[hocndoc]

At the risk of saying too little about so much, I do have a couple of points that I'd like to point out about this excellent review and critique of Dawkin's poor attempt at framing religion as delusional and teaching our children as abusive.

First, please note Dr. Orr's references to Dawkin's own religious (Judeo-Christian) and Victorian worldview, as well as the biologist's bias, assumptions and frank acknowledgment of a "Mission to Convert."

Second, the major weakness in all of the Creator vs. Science debates was pointed out by that same C S Lewis book that Dr. Orr cites: in Miracles, Lewis reminds us that the Creator of this Universe is Super - natural. He works outside of the Laws of Physics/Nature as we know them.

[hocndoc]

I've snipped some of the introduction, but couldn't bring myself to delete anymore of the review. Good commentary, here.

[MarineBrat]

...he argues that rearing children in a religious tradition amounts to child abuse.

There you have it my FRiends. The future of liberalism and the new spearhead of religious persecution.

[My2Cents]

Psalm 34:8 states, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." The confirmation of the validity of faith in God is found in the exercise of it. Dawkins is someone who has apparently never exercised faith, and yet he speaks about this topic as if he were an expert. There's another psalm which says "The fool says in his heart 'There is no God.'" The only thing Dawkins proves by his "polemic" is that he is a fool, and speaks of what he does not know.

Darwinists berate "non-scientists" for even commenting on the veracity of the theory of evolution. Why should we tolerate a nonbeliever telling us that belief is absurd?

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

Though I once labeled Dawkins a professional atheist, I'm forced, after reading his new book, to conclude he's actually more an amateur.

Heh heh.

[colorado tanker]

From this review, it appears Dawkins is seriously out of his element and makes a bunch of banal arguments. He seems ignorant of the history of Christian theology and doesn't engage the major apologists and philosophers

I think I'll pass on this book.

[Always Right]

Perhaps we should just inform Muslims that Richard Dawkins book attacks Islam.

[BaBaStooey]

[My2Cents]

the Creator of this Universe is Super - natural. He works outside of the Laws of Physics/Nature as we know them.

A point I'm willing to recognize, but then you have folks like Dawkins who believe that unless something can be brought into the lab and observed, it doesn't exist. A militant adherence to materialistic science as the source of all knowing and truth is a militant commitment to ignorance, at some level. 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, and we touch and experience that reality as we align ourselves with it. To be blunt, when someone like Dawkins shakes his fist at the notion of God, he's living a lie.

[My2Cents]

The most disappointing feature of The God Delusion is Dawkins's failure to engage religious thought in any serious way.

Dawkins actually has a pretty good gig. What other person can plumb the depths of their own dark psyche, spew their prejudice onto paper, and have it become a best seller?

[betty boop]

In short, only complicated objects can design simpler ones; information cannot flow in the other direction, with simple objects designing complicated ones. But that means any designer God would have to be more complex —and thus even more improbable— than the universe he was supposed to explain.

This "proof" against the existence of God as creator of the universe is likewise "proof" that chemical evolution cannot be the source of complexity that we observe in the living world. For the physical-chemical laws are "simple", i.e., have very low information content; while even the simplest of living systems, bacteria, are enormously complex (i.e., have high information centent). So we can just forget about abiogenesis....

...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. Yet in his desire to bump off God, Dawkins has to bump off abiogenesis as well. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

[capitalist229]

Many people want to reserve judgement.

Too bad He won't.

BUMP

[Our man in washington]

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.

[Ozone34]

Dawkins is a monist mired in proximate causes.

[jonno]

Hey Richard - have you considered that you might be wrong?

A "C" is not a passing grade in the test of life...

[Antoninus]

Who says there's no such thing as evangelical atheism?

[CottShop]

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

[samtheman]

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.

[CottShop]

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

[trisham]

How does one believe in evil if one does not believe in God? It seems illogical.

[AndrewC]

The reason seems clear. The first argument leads to a conclusion Dawkins despises, while the second leads to one he loves. Dawkins, so far as I can tell, is unconcerned that the central argument of his book bears more than a passing resemblance to those clever philosophical proofs for the existence of God that he dismisses. This is unfortunate.

No, it displays his stupidity.