Swing and a Miss February 9, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in Atheism, Poetry, Religion, Science.trackback
I take a time out from grading to highlight for you the incredible ignorance on display in this piece by Tom Frame:
I find the materialist atheism of some rational sceptics harder to accept than theistic belief, and cannot make sense of my life in this world without believing in God and providence. Crudely naturalistic science leaves no room for poetic truth, refuses to honour any spiritual element in physical things and cannot accept the existence of a human soul.
Two points: first, it’s telling that Frame uses “accept.” Clearly it is his view of the implications of atheism that is the problem, not atheism itself. He doesn’t say “I believe there is strong evidence for a God*” but rather settles for the tamer “I don’t like to believe there is not a God.” It’s lazy thinking at best.
Second, it’s clear that Frame doesn’t have the foggiest idea what “science” leaves room for. Anyone who looks at methodological naturalism (or even philosophical naturalism) and decrees that it leaves no room for artistic insight into the human condition is a fool.
As difficult as it might be for Frame to believe, my appreciation for poetry hasn’t lessened since I rejected theism. Maybe he isn’t familiar with that classic atheistic poem, Dover Beach? You know, the one that finds poetic truth in light of science’s erosion of the need to evoke God as an explanation.
I wouldn’t have believed one could get so much wrong about both art and science in one paragraph. It’s quite an achievement in ineptitude, really.
*The best he can do is convergence. Seriously.
i sing(badly)i dance(badly)i adore art of every type,love history,read voraciously on any and every topic,love gardening,photography,animals(all creatures great and…)plants,trees,geography etc etc and i am an atheist!i have a soul too!!i know everything comes from somewhere,i just don,t know who or what started it for sure!!when i die if there is a “god”then i,ll just apologise profusely but he or she will undestand and forgive me-won’t he or she cos thats what we are told(countless times…)or am i just being silly again!!
“when i die if there is a “god”then i,ll just apologise profusely”
I wouldn’t worry about this too much. It’s about as likely as you dying and then waking up in one of the pods from The Matrix.