Dawkins, atheism & intelligent design

[Simon39759]

But there is a major logical flaw in Pascal's argument.

"The church within which alone salvation is to be found is not necessarily the Church of Rome, but perhaps that of the Anabaptists or the Mormons or the Muslim Sunnis or the worshipers of Kali or of Odin." J. L. Mackie

There is more than one major flaw in Pascal's argument.

-It presume one can 'choose to believe'. Most of the time, you can't. try convincing yourself that you are seeing the sky as being green for example, no matter how hard you try, most people won't be able to do it.
Although, apologetists and other evolution denialists are often pretty good at that...
-It presumes that God do not care or can not detect the difference between real worship and convenience worship.
-It presumes that the God you'd choose to worship would be the real one. There has been thousand of deities in the history of manking, and civiliziation has gone for at least 3000 years before 'discovering' Yahweh, so it makes little reason to have him as the 'default position'. And, of course, that's assuming the men has found the real God among the infinity of possible divinity imaginable.
In fact, picking Yahweh is actually a poor logical choice as he asks you to officially renounce and insult the other possible deities, so, if you choose Yawheh and end up in Olympian Greece, you are SOL. On the other hand, polytheistic Religion are generally quite tolerant. Start worshipping Zeus and if you end up in front of Wotan... he will probably not hold that against you. Picking an Abrahamic religion is putting all your eggs in the same divine basket while polytheistic ones let you spread them, or at least do not get out of the way to smash the other baskets...
-It basically presume the 'cost of worship' to be free, that the whole point of the equation: X (benefit possible) multiplied by non-zero (the chance for it to be real) is higher than zero (the cost of believing).
In reality, the cost of religion is not zero, there is tithe, of course, but also loss of personal freedom and the lost of time spend at church (and lazy Sunday morning sex is the best also, no queue at the stores when all the Christians are in churches).


Really, Pascal wager only makes sense if you believe that there is a reasonable chance for God to exist and for this God to be the one of the Religion you will choose (Christianity in Pascal's case).
In short, it only works if you already are Christian (or from whatever Religion you want to convert to). Hence... It's useless (but Pascal, being a firm Christian, could not see how his assumptions were deeply Christian ones).

 

[Marius vanderLubbe]

Marius, you whined and whined about me coming here to this Forum from Skeptoid, because I would have (your suggestion) more space and verbosity to post longer explanations of my viewpoints. And when I did just that, you have only the comment: "One word. paragraphs.You might stand a chance of someone actually reading your magnum opus then. .."??? What gives?

Can you reply with a scientific articulation? Are you capable of that, Marius? Or are you just like almost all the others here - only able to say "he said blaa blaa blaa blaa..." etc etc..????!!!


No wonder I am reluctant to reply in this Forum. Yahoos indeed.

If I can take the time to intelligently write and post a viewpoint (re Dawkins' book) then surely you can take the time to respond or post your view. If not, goodbye.

Whined? Invited and suggested, Joe.

My review of the God delusion? Its a good book. I agree with Dawkins. Buy it. Then get "God is not Great" by Hitchens.

Debating with the fundimentalist creationistas is a bit like a fist fight with a 5 year old. Pointless really. Though at least five year olds undertand when they are beaten.

 

[pakeha]

...If I can take the time to intelligently write and post a viewpoint (re Dawkins' book) then surely you can take the time to respond or post your view....

Sorry, I'm not clear whether your posts are about the review or about the book being reviewed.

 

[Achán hiNidráne]

Godless Dave, that's not an answer, that's 'avoidingb the question'. Quoting Marcus Aurelius is pure bunk because he doesn't address the logic of Pascal at all.

It would have been very difficult for Caesar to consider Pascal's "logic" because Marcus Aurelius died over 1400 years before Pascal was even born.

is God because he is logical, loving, all-knowing, and all-caring.

That's funny, after reading The Bible I came away with the exact opposite assessment: Your god is irrational, hateful, less-than-omnicent, and unspeakablly cruel. Whether or not that makes him "God" is another issue. Either way, I don't worship dictators, real or imagined. I certainly don't worship ones who threaten to have me tortured for all eternity for not properly kissing its ass.

Aurelius didn't think it through:

I don't think Caesar was even thinking of the Judeo-Christian god at the time he penned that quote.

God knows and therefore God cares and responds to our act of faith in Him.

I don't know which is worse and more deserving of my contempt: A tyrannical being that demands tribute and worship, or the self-loathing sycophant who would happily give such tribute and worship.

 

[Nonpareil]

CurtC, can you actually read English??? You posted "He criticizes Dawkins for saying that this God character would have to be irreducibly complex, then turns right around and says he must be irreducibly complex.
How so????? God IS irreducibly complex, yet Dawkins refutes this entirely. Did you really read his stuff? I don't think you did. You just like to hear yourself arguing. Good luck with that, buddy!

Uh... so Dawkins saying that you're wrong is wrong because you're right?

Circular logic doesn't work.

 

[CriticalSock]

Uh... so Dawkins saying that you're wrong is wrong because you're right?

Circular logic doesn't work.

Sure it does!

"A wheel is round."
"This is round, therefore it is a wheel."

Now I will proceed to prove that black is white and go and get killed on a zebra crossing.

 

[Hux]

Dawkins just points out that the religious cant have their bread and eat it too.

 

[hereisjoe]

"When I hear biblical quotations, I know the situation is helpless regarding intelligent debate."

How about this one, written many centuries before we even had science and modern telescopes:

Job 26:7

 

[Glockjaw]

"When I hear biblical quotations, I know the situation is helpless regarding intelligent debate."

How about this one, written many centuries before we even had science and modern telescopes:

Job 26:7

That's as mystical as a Nostradamus quatrain. But, one man's prophet is another man's heretic, right?

Anyway, science and modern telescopes haven't proved that 'he stretched the north over the empty place' has it?

 

[godless dave]

Godless Dave, that's not an answer, that's 'avoiding the question'. Quoting Marcus Aurelius is pure bunk because he doesn't address the logic of Pascal at all.

What logic?

Aurelius was addressing the same question that Pascal was: given that I can't know whether a particular god exists, should I believe in one? Pascal proposed (but did not endorse) using a crude form of gain theory, balancing the risks and rewards of each position. Aurelius did the same thing. He didn't avoid the question at all.

 

[godless dave]

"When I hear biblical quotations, I know the situation is helpless regarding intelligent debate."

How about this one, written many centuries before we even had science and modern telescopes:

Job 26:7

"He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing."

What about it? It's pretty vague.

 

[KingMerv00]

"He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing."

What about it? It's pretty vague.

An alternate answer: The Greeks had known that the Earth was a sphere like the moon centuries earlier. I wouldn't be unreasonable to look up at the other heavenly bodies and think "Maybe the Earth is suspended on nothing too."

 

[temporalillusion]

As Creationists are so apt to tell us, space isn't nothing.

 

[pakeha]

Godless Dave, that's not an answer, that's 'avoidingb the question'. Quoting Marcus Aurelius is pure bunk because he doesn't address the logic of Pascal at all. God is God because he is logical, loving, all-knowing, and all-caring. Aurelius didn't think it through: God knows and therefore God cares and responds to our act of faith in Him. Aurelius is a cop-out.

Other posters have debunked this post thoroughly.
My question for hereisjoe is if he/she could give an example of how God 'responds to our act of faith in Him'.

 

[godless dave]

An alternate answer: The Greeks had known that the Earth was a sphere like the moon centuries earlier.

I think the book of Job was in something like its present form circa 500 BC. I don't know when Greek philosopher/scientists figured out the earth was a sphere, but Eratosthenes didn't measure the circumference until the second century BC. So I'm not sure the timeline works out.

 

[Simon39759]

I think the book of Job was in something like its present form circa 500 BC. I don't know when Greek philosopher/scientists figured out the earth was a sphere, but Eratosthenes didn't measure the circumference until the second century BC. So I'm not sure the timeline works out.

Pythagora believed in a spherical earth, so did Plato a few decades later and they both were from the 5th century BC.
One of Plato's student, Aristotle, actually presented some more scientifically based reasoning behind it (a surprisingly accurate concept about gravity as well as the observation that the shadow of the earth on the moon was, indeed, round) but he was from the 4th century.

 

[godless dave]

Regardless, Job doesn't describe the earth as a sphere. IIRC Babylonian cosmology described the earth as a disk, which could well have been suspended over empty space, and the northern sky (as well as the sky in all directions) could have been described as "stretched over nothingness".

 

[Simon39759]

"When I hear biblical quotations, I know the situation is helpless regarding intelligent debate."

How about this one, written many centuries before we even had science and modern telescopes:

Job 26:7

Here is the passage in question:

Job 26:7

He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

Ok, now look at this:

That's a very common cosmological system that you can find, with variations, all through the ancient world and especially among the people of the ancient Near-East.

Remark how it would fit the description in Job just as well.
Remark how it would actually be a much better fit for the description of the 'fountain of the deep' and the fountains and the windows of the heavens (in Genesis 7:11-12) as a place where water would come from.
Remark how it would work perfectly well, indeed, it would be expected, if the story of Job was part of an older tradition widespread all over the region.
Remark how it would also make perfect sense if this description was added during the Babylonian exile (the time when the Book of Job was most likely finalized).

This brief passage in Job would be perfectly consistent with somebody describing the cosmology of the region and of the time; there is nothing to be particularly impressed there, unless one is purposely trying to get himself impressed.

 

[GreyICE]

Dawkins wants to destroy organized religion so much he carelessly ignores both fact and reason when he claims that highly complex systems and extremely sophisticated examples of orderliness simply evolved through some mindless, non-intelligent process.
He refers to this mindless process as Natural Selection. He fails to realize that Natural Selection “is” Intelligent Design, or he may simply be intentionally ignoring this fact.

I nominate this for the greatest goalpost shift in all of history. ID does not contradict evolution. ID IS evolution!

 

[Hux]

Originally Posted by bwinwright View Post
Dawkins wants to destroy organized religion so much he carelessly ignores both fact and reason when he claims that highly complex systems and extremely sophisticated examples of orderliness simply evolved through some mindless, non-intelligent process.
He refers to this mindless process as Natural Selection. He fails to realize that Natural Selection “is” Intelligent Design, or he may simply be intentionally ignoring this fact.

Dawkins does not want to destroy religion. He states he just wants religion to know its place. As for the rest - ignorance is alive and living well. It is NOT Dawkins claim "that highly complex systems and extremely sophisticated examples of orderliness simply evolved through some mindless, non-intelligent process." It is a scientific and historical fact. If Dawkins had never been born it would still be a fact. How often do these goons think attacking explainers of Evolution somehow makes evolution wrong?