December 04, 2007
Dinesh D'Souza has another one of his interesting columns about his on-going debates with atheists.
God v. Atheism: My Debate with Daniel Dennett
By Dinesh D'Souza
“On Friday, November 30, I debated philosopher Daniel Dennett at
As always, read the whole column.
But now I’ll comment on one bit that I enjoyed and D'Souza writes:
“Most memorable for me was the philosophically-minded savant who pooh-poohed the possibility of God's existence on the basis of what he called the Principle of Parsimony. He argued that either propositions are true by definition, or they are true by empirical verification. If a proposition cannot satisfy either criteria, then it is meaningless. Since God does not exist by definition, the young man insisted, and since we cannot verify His presence empirically, clearly God has been refuted by the Principle of Parsimony.
I asked our undergraduate savant to apply his twofold test to the Principle of Parsimony itself. Is it true by definition? No. Well, can it be verified empirically? Again, no. Therefore by the student's own criteria the Principle of Parismony is worthless and can be cast aside. The student had no comeback to this and neither did Dennett.â€
For me I found it interesting that a “philosophically-minded savant who pooh-poohed the possibility of God's existence on the basis of what he called the Principle of Parsimony,†a methodological procedure espoused by William of Ockham, a Franciscan friar. You know, a Catholic.
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Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at December 11, 2007 02:59 PM (QbcjU)
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