The God Delusion: David Quinn & Richard Dawkins debate (Transcript Here)

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[Silly]

Wonderful interview. Thanks for posting.

[Alamo-Girl]

Well said, MHGinTN! Very well said indeed. Thank you!

[Quix]

Your post zeroed in on the essence of it all ... Dawkins assumes his own status as godhood and thus moral responsibility which begins and ends with himself. From such an arrogant position it is near impossible to even comprehend his own error in reasoning, yet the error is blatant. Dawkins may have free will as his own god, but no one else may have free will if their choices obstruct his will. Truth is, only with a God of the creation in which we are creatures may we each have free will since we answer ultimately to the highest authority ... which is not Richard Dawkins, not any government, not any whim of nature or even the natural destruction of that which is matter in nature, for the soul is more than the matter in the mechanism and the spirit is more than the soul of the mechanism. Someone might want to ask Dawkins by what standard Stalin was evil or bad ... alas, Richard will obfuscate the obvious even from his own mind because he is unable to be free to be loved by his creator since he holds himself to be god to himself.

= = =

Excellent points.

Thanks.

[RobbyS]

In my opinionb, Quinn cleans hos clock, but why not: Dawkins never rises above village atheism. What's his name is much more formidable.

[RobbyS]

Seventy-four years of official atheism robbed the Russian people of this source of hope. This, more than a ruined economy and environmental degradation, is what has put Russia on the road to extinction. It’s a tragic reminder that ideas, and the worldviews and attitudes they engender, have very real consequences.

[Cicero]

Well said. Materialism is not the same thing as philosophical realism, although most modernists carelessly confuse the two, materialism and realism, and think of themselves as realists.

Furthermore, materialists cannot even know what is "real" in the material world. You can pound on a desk and say that it is real. You see it and feel it. But we know that the wood of the desk is in fact mostly empty space, made up of electrons orbiting around atomic nuclei. (If, in fact, there is any such thing as electrons, protons, or neutrons, or maybe these elementary particles are made up of muons or something else we don't know about yet?)

The world that materialists think of as real changes with every scientific advance.

Indeed, materialism often slows the advancement of science, because members of the scientific establishment stubbornly refuse to change their view of the way things work until their noses are absolutely rubbed into the new discoveries, as Thomas Kuhn points out in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." It happens again and again.

Materialists like to parrot that the Catholic Church resisted Galileo's hypothesis that the earth goes around the sun whenever resistance to science comes up. In fact, Galileo's friend the Pope only clamped down and ceased protecting him from his scientific rivals when Galileo (falsely) insisted that the movement of the earth was a proven fact, not a hypothesis. It was not really proven until more than a century later. Yet, four hundred years later, the Galileo affair is still the most famous example of opposition to scientific advancement, endlessly repeated.

In the real history of science, I suspect that most often literal-minded materialists are the ones who have most tenaciously resisted new and upsetting discoveries.

[MHGinTN]

I'm truly enjoying your exchanges with TrisB ... perticularly this response: Likewise you cannot declare something is random in the system when you don’t know what the system “is.” Secular humanists assume their current knowledge is the extent of that which is reality, when it is clear that their horizon is short of the turn. The material atheist declares the limits of the system and every year new data shows the arrogance to be amusing. Interesting that even Dawkins brushes against this fact when he says Science is working on the problem yet he, Dawkins, has yet to comprehend the essence of your cogent sentence regarding system incomplteness and randomness.

[pray4liberty]

Only a fool says in his heart, there is no God.

If this fellow got a good showing of God's wrath, he'd start believing in a hurry.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your outstanding essay-post and for the additional insights into Galileo. And thank you for the encouragements!

The world that materialists think of as real changes with every scientific advance.

So very true. As you have explained so well, they are often brought kicking and screaming to the next level of scientific discovery.

It will be interesting to see their reaction if CERN gives up on the Higgs field/boson (ordinary matter) or if what CERN observes does not agree with the Standard Model - further advancing supersymmetry, extra dimensionality, etc.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for your encouragements and for your excellent insights into Dawkins "I" problem. LOL!

Seriously though, it saddens me that the Dawkins of the world are so sure they have all the answers when they willfully refuse to see but a fraction of what we see.

[betty boop]

...materialism often slows the advancement of science, because members of the scientific establishment stubbornly refuse to change their view of the way things work until their noses are absolutely rubbed into the new discoveries, as Thomas Kuhn points out in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." It happens again and again.

Excellent point, Cicero!

Thank you so much for the additional details on Galileo, the book recommendation -- and for your outstanding essay/post!

[betty boop]

...If all perception is just electrical sensory information

Jeepers, why do you use the word "if," when it seems this is your actual view?

Like Alamo-Girl, I strongly disagree with this presumption on your part. There is a species of "perception" which is "inner" to a man, not something originating from "outside." You only need physical ears for the latter.

I think you and Alamo-Girl are simply "talking past each other." And yet to me, she is speaking so clearly and directly. FWIW.

Good night, TrisB!

[Alamo-Girl]

There is a species of "perception" which is "inner" to a man, not something originating from "outside." You only need physical ears for the latter.

So very true. Thank you so much for your encouragements, my dear sister in Christ!

[TrisB]

I really cannot believe some of the things I'm reading from many of the contributers. Here, theists are accusing others of:

Limiting themselves by working within a presumed framework (i.e. blind postulation)

Slowing scientific advancement and not accepting change

Being arrogant

Lacking imagination

Failing to listen

Some of the things here are so hypocritical it makes me uncomfortable and somewhat reluctant to bother engaging with. I do feel somewhat outnumbered here by the nature of the site, and so much is being said unopposed purely because end-conclusions are the same - Any argument will suffice, so long as it comes to the same conclusion, whereon many congratulations are exchanged.

Alamo, we have failed to clash blades in the manor I hoped; I feel my arguments have been instantly cast aside because of their implications conflicting with your beliefs, not their content. I don't appreciate being talked down to, the household-physics you churn out hasn't actually brought anything to the table, and every time I check back I see my statement copied in inverted commas with replies all cryptically resembling "No you are wrong" or at best "No you are wrong because I am right". Read back over your dissections of my posts if you don't believe me. A parrot can tell me I'm wrong, but only a theist can say it in a different way each time.

I was told by my associates that arguing with theists is a waste of time, since argument is a rational activity which theists gate-crash by smudging and evading attacks on their irrationality so that it remains hidden, and whenever they run off the playing field, claim that their playing field is bigger, when actually overall it's smaller. I had more respect than my associates, and wanted to prove them wrong. I have enjoyed our exchange, but hope next time I clash with more modern minds.

[MHGinTN]

"If this fellow got a good showing of God's wrath, he'd start believing in a hurry." Ahh, but these same individuals will ignore for a whole lifetime the showing of God's love toward those around them and focus only upon the tragic things that happen to folks, choosing to blame God--or in the Dawkins case of self-godhood, blame the lack of God they choose to uphold--rather than seek the reasons for human failings. It is irrational to believe that because God may see all of time like a panorama that God is then responsible for what happens across time, because the reality of free will is the axiom they must reject first in order to prove to themselves that there is no free will and/or no loving God of Creation. If I see an auto crash, am I responsible for that event? Hardly, yet there are people who would argue in essence that I am responsible if I'm God. How irrational, don'tchaknow. On the other hand, accepting the axiom of free will makes room for events to occur without a puppet-master god causing each of them. But there are those who find escape in believing the either or false premise that God's universe is either a puppet stage or is without a master. Dawkins has chosen in his arrogance to believe the latter, sadly ... or perhaps rather than arrogance it is fear of that which he cannot completely know or cannot accepted will never be completely explained/revealed by his demi-god, Science, at this level of reality.

[MHGinTN]

You are an insulting little mind. Did you imagine that your insulting phrases would somehow whoosh over our primitive heads because you couched your petty insults in cloying verbiage? So juvenile.

[TrisB]

No I DO actually WANT you to take my words in and contest them. I apologise if my pompous Cambridge English sounds condescending in verbosity, I did not intend this. Honest!

[subterfuge]

This thread should reallyl have a pic from the South Park with this Dawkins character in it. Can you post the one with Mr/Ms. Garrison by chance?

Dawkins is the smartest man in the world according to Otters.

[MHGinTN]

I had to search diligently to find a single personal offering that opens a doorway in discussion rather than pumping your ego: "Ok, getting a little deep here, but I'm struggling in retrospect of my young days when I did believe in free will, and now trying desperately to understand what it could possible be, and what would permit it to exist outside of order and chaos." Refer momentarily to the story of Flatland, the 2-D realm visited by a 3-D being. Confronted with a dot on the 2-D plane, a flatlander has only the choice of left or right, back away to avoid the dot; the 3-Der has the additional up or down (over or under) to allow freer movement.

If you can, apply this analogy to the nature of dimensional complexities in space, time, soul of life force, and spirit, such that a being of merely space, time, soulish level of complexity is a reactive-to-only-stimuli sensed by the three dimensional existence, while the space,time, soulish, spirit being has another level of variability to which decisions may be submitted for review before reaction. A cat killing a mouse is not committing a good or bad act, but a human killing another innocent human (not in self-defense or in war, for example) is committing a bad deed by the reckoning of a dimensional variability (spirit) not available to the cat or the mouse.

Imagine that the Creator God is seven dimensional (space, time, soul, spirit, 5, 6, and 7, though in my limits I cannot fathom what to name the 5th, 6th, or 7th dimensions of The Creator God's variability). While the cat is free to kill or not to kill the mouse, based upon abilities, the human is more free and more responsible to utilize the greater variability factors of his or her existent reality.

If you can imagine each dimension has three variable expressions (as in space has length, width, and height; time has past, present, future; soul has will, emotion, mind; spirit has ... well, you get the idea), the human is not just one level more free, but three levels/exponentials more free than the cat or mouse, having a spirit component the cat and mouse do not have.

The above is merely offered as a means to open thought to more realistic discussion not limited by antiquated notions of 'all animal kingdom species are the same in moral value'. Consider the entire field of variables is essential in reaching an ultimate truth regarding the reality of the variables, but we haven't the means to define all the variables yet, so we cannot 'know' in a scientific sense that there is no God of Creation ... to assume there is no God of Creation is arrogant in the main, since taking such a perspective assumes personal abilities regarding the variables not yet well defined. It is not however arrogant to postulate variabilities we do not have (yet; we are an evolving species) and assign these greater variabilities to God of Creation, an uncaused cause of our reality. Is it irrational to postulate God of seven dimensions and believe our universe (the realm of our perceptions, and don't eliminate spirit as a means of some perception) exists within those seven yet the One Of All Seven is outside and inside our realm? Philip got that same Physics lesson from Jesus as related in John's Gospel, 14th Chapter. You might find it an interesting read.

[Alamo-Girl]

But how do you really feel, MHGinTN? LOLOL!

Our correspondent is a newbie with less than a month’s experience on this forum whereas you, betty boop and I have been around here for a very long time, a cumulative total of some 25 years of active posting history between the three of us.

On this forum, we have entertained, engaged and exhausted every atheistic challenge known to me. But there’s always the possibility one will post a challenge we haven’t seen before. Maybe next time...