Should Science Speak to Faith?

[metadigital]

Right, now I have a spare minute I shall make a couple of comments.

 

Qwerty, you are, by your own admission, SPECIFICALLY AND DELIBERATELY excluding faulty premises, so that you may redefine the cosmological argument in such a manner so as to make it adhere to the strict rules of formal logic. This is a species of intellectual dishonesty, whether intentional or otherwise.

 

So, YOU are guilty of (the FORMAL FALLACY of) faulty generalisation (probably half-truth).

 

As well as using a narrow definition (faulty premises notwithstanding), you also denigrated my citations from the wikipedia and appealed to an authority (of sorts: JSTOR). I think it's worth spending a moment to explain this process, so I shall.

 

The wikipedia is a (notionally) independent, third party knowledge base that is readily available to all. I agree that it is by no means definitive, though it certainly lists sources and gives a good starting point for research. Added to this you cited a restricted website; I had to access it through my university's online library (fortunately I had recently matriculated, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to). I searched for journals relating to "Aquinas" and "Cosmological Argument", though none were particularly relevant (though I could easily have not had total access or missed an article, to be sure), and none matched your details (though you didn't provide any identifying descriptions, like authors or published dates). Denigrating my sources as being "basic" (I had three sources, which is triple the amount you cited), an ad hominem fallacy to boot (why not update the wikipedia to bes less "basic"?), whilst not providing either a quote or a direct link is poor etiquette at best, and disingenuous at worst.

 

Finally, and this is a general comment that was touched on by Cantousent, and I wanted to clarify some netiquette for everyone. Yes, I have been as guilty as anyone (if not more) of taking threads off-topic. The lexa non scripta, though, is that this is with the permission of the topic starter. Why? Because the topic starter implicitly has undertaken the duty (and pleasure / privilege) of monitoring the thread, replying to people and generally managing the discussion. To take someone's discussion off-topic is just rude. Start your own topic. Basically, it is cashing in on the audience of the topic; a type of attention-whoring (intentional or not), probably based on the fear that no-one would read the new topic. And the onus is on the topic-starter to monitor every reply. But here's the point: if Qwerty had started a topic about the formal logic deployed in theological proofs, I (and everyone else) would be able to read and contribute as and when appropriate, at our discretion and pleasure, instead of having to read through multiple off-topic replies (i.e. thanks for spamming).

 

Quite frankly, Qwerty, owing to the discourtesy you demonstrated, as outlined above, I nearly wrote a line-by-line dissection of your entire posting history in this topic, with appropriate commentary. I refrained for a number of reasons (not least of which is that I have a lot of work to finish at the moment, and writing in-depth responses with appropriate links takes a lot of time and effort (though not everyone shows this courtesy)).

 

I try very hard not to moderate unless it is absolutely necessary. I have never had to moderate one of my own topics, so far, and I would rather try to argue points cogently rather than resort to editing others' posts.

 

Here's hoping that some lessons can be taken away from this.