God's Existence, Science and Faith, Suffering and Evil, Jesus' Resurrection, and Book Reviews
Showing posts with label Agents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agents. Show all posts
11 Quotes From J. Warner Wallace on Evidence For God's Existence
"The totality and interconnected nature of our galaxy's unique backstory, along with its rare circumstances and unlikely conditions, overwhelmingly indicate tampering."
"Researchers have been consistently unable to identify a viable location, pathway, or mechanism explaining the origin of life. With each passing year, the level of complexity and interaction at the cellular level becomes more apparent and more difficult to explain."
"Most investigators have sought the secret of life in the physics and chemistry of molecules. But they will look in vain for conventional physics and chemistry to explain life, for that is a classic case of confusing the medium with the message. The secret of life lies, not in its chemical basis, but in the logical and informational rules it explains."
"If a model attempts to explain the origin of life yet fails to explain the origin of information foundational to life, it falls dreadfully short of its goal."
"Choice is a feature of design and a reflection of intelligent agency. Designers make conscious choices between options. Their designs often reflect these decisions, especially when other options are available."
"In order to think rationally about their thoughts, they must have the freedom to do so, but this freedom is unavailable if the laws of physics and chemistry are controlling their thoughts. The fact skeptics are free to believe their thoughts are entirely physical is evidence their thoughts are not entirely physical."
"Naturalism fails to explain two attributes of the universe related to objective moral truth. It cannot adequately explain the existence of objective moral truths, and it cannot explain objective, transcendent personal obligations. Naturalism...can be reasonably eliminated because it fails on two counts."
"No single explanation will account for every act of evil. There are often several causes involved in explaining any given episode of suffering."
"When multiple divergent lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion, you can trust you're making a proper inference."
All these quotes can be found in Wallace's latest book "God's Crime Scene."
Book Review: Agents Under Fire
Introduction
This reviewer has long been interested in the discussions about the existence of agents. Since the teleological argument depends on the existence of design being a legitimate concept, and that being dependent upon the existence of agents, Angus Menuge's book "Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science" (Hardcover, GoodReads) was quite appealing. This reviewer balked at the price on Amazon, but it was given as a gift, and this reviewer was ecstatic delve into it immediately. The book is 215 pages divided into eight densely packed chapters. This review is designed to be a chapter-by-chapter summary to prepare the reader to tackle this challenging text.Preface
Dr. Menuge begins the preface of the book by stating that his purpose behind writing Agents Under Fire is to defend the existence of agency (a non-natural entity capable of reasoning and purposing). He explains that this is a pivotal question in debates about intelligent design, for if there is no agency then there is no agents to design anything (to compare the "designs" in nature to)- design even is an illegitimate concept and should be completely discarded.
Menuge defines two key terms for understanding the book: Strong Agent Reductionism (SAR) and Weak Agent Reductionism (WAR). SAR represents a complete "explaining away" of agency by positing that all decisions are the results of natural cause-and-effect systems- no thought, reason, or purpose are involved in such systems. WAR attempts to explain agency in natural terms- making agency a product of nature. He then offers some quick points of critique of each, but saves the deeper content for later.
Following the definitions is a chapter-by-chapter summary that helps the reader get his or her bearings and recognize how the book will flow. Some people are tempted to skip prefaces of books, but this is a case where doing so will make following the book much more difficult.
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Agents, God and Science, Intelligent Design, Reason, Science, Science and Faith
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