I pit Richard Dawkins, Victor Davis Hanson and people like them

The BBQ Pit
61

Nope, I’m not saying you personally have to respect anyone else’s beliefs. Just that, if you want to convince somebody else that a particular belief is inane, you have to analyze it in an intelligent and informed way that realistically takes into account how the holders of that belief view it.

Just assuming the crudest, stupidest possible interpretation of the belief in question and then saying “Haw-haw, isn’t that belief so inane?!?” is what makes you (Dawkins, that is) look like an intolerant sadsack.

62

Well yes, he does. That was kind of my point. He says explicitly, “They must think that God is awfully easily fooled.”

If he meant something else by that, then I think he should have, you know, said what he meant.

Unless you’re trying to argue that the Dawkins Scripture is infallibly correct as long as one interprets it correctly. :dubious:

But this isn’t a competition, is it? The reason I brought that up was not to argue that Dawkins is more naively asinine than any of the religious beliefs he criticizes (which, as I noted above, I’m not claiming).

Rather, the reason I brought it up was simply to point out that Dawkins can be naively asinine in his remarks on religion.

63

I’m perfectly capable of understanding the religious interpretation. I simply don’t see it as a nuanced and carefully thought out position. It looks like a way to eat meat on a fast day and I see no point in trying to dress it up as something it’s not.

64

No, see, I think this is exactly the sort of thing that Dawkins rightly criticizes.

The problem is that religious logic like this is inconsistent and oftentimes self-serving.

Okay, so we’re not supposed to eat meat on fast days, but it’s OK if we eat it via some arbitrary word loophole in order to remind about the importance of the law by… breaking it?

I mean, how does that crap make sense? If the law was really that important, you’d simply follow it. But it’s not what we see. You can always go back through your Holy Laws and “rub out the bits” you disagree with because they don’t suit your agenda, or make up some lame excuse as to why God is granting you the exception. But when it comes to other people doing things you don’t like, you can just as easily fall back onto your scripture and say “Well, God hates homosexuals, and abortion is sin!” yada yada yada. Why can’t those rules be “skipped” over, too?

65

If you can’t grasp the difference between the words and the meaning then I can see why you’d have problem with the book in general…If you can’t place the above sentence in context then just wait till you get a load of the bible!

Why don’t you give us the full book reference for your quote and we can all judge for ourselves the point he is making.

66

Quote:

"The theological mind takes a delight in the niceties of dietary laws and the ingenuity required to dodge them. In South America, capybaras (sort of giant guinea pigs) were deemed to be honorary fish for the purposes of Catholic dietary laws on Fridays, presumably because they live in water. According to the food writer Doris Reynolds, French Catholic gourmets discovered a loophole that enabled them to eat meat on Fridays. Lower a leg of lamb into a well and then ‘fish’ it out. They must think God is awfully easily fooled. "

67

Even I, as an atheist, can see that that’s naively over-simplistic. Why does it have to be either “zero tolerance” or “anything goes”? That’s fundamentalist talk that I don’t think a moderate theist would consider applicable to his/her views.

Why couldn’t a moderate theist say “well, spiritual discipline is part of what God wants us to do, so we enact rules to restrict our actions in certain ways. But God also recognizes that we’re imperfect humans and can’t always apply the rules uniformly, so He doesn’t mind if we build in some exceptions in the rules.”?

You might not find that a convincing argument, and I’m not suggesting that you have to. My point is just that it’s a different argument from saying “LOL we put the steakz in the well n now the Big Guy cant tell itz not fish!!!1!!”

68

I agree with the OP, that Richard Dawkins is a complete hack when it comes to religous matters. It is not just that Richard Dawkins has no qualifications in philosophy/theology, it is that he makes no real genuine effort to understand what his opponents are saying. That I think makes him little more than an anti-religious bigot, someone who is not sure of exactly what it is that they dislike, but know that they dislike it intensely.

A simple example of the complete ineptitude of Dawkins in not just theology, but also the philosophy of science is when he argues (in chapter 4 I think) that God cannot be an explaination for anything, because that the raises the question of who created God. It is inept theologically because just about all religions hold that God exists out of logical necessity, and is not created in any sense. This is not just theological hand waving, as this, up until the 20th century, was also what atheists believed about the natural world, that it existed necessarily, and therefore needed no God as a creator. It is only with the advances of cosmology that have shown that universe cannot be past eternal that have caused some atheists to give up on this view, although many are still trying to cling to it in some sense. In any case to present “who created God?” as a serious argument show a complete unwillingness to even consider the basics of theological belief.

Secondly his whole position here, if taken seriously undermines all of science. Dawkins seems to think that explainations, in order to be valid, themselves must be able to be explained. However that very quickly leads to an infinite regress of explainations such that nothing can ever be explained. So evolution would require an explaination, that itself would require an explaination, and so on.

The often quoted “Courtier’s reply”, when you really think about what it is really saying, demonstrates the “ignorant and proud” stance that seems to be the hallmark of Dawkins and his supporters. Essentially it is saying that “they don’t need no fancy book learnin’ to know that religion is bunk!”. It really is at heart a statement of anti-intellectualism that is a complete mirror of the stereotypical religious fundamentalist position that something can be dismissed without understanding it because it is the work of Satan or something.

I think the most telling thing about the God Delusion is really the lack of support, (or indeed any support) that the arguments therein have recieved from the philospohical community. No philosopher, atheist or otherwise, seems to be willing to defend the “central argument” of Dawkins book, namely his Ultimate-747 gambit. The arguement has recieved widespread condemnation, even from atheist philosophers, yet none are willing to stand up and defend the argument in an area where there are many defending arguments against the existence of God. That, I think speaks volumes of the percieved quality of the book amoungst those who are experts in these types of arguments.

Calculon.

69

Sure it’s a way to eat meat on a fast day. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not a nuanced and carefully thought out position.

Mind you, I’m not asserting that it necessarily is a nuanced and carefully thought out position, just that I don’t buy Dawkins’ absurd characterization of it.

Very true, and that’s an issue well worth discussing. But discussing it is not the same thing as saying “Ha-ha, I’ve caught you in an inconsistency and therefore I can contemptuously dismiss the possibility of any sincere spiritual intent in your actions and simply mock you for whatever degree of stupidity and/or bad faith I choose to assume you must be guilty of!”

And thanks for reproducing the quote, by the way.

70

What you have said here is simply a version of my option 3.

I know what I wrote is simplistic, because it is. Theologians expend a lot of energy trying to complicate it but the fundamentals are never clarified; always obscured or reduced to simplistic truisms that end up meaning nothing.

71

I stand by my initial assessment. Unless something that he has written here is factually wrong.

(BTW, page number and book would be useful)

72

This may be the most awesome thing I’ve read all year.

73

What a dishonest shit-brick of a post.

No, this isn’t the same thing. Scientists don’t claim to know why existence exists – but many do think that it’s a meaningless question. It may not make logical sense to ask what it would mean for existence to not exist. That is a far cry from claiming God or any other entity X exists by logical necessity.

If you’re going to posit that God exists, but that he needs no explanation, then why not apply Occam’s Razor and cut out what we have no evidence for, and say the universe simply exists and needs no explanation?

Atheists don’t typically argue that they know why existence exists. Atheists tend to be more comfortable with the answer, “We don’t know yet. We can speculate a bit, but we simply don’t know. We may never know.”

For one thing, please stop spreading misinformation. There haven’t been any recent advances in cosmology saying that the universe cannot be “past eternal.” This is just outright false and is a typical Creationist argument (the “infinite passed time” fallacy). The truth is that cosmology, right now, has nothing definitive to say about events before the Big Bang or even the exact t=0 point itself. We do not know yet.

Dawkins does not say this, really. His entire point is about justifying your beliefs with facts, evidence, and rationality/reason… and not pandering to authority and superstition. Evolution is watertight regardless of how abiogenetic events may have occurred. Evolution is a claim about how life changes once it’s already there. It makes no claims about its origin. Origin is a separate matter that we don’t know 100% yet, but we’ve learned enough to suggest that we know the kind of event it must have been (origin of first self-replicating molecule). Your argument here reminds me of Bill O’Reilly’s logic: Tide goes in, tide goes out – you can’t explain that! “It’s due to the moon, dude.” Well, how’d the Moon get there?!

We can always trace explanation back upon explanation, but at least we’ll have evidence every step of the way. When we hit our wall, we hit our wall and make no claims further until we know more.

74

Courtiers reply Calculon, however much you dislike it, it is perfectly valid.

It does indeed.

Firstly, the charge of “inept theology” doesn’t carry the sting you think it does. Secondly, if god needs no initial cause then why should the universe. I know you’d like this question to go away but it doesn’t.

And yet the religious consider “no-one created god” to be a serious rebuttal?
You, as many do, have just hand-waved objections away. You can’t answer them, you realise the implications of an uncreated universe and don’t like it.

75

I wish I could claim it was my own, but I’m pretty sure my brain cribbed it from a previous thread on the courtier’s reply.

76

Man, Victor Davis Hanson is getting off easy in this thread!

77

AK84, how about an example of something you feel Dawkins got wrong because of his lack of theological expertise?

And don’t forget to include a reference to your own theological degree, otherwise how could we possibly take your opinion that it’s wrong seriously? :wink:

78

To digress a bit, where I think Dawkins’ “scientism” leads him most astray is not so much in factual errors as in assuming that his epistemological viewpoint is the only possible one. On pp. 72–73 of The God Delusion he says:

I don’t buy that assumption. Although I happen to share Dawkins’ belief in God’s non-existence, I don’t see why I should assume that God, as a supernatural being, must either exist or not exist. Sure, if you posit a strict rational-materialist epistemology, those are the only two options. But positing a strict rational-materialist epistemology, or any other epistemology, is fundamentally an arbitrary choice. There is no a priori guarantee that ultimate truth and reality have to abide by those constraints.

As far as I’m concerned, “supernatural” means that all bets are off, not just about the ordinary laws of physics but about the very nature of scientific verifiability and even logical necessity. I have no problem with the idea that a supernatural God might somehow both exist and not exist in some way that my decidedly non-supernatural mind can’t understand. Consequently, the idea of God’s existence as “a scientific fact about the universe” would be meaningless.

Dawkins makes a lot of cogent criticisms of religious belief as well as a lot of dumb caricatures of them. But IMHO, the fundamental weak spot in his reasoning is the petitio principii of taking for granted that strict rational-materialist epistemology is the only valid way to interpret reality, and failing to recognize that this is ultimately an arbitrary rather than a necessary choice. That’s a mistake that I don’t think most professional philosophers would have made.

79

It would be meaningless, period. You might as well sit in a corner and gurgle; it has as much meaning as anything you can say about the kind of incomprehensible thing you are describing. Of course people don’t want to admit that; “God” is only incomprehensible while skeptics are questioning his existence.

80

“Scientism” is a well known strawman argument: Scientism - Wikipedia

"Philosopher Daniel Dennett responded to criticism of his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by saying that “when someone puts forward a scientific theory that [religious critics] really don’t like, they just try to discredit it as ‘scientism’”

No, the point is that it’s the only way we can interpret the universe. Let’s assume for a moment that there is something supernatural and that it doesn’t need to adhere to our definitions of existence or non-existence or logical necessity or laws, etc. How would we possibly be able to know about it or detect it? If there’s no evidence for something, and no real way for us to know about it, we can treat it as though it doesn’t exist. What’s the difference between an invisible dragon that makes no sound/breathes heat-less fire/leaves no footprints or trails/etc and no dragon at all?

It may very well be true that somewhere in the fabric of existence lies a parallel universe where pink unicorns dance with spaghetti monsters while the sky pulses to the rhythm of the Great Beat Boxer in the Sky. If we can’t ever detect it, why posit that it exists, either?

When you say “God can both exist and not exist,” this doesn’t really mean anything. It’s like when people say "God needs no explanation / God is outside of time and space / God defies all logic / God is beyond our understanding " and so on. What on earth does it mean for God to both exist and not exist at the same time? What, he doesn’t exist when it suits atheists, but he exists when it suits theists? Seems like a lame attempt at an easy out, to me.

Even if something is beyond understanding, we have no way of knowing, and therefore must withhold judgment until we see otherwise.