Aside from his attempts at mischaracterization of his opponent's arguments, I'm also underwhelmed by Enyart's definitions.
Truth is a statement of reality…
In't that tautology? Can't that be read as: "Truth is something that is true." Tautology to prove the truth of a statement may work in boolean logic but not in argumentation.
The fundamental statements of Aristotlean truth (A is A, A is B or A is not B, A is not both B and not B) are not, in themselves, statements of reality until "A" and "B" are defined.
Yes, I believe that there are truths because I am convinced of the existence of objective reality. However, providing completely truthful definitions of objects within that reality is challenging enough, never mind more conceptual "eye of the beholder" type notions, like religion or political definitions.
As for absolute morality - if someone cannot conceive of a situation where a particular act is right, does that then make it an absolute? I would argue that it does not. Or a qualified absolute at best, and I'm not convinced that a true absolute can be qualified.
So we're back to the argument from personal incredulity as far as abiogenesis goes. I'm sure Bob would agree with me that science has made giant strides in explaining the world around us (we might part company if that explanation looked like it might contradict the bible) in the last 200 years. The difference between me and Bob is that I suspect that science will one day provide a likely mechanism for abiogenesis. To prove that this was beyond doubt the path that life took might be impossible, but without a time machine I doubt we will ever know for sure.
My definition did not imply God is aloof, and you can learn about Him through the His creation.
Yes, except his creation seems to irrestistably point towards an old earth, an evolution of life, and a huge and star-filled universe created from some event billions of years ago.
Which leads me to this....
What universe? Hawking was speaking of the event that “produced a universe.” And he draws the energy for that event “from the gravitational energy of the universe.” Sorry. Hawkings is wrong
Hawking may well be wrong, but I don't think it's because he's unaware of basic physics. In fact, as Hawking observed:
"This argument about whether or not the universe had a beginning, persisted into the 19th and 20th centuries. It was conducted mainly on the basis of theology and philosophy, with little consideration of observational evidence. This may have been reasonable, given the notoriously unreliable character of cosmological observations, until fairly recently. The cosmologist, Sir Arthur Eddington, once said, 'Don't worry if your theory doesn't agree with the observations, because they are probably wrong.' But if your theory disagrees with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is in bad trouble. In fact, the theory that the universe has existed forever is in serious difficulty with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law, states that disorder always increases with time..."
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/bot.html
He probably forgot he said this when he wrote that in Origin of the Universe. It's probably not because he made a brisk generalization in a popular science book to avoid a long digression into quantum physics, it's probably because he just doesn't understand basic physics, or forgot them temporarily.
My, will his face be red when he spots this appallingly elementary mistake! I can't believe his buddies at Stanford, Syracuse, and Caltech didn't point it out to him either - I guess they probably feel sorry for him because he's in wheelchair and didn't want to make him look bad.
When will Bob be producing a paper that criticises this idea of borrowed energy? Someone needs to let these rogue cosmologists know they've overlooked elementary physics in their eagerness to disprove the existence of God.
Bob probably also read somewhere that near the point of a hypothetical singularity, the laws of physics as we know them break down, but he may have forgotten that too. It's easy to forget things when you're physikin'.
Bob's only interested in truth when it's a truth he likes and is in line with his particular biblical interpretation.
There are only three theoretical alternatives to the origin of the universe. True or False?
It's this sort of sophomoric approach to argumentation which makes me doubt his sincerity. There are a number of different alternatives. If the universe was a result of a collision between other objections, into which alternative does that fit?
I can find a word for something popping into existence from nothing: Magic. Magic is not real.
Strange. Isn't that what fiat creation effectively is? A magic word is spoken, and something comes from nothing.
Dear oh dear Bob, I was really expecting better from you.
Neither side is doing a great job of proving their particular position so far, but it is still early days. I wasn't really expecting either side to, because the topic requests proof of a highly abstract concept. Good luck with that.
