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Human brain points science writer back to God

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Closing our religion coverage for the week (a bit late), over at ReligionNews.com, Emily McFarlane Miller reports that Mike McHargue tells us:

‘Science Mike’ McHargue: ‘Christians aren’t stupid, and atheists aren’t evil’

What are some of the most compelling things you’ve found in your scientific studies that point you back to God?

Probably the first thing would be how ideally suited the human brain is as a host for beliefs about God, the way belief seems to be relatively inevitable a consequence of human consciousness, and the way our brains tend to develop in healthy ways when we indulge that belief, especially in a God who is loving. Beyond that, as you learn more about cosmology and physics, particle physics or quantum physics, you find our world is at least as mysterious and beautiful and, I might even poetically say, magical as anything depicted in the sacred texts of the world’s great wisdom traditions.More.

McHargue’s right, of course, but the usual naturalist atheist response is simply to claim that “evolution” means that we cannot understand reality and don’t have free will. That point of view, as it sinks in, will have serious political and legal implications, not just religious ones.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of  unqualified science-and-religion stuff out there.

Some of us find it helpful to ask, what science and whose religion are we discussing?

It makes a difference whether the “science” is nuclear physics or astrobiology. It makes a difference whether the religion is Buddhism or traffic in shrunken heads.

Back to our regular coverage shortly.

See also: Science writer John Farrell gets BioLogos right Farrell is polite about the BioLogos sucker punch drunks, but there is no concealing that rejecting design in nature means embracing naturalist atheism in the end. The trick is to spin out the “religion” schtick long enough that people don’t notice. Being nice helps.

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Comments
You can see that atheists, materialists, besides denying God, also very commonly deny free will. Or, like the very influential ultra darwinist Daniel Dennett, redefine free will to mean that he could not have done otherwise. Now why would atheists deny free will, when atheism is really only about denying gods? It is because the issue of what the agency of a decision is, is categorically a matter of opinion. There is a fundamental part of reality, agency of decisions, to which objectivity, facts, do not apply. The real target of atheists, materialists is against subjectivity. They really only accept the validity of objectivity, facts. And why would any man deny the validity of subjectivity? It is because man is tempted to conceive of choosing in terms of sorting out the best result. To do the best implies to know for certain fact what is good, and mankind covets this certainty. This factual certainty about what is good provides a false sense of absolute confidence, which explains why atheists are generally authoritarian and arrogant. By teaching the difference between fact and opinion in school, establishing the validity of subjectivity, then people will take subjectivity seriously, and consequently they will generally all out of their own free will come to believe in God.mohammadnursyamsu
October 3, 2016
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You always have been very interested in science. Had that never clashed with your faith and been an issue for you until that point?
This question is loaded with false assumptions. At its very core, my "faith" is based on the insight that rationality necessarily springs from a free unitary consciousness. Atheism/materialism spectacularly fails to accommodate rationality. So I simply cannot make rational sense of a world without God. Put another way: there is an unbridgeable divide between how I perceive the world and a world consisting of just fermions and bosons. Allow me to rephrase, one more time: I cannot make rational sense of a world where a (fine-tuned) universe pops into existence out of nothing and where fermions and bosons self-organize into life and rationality by sheer dumb luck. Next question, please.Origenes
October 3, 2016
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