The Dawkins Delusion (page 7)

Liberty

Giving examples of "bad" religious people may really just be a way to counter the constant refrain from theists that human beings must believe in God in order to be "good". My parents argue this with me all the time and yet the evidence I have seen with my own eyes over 49 years of life clearly defies this assumption. Living in the Bible Belt of the USA I've seen that just having a large God believing population doesn't change the percentage of aberrant/criminal behaviours.

People are people and a certain percentage of any population are going to exhibit "bad" behaviour despite being Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Communist, etc. If Believing in Jesus were enough then there should be lower percentages of criminal statistics in places like Oklahoma City while Bejing China should be a cesspool of criminality. In short there is no difference between a non-Jesus population and a Jesus population when it comes to bad behaviour.

Dawkins, perhaps doesn't spell this out as well as he should, but that's what I got out of it. Catholic priests can be child molesters as can JW Elders, or Baptist ministers, or Communist Party chairmen. I'm not saying that Christians should all be perfect, I'm just pointing out the evidence that a human being is just a human being and belief in God is statistically not important when it comes to acting badly. Believing in God does not make you a better person. There are just good people who do or do not believe in God and bad people who do or do not believe in God.

As to faith, I won't speak for Dawkins, but for me alone. I find it impossible to have faith if there is no evidence. I don't know about you, but God has never spoken, appeared or revealed Himself to me in any way and the culture I was raised in presents for its strongest evidence a silly book of fairy stories (the Bible) that can be disproven over and over again. So no, I no longer have fath that an invisible super being named Jesus or Jehovah is running the show in the same way that I don't believe that Allah, Zeus, Oden or that pink unicorns make the Universe work and will judge me for masturbating while lusting after naked women. I have faith in things that provide some evidence for their existence like the reality of real things most of us live with every day. Allah, Zenu, Molloch, Thor are not real for me just as Jesus is not real for me. I have never seen or heard anything that provides any evidence that He still lives and controls the Universe, hence I have no faith in Him. What is faith to you? I guess I don't understand why you claim Dawkins and I don't understand your version of faith. Is faith belief without evidence?

hamsterbait

brother dan -

PLEASE DONT REDEFINE WHAT I SAID.

I did not say the ONLY reason people do bad things is because of religion.

toddlers do bad things. the senile do bad things.

HB

TheClarinetist

Dawkins main argument against the existence of God is based on evolution and what he calls his "Ultimate Boeing 747 idea. He dismisses the idea that the universe could have been created and designed by a Supreme Being because that Being would need to be even more complex, even more intricate that the universe he created. In other words, God would need to be more complex than the laws of physics, or the human brain or a virus or a Boeing 747. Dawkins argues that such a complex God explains nothing, because something else is then required to explain how such a complex God could himself arise. Now Dawkins draws his conclusion based on his own experience of the world and his belief that complex things can only arise from simple things through natural selection or the laws of physics. But even Dawkins has no experience of things that occur outside of the known universe. It is just not valid to dismiss the possibility of a creator God in this way - and certainly SOMETHING had to exist 'in the beginning' - even if it was just the laws of physics or the quantum singularity.

I had issues with this argument, too. It doesn't change the fact that there is no (as far as I know) evidence for God, but you cannot state that God is more unlikely than X, because both of them exist out of space/time/reality as we know it. The rules are fundamentally altered in ways which we cannot be sure about.

(And because I'm taking logic class right now and we're working on Informal Fallacies [test today], I'll add that citing this argument from Dawkins is an "Appeal to an Unqualified Authority"... I'd be interested to know what a theoretical physicist would say about it, but I probably wouldn't understand anyway)

nicolaou

brotherdan and stephen; please try to understand that to most rationalists a scripture quoted is less than useless - we just don't care what the bible says! Honestly guys, wise up. Your holy book has as much bearing on the nature of reality or the structure of the cosmos as this weeks TV Guide.

The bible? WHO CARES?!

brotherdan

My use of the Bible was not to PROVE anything to you, Nic. I was showing you what believers think about faith.

The point I was trying to make is that Dawkins does not correctly argue. He should have taken a belief from a creationist and compared it with his own and then showed why his own opinion was the correct one. But instead, he did what the WT does. He ignored the other side, he altered definitions, and focused ONLY on his opinions and philosophies.

hamsterbait

Brotherdan What about the definition of faith in hebrews:

"Faith is the evident demonstration of realities NOT BEHELD. " What does this gibberish mean?

It means nothing to a person waiting to SEE something "real" but invisible. How is this evident, exactly to a non religious? A demonstration of what exactly? And why cant we see these "REALITIES"?

HB

brotherdan

Bah...same old argument. I have not BEHELD the suns rising tomorrow. But I have FAITH that it WILL rise.

TheClarinetist

He... focused ONLY on his opinions and philosophies.

If I asserted to you that Unicorns were real, would you explain your philosophy of A-Unicornism or simply attempt to show me that it was illogical to believe in Unicorns?

brotherdan

If I wrote a book called, "Why Unicorns are fake"...then yes I would show what unicorn believers believed and I would show how they are most likely wrong due to my own belief and experience.

SweetBabyCheezits

I have not BEHELD the suns rising tomorrow. But I have FAITH that it WILL rise.

Pattern recognition isn't limited to primates....

The Dawkins Delusion

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