high survival value
1) In Alvin Plantinga’s book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism “the central thesis in the book is that while there is a genuine conflict between religion and science, that a conflict lies, not between theistic religion and science but between the religion of naturalism and science” (Craig, W. L. n.d.). Plantinga states that there is an allusion of conflict but there are scientific facts and religious beliefs that actual complement each other or prove one another’s existence.
Plantina’s theory is that both religious and science can co-exist. He talks about how there are conflicting facts for science that some believe disproves religion. He thinks that the conflicts are over exaggerated or really don’t apply in some cases.
The section on divine action and in that section Plantinga has no problem showing classical physics or quantum physics suggest in any way that god cannot intervene miraculously in the series of secondary cause. So in lame man’s terms he is saying that science cannot disprove religion. There is no science that can show that there is no way that god cannot intervene if he wanted (Craig, W. L. n.d).
One of Plantina’s points in this book to atheist is that just because science can be the proof to the creation of life that doesn’t mean that god did not have his hand in the creation guiding that creation. Atheists believe that the science is what created us. And the creation of man and life was guided by god being the belief of Christians.
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2) Richard Dawkins is an unapologetic, often harsh atheist. He is also a world renowned evolutionary biologist. He opens up one of his books saying “Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, ‘Have they discovered evolution yet?'” (Dawkins, 1976, p1). Dawkins is a firm believer that we arose through evolution by natural selection as proposed by Charles Darwin over one-hundred and fifty years ago. Dawkins equates God as to nothing more than a placebo that people have used as a superficial answer to questions on are existence. He states that God does exist “if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human cultural” (1976, p193). Dawkins does not see any relation in religion and science. He thinks that the only reason the idea of a god exists is because people did not have another plausible way to explain existence or other deep questions. In Dawkins’ book “A River Out of Eden” he also talks about the incompatibility of nature and God. He uses our innate ability to find purpose in everything by comparing what the cheetah and antelope were “designed” for. The cheetah with its speed, claws, and teeth were made to kill antelope he says. However, the antelope has adaptations that work the exact opposite, to not be killed by cheetahs. Which he says its “as though cheetahs had been designed by one deity and antelopes by a rival deity” (Dawkins, 2008, 9 105). However, he says it does not matter whether you think it was one deity or multiple because they are both wrong. The only purpose is survival of each species DNA unto the next generation and so on.
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