"The God Delusion" discussion thread

Great Debates
1

This is the discussion thread for Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, as proposed by ITR Champion’s thread, and as a companion to the discussion thread on C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. I assume the ground rules are the same as in that thread: “(1) no insults and (2) only participate if you’ve read the book.”

Having finished the book yesterday, here’s my overall impression:

I thought the book was a good read and a good choice for representing the atheist point of view. Dawkins writes well, and he states as clearly as he can exactly where he’s coming from. He’s not one of those writers whom you can’t argue back at because his argument is so fuzzy and muddled you can’t really get a firm hold on what he’s saying.

And he’s done his homework. In nothing he addresses does he sound like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Rather, he’s been thinking, writing, and speaking about these things for long enough that he’s heard most of the major objections and tries to anticipate them in this book. Still, I don’t think he proved every case he tried to make, and I’ll explain why I think so later.

He covers a lot of ground and brings up many issues. A lot of these issues have already had one or more Great Debates threads devoted to them in the past. Since he has so much to say, I had a lot to say in response. I’ll try to address some of his specific arguments in subsequent posts, but to summarize my reaction to the book as a whole: I think he successfully dismisses some of the arguments for God’s existence, but I find his argument against God’s existence totally unconvincing. And I agree with most of his criticisms of religion but I do not think they apply to all religion, just to “bad religion.”

2

Dawkins’s main point in this chapter, as I read it, is that it is legitimate for science to address the question of whether or not God exists: “a universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?”

Well, in fact, many, many people believe (for various reasons, not all of them scientific) that this universe looks like the kind that has a creative superintendent, and many others believe that it looks like the kind that does not. How can we tell who’s right? And how does science apply?

Dawkins brings up the Great Prayer Experiment, in which sick people who were prayed for didn’t show any advantage over those who weren’t. This has been extensively discussed before in GD, and as I believe I pointed out then, if the experiment had shown a difference, it would have been evidence of an impersonal force that people could manipulate through prayer, not of a personal God of the sort Christians et al believe in. As Dawkins points out, an experiment like this, in order to be valid, has to be “double-blind,” so that neither the patients nor the pray-ers know which group is which. But the problem is that it can’t be blinded from an all-seeing God.

More generally, a problem with looking for God with science is that God (as Christians, Jews, etc. understand God) is capable of hiding or revealing himself however and to whomever he chooses. Any scientific experiment aimed at proving/disproving/revealing God would have to have God’s cooperation.

3

I’m just posting to say I haven’t read it yet. I wouldn’t want people to think my not posting in this one when I posted immediately in the other one hints at my huge biases. Not that they’re necessarily not there, of course. :wink:

4

I disagree. One of the things that the Abrahamic religions have in common is the strongly held belief that God created the universe and all life in it. Unless you’re proposing that God makes some people see evidence for his hand in creating the universe and hides that evidence for others, or that there can’t be any evidence for God at all (and why would you?), science can have something to say about the existence of that kind of god, at least.

As far as I can tell it’s one of the few things that could in theory leave objective evidence for God. It’s definitely be his greatest miracle. I think intelligent design is a stupid theory, but that’s mostly because they lack any serious evidence. The idea that evidence for God (or some intelligent creator at least) could be detectable through the structure of life is not a bad one in itself.

5

One way would be to make predictions about what the world would look like under with a creator and then see whether the world matches up. Obviously, this is a hard thing to do without a “control” universe, but I think most people would admit that historically when people made predictions about how the universe works based on theology, those predictions turned out wrong. There is one major exception, which I think Dawkins would concede: I think it can be argued that theists predicted, before there was enough evidence to be certain, that the universe is discernible to reason–that it has a structure and an order that can be discovered and understood by an intelligent species. Of course theists also predicted that such discovery would confirm their other predictions such as the age of the earth.

On the whole, I think this looks like a purely natural world, and it seems that those who know the most about how it works tend to agree.

Of course, no one, theist or non-theist (until Darwin), predicted that we would find that the universe is one in which systems of enormous complexity and apparent design can arise from very simple systems. Nevertheless, it removes a lot of what had seemed to be reasons for believing in God and makes a naturalistic world much more plausible.

It also leads to his next point, about the unlikelihood of God, which I think is very good, but we can address that later.

6

Oh, I didn’t mean to deny this! Just to warn that any scientific experiement aimed at investigating God would have to keep in mind that God, unlike an impersonal force of nature, would be capable of rigging or making an end run around the conditions of the experiment.

Some of the things that Dawkins says make it sound like he agrees with you: that in principle there could be evidence for God (i.e. evidence of intelligent design), but in practice no such evidence has yet been found. But then he turns around and says that anything that looks like intelligent design is a “gap,” and it’s unfair to invoke God just because we can’t yet think how something could have come about without God. “The reasoning that underlies ‘intelligent design’ theory is lazy and defeatist - classic ‘God of the Gaps’ reasoning.” Or, in a passage that Dawkins quotes approvingly:

If God is not allowed to be an explanation for anything, how does that leave room for any possibility of evidence for God?

7

I think that’s a false dilemma. It assumes that the only reason for disbelieving in God is because that evidence has been hidden from those people. It’s entirely possible that some people see the evidence, but choose to ignore it. Or that they see the evidence, but choose to interpret it differently. Or perhaps they don’t care.

Now I know that some skeptics would say, “Wait a minute! I don’t fall into any of those categories!” Fine. I’m not here to debate whether they do or not, as that would clearly be an irresolvable issue. The point is that it’s a false dilemma to say that God must be hiding the evidence from those who don’t perceive it.

Besides, let’s say that this evidence is indeed invisible to certain people. (I don’t believe that it is, but for the sake of argument, let’s adopt that premise.) Why should an omniscient deity be obligated to manifest this evidence to everyone? If the deity knows that a certain individual will not freely admit his existence, no matter what, then why bother? It would be like providing only one ingredient in a two-part epoxy. No matter how much of the first ingredient you provide (the evidence), it does nothing unless the second ingredient (willing acceptance of the evidence) is also provided.

8

That would seem to be also a false dilemma - that for those who do not see particular evidence,* no* evidence will ever be able to convince them.

No deity is obligated to do anything, but if a deity wishes itself to be known by people (as many seem to), then it is in their interests to give everyone the best evidence possible, within the constraints of it’s other goals. If i’m trying to get something across to someone, and they (for whatever reason) do not see it/pretend they don’t see it, i’m not obligated to do anything, but it wouldn’t change that I wanted to. It would be in my best interests to switch to a different type of communication - a different form of evidence. And if we accept this is so, then the examples of people converting to a particular religion after a lifetime of another (or atheism), then we can only conclude that some new evidence was brought in (or they stopped lying to themselves, but for obvious reasons I don’t think that’s a genuine possibility).

9

Here Dawkins addresses some of the arguments he’s encountered for the existence of God, and tells why he finds them unconvincing.

Philosophical proofs (like those given by Aquinas and Anselm): I think it is ultimately right to reject them, but I’ve heard better explanations of why, from people with more philosophical background than Dawkins hass.

The argument from beauty: Oddly, Dawkins only addresses man-made beauty (like the works of Beethoven or Shakespeare or Raphael), not natural beauty, which strikes me as a major omission. I don’t know that natural beauty makes the makes for a convincing argument, but it does make for a stronger one.

The argument from personal “experience”: Dawkins limits the kind of “experience” he talks about to seeing visions or hearing voices—things that could be explained away as tricks of the brain or misinterpreting natural phenomena as divine: “If you’ve had such an experience, you may well find yourself believing firmly that it was real. But don’t expect the rest of us to take your word for it, especially if we have the slightest familiarity with the brain and its powerful workings.” Fair enough. But, to my mind, “personal experience” of a sort that leads people to believe in God covers a far wider range of experience than just the sort of thing Dawkins is talking about here.

The argument from scripture: In its more simplistic forms, this is indeed a lame argument. There’s nothing in the Bible that you have to believe just because it’s there. We’ve had plenty of GD threads about the reliability of the Bible, so I won’t rehash them here. I’ll just say that it is one thing to reject (or regard as inconclusive or unproven) any particular claim of Scripture, but another to say that there is no truth in Scripture. Personally, I think the Bible points to something, and it is one of the reasons I believe in God, but I don’t expect everyone to agree: the evidence permits a wide latitude of responses, from acceptance to rejection.

The Argument from Admired Religious Scientists: Dawkins shows how few modern great scientists (e.g. Nobel prize winners) are religious believers. This is another thing that has been discussed here on the SDMB in the past. Whatever special siginifcance the religious beliefs of the scientific elite may have, Dawkins is right that those who hope to score points for theism by trotting out religious scientists are playing a game in which they are outmatched.

10

Here Dawkins is on his home turf. He makes one very good and important point: that, thanks to Darwinian theory, we have an alternative to the two explanations “This was designed” and “This came about by chance.” And in doing so, he pretty well demolishes at least some forms of arguments by design or improbability for the existence of a Creator. I wish he had taken the time here to at least briefly explain how order and complexity can arise from chaos and simplicity via Darwinian evolution, since it’s so key to what he’s talking about in this chapter, but since he’s written other books about this I guess it’s not fair to expect him to repeat himself here.

It is in this chapter that he presents his reason for believing there almost certainly is no God, and it is in one of the premises of his argument that I emphatically disagree with him. Thinking as an evolutionary biologist, he apparently assumes that a God, being complex, must have evolved.

“Must be”? I emphatically disagree.

Dawkins’s business, as an evolutionary biologist, is trying to explain the origins of things, so he gets stuck when it comes to the origin of God. “The designer himself (/herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin.” But that’s only a problem if you assume—wrongly, in my view—that God must have an origin.

To continue with the excerpt that I started quoting in an earlier post,

Well, yeah. Except for the vague part. Theologians have always insisted that God is eternal. And that God is outside nature (having created it). Deny that, and you’re just changing the rules to make your own argument easier. If you’re proceding under the assumption that God isn’t eternal, then you mean something different than what I understand as God, so your argument is irrelevant to my God.

11

When Dakwins’ book was first suggested in my original thread, dangermomsaid, “He’s good at evolution, but on religion he rants and raves an awful lot.” That’s the best short summary of my feelings I can give after reading the book. The chapters on evolution and the introduction to genetics and behavior are very organized, lucid, and succinct. The further he strays from his field of specialty, the less organized he becomes and the less clear he is.

Before I discuss what’s in the book, I’d like to mention something that isn’t in the book; fortunately it’s something that ties in with the discussion already in progress. All other professional skeptics that I’ve read begin with an argument that science should be the most trusted belief system. Dawkins has little of that, beyond the annecdote about the guy who didn’t believe in the golgi apparatus. Thus he assumes from the beginning that the reader agrees with him on that topic.

As it happens I don’t agree with the claim that science is the best method for finding out about the world. I think that humans have many channels for experiencing the world. Besides the scientific, there’s the personal, the moral, the ethical, the artistic, and the spiritual or transcendent. To say that one is better than the other is to misunderstand what these channels are and how they stand in relationship to each other.

To his credit, Dawkins never precisely says ‘science uber alles’, yet the entire book gives the impression that he leans in that direction. One point that really stood out for me was when he dismisses the argument that the existence of God is outside the realm of science. He asks why theology should be able to answer the question, and why science should not. The answers seems straightforward to me: it is a question within the area of expertise of theologians, but not of scientists.

There’s also a broader answer though, which is that God includes attributes in all realms of being, not just the scientific. Thus a scientific approach to the question of whether God exists can’t fully address the question. As a metaphor, consider a scientific approach to analyzing a symphony. Science might tell us the rate at which the violin strings vibrate, but it can’t tell us anything about the artistic merit of the sympony.

I find that Dawkins’ approach to the question of God doesn’t ring true because of this bias of his. For instance, he makes claims about how complex God would have to be, yet that’s a statement that he can’t justify. How would he know that God has a certain amount of complexity? How could anyone even measure the complexity of God? One could surely make arguments that God is the simplest thing, rather than the most complex. (For instance: simplicity and beauty exist in tandem, God is the most beautiful thing, therefore God is the simplest thing.) Not that I’d expect many to be convinced by that; the point is that Dawkins’ approach can’t tackle that sort of argument.

12

(emphasis added by me)

The problem to me isn’t that God can’t be an explanation, the problem is that what is used as evidence of God is in general nothing more than a lack of explanation (and in the case of I.D. it’s usually just ignorance of explanations); presenting God as an explanation usually just means you’ve given up looking, but I’m willing to allow the argument in principle (and I’m probably not with Dawkins here), but read on.

I think a god of the gaps is a pretty weak argument, but it’s also a question of how many (serious) gaps we have. We’re not in a situation where we know nothing about how the world works. We have good theories about how we came to be here, how the weather works, why eclipses happen, etc etc. So we don’t need gods to explain any of that. The only half-decent options for people who want to have a god of the gaps are the origin (not the diversity) of life and possibly the origin of the universe.

If the theory of evolution really would have serious problems explaining the variety of life, and there weren’t any other explanations, that would to me make a creator as an hypothesis harder to dismiss. A rather cruel and unfocused creator who may or may not care about us at all, but still.

But the people who claim to have evidence aren’t ignored; their arguments are generally shown to be very weak, misguided or actively misleading. Why would serious, objective evidence of a creator god be so hard to find unless he’s actively trying to prevent people from finding any or maybe he just doesn’t give a damn and by lucky coincidence never left any evidence? And then there’s the possibility that he doesn’t exist.

13

Dangit, I haven’t read it yet and can’t for the next few days. I’ll try though.

14

The complexity of an entity is determined by the number of parts that it contains and the number of ways throse parts can be arranged.

If God is omniscient then He must contain within Himself the knowledge of the state of the entire Universe. The encoding of the Universe in the mind of God requires that the Mind must possess at least as many logical permutations as the Universe itself. If it doesn’t then some of the multiple configurations of the universe will map to a single configuration in the Mind. A God who cannot distinguish between two different configurations of the Universe cannot be said to be omniscient. The Universe taken as a whole represents the most complex object we know of. So if God is omniscient, He must necessarily be more complex still.

In short: An omniscient God cannot be simple. And a simple God cannot be omniscient.

15

Athiest here. I found the book to be quite well written and well argued, but since I agreed with most of his reasoning, it was hard to find much fault with his thinking. I thought the main point of the book was the notion that, although there is no proof against the existence of God, there is certainly no need for a God. More than ever before, we can explain most everything without invoking the supernatural. We can even explain how religions could have originated, propagated and evolved.

Even the unanswered questions are getting closer to illumination. The big bang sounds mystical and supernatural, but theoretical physicists have developed theories here that have predicted other phenomena with startling accuracy. It’s not proof, but it is certainly a good sign that they are on the right track.

Humanity has been struggling to understand the nature of the universe for a bloody long time. 200 years ago, God was the best answer that anyone out there had to offer. The different versions of the belief mutated, fought one another for survival. The ones that made it were the ones that could be latched onto most tenaciously by the human mind. So we even have a plausible explanation of why so many people seem to defend the belief so fervently.

There is no evidence of God, and no longer any need for God to explain what we do have evidence for. The only thing God has left going for him is his legions of adoring fans, and their determination to keep the faith alive.

16

This would fit in well in the discussion of The Abolition of Man. You should check out the thread if you haven’t already.

I agree that there are other “channels” of experiencing the world than the scientific, but I would argue that they all tell you less about the thing experienced than the one experiencing. What does it mean to “know” something artistically? How can you tell if you’re right? The aspects of a symphony that can’t be described scientifically are the qualia of your perception of the symphony and your reaction to it. You can generalize to other people who (we assume) have similar qualia and experience as you, and from there we can infer things about the composer or performers or about the music itself. But the sound of the symphony, the way you perceive it, doesn’t exist in the vibrating molecules of air or in the notes on the page; it exists in your head.

17

I think he may have seen it already.

18

:smack:

19

No, it isn’t. For one thing, I said no such thing. I did not say “that for those who do not see particular evidence,* no* evidence will ever be able to convince them.” I merely allowed for the possibility that some people would never be convinced no matter what the evidence, which is an entirely different claim.

Saying “If people don’t believe in God, then God must be hiding the evidence of his existence” is a false dilemma. Saying “Why should God be obligated to manifest himself to people who would not be convinced anyway?” is not.

20

Even if we grant that claim (which I vehemently reject), it’s irrelevant to the point I was making… namely, that’s it’s fallacious to say that God (if he exists) must be actively hiding the evidence from people who remain unconvinced. This conclusion simply does not follow from the premise. Not by a long shot.

As I explicitly said,

“Now I know that some skeptics would say, ‘Wait a minute! I don’t fall into any of those categories!’ Fine. I’m not here to debate whether they do or not, as that would clearly be an irresolvable issue. The point is that it’s a false dilemma to say that God must be hiding the evidence from those who don’t perceive it.”