Comments on: Dinesh D’Souza: Why We Need Earthquakes

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:56:34 +0000

“Fish might survive in such an environment, but not humans.” And fish don’t know how to nail each other to a cross, which was obviously a requirement for salvation, so yeah, I can see why God would have the foresight to put in plate tectonics so that he could be sacrificed a few billion years later.

By: Modusoperandi

Modusoperandi — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:00:23 +0000

"...are discussing the “anthropic principle,” which specifies the degree to which our planet appears fine-tuned for complex life"…and just a couple of paragraphs later..."Fish might survive in such an environment, but not humans." (emphasis mine, obviously) My head is spinning.

By: freefall

freefall — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:06:23 +0000

The laugh line for me was this one: “Science tells us that our world has all the necessary conditions for species like Homo sapiens to survive and endure … ”

How about common frickin’ sense tells us that? I’ll go further: the Earth also has all the necessary conditions for all the species that currently exist to … exist.

By: Jer

Jer — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:16:49 +0000

This is just another “God is all-powerful; except that He’s not all-powerful when that’s inconvenient” explanation

Yup. The only way to reconcile an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God with the actual facts of Life As We Know It To Be is to depower one aspect of God. Either he’s not all-powerful, not all-knowing, not all-loving or some combination of the three. D’Souza has taken the “not all powerful” approach for this particular apologetic. It’s the one I run into most commonly – probably because it’s the easiest one to accidentally make. You don’t downplay God’s “all-loving” or “all-knowing” natures by accident, but it’s fairly easy for an American Christian of just about any denomination to fall into the “not quite all-powerful” trap.