# A response to Richard Dawkins' argument against the existence of God. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 21, 2009, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544 "2009-10-21T00:51:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/41 "2009-10-21T18:23:14Z")
> [@Camus](#): > > How has the problem of the first cause - at least as you have partially expressed it - been “knocked down” ever, let alone millions of times? Quoting the Bible as saying that God created the universe doesn’t get around the problem of how God came into existance. If everything we see and know in the natural universe obeys the laws of physics (at least as we understand them so far), why would God be somehow different? Simply saying that God by His/Her/Its very nature is eternal and thus has no creator, is a sidestep of this problem, not a valid answer precisely because it requires some sort of faith and not rational argument or reason. I think my point in quoting Genesis was misunderstood. Dawkins’ argument against the existence of God rests on the assumption that any God who created the universe must have had a beginning moment. (He never states this assumption, but just tries to slip it past the reader.) So according to Dawkins, there is no alternative explanation to the existence of God besides God having a beginning. The Bible clearly refutes this by offering a plausible alternative scenario; Hence the argument that Dawkins offers does not cover all possible scenarios. I did not–despite what some people seem to think–claim that the what happened in the Bible must be true, only that it offers a scenario which Dawkins never addresses. ---
**Author:** ![Fantome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fantome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fantome)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/42 "2009-10-21T18:26:08Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I’m not asserting in this thread that God is required as a reason for the complexity of the universe. I’m instead responding to a specific argument that Richard Dawkins makes. (In ch. 4 of _The God Delusion_, for those who wanted the cite.) > > Now there are responses to your exact question; I can point you to some books if you’d like, but it’s not the topic of this thread. See my post where I put the quote in context. It’s not even Dawkins’ argument. He said “How do they cope with\*\* the argument\*\* that any God capable of designing a universe, carefully and foresightfully tuned to lead to our evolution must be a supremely complex and improbable entity who needs an even bigger explanation than the one he is supposed to provide?” He’s not claiming the improbable can’t exist. He’s claiming if you believe we can’t be here without a grand creator because our existence is so improbable, then that same argument makes no sense when the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient being that had no beginning is used an explanation for our existence. ---
**Author:** ![Fantome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fantome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fantome)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/43 "2009-10-21T18:30:21Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I think my point in quoting Genesis was misunderstood. Dawkins’ argument against the existence of God rests on the assumption that any God who created the universe must have had a beginning moment. (He never states this assumption, but just tries to slip it past the reader.) So according to Dawkins, there is no alternative explanation to the existence of God besides God having a beginning. The Bible clearly refutes this by offering a plausible alternative scenario; Hence the argument that Dawkins offers does not cover all possible scenarios. I did not–despite what some people seem to think–claim that the what happened in the Bible must be true, only that it offers a scenario which Dawkins never addresses. > [@Richard Dawkins](#): > > “Any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.” .. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/44 "2009-10-21T18:49:09Z")
> [@Fantome](#): > > Isn’t it obvious? Humans are complex beings, no? Wouldn’t a being more powerful than us in every way also be complex? Complex defined how and compared to what? Dawkins never explains. He also endorses the existence of a huge number of a parallel universes, so putting that argument and his anti-God argument together, he apparently believes that a God capable of creating one universe is necessarily more complex than an infinite or near-infinite number of universes. > [@](#): > > He mentioned it in his book. Did you read it? The religious premise is that God always existed. Dawkins says, “Any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.” Yes, he says it, but he doesn’t justify it. Why must this statement be true? What barrier is there to the existence of an eternal, intelligent being? But in any case, why should creative power put a lower limit on complexity? A computer program in some circumstances can create a new program more complex than itself. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/45 "2009-10-21T18:55:46Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > In case you missed it, Dawkins’ main argument against the existence of a god is that all the arguments _for_ its existence are invalid. With no arguments left for its existence, there’s not much reason to believe it exists. Nope. Perhaps that’s _your_ main argument. Perhaps you wish that Dawkins had made that argument. But it’s not his main argument. I’m quoting from a chapter entitled “Why There Almost Certainly is no God”, so apparently I’m supposed to be convinced of the point by the end of the chapter. (In addition, I find his refutations of arguments for God to be mostly unconvincing, as I’ve already explained in other threads.) ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/46 "2009-10-21T18:56:49Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > **Sophistry and Illusion** , are you by any chance familiar with Lee Smolin’s ‘[fecund universes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin#Fecund_universes)’-proposal? (Also known as cosmological natural selection.) In brief, Smolin attempts to answer the question of why our universe seems so uniquely fit for supporting life by proposing a mechanism by which universes can ‘give birth’ to daughter universes – through the creation of black holes --, whose fundamental constants (and thereby, whose laws of physics) may differ slightly from those in the mother universe. Thus, the multiverse becomes dominated by universes having the greatest capacity for self-reproduction – those that easily create black holes --, which also makes them hospitable to complex molecules, and thereby, life. This is somewhat off the topic, but I claim that as along as a universe and the rules that govern it are well defined, there’s no difference between saying that the universe COULD exist and saying that it DOES exist. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/47 "2009-10-21T19:06:21Z")
So, let me summarize the theistic argument: The universe must be created since all things have causes. God does not have a cause. The universe is too complex to have “evolved” using understood physical processes. A far more complex God can spring into being from nothing or has always been here. The speciousness of this argument doesn’t mean it is false, of course, but it does mean that we can’t use God as the default actor here, and that someone should show evidence beyond this for God’s existence. There are many other possible solutions to these problems more in line with the evidence (or at least no less) without the problems God has. The reason for “Any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.” is that we have observed this to be the case, and that a complex, intelligent entity arising out of nothing is exactly the windstorm in a junkyard creating a 747 problem. Which, to be clear, is not how evolution happens. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/48 "2009-10-21T19:08:37Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > But in any case, why should creative power put a lower limit on complexity? A computer program in some circumstances can create a new program more complex than itself. That’s true - and those that do use a process of evolution. They do not design the new program, they more or less randomly mutate and test variations of it. More evidence that God is unnecessary. ---
**Author:** ![Fantome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fantome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fantome)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/49 "2009-10-21T19:11:34Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Complex defined how and compared to what? Dawkins never explains. Why should he? Again, isn’t it obvious? We’re complex, no? Wouldn’t a being more powerful than us in every way also be complex? > [@](#): > > He also endorses the existence of a huge number of a parallel universes Cite? > [@](#): > > so putting that argument and his anti-God argument together, he apparently believes that a God capable of creating one universe is necessarily more complex than an infinite or near-infinite number of universes. You’re confusing complexity with quantity. > [@](#): > > Yes, he says it, but he doesn’t justify it. You said he gave no reason why God had to come into existence in order to exist. He did. Now you’re backpedaling and claiming that everything needs to be spelled out for you or it doesn’t count. Complex things are made from simpler things. You don’t agree? Explain how a complex being capable of making everything, of being jealous, etc. can always exist, yet a universe with no creator can’t or is more unlikely? > [@](#): > > A computer program in some circumstances can create a new program more complex than itself. You’re still not getting it. The argument was made using the logic of the one that believes we are so improbable that we couldn’t exist without a creator. Yet people that believe that somehow have no problem with this all knowing, all powerful being always existing. ---
**Author:** ![Fantome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fantome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fantome)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/50 "2009-10-21T19:23:55Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I think my point in quoting Genesis was misunderstood. Dawkins’ argument against the existence of God rests on the assumption that any God who created the universe must have had a beginning moment. (He never states this assumption, but just tries to slip it past the reader.) Never states it? Slips it by? Do you need me to quote him again? > [@](#): > > So according to Dawkins, there is no alternative explanation to the existence of God besides God having a beginning. The Bible clearly refutes this by offering a plausible alternative scenario What’s plausible about an omniscient, omnipotent being that created everything always existing? What other intelligence or complexity that we know of has these attributes? > [@](#): > > Hence the argument that Dawkins offers does not cover all possible scenarios. I did not–despite what some people seem to think–claim that the what happened in the Bible must be true, only that it offers a scenario which Dawkins never addresses. He did address it. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/51 "2009-10-21T19:56:35Z")
> [@The\_Lurker\_Above](#): > > I’ll refute your refutation with a reference the The Gospel According to Lurker Above 1:1 “No, God doesn’t exist”. sign of the lurk. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/52 "2009-10-21T19:58:24Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > Ah, thanks for that. > _Intellectually dishonest_ debates, yes. If we all agree to avoid mischaracterising or misquoting our opponent, the debate/dialectic/_quaestio_ is IMO the best route to ‘truth’ there is (if indeed there is such a thing). No, it’s more than that. Even without mischaracterizing or misquoting your opponent, debates are terrible. I’m thinking of examples of debates I’ve heard between, for example, William Lane Craig and Richard Carrier. Or Duane Gish and anyone supporting evolution. Craig and Gish spew out all kinds of crap at ninety miles an hour, and it would take fifteen minutes to properly address the mistakes they can make in ten seconds. Gish and Craig are very practiced at this and understand the advantage they have in public debates. It’s just a terrible way at arriving at what’s true. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/53 "2009-10-21T20:06:48Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > The creation of the Heavens and the Earth was not the opening event, if I recall correctly, but I get your point. Problematically, the idea of God being eternal is pretty vague. We don’t really have the words to describe something existing out of time or physical reality; it’s tricky to understand how such a being could exist, in what form, and how a physical reality constrained by time and the like would interact and be interacted with such a being. I would half agree with you here, in that believing in the Christian God does requires the believer to stretch his or her mind beyond what we’d generally consider normal, everyday functioning. That much, as far as I know, nobody has ever seriously denied. But in what way does that lead to the idea being vague? C. S. Lewis tackles this topic in _Miracles_. He argues that the Christian idea of God would certainly sound vague to those who are completely inexperienced at speaking about religious and mystical topics, because it involves so much language that’s negative in character. (God is not strictly physical, not in time, etc…) But to those who have in depth experience, especially of the mystical kind, God is not vague at all, but rather defined more clearly than anything else. Or to approach the topic via analogy, if you believe mainstream science, you believe a lot of things that would sound incredibly vague if they had to be explained to a tyro in ordinary language. Just try explaining the nature of a photon in non-technical terms. > [@](#): > > As to your argument from personal experience; it is a terrible one. Plenty of people have personal experience of gods which entirely contradict yours. In fact, I would find it quite reasonable to say that, in the grand scheme of things, the vast majority of the people on this world - billions upon billions of them - disagree with your personal experience, based on personal experience of their own. And that’s true for each of us. The only logical conclusion is that personal experience can well be flawed. It’s a mighty jump from saying that it “can be flawed” to saying that it is in this particular case. More to the point, I don’t believe that the contradictions among religious experiences of billions of people prove anything significant for a number of reasons, the biggest being that I don’t see nearly as many contradictions as you do. Most religions are not centered on the relationship between individuals and a deity, as Christianity is, and hence other religions produce a much less rich experience for individuals. As for the actual contents of experience, those who investigate the topic such as William James in [The Varieties of Religious Experience](http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/james/toc.htm) and Rudolph Otto in [The Idea of the Holy](http://books.google.com/books?id=0-9YrD6H0xUC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=The+Idea+of+the+Holy&source=bl&ots=PYrWEB-4e3&sig=i0Jo4ps6EIbpx_jFmCAa35dU7qs&hl=en&ei=oGHfSpzgOsyxlAeI-pFA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CB4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=&f=false), have found enough commonality from the experiences of the whole human race to support, rather than oppose, the legitimacy of those experiences. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/54 "2009-10-21T21:01:48Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > _Erratum_ for **ITR** : We debated whether people believing that they had experienced gods or spirits actually required those entities to exist (_ie._ whether **all** religions required divine inspiration and **none** could be explained naturally) in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=461559&highlight=sentientmeat). > > I’d be happy to continue said debate here if you like. One of your [final posts](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=9688878&postcount=203) there stated that you still thought it _ludicrous_ that anyone could believe that they had experienced a god or gods when they actually hadn’t. Is that still the case? > [@](#): > > So what you’re saying is that you ascribe a tiny (or even zero) probability that your experiences are not actually divine in origin, yes? > > Like I’ve said many times, personal experience is perhaps the last bastion of the God of the Gaps. And even here, those Gaps are shrinking rapidly. I don’t think I ever denied that someone _could_ have a hallucination, dream, or drug trip and mistake it for a mystical encounter. Everyone is well aware of the possibility, and they were even in ancient times. (In the book of Acts some bystanders try to explain away the Pentecost as a result of drunkenness.) That’s why Dawkins’ short section on religious experience is so unconvincing. He seems to expect religious readers to slap ourselves on the cheek and say, “Why did I never think of that?” Everyone’s thought of that. Like many people I’ve rejected it for several reasons. First, while hallucinations do occur, they’re not as frequent as some atheists seem to think. Dreams are sometimes mistaken for real experiences, but not all that often. Many religious debates produce a claim that people “always” or “automatically” experience whatever they want or whatever they’re told to or so forth. Well, I don’t. People I know generally don’t. Such sweeping statements, to me, don’t match up with reality. Second, religious experiences are not generally like hallucinations, dreams, or drug trips. Mario Beauregard tackles this topic in [The Spiritual Brain](http://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Brain-Neuroscientists-Case-Existence/dp/0061625981/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256156932&sr=1-1) and points out many differences. Religious experiences are typically longer than hallucinations, more clear and specific than hallucinations, people remember them for longer than hallucinations, and so forth. Third, I simply find the explanations of religious experience as psychic phenomena to fall flat. Basically, none of the explainers actually tackle religious experience as it exists, but rather a fictional version that they crafted to match their particular theory. Any neuroscience-based explanation of religious experience needs to explain what really happens, as carefully documented by James and Otto and others. Fourth, that it’s been carefully documented that people who have religious experiences are, on average, in much better mental health than those who don’t. (See a thread I started a couple months back for cites.) Fifth, there are the many cases where such experiences are backed up by outside evidence, ranging from correct prophecies to miraculous healings to simultaneous experiences among people far apart to scientific studies with EEG and MRI devices used on the brains of visionaries. The bottom line, though, is that I believe personal experience until someone gives me a reason not to, much like everyone else does. You claim it’s a god of the gaps argument. You could likewise claim that my argument for my mother’s existence is a mother of the gaps argument. You could claim that **Paranoid Randroid** made a cow of the gaps argument earlier in the thread. If you have real evidence on the issue I’d be happy to look at it. (Preferably in another thread.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/55 "2009-10-21T21:12:36Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > First, while hallucinations do occur, they’re not as frequent as some atheists seem to think. Dreams are sometimes mistaken for real experiences, but not all that often. Many religious debates produce a claim that people “always” or “automatically” experience whatever they want or whatever they’re told to or so forth. Well, I don’t. People I know generally don’t. Such sweeping statements, to me, don’t match up with reality. Not so. [Sleep paralysis](http://hubpages.com/hub/Sleep-Paralysis-Symptoms--Causes-and-Treatment) is fairly common, and responsible for vivid hallucinations which you no doubt do not believe in alien abductions and the appearance of demons. This has nothing to do with mental health in the sense that those who have them are not crazy. As for accusations of drunkenness, surely you have seen scifi movies where the aliens really land and those who see them are accused of being drunk. False accusations like this are a great way of building sympathy for the characters, and directly addressing some of the skepticism of the reader. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/56 "2009-10-21T21:15:08Z")
The premise of God always existing breaks down into one of two cases: 1. God has no beginning, and has existed ‘forever’. For this to be true, the timeline in which God exists\* extends infinitely into the past. That is to say, that no matter how long God waited around, enough time for the present time to arrive has not passed, and thus the present time is not and will not ever happen. This is, obviously, nonsense - thus, God has not existed for an infinite amount of time. 2. God has a beginning; it’s just that his beginning occured simultaneously with the beginning of the universe in which he exists\*\*. This would put him in exactly the same boat as the big bang - “When the universe popped into existence, God/big pile of energy simply came along too as part of the package deal”. The issue rational people have with this is that it’s one thing for the universe to fart out a big load of generic energy as it pops into existence. It’s quite another for it to fart out a bearded old man who happens to be storing all facts ever including a blueprint of the entire universe in his head. The reason for this is because such a God is, necessarily, infinitely more complex. Yes, he’s complex. The act of knowing things requires that you have a mechanism for mentally encoding them. The more information you can encode, the more complex you must be. Proof: take one bit. Can store two values: 0 and 1. Only two states, max. Now, two bits. That can store four values: 00, 01, 10, and 11. Four states, max - being more complex than a single bit, it can store more complexity. Three bits gives you eight states. Four, sixteen. Or, alternatively, the larger collections of bits can be broken into smaller groups to allow you to store multiple peices of data, at a cost to the complexity of each piece you store. So, demonstrably, increasing the amount of data you can store, and the more _kinds_ of data you can store, _necessarily_ increases the complexity of the thing that is storing the data. You cannot store more knowledge than you have complexity. And God supposedly stores an infinte (or at least, very, very large) amount of knowledge. Necessarily, unavoidably, God must be incredibly, incredibly complex, containing extremely intricate and organized memories and peices of implanted knowledge. Which has to have just been farted into existence _without cause or sentient creation_. Dawkins finds this to be incredibly improbable. He’s right. - In the absence of time, motion is impossible - motion is a change in position over time. In fact, any change at all is impossible, because change requires time. This means that a God who is not inside of a timeline is, by definition, completely inert and inactive. Now, his timeline needn’t be the same timeline as ours, just as my timeline isn’t the same as Harry Potter’s - but he still must exist in a timeline. \*\* Existence necessates the existence of a space - things that have actualized existence exist someplace. Ergo, God cannot exist without a universe in which to be doing his existing. Now, his universe needn’t be the same universe as ours, just as my universe isn’t the same as Harry Potter’s - but he still must exist in a universe. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/57 "2009-10-21T21:16:08Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > The bottom line, though, is that I believe personal experience until someone gives me a reason not to, much like everyone else does. You claim it’s a god of the gaps argument. You could likewise claim that my argument for my mother’s existence is a mother of the gaps argument. You could claim that **Paranoid Randroid** made a cow of the gaps argument earlier in the thread. If you have real evidence on the issue I’d be happy to look at it. (Preferably in another thread.) Your arguments against hallucination don’t address the real problem, interpretation. Regardless of whether you actually saw something, you still don’t have any evidence that that something was god beyond ‘cuz I say so’. It becomes a legitimate god of the gaps problem when your explanation is ‘Well I can’t explain it, so it must be god’. Your mother’s existence is independently verifiable. We have no such evidence that your experience was caused by god. > [@](#): > > Fifth, there are the many cases where such experiences are backed up by outside evidence, ranging from correct prophecies to miraculous healings to simultaneous experiences among people far apart to scientific studies with EEG and MRI devices used on the brains of visionaries. Evidence please. We’ve seen lots of claims of things like this, and none have yet to pan out. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/58 "2009-10-21T21:17:59Z")
Looks like **ITR’s** been at the New Age section of Barnes & Noble again. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > First, while hallucinations do occur, they’re not as frequent as some atheists seem to think. I didn’tr know that atheists, as a whole, had a different perception of how often hallucinations aoccur than non-atheists, but, in point of fact, hallucinations are commonplace. D > [@](#): > > Second, religious experiences are not generally like hallucinations, dreams, or drug trips. Mario Beauregard tackles this topic in [The Spiritual Brain](http://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Brain-Neuroscientists-Case-Existence/dp/0061625981/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256156932&sr=1-1) and points out many differences. Religious experiences are typically longer than hallucinations, more clear and specific than hallucinations, people remember them for longer than hallucinations, and so forth. This bullshit again? What is the neurological definition of a “religious experience” as opposed to any other psychotic episode? Saying “religious experiences last longer than hallucinations” is just begging the question. Religious expoeriences are just a particular category of psychotic episodes that last longer than other kinds of psychotic episodes. There also isn’t a single so-called “religious experience” that can’t be created artificially by drugs or direct stimulation of the brain. Are those artificially induced experiences religious or psychotic in your mind? > [@](#): > > Third, I simply find the explanations of religious experience as psychic phenomena to fall flat. [ There’s certainly nothing p[sychic about it, that’s for sure. > [@](#): > > Fourth, that it’s been carefully documented that people who have religious experiences are, on average, in much better mental health than those who don’t. No it hasn’t. > [@](#): > > Fifth, there are the many cases where such experiences are backed up by outside evidence, ranging from correct prophecies to miraculous healings to simultaneous experiences among people far apart to scientific studies with EEG and MRI devices used on the brains of visionaries. Are you off your meds or something? I don’t think you normally try to make assertions this nutty. Cite for a single example of “prophecy,” “Miraculous healing,” or “simultaneous healing” (whatever that is). > [@](#): > > The bottom line, though, is that I believe personal experience until someone gives me a reason not to, much like everyone else does. You claim it’s a god of the gaps argument. It is. Why rule out telepathic dwarves? Incidentally, just FYI, Richard Dawkins does not and has not ever tried to argue that God can be proven not to exist, so your entire OP is a strawman. What he argues (correctly and irrefutably so…not that it’s hard to do with EOG debates) is that there isn’t a shred of evidence to \*support[/i[ any kind of God hypothesis, and that, as a _scientific_ hypothesis, it has neither explanatory power nor empirical support, and it has nothing more to recommend it than telepathic dwarves or magic wands. ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/59 "2009-10-21T21:24:56Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I’m quoting from a chapter entitled “Why There Almost Certainly is no God”, so apparently I’m supposed to be convinced of the point by the end of the chapter. (In addition, I find his refutations of arguments for God to be mostly unconvincing, as I’ve already explained in other threads.) Come now. We’ve seen you start up these threads over the previous months, all of your points are refuted, and yet you keep posting more “anti-atheist, anti-Dawkins, pro-God” threads. Seriously- the fact that you find his refutations of God unconvincing has nothing to do with Dawkin’s writings, and more to do with the fact that you have already made up your mind. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544/60 "2009-10-21T21:43:46Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Are you off your meds or something? I don’t think you normally try to make assertions this nutty. I’m sure someone has EEG and MRI records of religious experiences. This is consistent with the hypothesis that they are all in the head of the person having them. Just once God should tell the people he is revealing himself to whether P = NP, with a counterexample or a proof, and not stop with telling them that they are wonderful people and that life is worth living - earth shattering news that can indeed be found in the New Age section of any Barnes & Noble. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-response-to-richard-dawkins-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/514544.md?page=4)