The Dawkins Deception (bogus reasoning on the "improbability" of God)

by hooberus 49 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  SixofNine

  You have faith in your senses, how do you know theu aren't eluding you? You have faith in your memory, how do you know it is an accurate register?

  I think this is the crux of many of the differences between people of faith and non-believers: many people absolutely do NOT have faith in our senses; understanding that our senses can and likely will fail us or deceive us. Many of us realize full well that our memory is not "an accurate register".

  That's easy enough to understand and accept when you are looking at a scientific study that proves beyond doubt that humans (generically) have faulty memories or that humans' sense perceptions are often inaccurate. It's much more difficult to accept those facts and use them intellectually when your own personal cherished notions, perceptions and memories, are challenged.
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  hooberus

  hooberus:

  Dawkins argument is fallacious.

  Not at all. Merely simplified. . .

  So you don't think that it is fallacious to use an an argument based on the improbability of something coming about by chance against the probability of existence of something not believed to have come about by chance?
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  funkyderek

  hooberus:

  So you don't think that it is fallacious to use an an argument based on the improbability of something coming about by chance against the probability of existence of something not believed to have come about by chance?

  Not at all. Merely simplified. But I thought I said that already.
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  hooberus

  In a way I do disagree with Dawkins trying to prove that God doesn't exist, yet I don't think he is so unintelligent as to actually use that as a real argument. I do believe that he is doing it for the purpose of using the theist's own arguments against them.

  Dawkins is trying to use it as a "real argument."- I believe he even refers to it as "the central argument" of his book as to why "God almost certainly does not exist."

  Nor could he merely be using "the theist's own arguments against them", since informed theists do not equate improbability of coming about by chance with improbability of existence, for things that need not to have come about by chance.
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  hooberus

  hooberus:

  So you don't think that it is fallacious to use an an argument based on the improbability of something coming about by chance against the probability of existence of something not believed to have come about by chance?

  Not at all. Merely simplified. But I thought I said that already.

  Really, so I guess then you don't have a problem with me claiming that Dawkins "almost certainly does not exist" based on the same logic.

  After all any being like him would be very improbable by chance- therefore Richard Dawkins [nor any other atheist] "almost certainly does not exist."
• 

  funkyderek

  hooberus:

  Really, so I guess then you don't have a problem with me claiming that Dawkins "almost certainly does not exist" based on the same logic.

  Not at all. Claim away, but don't pretend that any of your claims are based on logic.

  After all any being like him would be very improbable by chance- therefore Richard Dawkins [nor any other atheist] "almost certainly does not exist ."

  I used to be encouraged when you'd post something like this. It's nonsense of course but at least you're using your noodle instead of just copypasta (see what I did there). However, you've been trying this for long enough that you should have learned the rudiments of rational argument by now. I think, for you it's a bit like a cargo cult. You've seen people debating and because they make claims you don't understand or believe, you think that's all there is to it, and so, in order to be part of the debate, you spew out nonsense like the above, hoping that the (to you) mysterious forces of logic will look kindly on your offering. Stop being ridiculous and try a bit of rational argument. Despite your record, I refuse to believe you're completely incapable of it.
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  hooberus

  After all any being like him would be very improbable by chance- therefore Richard Dawkins [nor any other atheist] "almost certainly does not exist ."

  I used to be encouraged when you'd post something like this. It's nonsense of course but at least you're using your noodle instead of just copypasta (see what I did there). However, you've been trying this for long enough that you should have learned the rudiments of rational argument by now. I think, for you it's a bit like a cargo cult. You've seen people debating and because they make claims you don't understand or believe, you think that's all there is to it, and so, in order to be part of the debate, you spew out nonsense like the above, hoping that the (to you) mysterious forces of logic will look kindly on your offering. Stop being ridiculous and try a bit of rational argument. Despite your record, I refuse to believe you're completely incapable of it.

  I agree that such logic would be nonsense. However earlier: (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/157731/2910917/post.ashx#2910917) when used against God's existence, this same logic was described by you as being "not at all" fallacious.
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  hooberus

  Even granting all its other assumptions "God Delusion logic" [ie: improbability of coming about by pure chance = improbability of existence !] is invalid as a weapon against the existence of anything not believed to have come about by pure chance. (This includes anything eternal, or even anything believed to have come about by non-chance processes.)
• 

  zagor

  I've posted this already before http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/153846/1.ashx. Or go directly here http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html
• 

  AuldSoul

  Your arguments fail to address Dawkins' main point -- that is , that any Creator God (such as imagined or described to us by traditions or "holy" books like the Bible) would have to be superior to and more complex than his creation.
  
  So.... From where did this complex God come from? If such a deity just popped up out of nowhere, it would prove life could pop up out of nowhere.

  This is the main thrust of Dawkins' argument. It presumes a complex God originated at all. In doing so, its premise is spoiled. As to the origin of everything tangible, both deists and evolutionists agree, there was one.

  Beyond the tangible, science cannot touch except in the hypothetical. Dawkins' attempts to demonstrate the implausibility of God by applying tangible constraints to the intangible. Before analyzing the spirit realm or the pausibility of any inhabitants thereof, he must intellectually credit its existence. Once he has done that, he must stop analyzing because he is not capable of stating any rules governing that realm. Yet, he does not stop there. He pretends to know rules that govern a realm of existence he does not even believe exists.

  It is Dawkins, in this case, who suffers from myopia common to any human who tries to prove or disprove elements of the spiritual through a philosophical method designed to analyze the tangible.

  It isn't Richard's fault that God doesn't fit inside Mr. Dawkins near field of vision and it certainly isn't the fault of God.