Is Atheism Irrational? NY Times

Alvin Plantinga
This is the first in a series of interviews about religion that I will conduct for The Stone. The interviewee for this installment is Alvin Plantinga, an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, a former president of both the Society of Christian Philosophers and the American Philosophical Association, and the author, most recently, of “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.”

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

THE STONE

Is Atheism Irrational?

By GARY GUTTING

(Materialism and Evolution can't be both True)

 ...First, if materialism is true, human beings, naturally enough, are material objects. Now what, from this point of view, would a belief be? My belief that Marcel Proust is more subtle that Louis L’Amour, for example? Presumably this belief would have to be a material structure in my brain, say a collection of neurons that sends electrical impulses to other such structures as well as to nerves and muscles, and receives electrical impulses from other structures.

But in addition to such neurophysiological properties, this structure, if it is a belief, would also have to have a content: It would have, say, to be the belief that Proust is more subtle than L’Amour.

...GG: That does seem to be a hard conclusion to accept. But won’t evolution get the materialist out of this difficulty? For our species to have survived, presumably many, if not most, of our beliefs must be true — otherwise, we wouldn’t be functional in a dangerous world.

Materialism can’t be sensibly believed, at least if, like most materialists, you also believe in evolution.

AP: Evolution will have resulted in our having beliefs that are adaptive; that is, beliefs that cause adaptive actions. But as we’ve seen, if materialism is true, the belief does not cause the adaptive action by way of its content: It causes that action by way of its neurophysiological properties. Hence it doesn’t matter what the content of the belief is, and it doesn’t matter whether that content is true or false. All that’s required is that the belief have the right neurophysiologicalproperties. If it’s also true, that’s fine; but if false, that’s equally fine.

Evolution will select for belief-producing processes that produce beliefs with adaptive neurophysiological properties, but not for belief-producing processes that produce true beliefs. Given materialism and evolution, any particular belief is as likely to be false as true.

GG: So your claim is that if materialism is true, evolution doesn’t lead to most of our beliefs being true.

AP: Right. In fact, given materialism and evolution, it follows that our belief-producing faculties are not reliable.

Here’s why. If a belief is as likely to be false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that any particular belief is true is about 50 percent. Now suppose we had a total of 100 independent beliefs (of course, we have many more). Remember that the probability that all of a group of beliefs are true is the multiplication of all their individual probabilities. Even if we set a fairly low bar for reliability — say, that at least two-thirds (67 percent) of our beliefs are true — our overall reliability, given materialism and evolution, is exceedingly low: something like .0004. So if you accept both materialism and evolution, you have good reason to believe that your belief-producing faculties are not reliable.

But to believe that is to fall into a total skepticism, which leaves you with no reason to accept any of your beliefs (including your beliefs in materialism and evolution!). The only sensible course is to give up the claim leading to this conclusotherion: that both materialism and evolution are true. Maybe you can hold one or the , but not both.

So if you’re an atheist simply because you accept materialism, maintaining your atheism means you have to give up your belief that evolution is true. Another way to put it: The belief that both materialism and evolution are true is self-refuting. It shoots itself in the foot. Therefore it can’t rationally be held.

This interview was conducted by email and edited.

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Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most recently, “Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960″ and writes regularly for The Stone.

Is Richard Dawkins leading people to Jesus?

Is Richard Dawkins leading people to Jesus? – Telegra

(Click the above link for the whole article.)

By Damian Thompson Religion Last updated: April 16th, 2014

3171 Comments Comment on this article

Winning souls for Christ!

My schoolfriend Michael – an atheist for decades – rang me the other night and told me he'd returned to the Catholic Church. "And you'll never guess who converted me," he said.

"Your wife?"

"No! It was Richard Dawkins!"

He explained that he was, and is, a huge admirer of Dawkins the biologist. (I'm with him there: I read The Blind Watchmaker when it first came out and was blown away.) "But then I read The God Delusion and it was… total crap. So bad that I started questioning my own atheism. Then he started tweeting."

Like a loony on top of the bus, no?

"Exactly!"

Funnily enough, this is the second time in a week that I've heard of Richard Dawkins leading someone to Christ...

Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. His latest book is The Fix: How addiction is taking over your world. He also writes about classical music for The Spectator.

14 amazing animal migrations

14 amazing animal migrations

By wing, by fin or by hoof, they are impressive. See all of the photos and brief explanations in following photos .

( Sorry, you have to click the above link to go back to the original website to see them all, somehow the arrows of forwarding and backwarding below are not working here)

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Related Topics: Animal Research, Pets, MNN lists

Dragonflies

Dragonflies are capable of long-distance migrations, but until recently, scientists had no idea how far they traveled. In 2009, scientists discovered a 14,000- to 18,000-kilometer dragonfly migration route that spanned from India to the Maldives, the Seychelles, Mozambique, Uganda and back again.

Incredibly, the epic migration spans four generations of dragonflies, with each generation playing its part in the journey much like a relay race. It is easily the longest insect migration ever discovered. The dragonflies appear to follow the rains, from the monsoon season in India to the rainy season in eastern and southern Africa.

The annual monarch butterfly migration might be the most colorful migration in the natural world.

Outdistanced only by dragonflies among insects, the monarch migration spans 7,000 kilometers (about about 4,349 miles) includes three to four generations, and occasionally crosses the Atlantic Ocean. It is a spectacular thing to witness.

Salmon

One of nature's most impressive migratory animals is the salmon. They are impressive for their ability to traverse both seawater and freshwater during their journey.

Salmon are capable of traveling hundreds of miles inland via rivers and waterways, and will even ascend thousands of feet up mountain streams to return to the waters where they were born.

Think about it, dear friends,

Amazing, right?

Dragonflies and Monarch butterflies with their thin wings can fly such a long distance to migrate.( with 3 to 4 generations to continue flying. ) Are those wings the results of evolution or are they designed that way? What material can be so thin yet so strong? Before they evolved such a pair of good wings, their species would have perished, right? ( they couldn't have one wing first and gradually grew the 2nd wing long long time ago, as Richard Dawkins wants us to believe.)

We all know that Salmons could swim upstream and ascend thousand feet up mountain streams to return to the water where they were born. How amazing! How can Evolution play a role in Salmon's going home? Smart you, can you tell me?

“Was it through your know-how that the hawk learned to fly,

    soaring effortlessly on thermal updrafts?

Did you command the eagle’s flight,

    and teach her to build her nest in the heights,

Perfectly at home on the high cliff face,

    invulnerable on pinnacle and crag?

From her perch she searches for prey,

    spies it at a great distance.

Her young gorge themselves on carrion;

    wherever there’s a roadkill, you’ll see her circling.”( Jobs 39:26-30)

"Suspended Animation" in Human Beings?( Recent Hawaiian Airlines flight teenager stowaway survival)

Hawaiian Airlines flight stowaway may have survived in 'suspended animation'

(Click the above link for more information)

The 16-year-old boy who survived a flight across the Pacific Ocean stowed away in an airplane's wheel well has everyone wondering just how he achieved this remarkable feat.

The teenager climbed aboard Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 at San Jose International Airport Sunday morning (April 20) and survived the five-and-a-half-hour flight to Maui with minimal oxygen at an altitude of 38,000 feet (11,600 meters) and temperatures of about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62 degrees Celsius). The boy remained unconscious for most of the flight, but was unharmed,The Associated Press reported.

The teenager probably survived by entering a state of suspended animation, in which the body's metabolism slows down and requires less oxygen and energy, medical experts say. [Infographic: The Limits of Human Survival]

"It is a true miracle that a lot of physicians have postulated in the past," said Dr. Evelina Grayver, a cardiologist at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.

The boy most likely lost consciousness due to the low oxygen level as the plane ascended, and then, the low temperatures probably put his cells into a frozen state, Grayver told Live Science.

Not everyone believes the story, however. "Somebody surviving at 35,000 feet for five hours with no supplemental oxygen supply; I just don’t believe it," aviation consultant Jim Nance told ABC News.

Human hibernation?

There have been rare cases of people going into states of suspended animation in extreme cold.

In 2006, a 35-year-old man survived 24 days on a snowy mountainside in Japan. His body temperature had plummeted to 71 F (22 C), his organs had shut down and his metabolism had slowed to a crawl, yet he recovered fully from the incident.

In the case of the boy on the airplane, Grayver suspects the symbiotic relationship between low oxygen and low temperatures brought the metabolic processes of the boy's cells to a halt.

"When an organism suspends its biological processes, it cannot do anything wrong," Grayver said.

As the plane descended to land, the cells would have rewarmed gradually and started functioning normally again, she said.

The boy's young age likely also played a role in his miraculous survival. He probably didn't have heart disease or congenital heart defects that could have caused fatal heart arrhythmias, Grayver said. 

Historic Significance of blood moons

Historic Significance of blood moons

In the past, the rare appearance of four blood moons on these feast days has coincided with major events for Israel and the Jewish people.

In 1492, Spain expelled the Jews. Columbus also discovered America, which became a safe haven for the Jewish people.

"In each of these blood moons, you have something that begins in tragedy and ends in triumph," Hagee explained.

For instance, in 1948, Israel was reborn as a nation.

"After 2,000 years, God supernaturally brought them from 66 nations and a nation was born in a day," Hagee noted. "That again was a supernatural something that happened following the tragedy of the Holocaust."

In 1967, Israel won the Six-Day War and recaptured Jerusalem.

"For the first time in 2,000 years, Jerusalem and the State of Israel were together again," Hagee said.

http://www.pray4zion.org/TheComingBloodMoons.html

A clip from another interesting article below
...In turn, this tremendous amount of dust would result in the moon appearing red or being darkened, and the sun being darkened. It is believed that the cosmic impacts that lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs put so much dust into the atmosphere that the Earth laid in darkness for over a year.

Impacts raising dust into the atmosphere would cause phenomena that are not unlike a volcano putting dust into the atmosphere and causing red moons and sunsets, but millions of times more dust would go up into the atmosphere from a cosmic impact. Depending on where one is located this dust would filter out the blue/green light passing through the atmosphere with the longer wavelengths of red light being the least affected, therefore causing the sun, moon, and stars to appear either darkened or reddened. It is interesting to note that after a small cometary fragment struck Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 it was reported that the whole northern sky appeared to be on fire.

On October 25, 2007, there was not a lunar eclipse, but Nick Carlson took a picture of a full red moon over San Diego that glowed red because of the smoke and dust particles in the sky over San Diego that night. http://www.flickr.com/photos/truelifeimages/1766830897/

Here again is the same description as the passage in Acts of a comet impact that would put vast amounts of dust into the atmosphere where the moon would become as blood and the sun would become darkened or black. These verses contain several clues that a comet impact is being described. Verse 13 says the “stars (i.e. comets) of heaven will fall to the earth.” A comet hitting the earth would also cause a huge earthquake described here as a “great earthquake.” A comet impacting the ground would also cause the atmosphere to roll back just as it does in nuclear explosions, and indeed we are told that the “heaven (atmosphere) departed as a scroll when it is rolled together.” We also know that the “great earthquake” referred to in verse 12 was caused by a comet impact because only cosmic impacts can generate earthquakes large enough to move “every mountain and island.” (Nuclear bombs and faults in the Earth cannot produce earthquakes over 10 on the Richter scale, but cosmic impacts can produce earthquakes over 12 or 14 on the Richter scale.)
Four Blood Moons | The Comets of God Blog

To learn more about cometary impacts and their connection to Biblical catastrophes and prophesied end times events visit www.thecometsofgod.com.

About the author:

An archeologist and a geologist, Dr. Goodman has devoted over twenty-five years to the study of the Bible. He holds a geological engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines, a M.A. in anthropology from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from California Coast University. He also earned a M.B.A. from Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He was accredited by the former Society of Professional Archaeologist. Goodman is a Messianic Jew who was saved in 1987.

NASA Eclipse Website, http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html

Sorry,  I haven't realized some of the dates of those past events mentioned by Pastor Hagee were off.( 10/7/2015)
Please see my new post below.( BH)

•     Are 4 Consecutive Blood Moons Doom sayings just Coincidences?
• 
  
• ...And the first instance of four blood moons is

We start in Spain in 1492. For this date, Christian history typically points to the end of the eight-century-long expulsion of the Muslims from Christian Spain. This “Reconquista” ended with the fall of Granada on January 2, 1492.

But no, Hagee says that God was focusing on the expulsion of Jews from Spain. The Edict of Expulsion was issued on March 31, 1492, and it gave Jews four months to leave. An estimated 100,000 Jews or more were forced to leave.

One small problem is that Hagee’s first blood moon didn’t happen until almost a year later (Passover, on April 2, 1493).

Remember that the “four blood moons” take about 18 months to play out (starting with a Passover and ending two Sukkots later). So God’s celestial show took place in slow motion after the problem had already come and gone.

Example two

Next up is the establishment of Israel on May 14, 1948. Okay, that sounds like a big development.

One small problem is that, once again, Hagee’s first blood moon didn’t happen until almost a year later (Passover, on April 14, 1949).

Example three

The last one was the Six-Day War, June 5–10, 1967. God must’ve been paying attention this time, because the first blood moon had already happened (on Passover, April 25, 1967).

But why this war? Since independence, Israel has had lots of conflicts. In particular, why not the Yom Kippur War in 1973? That war was a surprise, and there were more Israeli casualties.

And what about the Holocaust?! How does this not make the list? Israel lost less than 1000 dead and 4500 wounded during the Six-Day War. In the Holocaust, six million Jews were killed.

And God was apparently unmoved by any of the anti-Jewish pogroms. In Ukraine, for example, as many as a quarter million Jews were killed after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Let’s be clear, too, that the idea of “blood moon” = eclipse is Hagee’s invention. More importantly, the idea that eclipses occurring on Jewish holy days is meaningful in a cosmic sense is an invention. As is the idea of four in a row (instead of two or seven, say). “Four blood moons” is a marketing concept, not a biblical concept.

A Blood Moon is Coming in April 14-15 (2014)

I've wondered what a "Blood moon" could be in the Bible and now I think perhaps it is a lunar eclipse or a big volcano eruption( a great earthquake) that will blacken the Sun and turn the moon into bloody red color. The Sun becomes black also could signal black hole to me. Interesting? Read the related Bible verses at the bottom of this post.The same book of Joel also prophesied the outpouring of Holy Spirit and that great event happened at Pentecost as it was recorded in Acts. 2.( roughly 50 days after Jesus' crucifixion)  And here is the current news to share with my blog readers. ( The end of the world won't happen until all 3 signs (Sun black, Moon bloody red and a big earthquake ) in the Book of Revelation happen all together. So no alarm this time around. However, better hurry to get connected with our Creator God and to Know Him sooner, if you haven't already known God yet. Time is certainly running out !)

(note:) The colour is caused by the light from sunsets and sunrises glinting off the surface of the Earth. As sun light bends around outer edges of the planet, the light beams into the Earth's shadow, transforming the Moon into a rust-coloured orb. The effect is similar to that of the sun turning the clouds red or pink during a sunrise or sunset.

NASA describes the phenomenon as if a person standing on the moon was "seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once."

On April 15, the full moon will be darkened by the shadow of the Earth, producing an eclipse visible across North America and setting in motion a lunar "tetrad."

Three more total eclipses are expected at six-month intervals: the second on Oct. 8 will be followed by a third eclipse on April 4 and a fourth on Sept. 28 of next year.

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/conspiracy-theories-abound-ahead-of-blood-moon-eclipse-1.1773762#ixzz2yn1xBzTK

• There will be a total lunar eclipse Tuesday that will turn the moon copper red    
• Such moons are commonly called blood moons
• There will be four of them within a year and a half and many in the 21st century
• There was a period of 300 years when there was not a single one

The left summary column is from following CNN link
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/11/tech/innovation/blood-moon/  

Don’t worry, a Blood Moon is coming April 14-15

(The following clip is from science News)...Although astronomers are excited about this event, a small group of Christians is fearful of this Blood Moon because the Bible predicts such a doom-and-gloom event will cause the end of the world. 

The Bible states, “The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come." [Joel 2:31] And “I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The Sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair. The whole Moon turned blood red.” [Revelation 6:12]

But, be rest assured that the world will not come to an end during a Blood Moon. 

http://www.itwire.com/science-news/space/63688-don%E2%80%99t-worry-a-blood-moon-is-coming-april-14-15

 Well, this other link below sheds more information about blood moon.

http://www.universetoday.com/19969/red-moon/

...Volcanic eruptions or forest fires can also put particles 

into the atmosphere that cause the moon to appear red 

or orange. Lunar eclipses have a similar effect...

Below are some Bible verses for references:

Acts. 2 And when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all assembled together in one place,

2 When suddenly there came a sound from heaven like the rushing of a violent tempest blast, and it filled the whole house in which they were sitting.

3 And there appeared to them tongues resembling fire, which were separated and distributed and which settled on each one of them.

4 And they were all filled (diffused throughout their souls) with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other (different, foreign) languages (tongues), as the Spirit kept giving them clear and loud expression [in each tongue in appropriate words].

Above verses echo the prophecy of the Book of Joel.

Joel 2: 28 And afterward I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

29 Even upon the menservants and upon the maidservants in those days will I pour out My Spirit.

30 And I will show signs and wonders in the heavens, and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke.

31 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.

32 And whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered and saved, for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the remnant [of survivors] shall be those whom the Lord calls.