
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
On the fundamental question--evolution or creation?--Americans are on the fence. According to one survey, while 61% of Americans believe we have evolved over time, 22% believe this evolution was guided by a higher power, with another 31% on the side of creationism. For some, modern science debunks many of religion's core beliefs, but for others, questions like "Why are we here?" and "How did it all come about?" can only be answered through a belief in the existence of God. Can science and religion co-exist?

Director, Origins Project and Foundation Professor, ASU

Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and author

Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering, MIT

Author, What's So Great About Christianity

Author & Correspondent for ABC News
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Director, Origins Project and Foundation Professor, ASU
Lawrence Krauss is an internationally known theoretical physicist. He is the Director of the Origins Project and Professor of Physics at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. Krauss has written several bestselling books including A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (2012). Passionate about educating the public about science to ensure sound public policy, Krauss has helped lead a national effort to defend the teaching of evolution in public schools. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
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Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and author
Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine and Editor of Skeptic.com, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and an Adjunct Professor at Claremont Graduate University and Chapman University. Shermer’s latest book is The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (2011). He was a college professor for 20 years, and since his creation of Skeptic magazine, has appeared on such shows as The Colbert Report, 20/20, and Charlie Rose. Shermer was the co-host and co-producer of the 13-hour Family Channel television series Exploring the Unknown.
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Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT
Ian Hutchinson is a physicist and Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He and his research group are international leaders exploring the generation and confinement (using magnetic fields) of plasmas hotter than the sun's center. This research, carried out on a national experimental facility designed, built, and operated by Hutchinson's team, is aimed at producing practical energy for society from controlled nuclear fusion reactions, the power source of the stars. In addition to authoring 200 research articles about plasma physics, Hutchinson has written and spoken widely on the relationship between science and Christianity. His recent book Monopolizing Knowledge (2011) explores how the error of scientism arose, how it undermines reason as well as religion, and how it feeds today's culture wars and an excessive reliance on technology.
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Author, What's So Great About Christianity
A New York Times bestselling author, Dinesh D’Souza, has had a distinguished 25-year career as a writer, scholar and intellectual. A former Policy Analyst in the Reagan White House, D’Souza also served as an Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute as well as a Rishwain Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Called one of the “top young public-policy makers in the country” by Investor’s Business Daily, he quickly became a major influence on public policy through his writings. In 2008 D’Souza released the book, What’s So Great About Christianity, the comprehensive answer to a spate of atheist books denouncing theism in general and Christianity in particular. D'Souza is also the former President of The King’s College in NYC,
62% voted the same way in BOTH pre- and post-debate votes (31% voted FOR twice, 24% voted AGAINST twice, 8% voted UNDECIDED twice). 38% changed their mind (6% voted FOR then changed to AGAINST, 2% voted FOR then changed to UNDECIDED, 7% voted AGAINST then changed to FOR, 2% voted AGAINST then changed to UNDECIDED, 13% voted UNDECIDED then changed to FOR, 8% voted UNDECIDED then changed to AGAINST) | Breakdown Graphic


Science is limited by its refusal to make stuff up!
Until Science can explain to me how the very first molecule of existence, even before the Big Bang, came to be, I will believe in God.
Airport kid, the statements "Science is incompetent to refute God!"
and "Science increasingly points to a God!" are not contradictory statements anymore than "Science is incompetent to refute life in other planets" and "Science increasingly points to life in other planets." They are certainly not obvious contradictions. Science cannot refute what we may find in the future but it can increasingly point to it.
...has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
...because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
...God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the wold to confound the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world, and things which are despised, has God chosen, yes, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in His presence.
...Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him: neither can he know them, because the are spiritually discerned. from 1 Corinthians chapters 1 & 2
Knock and it shall be opened to you; seek and you shall find...
We like monkeys and apes may have evolved from the lemur as found in archaeological digs in Germany. Religion on the other hand was and is man made as found in archaeological digs in the middle east.
Krauss claims that the universe is deterministic. If this is so then the words he speaks and the things he believes are determined by the laws of nature and has nothing to do with truth. This is a fundamental self-referential problem with atheism.
"Science is incompentent to refute God!" says Dr. Hutchinson.
"Science increasingly points to a God!" says Mr. D'Souza.
Well, if science is competent to indicate God exists, it's certainly competent to indicate God doesn't exist. Science is either competent or it isn't, Hutchinson and D'Souza have unwittingly directly contradicted each other - and it's too bad Shermer and Krauss did not point out this obvious contradiction.
Science does not refute God, but it does refute some particular human interpretations of God. Fundamentalists limit God to thinking and acting very much like a man, a model rejected by Jesus Christ.
I enjoyed this a lot. I really liked the attempt (both sides) to argue substance instead of technicalities, when there was every chance of falling in that trap. (Technically, I feel the proposition was doomed to lose, and that Krauss failed to even make a case. That doesn't mean he wasn't compelling!) So maybe science can't refute god but his "turf" has been shrinking monotonically since the big competition began.
These were the arguments I noted. Any see others they want to note?
a) big tent (welcoming other religions (didn't use to))
b) Non Falsifiable
c) God put those dino bones there Last Thursday.
d) Hawking's God with a Match (started the big bang)
e) This hole fits me staggeringly well!" said the puddle. (Anthropic)
Last I felt Dinesh's open statement was poor, basically retreating all the way to "God is nature (& science explores his majesty)" That's a form of God with a Match, non participatory and not different from science in any relevant way. Otherwise, it seemed to have been argued very honestly by both sides, which I liked a lot. Great show.
No matter what all religious types no matter their "faith" one cannot expect them to be logical when it comes to evolution or in matters of science. No matter what...
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