Wednesday, February 28, 2007

"What have the Romans ever done for us?"

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
In commenting about the worldview outlined by Schaeffer below, Corkscrew says:
The general theory is justified by its specific successes. Same goes for our models of the universe. What successes do your extensions to consensual reality have under their belt?
I would argue (with Schaeffer) that, if you can live with the existence of God, this worldview provides, beyond religion, a necessary and sufficient explanation of such non-obvious facts as the presence of the universe at all, consciousness (mine and others'), morality, reason, our sense of justice, our desire for perfection, our perceived freedom as agents, the problem of evil, the meaningfulness of science and the coherence of the scientific method, the pursuit of the transcendent, beauty, aesthetics, desire, the difference between animals and humans, the specialness of the location of the earth within the cosmos, the information content and the apparent design present in life.

And if you can't live with the existence of God, you still have to explain all of those things.