CADRE Comments

The argument says simply that the universe must be structured in very exact ways to produce life. It's so exacting as to be totally improbable. Because it's so improbable that gives us a good reason to think the game is fixed. This differs from the ordinary design argument because we have something to compare it to, all that is not the target level,

A. Universe Displays purposive order Max Planck (1858-1947), Nobel Prize winner and founder of modern physics. 5 "According to everything taught by the exact sciences about the immense realm of nature, a certain order prevails--one independent of the human mind . . . this order can be formulated in terms of purposeful activity. There is evidence of an intelligent order of the universe to which both man and nature are subservient."

......(1)laws have simplicity and elegance.
"The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance, and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a…

Argument:

(1) Scientific reductionism loses phenomena by re-defining the nature of sense data and qualia.

(2)There are other ways of Knowing than scientific induction

(3) Religious truth is apprehended phenomenoloigcally, thus religion is not a scientific issue and cannot be subjected to a materialist critque

(4) Religion is not derived from other disciplines or endeavors but is a approch to understanding in its own right

Therefore, religious belief is justified on its own terms and not according to the dictates or other disciplines


In my dealings with atheist in debate and dialogue I find that they are often very committed to an empiricist view point. Over and over again I hear the refrain "you can't show one single unequivocal demonstration of scientific data that proves a God exists." This is not a criticism. It's perfectly understandable; science has become the umpire of reality. It is to scientific demonstration that we appear for a large swath of questions concerning…

Resurrection of Christ by Noël Coypel, 1700,  using a hovering depiction of Jesus


The "no Body" theory says that Jesus' resurrection  was non-bodily; he didn't leave an empty tomb but just appeared to people as a spirit. This view is much prized by a certain segment of theological liberalism. Some liberals can't bring themselves to buck naturalism (I on the other hand am a  liberal of a different sort). This view was Championed byHans Grass's classic Ostergeschehen and Osterberichte.[1] The answer, of course, is that Paul's belief was the same as the Jewish belief of the day, that Messiah was to raise all of fallen Israel at the end of times. This was to be a bodily resurrection. Paul sees Jesus as the "first fruits" or the hearld of this mass resurrection in the end. But why would he speak of a bodily resurrection for us (which clearly he does, as we see in the quotation at the top from 1 Cor. 15) and not for Jesus himself? The argument is that
We…