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G.M. Jackson Quotes

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Famous G.M. Jackson Quotes

“A theist can't empirically prove that God exists but he believes in God because no one can allegedly disprove God's existence. By his logic, you must believe in anything you can't disprove. That means all things are real until disproved--including the tooth fairy, the Loch Ness Monster, Santa Claus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.”

“Many Christians, including BioLogos, like to throw out the "you can't take the Bible literally" argument. They think it is the ultimate zinger that will end any debate in their favor. But if we shouldn't take the Bible literally, why should we believe God is real in the literal sense? Perhaps God is a metaphor also. Maybe God is really a metaphor for nature or chance. Heaven forbid! However, BioLogos insists on having it both ways: God is literally true but the Bible is not. That's like saying Mother Goose is literally true but her nursery rhymes are not.”

“Miller believes, like many theists, that religion brings us beyond the bounds of materialism. (Ironically he insists on a material explanation [evolution] for our existence.) However, he fails to explain how religion does this. Will religion enable us to overcome Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? Will the secrets of Miller's black box of quantum mechanics be revealed? Will chance and chaos be things of the past? If religion can't help us solve these mysteries, take us beyond the bounds of our material understanding, then Miller's belief is just so much wishful thinking. However, during one of his more coherent, non-blonde moments, Miller makes one of his strongest points: Science only concerns itself with the material universe, so we must look beyond science if we are to have morals. I can't say I disagree. However, morals don't have to come from an imaginary sky daddy. They could be rationally conceived and practiced to create an orderly society. And, why should science limit itself to the material universe? Morals can be tried and tested; bad morals can be weeded out while good morals are preserved. Such has already happened. Consider the fact that most parents no longer obey God's command to kill their children when they misbehave. Yet, those same parents abstain from stealing and adultery.”

“According to the anthropic principle proponents, if the universal constants (e.g. gravitation, the strong force, etc.) were just a nose-hair off, the universe as we know it would not exist; stars wouldn't form and there would be no life and no us. That supposedly makes our universe truly special. To demonstrate just how ridiculous this fine-tuning argument is, consider the fact that no measurement in physics is perfect. All of them are approximations and have margins of error. That means the universal constants, that make our universe what it is, have some wiggle room. Within that wiggle room are an infinite quantity of real numbers. Each of those real numbers could represent constants that could make a universe like ours. Since there are an infinite number of potential constants within that wiggle room, there are an infinite number of potential universes, like ours, that could have existed in lieu of ours. Thus, there is really nothing special about our universe.”

“The claim of fine tuning is subjective. As I stated before, no measurement in physics is perfect. The amount of precision we demand can be increased or decreased at our whim. We could have an approximate measurement that has a huge margin of error and call it finely-tuned if we so desire. Theists, in particular, have a lot of such desire. They so badly want God to be an indispensable part of our universe's creation, so they see finely-tuned constants. They also tend to sweep under the rug the following fact: the vast majority of our universe is hostile to life, and they fail to consider that another hand in the proverbial deck might yield a better universe than ours, one teaming with life on every planet throughout the cosmos.”