<a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogI ... 19">Loftus Speaks</a>
Will, I do find the scale of the universe problematic for theism. Why is it that until the very recent findings of modern cosmology that no previous theist believed the universe is billions of times bigger and billions of years older than they had understood it to be in their day? O'Connor's claims (?) are ex post facto, and as such they are weakened by the very fact that they are indeed "after the fact." If he is correct then some theist should've come to that same conclusion BEFORE modern cosmology suggested it. The fact that no theist thought of it is counted as evidence against theism, since it is NOT what one would expect given the theistic hypothesis. It is counter-evidence to the theistic claim
I think Lofuts is an intelligent person. BTW he did the first post too about the immense size of the universe. But he went to graduate school, he is fairly well read in Theology and they studied with William Lane Craig. yet he should know better that o say this. He should know that this is not Christian doctrine and we would have no trouble finding a passel of theologians who who would not agree to the assertion that the universe is made just for us. Moreover, the assertion God would tell a theist some amazing yet basic scientific fact before it was undiscovered by science is extremely simplistic.
First, it assumes that God is about science. It assumes that scientific facts are the only real knowledge and that we can only make judgments about reality if we have scientific facts to back them up. Of course it also try to second guess what God would do, "if he existed." Of course they never say things like if God existed then we should expect to find the anthropic principle creating fine tuning targets and meeting them even against overwhelming odds. They try to second guess God and set up a straw man which is constructed to put up some bar that they know God has not met, but when it comes to realistic expectations which God has already met, they can't deal with it.
Another major flaw here is that they are assuming that we can reason to God based upon the nature of the universe. If this is so they have no reason to deny the cosmological argument or the anthropic argument. This is as simplistic as saying "if God existed he would have made my mother buy me a better lunch box in fourth grade. I he really wants people to come to him, they have to find my witness credible, now can they do that if all I have is this stupid space station lunch box? I should have had a Gold Finger Lunch box, that's a real witness!"