Posted on 04/12/2007 1:27:09 PM PDT by freedomdefender
Crusading pro-evolution scientist Richard Dawkins has had his anti-religious claims ridiculed during an Oxford debate with a theologian who once was an atheist like the evolutionist, who is devout in his public denunciations of religion. "Having been an atheist, I discovered religion was in fact an enormously powerful, transformative power for good," said Alister McGrath, Oxford University's professor of Historical Theology.
"The claim that the scientific explanation ends everything, ignores fundamental realities. There's a whole range of human experiences, often involving a longing for something beyond us which brings legitimacy to our core notions and philosophical ideas."
The 54-year-old Anglican priest was debating with Dawkins during Oxford 's Literary Festival in March. Dawkins' post as professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford is funded by Hungarian-born Microsoft millionaire Charles Simonyi. His attacks on religion are frequent, and he set up a foundation in December to send atheist books and DVDs to schools in Britain and the United States.
"Far from being enriching, religion is stultifying, impoverishing and limiting," said Dawkins, whose book, "The God Delusion", has sold a million copies since publication in 2006. "Science and religion both attempt to answer the same questions - the difference is that religion gets the answers wrong," the atheist campaigner asserted.
McGrath said, however, science was unable to provide a "guiding moral vision". He noted that non-believers such as the writer Iris Murdoch had agreed on the necessity of a transcendent basis for ethical decisions.
"Although I can't prove Christianity, as I can prove the structure of DNA is a double helix, it is a hypothesis which makes perfect sense, and which gives direction and animation to life," said McGrath, who became a Christian after studying chemistry and molecular biophysics. McGrath recently published "The Dawkins Delusion" as a riposte to the scientist's book.
"Belief in God creates an explanatory framework, which enables you to appreciate and value the sciences while also seeing beyond the beauty and glory of the world to something enriching and ennobling," contended McGrath.
Describing his book as a "consciousness-raising exercise", Dawkins belongs to the London-based National Secular Society, which has since the 19th century campaigned to make Britain atheist. In his speech Dawkins said he had "disposed one by one" of arguments for God's existence, and believed it was "a form of child abuse" to assume children inherited their parents' religion "without consent".
McGrath, however, rejected this, arguing Dawkins had ignored "the dialectic between proving and giving reasons for something," and had falsely assumed science eliminated "the conceptual space for God". "Religion has the capacity to go seriously wrong - it can be dogmatic, intolerant and aggressive, as can other worldviews," said McGrath. "But it can also provide a moral stimulus and raise our imaginative capacities to new heights. For every grand tragedy involving religion, there've been ten thousand acts of personal kindness and social good."
See also:
Science, Religion, and the Human Future
Leon R. Kass
April 2007
Abstract –
Western civilization would not be West- ern civilization were it not for biblical religion, which reveres and trusts in the one God, Who has made known what He wants of human beings through what is called His revelation—that is, through Scripture. Western civilization would not be Western civilization were it not also for science, which extols and trusts in human reason to disclose the workings of nature and to use the knowledge gained to improve human life. These twin sources of Western civilization—religion and science (or, before science, philosophy), divine revelation and human reason—are, to say the least, not easily harmonized. One might even say that Western civilization would not be Western civilization without the continuing dialectical tension between the claims and demands of biblical religion and the cultivation of autonomous human reason.
Note: this abstract was auto-generated and may contain errors.
About the Author
Leon R. Kass, the Hertog fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, served from 2001 through 2005 as chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics. In somewhat different form, this essay will appear in a volume on religion and the American future to be published later this year by the American Enterprise Institute.
© 2007 Commentary
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10861
A Scientific Shaman.. of natural science..
The boy needs some serious prayer..
Side A mocks side B. Side B mocks side A in return.
And the level of public knowledge goes down yet another notch.
Don’t confuse haters like Dawkins with facts, logic, or truth.
I am finding that evolutionist’s faith is in CHANCE. Totally amazing.
Science doesn’t have anything to say, morally, about the strong killing the weak, only acknowledging that it DOES happen. And as I understand that strength does trump weakness (as you say) I’m also a believer in the value of learning and practicing martial arts so that if anyone tries to squeeze MY neck they’ll very likely find themselves flat on the ground with numerous broken bones.
And I suppose it’s up to any Creator to judge me as well as my attacker for the morality of our actions.
Both will essentially rely on the same type of argument for they can find no sensible evidence to support either view. Hence, both argue on the mere faith of their beliefs.
Yet, the atheists seem to be winning in the courts claiming they want a separation of church and state. The courts are blind to the church of the atheists. Don't ask me particulars for the church of the atheists. Go to the ACLU, Ayn Rand, etc. to get details on the denominations. Some denominations, like the communists, have a whole system of commandments and altruistic rituals. Others, may be more like free spirits. It varies just as those churches founded upon a God.
The courts should throw the atheists out for violating the First Amendment.
I prefer a Ruby Port, personally. Someone ridicules Dawkins’ arrogance and it makes headlines? Pshaw
Life without [belief in] God is no song, no melody, no tune, no poetry. Nothingness.
Richard Dawkins is a hate filled blowhard who deserves to meet his [natural] death surrounded by nobody and nothing.
And did you know that there are people who don’t believe in Hell until they get there?
I hope the rocks fall on him.
):^(
Nice try. Dawkins has no human kindness. After all, atheists are the smartest people in the world, unlike us ignorant superstitious peasants.
Kindly foist your moral superiority elsewhere.
see # 20 and 28.
“being myself tone deaf and having no voice”
I am sorry for that which you never have known. Faith in God can be expressed many ways, and many a poem, tune, and song has been raised in celebration of His holy Name.
Don’t be sorry but rejoice with me. Tone deafness saves me from contemporary music of both kinds - both from the loud cacophony and from the even more loud cacophony. Try to claim that this is not a benefit!
This is so off thread about God or atheism.
Discussion over.
That’s OK. I am about as much an atheist as Dawkins - and as for poetry, I am not only enjoying it but am even translating it on occasion, [sometimes not too badly, and more frequently worse]. Thus poetry and its enjoyment are wide open to atheists like me, giving a lie to your statement “live without {belief in] god is... no poetry”. There is a lot of poetry in my life - and I do not believe in god.
This is precisely the point where Dawkins goes off the rails: Science and religion do not treat of the same questions at all.
The only way such a statement could be true would be if the universe is what Dawkins says it is: pure materiality, somehow paradoxically ordered by pure chance that somehow manages to become "intelligent" (for some inexplicable reason) along the way of its evolution, such to produce the splendid variety of creature that we see in our world. All of which presupposes that the biological generations result from a "blind," that is to say unguided, purposeless process taking place in space and time. And that's all there is to it.
I do not see any basis in reason at all by which such a complex of expectation could possibly be organized, let alone justified.... Where is the basis in direct experience that could possibly justify it?
In short, Dawkins is deaf, dumb, and blind to the "spirit" that matter needs in order to form any kind of intelligence, or to be any kind of life.
That's putting the problem pretty crudely; but I'll leave it there for now, hoping anyone interested in this problem would write back....
Thanks so much for the post, freedomdefender!
“and I do not believe in god [sic]”.
Sounds like you got a problem.
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