Posted on 01/04/2007 9:31:34 AM PST by hocndoc
My relatives got this book for Christmas and were delighted to start reading it. My thought was "I've heard all the arguments for atheism since I was in high school. What could he possibly say that was new?"
So he goes with religion is evil and religious believers can't explain what created God. It's about the same argument I hear from any atheist.
I guess his next book will be on why it's important to wash your hands. Maybe he'll come up with "it reduces the spread of germs" and be praised for his groundbreaking thought.
--...which is actually a theory I'd have thought would be close to Dawkins' heart, as a "God substitute" -- e.g., abiogenesis moots the idea of a divine creator.--
abiogenesis is NOT a theory.
...God would have to be more complex —and thus even more improbable— than the universe he was supposed to explain.
What a maroon.
Dawkins is a monist mired in proximate causes.
Hey Richard - have you considered that you might be wrong?
A "C" is not a passing grade in the test of life...
Who says there's no such thing as evangelical atheism?
Dawkins is a super-flyweight when it comes to philosophy- he's a mental midget compared to htose who tries to refute- Dawkins doesn't even have the common sense to realize that there is nothing new under the sun and that men and women far more intellectual than he has tried unsuccesfully to malign God and creation with their carefully crafted lies and deceit.
Humes, a secularist philosoper even stated in an eloquent and well thought out diatribe that you can not discount hte testimony of 1000's of eyewitnesses, and you can't write it off as a mass delusion of the converts when secularists also witnessed the same events. Dawkins however has done just that- written off the evidence and stuck his fingers in his ears and hands over his eyes in order to present his anti-God crap http://sacredscoop.com
Dawkins has a difficult time facing up to the dual facts that (1) the twentieth century was an experiment in secularism; and (2) the result was secular evil, an evil that, if anything, was more spectacularly virulent than that which came before.That's putting it mildly. The body count of atheistic killers is far higher than that of those who killed in the name of religion. Of course, that is probably about to change. When IslamoFacists get nukes, they will begin ratcheting up the deaths on the "religious" side very quickly.
If anyone is interested- here are Hume's thoughs on the issue of miracles- just remember, he was a secularist who did not beleive in God, but nontheless argued rationally free from his bias for the most part
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~howardd/miracles.pdf
The evil done by early unsaved people in the name of religion amounted to what? 10,000 deaths during the inquisition? Hitler, pol pot, musilini, stalin, Mao, saddam, khomani etc etc etc all killed how many again? Yes, some of those claimed religion- but they were NOT religion- they were political institutions that falsely claimed they were religion- Christianity is the only true religion- yet 200,000,000 Christians have been murdered by false religions over a few shoirt decades. What hte early catholic Church did was NOT done by TRUE CHristians- it was done by unsaved folks- doing Satan's work, and abusing the title of Christianity- they were NOT God's children and did NOT represent God's word at all- they were FALSE self proclaimed religious folks doing the work of the Evil One- much the same way Hitler and ilk did.
C.S. Lewis also used to refer to this world and reality as the "shadowlands," that what exists at the Super-natural level is the true reality,
___________
Sounds like the cave story in Plato's Republic.
Excellent comment. Dr. Orr points out several ways that Dawkins does not, in fact, subject his own biases to his supposed scientific methods.
Another way of looking at Dawkins, is that he's out of synch with the rhythms of the Universe, while others at least occasionally intersect/see/hear/experience those points where we are able to align ourselves with the Supernatural.
(I've used Paul's analogy that we see the Light as "through a glass, darkly." Some of us have a clearer glass, some of us see the reflections from a prism, others see the reflection from some very poor images - believers - and others are over in the true shadows.)
LOL! Good one.
I'm taking the man at his word, not out of context, UpAllNight. He says that simple things cannot give rise to things that are more complex than themselves. Actually, I thought this was a rather striking statement, coming from a NeoDarwinist of Dawkins' credentials.
As to whether or not abiogenesis is "a theory," I'll defer to Harold Morowitz for the answer to that question (he argues that life is a spontaneous development arising from the evolution of the periodic table of the elements [initial conditions] and the physico-chemical laws).
Yet as a friend of mine has recently written, "Chemical abiogenesis cannot produce algorithmic and genetic complexity from morphological complexity in the same way as emergent phenomena cannot produce laws of nature." Which is another way of stating Kahre's Law of Diminishing Information (2002): "Physical systems cannot produce more information at their output than what was already present at their input."
As far as this Christian is concerned, I do not believe that God Himself was "caused" by some prior agent. God -- by definition, that goes back to the ancient Greeks and perhaps before -- is the uncaused First Cause and Prime Mover. He is not in space and not in time; and therefore is unavailable for lab tests. :^) Only a fool like Dawkins would ask: "Who (or what) created God?" If God has a cause, the cause must be Himself (i.e., He is sui-generis).
But Christians don't worry about such things; evidently, only atheists do.
Than you for writing UpAllNight!
Dr. Dawkins is the perfect example of those for whom we are admonished to pray, feed and nurture, in order to heap coals on his head (an analogy to the metal refining methods of the day, not really a wish to torture the poor man). Matthew 5:44 and Proverbs 25:21-22
No, it displays his stupidity.
Dawkins has a difficult time facing up to the dual facts that (1) the twentieth century was an experiment in secularism; and (2) the result was secular evil, an evil that, if anything, was more spectacularly virulent than that which came before.
Whoops, I didn't notice that you'd already quoted this paragraph. Excellent point, I beleive.
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