TIA Tuesday: The “decline” of science
October 28, 2008 — Deacon DuncanOne of the first lessons I learned in life is the importance of using the right tool for the right job. A razor has a sharp edge and a fine line, and is the tool you need for making careful, precise, well-defined cuts. A chainsaw, by contrast, is loud, smelly, and not well suited to making fine distinctions, preferring to chew its way through things and throwing the chips however they may fly. In the right hands, a chainsaw can be a powerful tool, and can even be used to make folksy carvings out of raw logs. In the hands of a klutz, however, it can be dangerous to both wielder and bystander alike.
We’re in Chapter 14 of TIA, watching Vox wield what he calls “Occam’s Chainsaw,” which he seems to prefer to the similarly-named Razor. It’s an apt distinction, as shown by his hack-and-slash approach to trying to craft a rebuttal to atheistic arguments. For example, see if you can figure out why he entitled the argument below, “The Argument from Temporal Advantage.”
One of the obvious weaknesses in the atheist concept of the conflict between science and religion is the fact that many, if not most, of the great scientists in history were religious men. Even the first great martyr of Science, Galileo Galilei, was not an atheist but a Christian. For every Watson and Einstein, there is a Newton, a Copernicus, a Kepler, and yes, a Galileo.

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