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MARK L. BAKKE'S
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REPLY #48 TO
"RELIGION"
Boldfaced statements are parts of the original essay (or a subsequent reply) to which the respondent has directed his comments.
 Italicized/emphasized comments prefaced by (R) are those of the respondent and are presented unedited. My replies appear under the respondent's comments in blue text and are prefaced by my initials (MB). (R) It's obvious you didn't even read the Newsweek article, otherwise you'd know it had nothing to do with science proving God's existence. (MB) As has been the case with so many other things that are "obvious" to you, you are wrong yet again. I read the article and saw nothing but a thinly-veiled rehash of standard Creationist rhetoric that presented nothing new, much that is misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and/or distortion of fact and little that's even worthy of extended comment. The article attempts to show that science is contributing towards a strengthening of faith in the existence of God. It does so by dredging up the long-refuted cosmological and design arguments for his existence and supporting them with the assertion that "some scientists" believe those arguments. It also supports one of your favorite bits of illogic. To wit, that imperfect knowledge is support for God. The most egregious example of this is the bastardization of quantum mechanics whereby the unpredictable decay of a single atom is extrapolated into support for the notion that this indicates a place where God can act. A part of the article that produced a hearty laugh is the suggestion that humans might occupy some sort of privileged place in the universe since our size is roughly midway between the largest and smallest known objects. Of course, this is ludicrous since there are untold trillions of other things that are also the approximate size of human beings. Are they all "special" as well? There's also a blatant lie that the article attempts to slip past the uncautious reader. The first paragraph on page 50 refers to a "study" (completely unattributed, of course) that claims that 40 percent of scientists believe in a personal God. If you bothered to check the website references I provided in the last reply, you'll see that this figure is actually 7% with 72% being outright atheists and 21% being agnostic. Anything else you want to know about the assertions in that article? (R) Aside from the fact that it's absurd to call the lead article and cover story of a major news weekly "filler," this doesn't say much about your supposed open-mindeness. (MB) If you actually looked at that issue of Newsweek, you'd see that it contained no hard news of any importance. The lead "news" article was a recap of Hillary Clinton's legal woes. Obviously, there wasn't much happening in the world that week. In the absence of real "hard" news, a news magazine must fill pages with something and convince people to buy it. Thus, the article "Science Finds God" along with the splash cover. Since the article contained nothing newsworthy and much that is, at best, dubious scholarship, it certainly qualifies as "filler". It is no less so just because the subject happens to be an interest of yours. (R) You simply dismissed the article without reading it because it challenged your beliefs. (MB) I read the article and dismissed it due to the poor quality of the information it contains. The only thing it "challenged" was my ability to keep from laughing (I failed that challenge). If you believe the article has any merit, let's hear what you think about its specific claims. Also, I'm interested to hear why you originally gave the article such gushing approval if you now want to reverse yourself and say (correctly) that it does *not* show that science has "discovered" God.
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