Pericles,
You accuse me of a 'sweeping generalisation' in saying,

“science opposes religion, to the extent that the advent of Darwinian evolution made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

This is not my generalisation, it's a summary of what Dawkins believes. If you disagree, that's fine. But you are disagreeing with Dawkins, not me. (Or did Dawkins never say anything like this?)

And I think you are misunderstanding the Christian position. You seem to offer as a criticism a Christian presupposing the existence of a deity. Rather than being a criticism, it seems to me quite expected. I don't see how it could be otherwise. A Christian, by definition, will follow Christian teaching. The first four words of the Bible are: “In the beginning God ...” Scriptural teaching presupposes the existence of God.

The existence of God in the world is a Scriptural starting point. You claim this is circular reasoning. Quite possibly so. And you would then begin to understand the nature of presuppositions. Christians are explicit in their bias - “God exists”. Evolutionists are not so forthcoming in revealing their implicit bias with regard to the question of God's existence. Their implicit assumptions are similarly necessary to their way of thinking. The nature of evolutionary reasoning is to attempt to explain the realities of this world without the existence of God.

Going back to what you were saying in an earlier post, I think objectivity has a clear meaning. It has to do with focusing on an object, independent of the mind or feelings. I offered the object of the Bible, that is the text of the Christian Scriptures, as the (or a) basis for discussing Christianity. By analogy, I could offer the Australian Constitution as one objective basis for discussing Australian jurisprudence. In both cases, we can point to a real object, and base a discussion around that.

Squeers - “No empirical evidence for God?”
I suggest to you that God's creative qualities are evident throughout all creation.

By the law of the excluded middle, all evidence against the evolutionary process is evidence for God.

Not exactly, Dan S de Merengue.

>>This is not my generalisation, it's a summary of what Dawkins believes. If you disagree, that's fine. But you are disagreeing with Dawkins, not me. (Or did Dawkins never say anything like this?)<<

You referred to a Dawkins quote. Here it is in context.

"An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker 1986)

The part that I queried was your assertion that preceded it, which was:

>>As I understand it, Dawkins message is that a proper understanding of science is antithetical to religion; science opposes religion, to the extent that...<<

...at which point you add the Dawkins quote.

There is no correlation at all between science opposing religion, and your random Dawkins quote, none at all. You just made one up.

Science does not "oppose" religion. In fact, great progress is being made by scientists to explain how evolution itself may have been responsible for the invention of religion.

http://www.economist.com/node/18584074

Religion, on the other hand, is an implacable opponent of science. As you persist in demonstrating, with every post.

>>You seem to offer as a criticism a Christian presupposing the existence of a deity.<<

Criticism, no. Observation on the circularity of the Christian argument, yes.

>>The nature of evolutionary reasoning is to attempt to explain the realities of this world without the existence of God<<

Nope. Science is about learning. Its principal driving force is curiosity, not proving God doesn't exist.

Incidentally, using the Bible is not an objective basis for discussing Christianity, because - like the Constitution - it a result, or an output. It is a symptom, not a cause.

Pericles,
thanks for the link to the Economist article.
My own bias is to defend the human religious propensity as founded in something fundamentally to do with consciousness--however much it's abused socially/in practice. That is I'm interested in disproving my bias and in the process, hopefully, in substantiating it. Some of the experiments in the article are ingenious but for me they only establish how a human capacity can be manipulated, and not that it's a product of manipulation. The ritual behaviour seems a product of manipulation, but not the capacity. It's been fashionable to decentre the subject and attribute the capacity to language and the behaviour to rhetoric. Neuroscience though seems bent on attributing all ultimately to genetic coding. I don't pretend to fully understand such things but I doubt consciousness has had time to evolve in the usual prosaic way; that is, according to Dawkins's "variable speedism", which doesn't allow for hyperbolic punctuation--Gould's "punctuated equilibrium". Unfortunately, there's no fossil record for consciousness, except in terms of human artefacts, and we're forced to infer a great deal. The question of how and why consciousness evolved is what interests me. Evolution seems to put the kybosh on the notion of purpose--though I find it extraordinary to think of stupid phenomenality becoming conscious to no purpose, and there comes a point, I suspect, when a certain stage of development amounts to a radical singularity that sublates preceding stages. The universe is phenomenally, if modestly, self-conscious in us. Either a stupidly miraculous coincidence of elements and their improbable progeny, or some kind of purpose, seems indicated.

Dan,
The above accords somewhat with your position, yet my position is merely sceptical and I don't see how you can claim that "evidence against the evolutionary process is evidence for God".
In any case, can I ask for one specimen of evidence against evolutionary process for us to analyse?
My reservations above are sceptical and speculative, and not evidence for anything.
Even supposing you could make a competitive argument for God, then you'd have to explain what you mean by God. What is s/he?

Or not, Squeers.

>>The question of how and why consciousness evolved is what interests me. Evolution seems to put the kybosh on the notion of purpose--though I find it extraordinary to think of stupid phenomenality becoming conscious to no purpose, and there comes a point, I suspect, when a certain stage of development amounts to a radical singularity that sublates preceding stages.<<

What you refer to as our "consciousness" is surely little more than a more advanced state of the awareness displayed by many other members of the animal kingdom. While it may all begin with amoebic mindlessness at one end of the "consciousness scale", the intelligence displayed by many of our close animal relatives at the other is only inferior to ours by a couple of million years or so.

Which is a problem if you are a young-earth creationist, of course, but otherwise is pretty straightforward, to my way of thinking.

Pericles,

I'm also sceptical of leaps of inferential logic, and especially dislike the humanist bias that posits itself (consciousness) unique in the universe--a rationale to lord it over all other life.
But while your point that <"consciousness" is surely little more than a more advanced state of the awareness displayed by many other members of the animal kingdom> seems reasonable, there's surely no "surely" about it? Yet even if the reasoning's sound, it doesn't diminish the seemingly extraordinary instance that intelligence and self-consciousness should emerge at all, to no purpose. I concede there's no necessity that purpose has anything to do with it. But if sentience is such a common event, at least on Earth, that would seem to suggest it's not a fluke, and even that the universe has its "elders"? On the other hand there seems a profound distinction between sentience and consciousness--though I also concede that this might be conceit, and that what we call consciousness and intelligence might be nothing at all beyond the cultural rationalisations we've evolved to explain reality--which would make science possibly just as nonsensical or mythological as philosophy.
'Tis a puzzlement.

But what ho, Dan; can we have a bit of rigour from your quarter?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12760#222250
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12760#222257

Pericles, i see you are still avoiding answering simple questions in plain english.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12760#222256
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12760#222259

Squeers, you are getting more enligthened, but there has been plenty of "rigour" & good logic, from some christians on this debate.