Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: atheism, Dawkins, fundamentalism, God, God Delusion, philosophy, religion
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.
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: atheism, Dawkins, fundamentalism, God, God Delusion, philosophy
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.
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: atheism, children, Dawkins, God, God Delusion, parenting, philosophy
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
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: atheism, beauty, Dawkins, God, God Delusion, philosophy, Proof of God
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.
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: atheism, beauty, Dawkins, God, God Delusion, philosophy, Proof of God
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.
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: Dawkins, God, God Delusion, philosophy, Proof of God, religion
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.
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: God Delusion, philosophy, Proofs of God, religion
Well I will give it to Dawkins, he does write a page turner. I’m finding it difficult to keep my blogging up to my reading, but here is the next installment.
The section in chapter three on this is promised to be just a start on a more thorough treatment later on so this comment will be similarly brief since he does not give us his full argument here.
The only contrary argument that Dawkins gives us is that design can apparently appear by evolution. Lets not take that one head on at this stage, but simply add that it is much more than the biological world that appears designed. Dawkins himself speaks of his sense of awe looking at images of space. They are truly awesome, and not only in their beauty. We find a system that is so beautifully set up to support human life on earth to mention just one point. The earth has a magnetic field that deflects dangerous cosmic rays away from the earth. Not only that but the few that get in are directed away from most of human habitation in the frozen wastes of the polar icecaps. And not only so but they then put on a majestic display of the aurora.
There are many other such beauties in the cosmic design, but I will perhaps leave this at that point and come back to this since this is such a brief section.
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: Dawkins, God, God Delusion, philosophy, Proof of God, Thomas Aquinas
Having read this chapter I wondered what Aquinas has actually written and I found this page. I found it quite hard reading to start with until you get into the archaic style.
To take up where I left in the last blog, we get to the forth argument about God’s existence, i.e. that He is the ultimate goodness of which our ideas are shallow reflections. I must admit that I found Dawkins “disproof” quite convincing here, which is what took me back to the original Aquinas text. And on going back to it I found the original argument quite weak. But giving it more thought I do think the proof has some merit, even if Aquinas did not fully explain it.
Dawkins tries to disprove the idea that God is the ultimate good, by throwing in some totally silly comparison of smelliness. No-one would claim that God is the ultimate of that, so why the ultimate good he argues. But Dawkins is giving us a quite different concept in smelliness. People around the world to not have an idea of ultimate smelliness beyond there everyday experience of it. They do not have an idea of ultimate smelliness that they hold in some high esteem and are in large number aiming at or trying to show they are aiming at even if they are not really. Nor even do they have the idea of ultimate smelliness that they are trying to avoid. Nor do they feel a sense incompletion in try to attain, or avoid it.
And yet this is the case with “goodness, truth and nobility and the like”. Why is it that there is a ubiquitous idea around the globe that goes well beyond our natural experience? And it is not merely an idea of goodness better than our own, but an idea of ultimate goodness beyond which there is no higher. We can imagine an idea of smelliness greater than our own, even though such an idea does not have a widespead public following, but we have no concept of a smelliness that it the ultimate that one can not surpass.
There are only a few people in human history that would be deemed to have reached this ultimate state. Some would consider such people as Buddha, Job, Enoch, and Jesus as examples. And yet without these poeple in our everyday circles of friends we have this ubiquitous idea. To me at least this does speak of some close reality that we have an inner drive towards; an idea of a higher being, the measure of total perfection.
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: Aquinas, Dawkins Delusion, God, origins, origins of existence
Well I’m writing this blog round my breakfast, so I hope it will not be too rushed, but I felt I had to get back to blogging. Time has pressed me into this measure, but also I am going to not continue from where I left off, but just blog about what I read last night to save time on writing extensive marginal notes.
Chapter 3 – Arguments for the Existence of God
I don’t have a problem with Dawkins lumping together the arguments that there must have been a first cause, something to bring everything into motion and an origin to physical existence. But he does not really go to the core of the problem. But lets start with the things he argues around the edges of this concept.
He says it is “unwarranted” to claim that God needs no cause or to be brought into existence. In this he shows that he fails to comprehend the uniqueness of idea of God. He is totally beyond our everyday experience, other than of course our everyday experience of God. And if God were brougt into existence by something, then that cause would be God. God is the one without a prior cause.
Then he tries to make a general argument, calling these ideas ones of infinite regress – then the cause has a cause that has a cause that … Well ok, make some general discussion, but you need to get down to the very specific point of what it is that needs a cause, it is existence and progression itself. But taking the point that a terminator to a regression does not need to have all the characteristics ascribed to God is true, but doesn’t actually get us very far, and does not go any way to disproving the need for a first cause. But I would point out that the nature of what is caused does give us many clues to the causation
If we find that watch on the moor, we might not know who made it but we would be able to say a lot about that maker. Was that watch a bumbled first attempt that did not run, or was it a cheep mass produced item. Or perhaps we could see a finely honed instrument that kept precision time and was full of beautiful artistry.
Well we can go to the one point on which I feel an fellow feeling with Dawkins at agree that looking out at the universe we have to be filled with awe. So if this existence is started by anything it must be an infinite and all powerful cause, it must be a majestic and beautiful cause, it must be a cause of great wisdom to have established such a perfectly balanced creation. It must be a cause that needs nothing to bring it into existence or give it direction. Also we can see a universe of such diversity and abundance that speaks of the type of first cause that brought it into being. These things we can see and quite clearly identify the things that Dawkins claims there is no need for. For other characteristics of God’s nature we need to go to other places, but that would take us well beyond the discussion of His existence.
And if we don’t accept such a first cause, well then how are we here?
I see that Dawkins throws in the concept of the big bang, but even he does not try to argue that that is an event without cause. There must have been something out of which that came, if only space with a set of laws. So throwing the idea in is a bit of a red herring. What is it in this place for, unless to confure the argument. But at least he does not try to defend it as a first cause.
Dawkins tries to throw in an argument about the inconsistency of the attributes of God. This is totally irrelevant to discussion of first cause, and he only seems to be avoiding the actual issue. But in this he shows that he has been unable to understand God as the ultimate being, that our descriptions can only begin to outline. That He is all powerful and also all knowing in no way ties Him up. He is totally free to chose, more than any other being, but unlike that rest of us He totally knows the results of His choices. That we can not imagine this is not surprising or that we can not see the sorts of choices that are available to Him. And undoubtly He will experience situations even like ourselves where we can see that one choice will tie us into another choice to come, but He is however able to so guide things as to open up possibilites that we could not see.
Dawkins argues that the “infinite” regression of cutting something smaller and smaller finds a natural end as you get down to atomic scale and can cut it no smaller. This is yet another red herring and he shows no reason by which a natural end could be found to the problem of first cause.
What we do know however is we are here. Dawkins suggests no reason to explain why we are. Till he comes up with a better answer than the divine origin he is stuck with a mystery that can only be answered by the existence of God. But then he did only skirt round the edges and not touch the core of it. For that at least we can be greatful.
Filed under: God Delusion | Tags: atheism, God, philosophy, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I asked my brother to get me “the God delusion” for Christmas. Both my brother and another good friend from primary school days are reading it and I thought it only right to show them the courtesy of reading the book before complaining about what it says. I want to take the book seriously, even though Dawkins seems not to pay the same respect to religious people. I’ve been writing so many marginal notes that I thought it would be good to put my thoughts into properly formed prose rather then scribbled notes. So I would like to make not only some general observations but also to point by point consider his arguments.
I would really appreciate your comments. I want to think clearly in what I say and express it lucidly so please don’t let me away with sloppy thinking or unjustified assumptions. Whether you’ve read the book or not please give me your thoughts.
The God Delusion Preface Comments 1
I’m only round about 20% of the way through the book so far but the biggest thing that strikes you is this guy’s anger. What has got him so upset. He seems almost incapable of speaking politely about any religion. I would really like to know what his problem is, maybe we’ll get some insight later.
I’m reading the paperback edition and its preface and most of it seems to be taken up with justifying his intemperate use of language. It isn’t so much the big statments about the nature of God that he should be considering in defending himself, but the steady drip drip of sneering, without any intelligent point.
Paragraph 1: He says it intelectuals believe in belief – his arguement against: “their zeal pumped up by ingratiating broad-mindedness.” ok so he doesn’t like it, but where is the reason. And I thought he was after a bit more broadmindedness. Perhaps not.
Paragraph 2: His argument against starting from the point “I used to be an atheist, BUT…” is its “one of the oldest tricks”. That is not a very profound response.
This might sound a bit nit picking but he keeps on like this so much it needs pointing out. But to prevent repeating myself with this sort of criticism I’ll skip paragraph 3.
Paragraph 4: He suggests that he “need consider only those theologians that take seriously the possibility that God does not exist and argue that He does.” Perhaps then as a theist I don’t need to pay any attention to Dawkins because he certainly does not do what he wishes his “opponents” would. He does not take seriously the possibility that God exists and then argue that He does not. But I will not take that attitude. He should not be surprised that most theology books start with a presumption of God’s existence, because there are a whole lot of interesting theological questions other that God’s existence. We would be a very strange religion if all we talked about is whether God exists. But Dawkins could have done himself and his readers a great service by taking some of these works more seriously, or even reading them. Later on he shows a great lask of understanding of what believers think about prayer and so makes many trite points and misses the central issues.
Paragraphs 5 to 7: Dawkins belittles his readers in trying to associate God with the emporers new clothes, flying spagetti monster and fairies. Come on lets have some serious discussion.
Paragraphs 8 & 9: He responds to the complaint that he is dealing only with the worst of religion by making the startling assertion that resonable religious people are “numerically negligible”. What evidence does he give for this? None. Religous people are almost all bin Ladens according to Dawkins. I don’t think I need say any more about the error of that.
Paragraphs 10 to 17: In trying to defend himself against claims that he uses “shrill, strident, intemperate, intolerant, ranting language” all he does is drag up some other examples of others using such language. They did it too, well does that make it right? In his para 15 arguement that blasphemy is a victimless crime he is failing to understand the quote he seems to espouse on page 50 “We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect the theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”
I must say if Dawkins came to my house and spoke about my wife’s appearance and children’s intelect in the way he speaks about my God then he would think himself lucky if all that happened was that he was rudely asked to relocate and helped in carrying that out.
In his victimless crime idea he fails to see how many people he is insulting and alientating in his intemperate language.
In para 16 he seems to think that the fact that his statements get a laugh indicates that people think they are funny. He ought to consider that many people will laugh to cover their embassament at another’s shocking bad manners, the very effect that Borrat played on.
I was trying to finish the preface, but time has gone. More another day.
Please comment
