Dr. Vincent Torley vs Dr. Randal Rauser

Torley spends a great deal of time defending the indefensible. This time he calls out Rauser, which I find interesting and funny. To read what he wrote you can do so right here, under the heading, "Does the reliability of associative knowledge in animals legitimize scientific inference?"

In an article on his Website, Debunking Christianity, the well-known skeptic and former preacher John Loftus, M.A., M.Div., author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, defends the possibility of scientific knowledge along the following lines:

“If there is no God then we don’t know anything.” False. If so, chimps don’t know anything either. They don’t know how to get food, or mate or even where to live. Without knowing anything they should’ve died off a long time ago. And yet here they are. They don’t need a god to know these things. Why do we need a god for knowledge? We learn through a process of trial and error. Since we’ve survived as a human species, we have acquired reliable knowledge about our world. Period.

"There are several things wrong with this argument," Torley writes.

First, Loftus is attacking a straw man here. Theists who make this kind of argument do not claim that if there is no God then we don’t know anything. Rather, what they claim is that we can have no scientific knowledge in the absence of God: hence the attempt to invoke science in order to undermine belief in God is self-defeating, for it destroys science as well.

Well then, I wish he and Rauser could agree. Torley quoted from my opening statement in a debate I had with Rauser, which can be read here. It's based on a chapter of our co-written book, God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions.In Rauser's chapter he says that which I'm responding to, and he says we cannot know anything. No straw man here. If Torley wants to read my response to Rauser then he should get the book.

I'll probably respond to other things Torley says in a separate post, as time permits. I am truly honored that Torley puts my arguments on a par with some important people though, so thanks for that.

Rauser vs Torley. Torley vs Rauser. Isn't this typical? Let's sit and watch them duke it out. I've placed no bet on the outcome. I wonder where Dr. Victor Reppert stands on this? My bet is that, as the foremost defender of the Argument from Reason, he sides with Rauser. I'll further wager that Dr. Alvin Plantinga sides with Torley. ;-)