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Correct.

If you are implying that Dawkins is suggesting that it is ok to be selfish, that is completely incorrect. In the first chapter of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins clearly expresses that "I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. ... My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene's law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live."

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"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."

-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34

Well, we aren't in complete control.

But if what you are suggesting is that we Christians have been asleep at the switch for about a half a century, then I mostly agree.

I'm not really talking about what percentage believe the Bible. I'm talking about the percentage of the public that are mostly familiar with the stories in the bible that everyone, believer or not, used to know.

As in, "who'se Noah?" I suppose you hear that more in Vermont than in Mississippi.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

That's not what I was trying to suggest. But, now that you mention it, I do not accept Dawkins' self assessment. He's basically trying to set up framework where an intelligent designer that would create a world like this one would be an evil creator. That, in turn, makes a world with no creator look relatively benign.

But I'll admit that I'm not a great student of Dawkins.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

He's not trying to set up any such framework. Primarily, he is presenting the results of scientific inquiry (namely evolution) to a popular audience. The 'framework' of evolution existed long before Dawkins, and it is accepted by biological scientists (theist and atheist alike) as the best theory explaining the facts of biological change-over-time.

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"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."

-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34

Strider33 and others that posted : Shalom to all , please look at this site on youtube ; ...evidence for giants nephilim rephiam anunnaki part 1- youtube ... youtube,com/watch?... about the Giants in ... Gen.6:1-4 ... about the * Sons of God * having sex with Female Humans and Creating Giants ... Half Angels , Half Humans ... a Hybrid of Giants ... ? !!! ... Faith Hope Peace Mercy Love from Mount Zion ... Duet12:11 ... Psalms2:6 ... Micah4:1-2 ... Glory to God through Christ ... bless everyone amen shalom !!! ... Ps Science is a Study of God*s Creation ... amen bye !!!...

I was reading Somewhere that the laws of physics Had to be In Place Before anything was here or it couldn't Be here. Gravity being a big thing -- but All of nature - the way everything works together Speaks of an Intelligent Designer. That Designer being God. The Genesis account of creation makes more sense than anything evolutionary thought comes up with. Evolutionarily speaking there's no reason for anything To be here.

Religion is man trying to reach God. Christianity is what God has done for us on the Cross.

Shalom to all , Sister SueD : Excellant post ! Here in America schools abandoned Creation in 1960 and taught evolution ? ! WHY ? To confuse the minds of most ! Creation is Evolving ! Not just evolution ! Take God out of the equation ; you have problems in society ! Glory to God through Christ , bless you and your loved ones , amen shalom bye !...

Strider33, back to the OP, you were talking about

Once, when this assumption finally untimorously reached the light of day in 1928 with the publication of "Language, Truth, and Logic" by A.J.Ayer in England, at first, not only advocates of all religions, but all ethics advoctes and all those who believed in any kind of objectivity in anything that's not backed by physical measurement were very frightened.

And then, and this is one of the great stories of the passing of a philosophical fad, something happened. The criterion of this philosophy, called "logical positivism," was called the criterion of verifiability, the thing that they used to accuse religion, ethics, aesthetics of all making meaningless statements because they could not be verified by observation -- was subjected to its own rule!

And guess what, you know the story, the rule, that says that all statements must be verified by observations or else be meaningless ... disqualifies itself, on its own criterion. The rule that said that the only things that can be true are science-based, measurement-based ... is not a science-based, measurement-based rule!

Among those who saw this, that saw that the falsifiability criterion of logical positivism discredits itself, were NOT the purveyors of pop science to the popular mind, who out of interest in stirring up science-religion disputes, wanted to perpetuate it, until today.

CB,

That's very interesting!

I wonder if the same sort of thing will happen with "post modernism". This attacks both faith and logical positivism with the idea that it's all subjective anyway. The miasma of "my truth", "your truth", "his truth".

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Not all those who wander are lost.

The field of mathematics -- 2 + 2 = 4 will always - has always been True. No matter what language is being spoken or who is speaking it.

Gravity is a Fact -- there is also weightlessness in outer space. But in this Real world -- gravity IS -- lots of us have no concept of How it works - the scientific / physics people probably understand it - but the average person Knows it exists - we just can't explain it.

God's Word is in reality God's word to mankind. Jesus Christ tells us that 'I am the Way, the TRUTH and the life - no man cometh to the Father but by Me." John 14:6
This tells us that we Can know Absolute Truth. We may not Like what we read - but that doesn't nullify it Being the Truth. Just like we might not Like the reality of gravity. We might decide we Want to fly - all by ourselves - like the birds with their wings. But - the Reality of Gravity remind us that we Aren't birds and instead of flying like them - we Drop to the ground. The landing might kill us or just harm us a little.
We might not Like God's existence -- we might wish He Didn't exist - but That doesn't change the fact that He Does exist.
God's Word tells us How this world got here -- He spoke it into existence -- no big bang or the need for billions of years for life to develop out of nothingness. Cause Anything that was out in space Had to get there Somehow. A Creator is essential.
There Are absolute 'rules' and there are absolute consequences for breaking them.

Sue,

Not to detract from your main point, but gravity exists in outer space. An astronaut on the space station is in free fall towards earth, but doesn't appear to be falling because the astronaut's inertia cause him to orbit, along with the station itself.

For that matter, the moon is in free fall towards earth, and earth is in free fall towards the sun.

The sensation of weightlessness is not due to the absence of gravity but to the absence of a force opposite to it.

As far as scientists "understanding" gravity is concerned, I would argue that they really don't understand it at all. They can explain it in terms of more fundamental entities, but that isn't the same thing as understanding it.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

strider 33 -- okay - so - on to my Main point ?!

What is your main point?

-Dan.

"Dan" -- you Could read the rest of the post -- I'd started out with 2+ 2 = 4. some one had commented about truth being 'subject to the situation at hand'. Not absolute. What ever a 'truth' is can be interpreted differently by different people. I was disagreeing.

Sue,

I'm not sure but I don't think 2 + 2 = 4 was true (or false) before God created time. So I'm not sure what you mean by "always".

I'm not even sure whether 2 + 2 = 4 is an incontrovertible objective fact, or a construct of the human mind. To be sure, if it is a construct, it's one that's gained universal consensus among humans.

Let's take another "universal truth" from mathematics. How about "parallel lines never intersect". Some mathematicians decided to start with an axiom that parallel lines do intersect, at an "ideal point". They then proceeded to see what kind of space results from that axiom, along with the other usual ones. That space is different form Euclidian space.

It turns out to have interesting properties. It even turns out to have useful properties.
But most of us don't think that way.

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Not all those who wander are lost.