In my assessment or his? >:)

;)

Please don't say that you have 'pointed something out' as if by doing so, you've been instructing, when you're simply expressing an opinion. — Wayfarer

How about instead of pointing something out, I thumb it out, like politicians are wont to do? Would that be better?

The only part of my comment that is arguable, and somewhat reliant on interpretation, was, admittedly, whether or not you had committed the fallacy. The fallacy itself can't reasonably be argued against. But you did seem to suggest that what is considered fundamental by the populace is therefore credible or true - which, whether you like it or not, is indeed fallacious, and has been shown to lead to false conclusions in some cases.

When I say 'fundamental to the world's cultures', I'm not engaging in hyperbole. Western culture was founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition; it used to be called 'Christendom'. Midde-eastern cultures were founded on Islam, Indian on Vedic religion, China on Taoism and Buddhism, and so on. So here I'm referring to the foundational role of religious revelation in cultural history. — Wayfarer

I haven't denied any of that, but I do question its presumed relevance.

I'm not saying that this proves anything about the validity of this or that individual claim. — Wayfarer

Good.

But what I am saying is that if you dismiss religious claims generally - and many do! - then you're actually dismissing a foundational element of culture itself, and also saying that to that extent, world cultures were founded on hallucinations or delusions. — Wayfarer

The devil is in the details. But even if I did, what is the presumed relevance, if, like you say, you acknowledge that there is no logical link between a beliefs consequences and its truth-value? You can't have your cake and eat it - which is, in this case, to say that you can't, on the one hand, acknowledge this fallacy; and, on the other, continue to use it against me. If that is not what you're doing, then you're still not out of the water, as you may instead be committing a fallacy of relevance.

But no, my issue is more specifically with theistic or supernatural claims, including those which fall under the religious category, rather than religious claims in general - which is a much broader category. I have no qualms in dismissing these specific kind of claims, after due consideration, on account of weak evidence or poor reasoning; and I similarly have no qualms in acknowledging the possibility or likelihood that a large number of people have been - or are - deluded in that respect, just as they have been deluded in other analogous respects, as in the example of geocentricism.

In that case, it would be useful if one could demonstrate it. X-) — Wayfarer

I believe I have: by not taking a stronger stance where I believe it would be unwarranted to do so. It might not be the openness that you expect or desire of me, but it is openness nonetheless.

It seemed obvious to me that you were joking this time, so it wasn't a case of rejecting anything. — John

I sometimes make serious points and criticisms through the use of irony, or in amongst what might appear to the less discerning reader to be just a joke, but they can be overlooked or dismissed as mere facetiousness.

In this case, to reiterate, how do you know I'm not God appearing to you in the form in which I am represented to you? How can you ever tell, with regards to anyone or anything, in any possible scenario?

And, secondly, how can you justify, if at all, your rejection of my claim, if you do indeed reject it, assuming sincerity, that I have a special ability which, say, allows me to read peoples minds, or see ghosts, or communicate with aliens, or experience faerie magic... yet not Colin's claim that he has had experiences of God? What is it that differentiates them, if anything? Or do you not reject such claims at all and bite this ridiculous bullet? (And if you're going to bring up this category of 'spiritual', then I refer you back to my previous questions and criticisms, which I don't think have been adequately addressed).

When I say 'fundamental to the world's cultures', I'm not engaging in hyperbole. Western culture was founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition; it used to be called 'Christendom'. Midde-eastern cultures were founded on Islam, Indian on Vedic religion, China on Taoism and Buddhism, and so on. So here I'm referring to the foundational role of religious revelation in cultural history. I'm not saying that this proves anything about the validity of this or that individual claim. But what I am saying is that if you dismiss religious claims generally - and many do! - then you're actually dismissing a foundational element of culture itself, and also saying that to that extent, world cultures were founded on hallucinations or delusions. (I'm sure Dawkins' ideas entail this, even if he would not be prepared to admit it.) And that is something that is actually happening, on a very large scale, in Western culture. There are literally libraries of books written on that topic. As you know, my major pre-occupation on this and other forums is arguing against materialism, on the basis that scientific materialism has morphed into a kind of pseudo-religious attitude to life. — Wayfarer

Culture is not "founded" on religion any more than it's founded on social relationships and power structures and food production and law and economics and technology and tribal allegiance and interaction with other cultures. Religion is a integral aspect of culture that arises with and evolves along with and influences and is influenced by other aspects. It arises in and evolves with the culture.

If as is often argued, the particular beings who populate the various religious experiences across different cultures are just the way people in a given culture understand the spiritual, then you have admitted that these people's brains filled in all those details with notions they were already familiar with, but you hang on to the claim that the source of the experiences is spiritual rather than the brain doing exactly the kind of thing we know brains do--generating narratives.

Culture is not "founded" on religion any more than it's founded on social relationships and power structures and food production and law and economics and technology and tribal allegiance and interaction with other cultures. — Brainglitch

Or any less. It arises within and evolves with it, but it also guides it. Many of the earliest archeological relics from the paleo- and neolithic periods have religious significance, such as the ubiquotious large-breasted fertility goddess figurines, and the relics of ceremonial items buried in graves (even neanderthal graves).

What we now identify as 'religion' was often not understood or described as such in pre-modern cultures; there was simply 'the law', which was underwritten by both gods and kings. But the point I'm making is simply to dismiss the accounts of religious experience as hallucinatory or delusional, is to undermine the foundational role of religious ideas in cultures. And this is something that is visibly happening in Western culture, leading to widespread feeings of alientation, anomie, nihilism, and the like. This is what Nietszche foresaw as the 'rise of nihilism' - something which he was both responsible for and a victim of. Many people who turn up on these forums post threads along the lines of the notion that life has no meaning and no value, we're all the products of a meaningless universe, and so on. This can have real consequences.

Many of the atheists who preach against religion, will often themselves admit that their beliefs undermine social values. Daniel Dennett, one of the 'new atheists', has himself admitted that, and said that 'the people' need to be able to 'believe' in their illusory gods (even if the intelligentsia, such as himself, realise that it's all brain-chemistry). Dawkins will say that Darwinism is a terrible basis for a social philosophy, without seeming to realise that he has devoted considerable vitriol to attempting to undermine the alternatives. But that's just typical of the confusion of modern culture.

... But the point I'm making is simply to dismiss the accounts of religious experience as hallucinatory or delusional, is to undermine the foundational role of religious ideas in cultures. And this is something that is visibly happening in Western culture, leading to widespread feeings of alientation, anomie, nihilism, and the like. This is what Nietszche foresaw as the 'rise of nihilism' - something which he was both responsible for and a victim of. Many people who turn up on these forums post threads along the lines of the notion that life has no meaning and no value, we're all the products of a meaningless universe, and so on. This can have real consequences.

Many of the atheists who preach against religion, will often themselves admit that their beliefs undermine social values. Daniel Dennett, one of the 'new atheists', has himself admitted that, and said that 'the people' need to be able to 'believe' in their illusory gods (even if the intelligentsia, such as himself, realise that it's all brain-chemistry). Dawkins will say that Darwinism is a terrible basis for a social philosophy, without seeming to realise that he has devoted considerable vitriol to attempting to undermine the alternatives. But that's just typical of the confusion of modern culture. — Wayfarer

Indeed, beliefs have consequences--both positive and negative.

But it is a logical fallacy to accept or reject a proposition because we like or don't like the consequences of people's belief or disbelief in the proposition.

But this is not a case of 'no true scotsman'. It is a case of understanding the subject properly. — Wayfarer

You said such "divine watchmaker" notions of God "doesn't match any conception of deity found in any of the world's religious traditions." I pointed out that it does, for instance, in the tradition of natural theology. You then dismiss that by saying it's "a case of understanding the subject properly." So, yes, this is pretty much a textbook instance of No True Scotsman.

I think that the mainly American tendency that has now crystallised around the title of 'intelligent design' is an unfortunate development, in many respects, and is *not* characteristic of the broader Christian tradition. It is a matter of record that neither the Anglican, Catholic, nor Orthodox communions defend or advocate any kind of intelligent design theology. (Yet they do support theistic evolution and natural theology, which are different arguments.)

Again, No True Scotsman. Whether ID is "characteristic of the broader Christian traditions" is not really relevant, only that such notions do in fact have a longstanding history in religion. And what is theistic evolution but the belief that God somehow guided the evolutionary process? That's pretty close to executing a "design" as far as I'm concerned. And no less than the the head of the NIH (Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian) has expressed his belief that the human moral sense was instilled by God, which, again, sounds a lot like design to me (and the fact that such sentiments were expressed by the leader of one of the largest biomedical research centers and funders in the United States is worrying to me, as it should be to anyone who cares about scientific rationalism).

As you may recall, another of the books I often quote in this matter is Karen Armstrong's A Case for God which is much nearer to my understanding of the issue than either the ID camp or the evangatheists. She points out in that book how 'design arguments' grew out of the early modern conviction that natural laws 'shewed God's handiwork', not realising at the time that this argument could then be used against theology, as knowledge of 'God's handiwork' expanded.

HOWEVER, all of that said, I think the attempt to 'prove that God exists' with reference to empirical facts always amounts to a species of fundamentalism. But the attempt to prove that God doesn't exist, with reference to those same facts, is also a species of fundamentalism, and that on those grounds, Dawkins, et al, amount to a kind of 'secular fundamentalism'.

It's no wonder that you accuse Dawkins et al of grappling only with fundamentalism, given that you have such an overbroad definition of that term! I understand fundamentalism to be a literalistic or overly-strict adherence to the dogma, texts, or teachings of a particular religion, often accompanied by a desire to force such adherence upon others. Appealing to empiricism to demonstrate the existence of God doesn't fall into that camp, in my opinion.

However, you are aware that Dawkins has also criticized a priori arguments for the existence of God, such as the ontological argument? If so, do you maintain that he switches from criticizing mainstream theology when dealing with the OA to criticizing only fundamentalism when he turns his fire upon, say, the cosmological argument?

But one asymmetry in all of this is, that even the most bone-headed young-earth creationist is nevertheless supposed to be bound by a moral code, which requires that he or she tend to the sick, practice charity and mercy, and observe the other elements of Christian morality. Moreover their belief system situates them in a broader context both culturally and spiritually. Whereas, the diehard atheist inhabits a universe that is meaningless and purposeless by definition, where the only kind of purpose or meaning that is available is that generated by the ego, in a Camus-like act of defiance.

Dawkins actually bemoans the adoption of Darwinian principles as the basis for a moral philosophy, wiithout seeming to realise that he has spent the whole second part of his career dissolving the traditional alternative in the acid of 'Darwin's dangerous idea'. Which is one of the reasons he's considered such a klutz.

Even assuming any of this is true, it is yet another fallacious appeal to consequences on your part. As Sam Harris said, no society has ever suffered from being too rational. If you have a counter-example to this, I'd love to hear it.

@Arkady, @Wayfarer, @John

Just want to note that Dawkins' argument that an intelligence capable of designing and implementing something as complex as the universe would have to be more complex than the complexity it allegedly explains, is specifically a response to the widespread fundamentalist assertion that the complexity of the universe entails a "designer"--wink-wink: God as they conceive of him.

And also note that, contra John's assertion a ways back, these fundamentalists exist in the tens of millions. The 2011 Pew Forum study on global Christianity puts the evangelical population at 285,480,000, over 94 million of which are in the U.S. Strictly speaking, fundamentalists are a subset of evangelicals, but, as evangelicals themselves note, the differences are more differences of style than doctrinal substance, and fundamentalists are more literalist. In any case, evangelicals unanimously assert that the Bible is inerrant, and overwhelmingly subscribe to ID.

In any case, evangelicals unanimously assert that the Bible is inerrant, and overwhelmingly subscribe to ID — Brainglitch

ID is a relatively theologically stripped-down version of creationism, at least with regard to its published theories. Though I don't have any polling data on this readily at hand, I would think that evangelicals lean more towards Young- or Old Earth Creationism than ID.

I might also disagree that fundamentalists are just a subset of evangelicals, especially if we broaden the scope to include non-Christians. Not all religions are inherently evangelical (e.g. Judaism), and yet some non-evangelical religions have followers who can reasonably be called fundamentalists (e.g. the Ultra-Orthodox Jews).

Just want to note that Dawkins' argument that an intelligence capable of designing and implementing something as complex as the universe would have to be more complex than the complexity it allegedly explains, — Brainglitch

As I wonder what on Earth could actually be the argument for that--how is he quantifying complexity exactly? How is he determining how complex something has to be to create something of a particular complexity? Etc.

It's probably too much to type out a summary of whatever Dawkins' argument is, but is there maybe someplace online that I could read it? Even just on Google Books or via Amazon's "Look Inside" or something?

Even assuming any of this is true, it is yet another fallacious appeal to consequences on your part. — Arkady

Yeah. Same ol' jeeprs, same ol' fallacies, eh?

Moreover their belief system situates them in a broader context both culturally and spiritually. Whereas, the diehard atheist inhabits a universe that is meaningless and purposeless by definition, where the only kind of purpose or meaning that is available is that generated by the ego, in a Camus-like act of defiance. — Wayfarer

This part in particular. I mean, what is your point? You take the time and effort to go into detail on this subject, but you have not made your point explicit, leaving us to try to read between the lines. It looks very much to me like you are contrasting the two based on how appealing you consider them to be, with the implication being that it is a matter of preference, rather than weighing the two based on evidence. Is that what you think?

ID is a relatively theologically stripped-down version of creationism, at least with regard to its published theories. Though I don't have any polling data on this readily at hand, I would think that evangelicals lean more towards Young- or Old Earth Creationism than ID. — Arkady

Yes, ID transparently is repackaged Creationism. When several court decisions about the teaching of "Creation Science" in U.S. public schools came down against Creationism as a legitimate science, evangelicals repackaged it. ID was a rhetorical ploy to avoid mentioning God so as to appear to be a legitimate alternative scientific theory that should be taught in the schools along with evolution. "Teach the Controversy" was one of their slogans. But ID, too, was defeated in the courts. Scratch an evangelical and find a creationist, ID smokescreen notwithstanding.

I might also disagree that fundamentalists are just a subset of evangelicals, especially if we broaden the scope to include non-Christians. Not all religions are inherently evangelical (e.g. Judaism), and yet some non-evangelical religions have followers who can reasonably be called fundamentalists (e.g. the Ultra-Orthodox Jews).

Sure. The term "fundamentalist" is somewhat plastic. There are fundamentalists in many religions. As a group across religions, we can identify certain common characteristics.

And fundamentalists across religions may well subscribe to ID. But the ID arguments Dawkins was responding to was a widely circulated Protestant Christian fundamentalist argument.

As I wonder what on Earth could actually be the argument for that--how is he quantifying complexity exactly? How is he determining how complex something has to be to create something of a particular complexity? Etc.

It's probably too much to type out a summary of whatever Dawkins' argument is, but is there maybe someplace online that I could read it? Even just on Google Books or via Amazon's "Look Inside" or something? — Terrapin Station

Dawkins expressed the argument in The Blind Watchmaker.

His primary argument is the positive one that natural selection can explain the complex adaptations of organisms, and he does this in great detail.

Then, as WIKI says:

After arguing that evolution is capable of explaining the origin of complexity, near the end of the book Dawkins uses this to argue against the existence of God: "a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution ... must already have been vastly complex in the first place ..."

He's just dismissing the ID argument by showing that by using the same reasoning about what counts as "complex" they used, he can postulate that a designer of their complexity must be "complex."

Note that the title The Blind Watchmaker alludes to the old watchmaker argument, but it is exactly this argument that ID revived in principle, and often used word-for-word in their presentations because of its commonsense appeal. Dawkins specifically addressed fundamentalist Christian ID in debates, some of which are probably still available online.

Yes, ID transparently is repackaged Creationism. — Brainglitch

I don't disagree, but I would question how many evangelicals subscribe to ID per se, which, as I pointed out, is largely shorn of theological doctrine. I think most evangelicals would as a group hold more of a literalistic "Goddidit" set of beliefs, with an explicit appeal to the Judeo-Christian-style creator of Genesis.

Young-Earth Creationism, for instance, is not really compatible with ID as most commonly presented (though, at least some proponents of ID, e.g. Paul Nelson, are YEC's).

I don't disagree, but I would question how many evangelicals subscribe to ID per se, which, as I pointed out, is largely shorn of theological doctrine. I think most evangelicals would as a group hold more of a literalistic "Goddidit" set of beliefs, with an explicit appeal to the Judeo-Christian-style creator of Genesis.

Young-Earth Creationism, for instance, is not really compatible with ID as most commonly presented (though, at least some proponents of ID, e.g. Paul Nelson, are YEC's). — Arkady

A pertinent distinction can be made between current popular "ID" and the more academic and centuries-old "argument from design."

In current popular ID, the "Designer" is code for "God." God as current ID evangelical proponents conceive of him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

You said such "divine watchmaker" notions of God "doesn't match any conception of deity found in any of the world's religious traditions." — Arkady

I am disputing Dawkins' understanding of God as 'super-engineer'. I say that every description of God that Dawkins provides, indicates misunderstanding of the term even from a viewpoint of the philosophy of religion.

And what is theistic evolution but the belief that God somehow guided the evolutionary process? That's pretty close to executing a "design" as far as I'm concerned. — Arkady

The difference between 'intelligent design theology' and theistic evolution, is that the ID intends to demonstrate, with reference to specific details, exactly what God is purported to have done, precisely the way in which 'divine intervention' must have been required for specific things to occur.

BioLogos, which subscribes to theistic evolution, and not ID, says:

ID claims that the existence of an intelligent cause of the universe and of the development of life is a testable scientific hypothesis. ID arguments often point to parts of scientific theories where there is no consensus and claim that the best solution is to appeal to the direct action of an intelligent designer. At BioLogos, we believe that our intelligent God designed the universe, but we do not see scientific or biblical reasons to give up on pursuing natural explanations for how God governs natural phenomena.

Source

Whereas the atheist argument is that the sequence of events culminating in intelligent life, arose in an important sense purely as a consequence of chemical and physical necessity, and in that sense are an accident or a vagary; 'without cause' in the sense of without purpose, telos or intention. This attitude is implicit throughout the writings of modern atheism.

Appealing to empiricism to demonstrate the existence of God doesn't fall into that camp, in my opinion. — Arkady

It depends. I think the anthropic or fine-tuning types of argument are persuasive, but they are also more suggestive than conclusive; they leave the possibility open. Indeed I think it is absolutely untenable to argue that they 'prove' that a naturalistic account is self-sufficient. But as soon as you try and use God as a term in an empirical argument, or the termination in a chain of efficient causes, and to 'prove' it in the sense that you prove a natural hypothesis, then you're overstepping the limits of knowledge (as argued by Kant). You're also reducing God to a factor among other factors, a being among other beings. That is why scholastic philosophers of religion, such as Ed Feser and David Bentley Hart, abjure Intelligent Design arguments, but are nonetheless theistic philosophers. (Now they're true Scotsmen!)

However, you are aware that Dawkins has also criticized a priori arguments for the existence of God, such as the ontological argument? — Arkady

I am indeed, and it was this very point that Thomas Nagel mentioned in his review of The God Delusion:

It is a question that Dawkins recognizes and tries to address, and it is directly analogous to his question for the God hypothesis: who made God? The problem is this. The theory of evolution through heritable variation and natural selection reduces the improbability of organizational complexity by breaking the process down into a very long series of small steps, each of which is not all that improbable. But each of the steps involves a mutation in a carrier of genetic information—an enormously complex molecule capable both of selfreplication and of generating out of surrounding matter a functioning organism that can house it. The molecule is moreover capable sometimes of surviving a slight mutation in its structure to generate a slightly different organism that can also survive. Without such a replicating system there could not be heritable variation, and without heritable variation there could not be natural selection favoring those organisms, and their underlying genes, that are best adapted to the environment.

The entire apparatus of evolutionary explanation therefore depends on the prior existence of genetic material with these remarkable properties. Since 1953 we have known what that material is, and scientists are continually learning more about how DNA does what it does. But since the existence of this material or something like it is a precondition of the possibility of evolution, evolutionary theory cannot explain its existence. We are therefore faced with a problem analogous to that which Dawkins thinks faces the argument from design: we have explained the complexity of organic life in terms of something that is itself just as functionally complex as what we originally set out to explain. So the problem is just pushed back one step: how did such a thing come into existence?

Of course there is a huge difference between this explanation and the God hypothesis. We can observe DNA and see how it works. But the problem that originally prompted the argument from design—the overwhelming improbability of such a thing coming into existence by chance, simply through the purposeless laws of physics— remains just as real for this case. Yet this time we cannot replace chance with natural selection.

Dawkins recognizes the problem, but his response to it is pure hand-waving. First, he says it only had to happen once. Next, he says that there are, at a conservative estimate, a billion billion planets in the universe with life-friendly physical and chemical environments like ours. So all we have to suppose is that the probability of something like DNA forming under such conditions, given the laws of physics, is not much less than one in a billion billion.And he points out, invoking the socalled anthropic principle, that even if it happened on only one planet, it is no accident that we are able to observe it, since the appearance of life is a condition of our existence.

Dawkins is not a chemist or a physicist. Neither am I, but general expositions of research on the origin of life indicate that no one has a theory that would support anything remotely near such a high probability as one in a billion billion. Naturally there is speculation about possible non-biological chemical precursors of DNA or RNA. But at this point the origin of life remains, in light of what is known about the huge size, the extreme specificity, and the exquisite functional precision of the genetic material, a mystery—an event that could not have occurred by chance and to which no significant probability can be assigned on the basis of what we know of the laws of physics and chemistry.

Yet we know that it happened. That is why the argument from design is still alive, and why scientists who find the conclusion of that argument unacceptable feel there must be a purely physical explanation of why the origin of life is not as physically improbable as it seems. Dawkins invokes the possibility that there are vastly many universes besides this one, thus giving chance many more opportunities to create life; but this is just a desperate device to avoid the demand for a real explanation.

The Fear of Religion, Thomas Nagel, New Repubic, 23 Oct 2006

And no less than the the head of the NIH (Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian) has expressed his belief that the human moral sense was instilled by God. — Arkady

And this is a problem - why? I have notes on exchanges between you and I in years past, where I asked, regarding materialist explanations of life, does this mean life is simply a complex chemical reaction. And your response was - what else could it be? I asked how it would be possible for evolution to have given rise to a moral sense - you acknowledge it doesn't deal with the problem at all.

The new atheists will gladly argue that Christian faith and morals have been dissolved in the 'acid of Darwin's dangerous idea', but what have they got to replace it with, apart from half-baked pop philosophy and scientism? I don't see any of them as being capable of undergraduate philosophy but as contributors to the general moral decline of Western culture.

None of that seems to be saying "would have to be more complex than the complexity it allegedly explains" though.

I doubt religious folks would object to saying that God must be complex, by the way.

I doubt religious folks would object to saying that God must be complex, by the way. — Terrapin Station

Then you are apparently unacquainted with the notion of "divine simplicity..."

None of that seems to be saying "would have to be more complex than the complexity it allegedly explains" though. — Terrapin Station

You're right.

In the Blind Watchmaker, he does not specify that the designer would have to be more complex than his design, but rather would be "vastly complex." He may have said "more complex" elsewhere, perhaps in one of his many debates, or I may just be mistaken.

However, whether the designer is more complex or not is irrelevant to his argument.

I doubt religious folks would object to saying that God must be complex, by the way.

Sure, the believer in the pew readily accepts that God is complex, but some theologians insist that God is simple. Though using this notion of simplicity as a counter to what is meant by complex in Dawkins' argument strikes me as equivocation.

Dawkins says, at the end of Blind Watchmaker, that "a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution ... must already have been vastly complex in the first place ..." He calls this "postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation."

This is the basis of the argument that is elaborated in The God Delusion.

It's also very important to understand that far more Americans believe in God, than in the literal account of evolution. And I think this is a real problem - it is one of the indicators of the general decline in general critical thinking ability. But that is at least partially because the evangelical atheists - and you can't deny they exist - use the arguments we are discussing here to 'prove' that God doesn't exist. This is not only unjustifiable on any scientific grounds, but it is dangerous to the social fabric.

On this point, it is well worth reading Michael Ruse. He is a philosopher of science and has been called as an expert witness at various court proceedings about teaching evolution and ID. He is a conscientious atheist, but he has been in effect black-banned by the 'new atheist' movement for being 'accomodationist'; he is said to be ideologically unsound, for having had the temerity to write about whether evolution was indeed a 'secular religion'.

Likewise, Lloyd Rees, Astronomer Royal in the United Kingdrom, was castigated by Dawkins and Jerry Coyne in 2012, for recieving the Templeton Prize, awarded by the foundation of that name, which is associated with promotion of dialogue between science and religion. Richard Dawkins compared Rees to 'Quisling', the notorious Norwegian Nazi collaborator.

Just be careful on which side you think the 'fanatics' are in these arguments.

I am disputing Dawkins' understanding of God as 'super-engineer'. I say that every description of God that Dawkins provides, indicates misunderstanding of the term even from a viewpoint of the philosophy of religion. — Wayfarer

The "Watchmaker" argument, a Christian apologetics argument, is widely rehearsed by contemporary apologists defending ID.

It's this argument that Dawkins' specifically disputed. Note that his book was titled "The Blind Watchmaker."

It's also very important to understand that far more Americans believe in God, than in the literal account of evolution. And I think this is a real problem - it is one of the indicators of the general decline in general critical thinking ability. But that is at least partially because the evangelical atheists - and you can't deny they exist - use the arguments we are discussing here to 'prove' that God doesn't exist. This is not only unjustifiable on any scientific grounds, but it is dangerous to the social fabric. — Wayfarer

I dispute your charge that Dawkins and company allege to "prove" that God doesn't exist. Any citations?

And your charge that the decline in Americans' general critical thinking ability is partly because of their arguments is preposterous.

I get that. Fred Hoyle uses a similar argument about 'the junkyard Jumbo jet'. But the inference about the nature of the designer is what I'm disputing, and the general observation that I think all of what Dawins says about God, is a reflection of his own twisted understanding.

We could explore that a little further. A lot of the philosophy that became incorporated into Christian theology in the early part of the Christian era, was Platonistic and neo-Platonist. In fact it was in the Timeaus that Plato posited the 'divine architect' or 'demiurge'. But I think, from memory, this architect was not 'the Good' or 'the One'. Such ideas were also found in gnosticism - that the 'creator-god' was actually an evil tyrant, whereas 'the One' was beyond all manifest form.

But another influential model for the Christian doctrine of creation was Plotinus. In his philosophy, which is of course impossible to summarise, the One, which is beyond all comprehension, is indeed entirely simple - as ''one' must be! How this gives rise to the manifold forms of creation is not by any kind of action, but by the super-abundance of dvine power, which simply emanates forms that then 'descend' through the various levels of the hierarchy to assume the shapes that we see. But the shapes we see are really only the facsimiles or instantiations of ideas in the divine intellect.

I don't propose to open a debate or discussion on that topic, as apart from anything else, I know I don't understand it very well. But I know enough about both sides of the argument to state confidently that Richard Dawkins doesn't understand it in the least. As many of the reviews of The God Delusion stated at the time, Dawkins doesn't display any familiarity with philosophy or even theology. I used to bring up such points on the actual Dawkins forum. The answer was 'well, you can't expect Richard to be an expert in these matters, after all he's a biologist'.

I dispute your charge that Dawkins and company allege to "prove" that God doesn't exist. And citations? — BrainGlitch

What I dispute is your charge that Dawkins and company allege to "prove" that God doesn't exist.

Stating that there probably is no God is not alleging to have proven that God doesn't exist.

I think first that these people do a disservice to scholarship. Their treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing. As I have said elsewhere, for the first time in my life, I felt sorry for the ontological argument. If we criticized gene theory with as little knowledge as Dawkins has of religion and philosophy, he would be rightly indignant. (He was just this when, thirty years ago, Mary Midgeley went after the selfish gene concept without the slightest knowledge of genetics.) Conversely, I am indignant at the poor quality of the argumentation in Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and all of the others in that group.

Secondly, I think that the new atheists are doing terrible political damage to the cause of Creationism fighting. Americans are religious people. You may not like this fact. But they are. Not all are fanatics. Survey after survey shows that most American Christians (and Jews and others) fall in the middle on social issues like abortion and gay marriage as well as on science. They want to be science-friendly, although it is certainly true that many have been seduced by the Creationists. We evolutionists have got to speak to these people. We have got to show them that Darwinism is their friend not their enemy. — Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse, Why I Think the New Atheists are a Bloody Disaster

The new atheists have made this position impossible: their entire shtick is that science and religion are mortal enemies in a total war, in which only one side can be a winner - which in my opinion is a kind of sublimated religious fanaticism.

Incidentally I noticed a current title by Michael Ruse - Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us about Evolution

@Wayfarer

The number of outspoken "New Atheists" can be counted on one hand.

Meanwhils, literally thousands of sermons, Sunday school lessons, Bible College lectures, book and tract piblications, radio and TV broadcasts and internet sites regularly disparage science (from biology to astrophysics to anthropology to geology to climate science to archeology to psychology to textual criticism ... that they judge to be inconsistent with their dogma. There is, and has always been, a characteristic strain of anti-intellectualism in American evangelicalism--they use the word "expert" disparagingly. They annoint their own experts (often self-appointed wannabe pseudo scholars, or sometimes off-the-chart outliers in secular sdcholardship) in various fields, and repeatedly allege widespread conspiracy among the conventional experts in any given field when they inevitably reject the claims of the annointed experts.

The number of outspoken "New Atheists" can be counted on one hand. — Brainglitch

Someone else on this thread referred to what the New Atheists do as "persecution," to which I replied that that poster is either prone to extreme hyperbole, or doesn't know what "persecution" means.

As for the stable of "New Atheists," their enemies can take comfort in the fact that Hitchens is gone, and Sam Harris's recent concerns over religion seem to pertain exclusively to radical Islam (or Islam in general). So, their ranks are fairly depleted (and Dawkins' latest books were memoirs. For all of the near-hysterical vitriol levied against him in some quarters, relatively little of his writings are directly concerned with religious belief).

I don't know if I call it persecution per se, but the do take a strong stance against participating in religion. They form a cultural force which would like humanity to eschew religious belief to one degree or another. In terms of their approach to creating an ethical society, they don't say: "People believe what you want, so long as you're not doing XYZ harm," let alone advocate the respect and prominence that people like Wayfarer want to give to religious belief.

In some respects, they "New Atheists" are more political, concerned about the prevalence of religous belief, than atheist. Some of their arguments against deities are too weak, particularly around falsification and the idea of an "invisible God."

(the bus advertisement is a actually a pretty good demonstration of this. Notice it's not really based on the question of God's existence or coherency, but rather on an idea that belief in God is damaging-- something that just creates unnecessary worry or prevents enjoyment of life).

Then you are apparently unacquainted with the notion of "divine simplicity..." — Arkady

I bet most religious folks I know would be unacquainted with that, too.