GordonAckerman’s Weblog

This is work that Archy did in 2002 but only now is seeing the light of day in a properly accessible format. Hope you enjoy it.

Here is a rough view of a video of the idea I have developed a bit.

from s15.photobucket.com posted with vodpod

Here is a little try out of an idea.

Sometimes it beggars belief that Dawkins can write such nonsense and think that he is putting forward a rational argument. To the criticism: “religion is here to stay, live with it” his only response it to complain at the tone of voice that people use to make the argument.

Well I’m crushed by your profundity, Dawkins.

NOT

What this little snippet does show is how intolerant Dawkins is. He criticises “fundamentalist” as being intolerant, but here (as well as in other places) he seems to be saying of the religious, ”drive them into sea”. How intolerant can you get. Dawkins makes lots of criticism of political leaders, but I am just very glad that Dawkins is not one of them.

In this as in many other places Dawkins is not living in the real world. Very nice idea to get everyone believing the same thing then there will be no more troubles. But, one, it is never going to happen and two, even if it does we will still have problems. We need more than an orthodoxy that we can not vary from Dawkins, even if you think that it is totally “proven”.

What we need far more is an understanding of how we can fervently disagree with others and yet respect and accept them.

Dawkins addresses the criticism  that he is just as much a fundamentalist as those he argues against. He does this, as so often, by knocking down straw dolls.

He finds a quote that seems to suggest the author of has no regard to evidence. “if all the evidence in the world turned against creationism … I would still be a creationist.” then suggests that this shows all religious people don’t think. I think that is a bit of a big logical jump. If one person is unthinking it does not show that all religious people are unthinking.

Before looking in detail at the quote let me point out that there have been various eminent scientists that took a similarly dogged approach to an idea that they held onto. Einstein himself held out strongly against the idea of Heisenburg’s uncertainty principle on the grounds that Einstein believed that “God does not play dice.”Though we can not see much fruit of that reservation it is an interesting parallel to Wise’s statement from a most eminent scientist. That reservation did lead to a very thorough testing of the idea as Einstein did all he could to show inconsistencies in it. Having got past such testing it is now pretty fixed in quantum theory.

It is might be also illuminating to see that many scientists withheld their acceptance of the wave nature of light, even though such a great scientist as Newton clearly demonstrated it. It was only when someone challenged such a strongly “proven” scientific theory that we were able to begin to comprehend the photoelectric effect and go on to develop quantum mechanics in the first place. There are many cases where scientist have gut feeling about the way things should be and hold onto them despite the prevailing zeitgeist. Some are in error but others make great leaps forward. So such dogged holding onto ideas is by no means unscientific.

But to return to Wise’s quite. This quote shows a quite different approach to unreasoning acceptance of ideas. Kurt Wise is saying that he is a creationist of the basis of the word of God. This is just such an impression of the way that things should be as seen in the previous two paragraphs. But it is not without evidence. Such a blog is too limited a space to thoroughly discuss all the evidences supporting scripture, but suffice it to say, there is ample historical evidence of its veracity, there is much internal evidence in scripture in its consistency and the prophetic predictions. But perhaps the strongest for the individual is the evidence of its words and promises proving true in our lives as we test them. This then is by no means an ignoring of evidence, but rather a comparing of evidence.

Before I go on must say that I find the term fundamentalist a thoroughly unuseful one. All it seems to mean is all that you find objectionable about others that you can then lump together and imply that each “perpetrator” is guilt of the whole panoply of crimes. So even though I regard Dawkins as guilty of the crimes he is ascribing to others in this section of the preface I will not stoop to calling him such a thing.

Dawkins does however show that he is guilty of not looking at the evidence in that he unreasonably holds onto his preset beliefs when he states, “all available evidence favours evolution.” He may decide that the balance of evidence favours evolution, but to deny any contrary evidence (and there is a lot) even exists is clear blinkered thinking.

I have just completed the first really satisfying ceramic piece that I have done. This is the end of the second term of nightclass and experiments up to now have paid of in The Cube. Click for larger views.

One of the areas that Dawkins gets quite emphatic on is his assertion that “there is no such thing as a Christian child; only the child of Christian parents.”

There are four basic errors in this statement. These errors are perhaps natural enough for an atheist to make, and concerns the nature of a religion. Dawkins in his statement is assuming that faith is a matter of reason and logic. These are important parts, but not sufficient.

Firstly faith is a community activity and the social element of faith is significant. Christianity at least, if not other religions as well, is about relationships and part of that is an identifying oneself with a community of faith.

Alongside that faith is also about recognising a set of traditions and rituals. Children love the repeating of things and ritual can give a lot of security in a young life. Elsewhere Dawkins says he is not about doing away with traditions such as celebrating Christmas.

My young children where in every respect part of a Christian community, enjoying its traditions and rituals. In these respects they were definitely Christian.

But perhaps the most important aspect of any faith is the spiritual element. Now while Dawkins might not recognise there is such a thing he must for the sake of argument recognise the other’s point of view and show his problem with it, not just dismiss it out of hand. Our praying together was a key part of the day, helping my children to deal with things that had gone wrong or anxieties they had as well as celebrating the joys fo the day. I have also recognised that my children had spiritual experiences at very young ages.

So in their spiritual lives my children were definitely Christian.

To look at if from a parenting/child development point of view, we need to consider what a parents role is in bringing up a child. The parent has not only to feed and clean a child, they need also to develop the child’s thinking and social skills. They need to feed in a set of norms about how you interact with other people, a task that can be quite laborious at times if you have children that tend to quarrel and fight. Young children only gradually develop their own separate sense of identity. Belonging is important for a young child and they do this by copying and and playing at being mum or dad. It is later when adolescence hits that they in earnest develop their own sense of separateness.

So in this child development view my children were Christian children.

At this young age children have neither developed the mental apparatus or the knowledge of the world to enable them to really think through issues of whether they agree with their parents. Later they will have to question whether and what aspects of their parents faith that accept or reject and make up their own minds, but they will be so much more equipped to do that if they have seen from the inside the workings of a coherent paradigm.

How is  it that you come to believe what you do? One of the most important roles that a parent has is to help their offspring to understand this by being open with the processes in their own thinking, their reasonings, their doubts, their ways of dealing with these things and with other peoples points of view. A young child can learn what it is to have a world view by taking on their parents views, which they naturally do and seeing how well they feel it fits.

So I can not say that my children had thought it all through for themselves at a young age, but they certainly took on the paradigm and had a look at it from the inside. In that sense they were definitely Christian.

Now I always encouraged my children to think for themselves and accept them whatever the outcome of their thinking, so the fact that one of my children does not really call themselves a Christian now that they have grown to adulthood is not a problem in our relationship. Even though he has turned away from that faith I think he benefited from being part of a faith community and seeing faith from the inside

Now this is a big topic, and I’m not sure I’ll get it all finished tonight, but lets make a start.

All that Dawkins does in this section is to point out the times that people are mistaken in their experiences. Now this undoubtedly muddies the waters here, but it does need looking beyond. There are various types of mistake that people make. He starts the section on one where some campers mistake some bird calls for the devil’s cackling. Yes these mistakes happen, no problems with that.

He picks up this sort of idea later on in discussing how the human mind it built to create mental models of the outside world. Because of the minds attempts to make sense of the world it sometimes over interprets the data it has and creates illusions in its attempts. This is accepted.

But I think that Dawkins here makes the mistake that he thinks describing the mechanisms by which something happens explains them away. You might be able to very clearly describe how a telephone reproduces sounds that sound like a human voice and so show that there is not a little creature inside the phone. But this does not demonstrate that there is no-one on the other end of the phone. Yes we have a mind that is prone to create visions, but that does not show that there is not someone communicating with us through these visions. I’ll come back to this.

Dawkins rightly points out to us that there are many ill people that believe that they have heard from God. Their error does not demonstrate that all such experiences are false. He does in fact give us a bit of a clue in the observation that there are far more experiences that are not pathological in the sense that they do not lead to institutionalisation or criminal activity. Most people’s experiences lead to a completely different outcome, and these outcomes need to be looked at in judging the experience.

I would totally agree that you can not build a whole belief on simply an experience. You need to test these things against other things. If someone where coming to me to ask if what they had experienced was really God one of the chief things I would look at is what outcome does it bring about. If an experience results in actions of kindness and charity to others that is a positive sign. If it brings comfort, peace that is also good. And it is such experiences that are in the vast majority as Dawkins points out.

We need also to mention the people whose lives are transformed by such experiences. There are many whose lives have fallen to bits, relationships broken down, addictions destroying them and criminal activities keeping them on the run. Whether it is such huge and obvious problems or some quieter and more personal hells an experience of God often brings a complete transformation. Hope is restored and people turn around. I would say that there is little to be said against such experiences.

The account of a mass vision is a difficult one to interpret, again I agree with Dawkins in that. I do not however agree with his writing it off in that the sun did not really fall from the sky. Of course it did not, it was a vision, true or not I do not know, but it was a vision rather than a reality. If it were a true vision it would be a communication of some sort from God.

Dawkins says that that is all that needs to be said about experiences of God, but he has failed to mention some the the extraordinary outcomes of such experiences. To mention one that occurred in my life. My wife and I were praying for a lady that was seriously ill. She had had a measure of healing when my wife prayed but it was incomplete and so my wife sensed that there was some deeper issue in our friend that needed to be dealt with. We talked at length and prayed but it did not seem that we had achieved anything.

So I was asking God how to pray when I clearly saw the insides of a building. It was not a place where I had ever been. I was fairly sure God was speaking through this vision but what did it mean? I did as I often would and asked God what it meant, but heard no answer, again not too uncommon. But then I felt, I would not say I heard, but I felt that I should ask my friend what it meant. I did not think that this was a very good idea. She would have little faith that we could pray for her healing if I could not understand the vision, but the feeling persisted.

Eventually I did what I felt God was saying even though it seemed rather risky to my own credibility. I described the place I had seen and asked her what she made of it. For a moment she looked blank and then she suddenly burst into violent sobbing. God had obviously pinpointed a painful experience and we were able to pray into that to bring her release from that time. As the sobbing subsided she kept asking, “how did you do that?”, and “how did you know?” She told us that she had told no-one, not even her husband about the trauma that she experienced in that place. It was her secret and she wanted to know how I knew about it.

Was I having a real experience of God? It certainly proved to be true that this lady had been in the place I described. And not only so, she quickly, and very surprisingly recovered from the life threatening illness and remains clear of it years later.

So there are experiences of God that have a visible outcome, supernatural knowledge, lives transformed and people healed. I would think that such experiences are pretty good proofs.

You will notice that I am breaking this blog up into separate blogs for each argument. I’m doing this to make commenting and discussing it easier to follow. I hope this works for you.

The argument form beauty is another one that is not a strong rational argument even as Dawkins comments, but it is of a different nature. I come back yet again to Dawkins confession of being awed at the wonder of the universe. It is this sort of awe that lifts one to a higher level. In the presence of something so lofty you lift your eyes about the mundane and consider grander themes. Is it reason or emotion or even a spiritual impact; it is hard to say. But we are definitely touched. 

So it is not a rational proof of God’s existence, but never the less something that draws us towards considering His reality.

I think one could also make the case that the sheer elegance of the universe speaks of a master watchmaker. There is far more in what we see than is necessary for an existence without God. In some senses we are coming back to the argument from design, not just in its effectiveness, but in its elegance. And in this we are therefor thinking not only of whether He exists, but what sort of God He is.

Well I am again agreeing with Dawkins. He and I both find it very difficult to accept that there could be a proof of anything about the universe that is not based on experience of it. The ontological argument is supposed to prove God’s existence from pure reason and not by looking at the world at all. So we both approach this very sceptically.

When I look at the argument itself I have to agree again that it is very weak, if not totally incomprehensible. I’ll need to give it some more thought and see if it makes sense later, but at the moment I tend to agree with Dawkins that it proves nothing.

Having thought about the whole concept of a priori argument it seems to me that there is some small hope of finding a proof in it. Though it does not take experience into account it is however built in a consistent rational world. This itself might lead to a proof. However no such proof has been demonstrated here, so I will just leave this discussion agreeing with Dawkins on this one.