FWIW, I don’t think that science’s danger to God is the possibility that it may disprove him (I don’t think it ever will), just that it will make him more and more irrelevant.
I am truly trying to understand something here. One of the objections to the book is that the author doesn’t take into account the possibility that God may exist outside of space and time and thus is immune from scientific fact finding. But why should that even be a factor, when “outside of space and time” is so far just as imaginary a place as Barsoom, Narnia or Oz? Why should that even be considered a possibility, let alone a probability?
It pretty much has to be God reaching out, in my mind; if we can’t understand “outside time” fully, we certainly can’t understand a being that exists in that. God is supposed to be so far above us that any communication has to be on his end so that he can dumb it down appropriately enough. For any meaningful understanding, God needs to be a willing partner.
I don’t think science can conclusively decide anything, but in terms of acts of God I think it can study them to some extent, and in addition there’s the possibility of providing alternative (or not being able to provide alternative) possibilities for the act. But scientifically or theologically, all we can do is study the act and draw inferences. Neither can be used to actually examine the performance of the act.
But I didn’t say that:
So there’s a third option: there can’t be any evidence for God. I don’t like that argument, but it’s been proposed. As in: you can’t have faith if you have evidence.
My atheist interpretation of that argument would be: nobody has hard objective evidence.
I’m willing to be convinced by objective evidence, but I haven’t seen any yet. In any case that should really the subject of another thread (unless that evidence is mentioned in the book) - if I recall correctly there’s been one here a short while ago about what it would take for atheists to be convinced God exists.
Because Barsoom, Narnia and Oz are possibilities?
If your argument is that it (and they) shouldn’t be considered possibilities because there is no evidence for them other than it’s a good theoretical explanation, the whole meaning of theoretical explanations is that they’re possibilities. I imagine that a believer would argue that if all of it was purely theoretical, we’d end up with a neutral claim, but that there is enough actual evidence to allow us to accept potential further explanations. IOW, God does exist, thus he must exist somewhere.
In this chapter Dawkins attempts to explain, or at least speculate on, how religion might have arisen. This is something of interest to both theists and atheists, since they can agree that at least some of the religious beliefs that have been held by humankind are false and mistaken, which leads to the question of how these bogus beliefs came to arise.
Dawkins, of course, takes the evolutionary biology approach to the question: how did religious beliefs evolve, or how did humans evolve into beings who held such (in some cases seemingly nonsensical or counterproductive) beliefs? I don’t want to fault Dawkins too much, but he did start to remind me of those thinkers who have one pet theory and then try to explain everything in the whole wide world in terms of that one theory. I asked myself, “Is it valid to explain/examine everything in terms of Darwinian evolution?”
But in this chapter, Dawkins is speculating, not pontificating, and the possibilities he comes up with have some plausibility.
I have to call “bullshit” on this statement. Barsoom, Narnia and Oz are imaginary places, but those that have read of them have a decent idea of what they consist of, even though they are imaginary places. “Outside Of Space And Time” is a concept without a description-a null term. Yet, if I tried to propose that God operated out of Oz, neither you nor anyone else here would spend a nanosecond debating the possibility of his existing there.
Certainly it is not valid to examine everything in terms of Darwinian evolution. Just things that propogate with inheritance, change over time, and compete for resources. All of which apply to religions. Although, technically, the evolution of religion would be closer to Lamarckian Evolution, not Darwinian.
In addition to what Revenant Threshold said, it’s because this is how God has been traditionally understood (at least by a substantial number of believers). You can’t argue that they’re wrong if your argument is against some different belief than the one you say they’re wrong about.
Indeed, how can I argue that a statement is wrong when it is impossible to understand? I can no more say that God does not exist outside of space and time, than you can say that God doesn’t spend his spare time there playing the galookaphone. You cannot argue against a nonsense term, but you also cannot argue for a nonsense term.
I suppose there are a couple of different ways in which you could understand God as being outside of space and time. One way is that God is outside of the space-time continuum in which we live, having created it, so that God exists outside of this universe in somewhat the same way as J. R. R. Tolkien exists outside of Middle Earth, or a video game designer exists outside of the machine on which it’s running. Another way is to claim that notions of space or time or location, “when” or “where,” are meaningless when applied to God. If you don’t understand how that’s possible, I sympathize, but if you claim that therefore it can’t be possible, you’re making an Argument from Personal Incredulity, which Dawkins denounces in a different context.
Becuase if the existence of an actual place “outside of space and time” is made part of the definition of God, then such a place is defined to exist, once you’ve assumed that God exists. We can know the place exists because that’s where God is; we know God is there because he can’t be found here. Straightforward logic, once you’ve assumed that God exists, which is generally where these people are coming from.
Once you believe what I believe, it is easy to convince you that what I believe is true.
Hey, he asked how the godians are able to so easily accept the existince of such a fantastical place; I proposed a theory in answer to his question. I didn’t say that it was based in solid logic; quite the contrary I think I may have hinted at an unsupported premise somewhere in there.
Well, first off, not being able to describe it doesn’t mean no-one can. I didn’t know what Barsoom was until you posted it (and promptly learnt a new set of words I don’t want to type into google again; boo to pulp fiction!). A thousand years ago, no-one would have an decent idea of what a car consists of. I am sure a believer would say that God has that effective understanding of “Outside Of Space And Time” that we lack.
And you are correct that we probably wouldn’t debate that; I would imagine because the existence of Oz is something we actually have decent evidence against, and the concept of God specifically isn’t one that’s ever really linked with metallic gentlemen and talking scarecrows. If we go back to the argument before, it is that God exists, and thus he must exist somewhere. If we’re starting from that proposition, as we again do here, then it only makes sense to judge whether or not that location is suitable from what we know (or believe to know) about that God. God residing in Oz? If you have reasons why it’s possible, then we’d probably debate it.
I bought the book and read about four chapters that I was particularly interested in, such as prayer, personal experience, etc. I found Dawkins making up his theories on the go, such as a software program running in the brain, etc. That was enough for me. The book is the rant of a fanatic and can hold no place in literature for me. I will trash it. But skeptics may see something in it while I don’t. He assumes he knows far more about religion than he actually does. Well, that is my take.
Please consider the possibility that the large parts of the book you skipped contained explanations for what you didn’t understand and/or agree with, and read the whole thing.
What Czarcasm said. You are eager that people genuinely look into research, information, and personal experiences themselves. You owe it to yourself to read the whole thing, even if in the end you do deem it worthless.
If not, well, the OP does ask you politely not to participate if you haven’t read the book. I would guess that refers to all of it rather than merely some.
I realize that the debate has already branched off in several directions, but I’d like to present some of my thoughts from the beginning of the book. Dawkins begins by saying that he aims to convert religious believers to atheism. It’s clear, I should think, that a book with this title by this author will get a mostly atheist readership. I don’t hold that against him, though. Most authors will necessarily be read by people who agree with them already.
What I do dislike is his take on why he’ll be able to win converts. He thinks the religious reader has been fooled by “childhood indoctrination”, and that once the reader picks up a little information the virtues of atheism will all become clear. He never acknowledges the possibility that there wasn’t any childhood indoctrination. He never addresses people like me who were raised as atheists and converted to Christianity after many years of reasoned investigation. In fact, he never even acknowledges the existence of people like me. And at the end of the preface, he as much as declares that anyone who’s still religious after reading his book is “fundamentalist” and incapable of rational thought. It is an insulting claim and unworthy of a man like Dawkins.
While I don’t expect anyone to accept me as proof that educated and sophisticated adults can convert to Christianity, but I would expect everyone to agree that it’s possible. There are many famous cases, including the other author under discussion, C. S. Lewis. Dawkins even tells of encountering scientific colleagues who are religious, and surely he wouldn’t say that they meet such a derogatory stereotype.
I won’t speculate on why Dawkins included that insult in the preface, but it certainly does start the book off on the wrong foot. Without it, it would be easier to approach his arguments as philosophical rather than polemical.
Next point: the evolutionary basis of religion. I will readily admit to having a strong bias on this one. I believe that evolutonary psychology is bunkum so far. It is speculation with little evidence, and proponents are (at best) stretching their conclusions way past what is justified. With that said, chapter five did little to convince me that it’s good science. To his credit, Dawkins does readily admit that his ideas in this chapter are only speculation.
He begins with a passage stating that only behaviors that help the survival and propagations of genes (or at least “replicators”) can survive, because nature is so ruthless. Evolution eliminates not only harmful traits, but also useless ones because they are wasteful. Right here he’s made a big leap, because he’s assumed that all behavior is genetic.
Obviously there is much ongoing debate about how much of human behavior is genetic, and it’s far too complex to even summarize in this thread. While I lean towards the less genetic end of the debate, I realize there are some good arguments on the other side. But in this chapter, Dawkins never acknowledges an opposing viewpoint. He never even mentions that any behavior might be partially environmental. Hence he gives a misleading picture of where the biological community stands.
Oddly Dawkins even admits that there are behaviors with no known survival value, but he insists that there must be survival value that we just can’t see. He might as well gaze wistfully towards the heavens and say, “evolution works in mysterious ways.” He’s being completely dogmatic at this point, saying that the theory can’t possibly be wrong or even fail to apply in a single case.
Next he’s on a whirlwind tour of possible evolutionary explanations for religion. He comes down against a few, and then presents his personal favorite: evolution decided that children should have genes which make them believe what their parents tell them, and religion survives as a side effect of these genes.
As I’ve already said, I don’t believe that genes have much effect on behavior, but I try not to be close-minded on the issue. As I see it, the convincing arguments for a genetic basis for behavior would be (in order of decreasing strength):
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Identify the exact gene that causes the behavior.
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Identify the physical structures in the body that cause the behavior.
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Conduct a large survey of several generations, showing that the behavior is inherited and cannot be explained by any other means.
In most cases that I follow, those arguing for behavioral genetics make only a small effort at 3, and none at 1 and 2. I find that the popular media tends to eagerly report findings that aren’t really justified. For instance, in 1993 a scientist named Dean Haber claimed to have found the gene that causes homosexuality in men. Other researchers disagreed with his results, but Haber’s conclusions have been widely reported and accepted by many. (See here for further discussion.)
There are possible explanations for how behavior genese could exist and thus far have eluded detection, but obviously that’s not as good as actual evidence. An analogy may be useful. Up to the late 1800’s, physicists all agreed on the existence of the “luminiferous ether” that carried light waves. Then a series of arguments proved that it would have to have contradictory properties. Various theories were offered, some quite creative, to explain these results. In the end, however, a better explanation won out: the ether didn’t exist. I think that behavior genes, at least in most cases, will eventually go through a similar story.