Let´s say my sister believes in a deist god, one who set the motions of the universe and does not intervene at all. How could Dawkins attack that argument?
With logic. If the deist god was undetectable, how did your sister ever find out about the existence of such a god in the first place? A deist god would not have had a Bible written. A deist god would not be answering prayers or intervening in anyone's lives.
Another way this has been described is to say a deist god is so undetectable as to be irrelevant.
I don´t think believers have any problem with God definitions or even contradictions in its definition because it is just a matter of faith. Like I have faith that there will be world peace, can you refute it or deny that claim?
Yes, one just need look at the evidence. Currently, there is an entire human history of conflict which supports the conclusion world peace is not going to come anytime soon. You may be able to make a case that as we advance as a species and as globalization increased we are trending toward eventual world peace. I would need to look more closely at the evidence to know if there was a trend or if it was an illusion.
Then how can he possibly attack something he doesn´t even know what it is? He is supposed to be a scientist, I would have started by defining my object of investigation to begin with. He picked the easiest one, the jewish or roman catholic god.
This is not true either. I know what god beliefs are, they are myths. If you follow the evidence instead of starting with the conclusion, the evidence is overwhelming that god beliefs developed as humans tried to explain natural phenomena in the Universe. The nature of our brains are that we seek causes for things we observe and experience. An illness or a crop failure must have a cause. When humans were just figuring things out, magical causes looked like an explanation. A ritual with a coincident good outcome led to trying the same ritual again. If the outcome the next time was bad, then the conclusion was, something must have been different.
At first poor conclusions were drawn. Recently the human species made advances in observation skills and in understanding how to interpret the evidence. The progress has followed a logarithmic scale and we are beginning the upward spike now in our lifetimes.
The observations tell us god beliefs are all myths and leftover magical thinking. And we can confirm this by the evidence. Most telling is the fact that as I said, science is successful, magical thinking is not.
I dont remember saying they are compatible, I would say they are two ways to interpret reality, one based on hard evidence and another based on faith.
The example of Isaac Newton shows that you can still be an intelligent human being while you believe in non scientific stuff. I do not see any wrong with that, UNLESS you have to kill someone for their opposite beliefs or call them stupid.
Dawkins cannot stand this situation, he goes crazy and becomes hostile when he founds that some people choose to believe in god despite lack of hard evidence. I do not see a problem. Who is he, who am I or who are you to decide what other people SHOULD or SHOULD not believe?
It is hard for theists, agnostics and some atheists to understand the viewpoint I and others like me have. It is not so much that I condemn theist beliefs as it is I simply refuse to coddle them. I refuse to go along with the I'm OK, you're OK position because I don't believe it. Faith based beliefs are no different than all non-evidence based beliefs. I don't buy the claim science deals with the how and religion deals with the why. I think that is just too apologetic and it is not supported by the evidence. There is no evidence supporting the nonsensical claim I need god beliefs in order to be a moral person.
To be fair about Dawkins and other more activist atheists, however, they are reacting to the attempt by some theists to impose their religious beliefs into the scientific realm and it is simply very bad science.
It is up to them. You can provide evidence, you can talk about your point of view but you can never force them to adhere to your world view by belittle them. This is what I learnt when I became a hard atheist and started attacking believers and calling deluded, it didnt make me happy to see them humiliated and abused. At the end, I was not making any progress. They held to their beliefs even stronger.
Now you are simply talking about tactics. There is a time to be accommodating and a time to take a more forceful stand. When Creationists want to stack the courts, government and school boards with people who interfere with science, it is a reason to be more forceful. Someone has to fight back against the propaganda machine of the believers.
But for the tenure of their existence there is a fixed belief.