Posted on 01/04/2007 9:31:34 AM PST by hocndoc
You have refuted nothing. You have offered contradictory statements, not refutations, and, in your abortive attempt at refutation, you have saddled yourself with the even more onerous task of justifying Dawkins’ contradictions.
David Quinn & Richard Dawkins in an interview with Ryan Tubridy on the Ryan Tubridy Show. The main subject of contention was Dawkins’ recent book The God Delusion. From the transcript:
Tubridy: “. . . Let’s just talk about the word if you don’t mind, the word delusion, so put it into context. Why did you pick that word?”
Dawkins: “Well the word delusion means a falsehood which is widely believed, and I think that is true of religion. It is remarkably widely believed, it’s as though almost all of the population or a substantial proportion of the population believed that they had been abducted by aliens in flying saucers. You’d call that a delusion. I think God is a similar delusion.”
The very title of Dawkins’ latest book is as clear a demonstration as one would want that Dawkins deems religious people (most particularly Christians) to be delusional, or worse (misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, and capriciously malevolent), and the book’s title likewise makes it manifest that the existence of a god is what he considers them to be delusional about.
It may be that the non-existence of any sort of a god is merely Dawkins’ first line position, and that under a certain degree of opposition, he will retreat to a more agnostic attitude. Many of his critics claim that to be precisely the case, but I’ll leave that to you in your attempt to justify and explain his contradictory statements. I must warn you, however, that any attempt at justification will likely do little more than serve to expose him as an intellectual marshmallow.
Well, you’re right, of course. We are enjoined not to despair for the lost member of the flock, even when that member seems grimly determined to remain lost. { 8^)
Amen to that, YHAOS!
Thank you oh so very, very much, dear sister in Christ!
Love overwhelmed and encompassed these too.
Until the moment of his last breath there is hope for every man, for all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God, from least to greatest, and all are equally in need of the Grace of God.
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
~1 Peter 3:18a
I like the title of this thread for that reason:
A Mission to Convert Dawkins
Dawkins has lost the ability to separate himself from his subject. The most basic principle of the scientific method eludes him. He cannot distinguish between himself and the subject of his concern.
He speaks as an Olympian from a mountain of his own construction. His words are edicts and his manner is stentorian. He has become the god that he denies to others.
Worshipping at the altar of his wisdom is the only response he deigns to acknowledge.
Dawkins is, very simply, mad. His madness is hubris, that most ancient of sins for which God banished Adam and Eve and the gods of Olympus scourged guilty humans.
In Dawkins we are confronted with a man who denies all other gods before him. He is the measure of all truth and no one is permitted to stand before him except in obeisance. He listens only to the serpent’s whisper that he shall be god.
He is mad.
I realize it may be a logical fallacy to say this, but...
when a scientist writes a book about religion that is as thoroughly poor as "The God Delusion" should not his work as a scientist be questioned?
jw
Well said... very creative..
Excellent post, Amos! Thank you!
He's clearly lying. He doesn't know the great theologians. He hasn't read them. And he's simply talking out of his a**."
That is pretty much all one needs to know about Dawkins.
jw
I so appreciate the way your write. In reading your post this story came to mind:
And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.Nothing is impossible with God, amen.
~Mark 5:15
bookmark for later
Bingo. Or, the way I put it is that religion per se isn't the problem -- dogma is. Any belief system that is oblivious to facts, crushes dissent and debate, and considers its people as means to an end fits the definition, whether it claims a supernatural justification or not.
Great analysis, Amos! I must say I agree with your conclusion.
And the irony of this turn of events is that the very injunction itself not to ever despair for the fate of fellow beings, would tend to irritate the greatest those who were most sensitive to the ‘arrogance’ (real or perceived) of overbearing religionists. How dare they (these religionists) bring their concerns where those concerns are unwanted, nay, even fiercely resented.
This highhanded religious behavior was not to be tolerated. The Secularists pushed back and indulged in a little highhanded behavior themselves. The battle was joined. In all the hostile pushing and shoving something occurred that we had hardly expected. We’ve – many of us – learned very much more than we ever expected to learn going in.
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Bravo! Amos.
I admire your understanding very much.
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