I think that’s a caricature that’s on a par with Dawkins’ own writing. I already cited Ruse and Orr, for example – two people who do NOT offer trivial defenses of religion. As atheists, they have no reason to defend religion at all, and yet that does not stop them from recognizing that Dawkins uses sloppy logic, acts as though he is ignorant of philosophy and history, and constructs the simplistic caricatures of which you speak.
Yes, I have. I already cited reviews by Orr and Plantinga, for example. While their treatments are by no means exhaustive, both of them cited numerous reasons why Dawkins handled the matter poorly. You seem to be deadset on disbelieving the notion that knowledgeable philosophers – whether theistic or atheistic – could find such fault in his work though, so I suspect that you will continue to insist that they offer no such analysis of his work.
If you want a more thorough treatment, you can refer to Dr. William Lane Craig, who breaks down Dawkins’ main argument here.
“But he’s a Christian!” some here would doubtlessly interject, as they have done in the past. “That makes him biased!” Fine. Then by that logic, one should reject Dawkins’ arguments as well, since he obviously harbors a strong bias against theism and religion.
(my bolding)
Surely they do, in that presumably they believe those arguments they make in defence of religion are true? I’m an atheist, and I certainly have reason to defend religion at times.
Craig’s rebuttal is not very good. Basically it just amounts to a claim that Dawkins has not disproven the existence of God, which is something that Dawkins never claimed to do in any case, but which also falsely reverses the burden of proof. Dawkins says, essentially, there is nothing in the universe which either necessitates or supports the God hypothesis. Craig’s rebuttal is that this still doesn’t prove there’s no God. Of course not. NOTHING could prove that. That doesn’t make the God hypthesis any more compelling or credible than the Matrix or Odin.
Here’s where we disagree. He expressly states that censoring parental choice in enculturating their children is a good thing and that society has a positive duty to do it. That’s more than a “hint” or “suggestion”.
He does not say that. He’s arguing against allowing the parents to censor their children’s education.
His solution to this is nothing more sinister than public education.
Technically you can’t censor choice itself, only the results of that choice. But yes, I agree with you; and he then says the means by which that duty should manifest itself, through public education, and certainly coming right out and saying something is more than a hint or suggestion. What he does not hint or suggest is that he has other ideas or support for alternative measures.
This I can’t agree with, as it is contrary to the text.
He claims he is arguing in favour of censorship. His very words:
Emphasis added.
Reading the quote in its full context does not offer a different meaning.
How on earth does one parse “… should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible, or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon” as a conclusion, as anything other than him being in favour of preventing parents from teaching their own children? He expressly states so! Says parents should no more be allowed to do it, than knock out their teeth or lock them up.
Really, if his cause was any less sympathetic, I find it hard to believe that people would be defending this as strenuously.
In the context of pure education, it is, indeed, unacceptable to allow parents to teach their kids that the sun revolves around the earth or that 2+2=5. He’s saying that Parents don’t have a right to substitute factual falsehoods for education. That’s all.
Oh brother - William Lane Craig. I get the impression that he views rhetoric as a game but doesn’t actually believe the crap he says - I think he’s too smart for that.
But in that essay, it boils down to this central few sentences, which try to explain why the design argument is not the only reason to believe in god:
First, the ontological, cosmological, and moral arguments are just stupid. They cannot support belief in an omnipotent, universe-creating deity. Revelation is also a demonstrably poor way to arrive at your beliefs. That does leave us with the design argument.
And rejecting the design argument doesn’t prove that god doesn’t exist (Dawkins says this himself), but it does, contrary to Craig’s last sentence, mean that belief in god is unjustified. And that is Dawkins’ point in his book.
This is actually my mistake. I should have said that he isn’t arguing in favour of enforced censorship. I think the rest of that sentence makes it clear, but you’re right, that was an error on my part.
By parsing it as protecting them through teaching alternate ideas. By ensuring, not that that particular piece of teaching does not occur, but rather, that other teaching also occurs, so that a different lesson is learned.
If it is surprising that we are willing to apparently defend him on a point so unsympathetic, surely it is just as surprising that he should make such an apparently unsympathetic point?
That’s a reasonable position, but I would suggest it is not reasonable to presume that this is what the author intended. He certainly does not state it anywhere - on the contrary, as I demonstrate below.
Indeed, and he himself acknowledges that his audience (particularly “liberals”) would find it difficult to swallow.
He then goes on to set up some “objections” to his illiberal censorship notions (clearly, no one would have “liberal” qualms about more public education!). He raises the analogy of physical mutilation as a means of disposing of the ingrained notion of parental rights, then states as follows:
In short, the "central point’ of his lecture is the moral one: that religious parents have no moral right to teach their children (he earlier notes that it is impossible to expect religious parents to not teach their children their own religion).
He does not say “the central point of my lecture is that I want more science education”. Science education is what he’d practically settle for, because he recognizes the unlikeliness of being in a position to impose what he quite clearly regards as the correct moral social duty - to prevent religious parents from teaching their children.
I haven’t said they are necessarily invalid, but you hadn’t quoted a point of meaningful criticism in the thread, or as I had expressed, “on the basis of a point of logic”; however, I should have paid closer attention to the text you did link to, which I’ve now skim read.
H. Allen Orr’s critique is a lot more meaningful that Dr. William Lane Craig’s ‘infinite regress destroys science’, ‘we don’t need to explain the designer’ and ‘God’s a really simple idea anyway’.
I haven’t read Dawkins book in full, only extracts, so I don’t know how fully I would agree with the points raised by Orr. Some of them seem somewhat invalid from the outset (there’s nothing inherently wrong with failing to refer to Wittgenstein, or conversely using Douglas Adams to make a point, especially when dealing with a wider audience who aren’t necessarily fascinated with philosophical onanism), but Dawkins may have been inadequate in dealing with the comparative evil done by both believers and non-believers, and the role played by religion in doing so. My understanding is that the main thesis of the book is in refuting the teleological argument, which Dawkins aside, is invalid as a concept anyway, and largely why I’ve yet to read it in full.
Of course they have reasons to defend religion - they’re both reconciliationists. Lots of people act as though reconciliationism is somehow less ideological than atheism, but I don’t see how.
I like the definition, but disagree with the interpretation. Bear in mind that we - I’m an atheist, remember - don’t have invalidating evidence of God’s existence. (Of course, theists don’t have evidence of his existence either.) So, calling belief delusional is not only insulting but inaccurate by any normal usage of the word. More importantly, as I argue above, it’s counterproductive, if the aim of the dialogue is to change the minds of believers. Recall that the OP is about how Dawkins’ books are perceived by believers.
It’s correct that there is no invalidating evidence for a deistic God (aside from being illogical and not complying with Occam’s razor), but scientific and historical evidence is flatly contradictory of the various Abrahamic and other religious texts, to which billions of people subscribe. ‘Delusional’ is entirely appropriate as a succinct means of expressing someone who holds their scripture to be infallible, or does not recognise that it is undermined by science. Dawkins makes it clear in the book that God cannot be disproved. Regardless, I doubt any book, even written in the most logical, comprehensive, and brilliant fashion, without use of ‘insulting’ words, could convince as many as a handful of believers to change their mind.
This is a silly argument. There isn’t any invalidating evidence of aliens from Pluto either, that doesn’t mean we can’t say it’s delusional to believe they’re sending radio signals to your brain. How is it any less delusional to think that you have a telepathic “personal relationship” with an obscure Palestinian preacher who died 2000 years ago?
How is it even any different from thinking you have a telepathic personal relationship with Brad Pitt?
What CAN you say is delusional by your logic?
Diogenes, PBear, Captain Awesome, I think the phrase tripping us up is “invalidating evidence.”
We have no invalidating evidence for God, or aliens on Pluto, so the definition quoted may not be the best one. It’s certainly delusional to have certain beliefs even though there’s not “invalidating” evidence, and the case of aliens on Pluto sending radio signals to your brain is a good example. Maybe the definition should be invalidating evidence, or a profound lack of evidence where there would be evidence expected if it were real.
And in that case, traditional religion is a delusion. I’ve heard that the DSM (I don’t have one myself) defines a delusion as a strongly-held irrational belief, but it specifically excludes any that are widely held in the population. So religion gets a free pass from them, but otherwise I see no reason to think that traditional religious beliefs are anything other than delusions.
I would argue, that through suggesting a solution he feels is appropriate which takes the form of “solving” the problem through alternate sources of teaching, that this argument is implicit. It makes sense to me that, if he suggests a solution through teaching alternate ideas, then it is reasonable to conclude that he believes as a theoretical position that solutions may lie in teaching alternate ideas.
I’m afraid I don’t understand your point then in your comments about the unpleasantness of the argument.
I disagree. Yes to it being a moral one, but it’s that religious parents have no moral right to teach their children to the exclusion of all else. That parents have no moral right to entirely control their children’s education; if it was simply teaching at all, then his expectation that it is impossible to expect parents not to would presumably have left him at an impasse.
No, I disagree. As i’ve said, the duty he sees is not to prevent teaching, but to prevent teaching from only one source, to prevent enculturation via one or two individuals. To, essentially, not alter that there is teaching occurring, but rather, to ensure that alternative sources of teaching are avaliable. Hence why his praise of science education is so full - he doesn’t simply suggest it as a poor, but necessary, second best, something that he’ll sigh and accept; he lauds it considerably. And he goes on to say (at some length) *why *science education is so good in his eyes. These don’t read to me as the words of someone who’s settling for something; they read to me as the words of someone extremely committed to the idea, who places a high priority on it.
And beyond that, even if your interpretation were correct, I’d still say you’re making a big leap from him saying “this would be nice” to “this would be nice; any means of enforcing or imposing it would therefore also be nice”.
I notice that no one seems to be interested in discussing the strand of my argument which relates to the OP. Whether belief in God is delusional we can discuss, but there’s no getting around the fact that the claim is insulting and effectively terminates the dialogue. If Dawkins’s purpose was simply to write an atheist manifesto, the title and tone of the book become defensible. If the object, as he claimed, was to change the minds of believers, they were mistakes. IMHO, of course, for reasons set out earlier in the thread.
As for whether the label fits, part of my problem is that I acknowledge, where apparently none of you do, that Christians are using a different world view. I’m a materialist, as I assume are all of you. In that world view, religion is out on its ear for want of evidence. Calling it delusional adds nothing. More to the point, I don’t assume a priori that my world view is right and the Christian one is wrong. That’s why I said (in my first post) that Dawkins’ title assumes the conclusion.
Also, let’s recall that the foundational belief of Christianity isn’t the cosmological proof. Nor is it creationism. It’s the proposition that the NT accurately describes an actual historical event which really happened. It’s not at all like radio beams from Pluto, the FSM or the IPU. No wonder Christians do “roll eyes” when arguments like these are trotted out. You’re not talking about their religiion.