I think the real comparison is one to be made between historic Christianity and secular humanism (which Dawkins presents as science).
These are the views which do try to describe the entirety of human experience so can at least trying to do the same thing, so can be compared.
But I would argue they are quite fundamentally different as one requires a leap of faith, the other doesn't.
Secular Humanism starts, as Carl Sagan says, with "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be" which is not a statement with any basis which could possibly justify it - it is just stated as an axiom from which to start working, so is effectively a leap of faith with no basis. It can't be questioned.
Whereas when historic Christianity states "And God did......" it is describing historic events which we can then investigate and seek to disprove or verify. Here belief in the Bible is always based in God's revelation, so there is at least some basis for the Christian claims - and the faith required is not a blind leap of faith, but a faith expressing trust in the source of those revelations.
Or course you could then throw the post-modernist view into the mix and say we can't know anything about history, science, etc.. it is all just made up stories to explain the world. So believing anything is true is a leap of faith - but that's another issue altogether....
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-11-02 10:29 pm (UTC)These are the views which do try to describe the entirety of human experience so can at least trying to do the same thing, so can be compared.
But I would argue they are quite fundamentally different as one requires a leap of faith, the other doesn't.
Secular Humanism starts, as Carl Sagan says, with "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be" which is not a statement with any basis which could possibly justify it - it is just stated as an axiom from which to start working, so is effectively a leap of faith with no basis. It can't be questioned.
Whereas when historic Christianity states "And God did......" it is describing historic events which we can then investigate and seek to disprove or verify. Here belief in the Bible is always based in God's revelation, so there is at least some basis for the Christian claims - and the faith required is not a blind leap of faith, but a faith expressing trust in the source of those revelations.
Or course you could then throw the post-modernist view into the mix and say we can't know anything about history, science, etc.. it is all just made up stories to explain the world. So believing anything is true is a leap of faith - but that's another issue altogether....