One man's poison is another man's cure
The „new atheists are jousting at windmills. God is a phantom who gains concreteness only as He is defined. When ridiculous theological minds, such as those of evangelists Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and their ilk define God, then God is reduced to ridiculousness. But when sublime theological minds, such as those of philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne˜minds that have plumbed subjectivity through introspection and honed their understandings of quantum mechanics, relativity, and the other conceptual breakthroughs of modernity˜define God, then the notion of God emerges as a sublime and ennobling concept.
The problem is not with the notion of God; no scientist or other rational person should have a problem with that. The problem is with scriptural literalism; every rational person should have a problem with that.
Then again, making the whole argument hinge on a distinction between the natural and the supernatural assumes that science has completed its account of the natural world. It hasn't. So how can we know if a peculiar happening is a supernatural event or one that expresses an aspect of nature that we don‚t understand yet? Choose your poison?
Kenneth JoppSt. Paul, MN
