The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

[Gordon Moore]

So, an interesting mix of views.

I was most interested by Rob's position and thoughts though. Why did I feel impelled to make a defense? Well, I think the title "God Delusion" is a pretty unambiguous and derogatory statement. Accusing 3/4 of the planet inhabitants as having a delusion because they believe in a God/Gods is bound to raise a little ire? If someone had bad things to say about a close member of your family, things that you knew or felt weren't true, I'm sure you would leap to their defence! In a like manner when we talk about music, we often leap to the defence of our own particular genre/act - no-one bats an eyelid at that. You also said that I should take up my argument with Prof. Dawkins implying that I am not allowed to do it here, does that apply to criticism of musicians/acts too? We would hardly have a forum if we were to follow that line of reasoning. You also made a point about warning folk if a "theological debate" was to take place. I think again that the clear title of the post "God Delusion" would have indicated that particular possibility.

What intrigues me most though Rob is your spirited and obviously heartfelt need to stop/avoid this debate? I know many people in the UK take the position that we should avoid politics and religion. Yet these are the two most important facets of our social life. Who taught us to avoid these subjects, to make them taboo? The education system which rarely engages pupils in any kind of meaningful debate about these topics? Or is it passed down by the establishment - particularly religious, because they don't want people to question their particular stand on issues - and it was ever thus? Or perhaps,because it does generally develop such ire and bigotedness in people that people learn to shy away?

Personally, I love debating these matters, but just as I would leave your doorstep if asked, I am happy to leave this here - if asked.

In reference to a few other comments. Norman is quite correct, that I made mention of how my faith was sustaining me through these last months and I certainly have greatly appreciated his (and others) support through a very difficult time. My comment about no-one talking to me, is clearly ridiculuous and silly, and I apologise for making it.

Dayna said "I'd leave it at that." I think again that reveals an interesting position. I could never understand that. If one has a strongly held belief, something one feels is vital, important, valuable, why would one want to "leave it at that"?

Con made some points about the "certitude from a scientist". Through history and indeed even in the present day there are many scientists who conclude from the evidence and their own reasoning that there is a creator. Indeed many of my own arguments are based on mathematical argument and probablilities. For instance Isaac Newton was well known as a monotheist (believed in one unique God, rather than a Trinity) which was a particularly dangerous position to take in the 17th century. He would hardly have made that choice on blind faith, especially as he was well known for seeking power and influence in society.

Indeed, it is a peculiarly modern and British? phenomena to think that the intellectual "Giants" of history were mindless, ignorant and superstitious fools because they believed in a supreme being or were simply conditioned by the times they lived in, and therefore intimating that we are somehow superior to them because we "know" that God is dead.

(I'm assuming that this is what you were implying Con?)

Ted made a comment that I understand about JW families and their children. It is difficult to make a reply to that without causing offence, but I guess I acknowledge that our understanding of the bible makes us careful about whom we socialise with. We do tend to keep ourselves to ourselves socially, although we have a strong desire to share our faith with others. The reason for this is not that we don't like people or care about them, but essentially because we are aware of the dangers to our spirituality in this present world and seek to avoid any situations which might be dangerous. Now, I do not know you Ted, but I'm sure you deeply care about your family and that you care about whom and where your daughter spends time. I'm sure you'd like to get to know the families a little first. For instance if I had a son or daughter I wouldn't want them to spend any time with a family that swore incessantly or drank to excess, or did drugs publicly, or gambled, or openly watched pornagraphic videos etc etc. How would I know if that's what they did? Similarly I'd prefer any child I have to spend time with someone who was like minded as to faith and spiritual values. Not that I'm afraid that they might be un-brain washed - I'd hope any child I had would be generally able to defend themselves as to belief - but why put them in such a situation unnecessarily?

It's a difficult one, because it does open us up to the issue of insularity and seperateness in this inclusive and multi-cultural society. However, we don't subscribe to interfaith, or a liberal acceptance of other view points. We have strong views on matters, views based upon how we understand the bible, and that are not open to compromise. For instance we do not accept that gambling in any form is simply fun, or that drunkeness is acceptable or that adultery is fine. It's hard to compromise on such stands really. So if for instance a church says that such things are just a failure to live up to an impossible standard and so can easily be forgiven, even if carried on, how could we have an interchange with such a body. For instance we will not take up arms, we are called to peace. Yet most religions are quite happy to bless the troops!

Another comment made was that I should "read the book". I have read many articles on Prof Dawkins and seen him a few times on tv. I think I have a reasonable grasp of his essential position. If I made the point that you should read the Bible, or Koran, or Bhagavad Gita or the Torah before making any coment upon it, I think you would quite rightly say that that was uneccessary. Most educated people have some familiarity with the essential teachings of these (well perhaps not in the case of the Bhagavad Gita).

Does one have to listen to the entire canon of Country Music, before pronouncing on it?

Howard asked for my evidence for a creator. I am absolutely happy to put my positions forward, but as I said before, I am wary of starting a debate that may create unresolvable tensions in this forum. I have eperienced it before in a school forum when debating creationism v evolution and it does not always lead to considered, calm, enquiry.

I am happy to correspond privately (in depth!) with those who want to know, but for the sake of public completeness here is one argument (an argument that Prof Dawkins dismisses almost out of hand as ludicrous I believe).

Suppose you had lived all your life in caves and in the wild and you were traveling in a completely barren wasteland and you came across a house. Beautifully constructed, well stocked, in good repair, and technologically advanced. How would you explain it? Surely, reason would say that someone had conceived, designed and constructed it and not only that cared enough to keep it in good order. Or would you dismiss such a notion as wild fancy, since you had never even come across anyone before capable of doing such a thing? Would you then construct a "theory" of how the wind and sun and perhaps some furry animals in wild random abandon had somehow evolved the house?

If you found a sign on it saying: "Please pay the rent on Friday", you might well decide that the second notion was more acceptable since you could then reason that you did not need to pay any rent to some imaginary being as the builder/owner.

As with all metaphors it is somewhat simplistic, but I think makes a pretty essential point. Every house has a builder, how much more so the almost unimaginable complexity of the human body and mind.

btw just to show that I do like JW jokes, here is one of my favourites, taken from a cartoon: A couple return from holiday to find about 15-20 people milling about on the doorstep. The husband says:"Oh no, I forgot to cancel the JWs!".

:)

edit: Just seen your previous post Howard. No mention is made of Jesus dancing, but he did sing (psalms) (possibly 12 part harmony). King David was a musician of the highest order apparently, and very prolific in his output, and did like to dance in his underpants. (His wife didn't like that).

er what else? sense of humour, have I?

:()

[Con Murphy]

(I'm assuming that this is what you were implying Con?)

No, absolutely not. My fault for not explaining it properly.

[Dayna]

"Dayna said "I'd leave it at that." I think again that reveals an interesting position. I could never understand that. If one has a strongly held belief, something one feels is vital, important, valuable, why would one want to "leave it at that"?"


It's actually nice to talk about this & maybe grow closer. I could tell you I am a Christian & God is my friend. If you want to talk more about it, I could. But maybe it is better to talk in a private message.

[Rob Hall]

Personally, I love debating these matters, but just as I would leave your doorstep if asked, I am happy to leave this here - if asked.

I thought that I had asked.

I'm not asking anyone to desist from having these discussions, just please label them appropriately so that I can ignore them.

Thank you.

[Gordon Moore]

Sorry Con, I've now reread your post carefully and see that your footnote was trying to make clear what I mistakenly assumed and you tried to help me avoiding that very error.

You were talking (I think) about the dichotomy and certitude of either there is a creator or there isn't.

I've thought deeply about that one too. The major problem I have with that is that it doesn't seem to get us anywhere. Yes, in one sense God is by definition unknowable because as creator "he" is by definition greater than we are. However, I think that we do have the ability to get glimpses.

One huge problem I do have is the old chestnut of how can a creator, by definition, exist? How does he come to be. The only answer for that, which of course goes beyond logic and reason is that since he (to me) does exist, and since he is at the top of the tree, then he must be uncreated and eternal. Therefore I reason/assume that time is a construct of his. As an inferior being I clearly do not have the intellectual apparatus to comprehend that kind of existence, but without evidence to the contrary, I can not deny it as impossible either. Basically, I'm thick!

Sorry again for totally misrepresenting what you were trying to say. :)

[Gordon Moore]

Personally, I love debating these matters, but just as I would leave your doorstep if asked, I am happy to leave this here - if asked.

I thought that I had asked.

I'm not asking anyone to desist from having these discussions, just please label them appropriately so that I can ignore them.

Thank you.

Rob, feel free to totally ignore this thread and anything I say on it. I hope you don't mind if I continue here though, where appropriate?

However, I would value any input you have. As Howard said, it is an important and valuable interchange, but I respect your desire to avoid it, though I confess I don't understand why.

[Rob Hall]

Have just discovered the "Stop watching this topic" feature which means that, hopefully, I will no longer be alerted to further postings on this thread.

[howard male]

Thanks for such a calm and well reasoned response to our comments Gordon. As you have brought what I feel is the crux of Mr Dawkins' argument, lets have a quick run through it. We could do this in private but I think it would be more productive to do it here so that others can join in.

Gordon wrote -

I am happy to correspond privately (in depth!) with those who want to know, but for the sake of public completeness here is one argument (an argument that Prof Dawkins dismisses almost out of hand as ludicrous I believe).

Firstly, as Dawkins has written at least two books on the subject of intelligent design - which is what I think you are talking about with your house metaphor - I don't think that could be called 'dismissing almost out of hand.'

No, such a house couldn't just come about by chance, but that is where the scientist's argument is often misunderstood. Dawkins and his ilk don't suggest that the complexities of nature came about by chance, they show, through probably thousands of observable and catologued examples, that it was a very, very slow process from relatively simple organisms to more complex ones.

Dawkins uses the eye as an example. The earliest eye would have simply seen movement - changes from light to shadow. But it would have been enough to save the primitive life form, say a flatworm, with the sub-eye from being gobbled up, whereas his brother without this rudimentary eye, who couldn't see a thing, never got to spread his genes. So you then get two flatworms that have dodgy eyesight mating, and their offspring may have slightly better sight, and so on. But I'm sure you know all this natural selection stuff anyway, so I'm intrigued as to why you should suggest Mr Dawkins hasn't though this all through - that's what he does for a living - thinks stuff through.

The point he makes is that we have to make a fundamental shift in how we think about the idea of design; complexity doesn't have to come from a creator it can come from a slow process of add-ons and improvements. Because the fundimental problem with the idea of a creator, is who or what, created the creator?

[Con Murphy]

Sorry Con, I've now reread your post carefully and see that your footnote was trying to make clear what I mistakenly assumed and you tried to help me avoiding that very error.

No need to apologise, Gordon, it's to your credit that I feel able to say that I knew I wouldn't have to explain it again! Hence my abrupt response. Your subsequent answer requires further consideration, but a lot of it makes sense to me, even if I don't necessarily agree with it.

Time is the one that fascinates me - my son (a confirmed atheist who has believed in reincarnation since he was about 5 - go figure that one!) and I have some great philosophical arguments over this. As far as I'm concerned, time is a man-made construct - like religion (and mathematics!), it's something we invented in order to make sense of what's happening around us. To that end, the Universe doesn't have to have a beginning or end. It just is and always will be. The reason we can't cope with that idea is because, as you say, we are too thick to cope with it. Try explaining to an ant that it's going to die one day. That's about the equivalent of how capable we are of understanding existence. No wonder we need gods to get us through the day.

Heavy stuff for a Friday!

[howard male]

Rob wrote -

I thought that I had asked.

I'm not asking anyone to desist from having these discussions, just please label them appropriately so that I can ignore them.

Thank you.

I would have thought the topic was pretty well spelt out by the title it already has, Rob. But I'm not sure why I'm bothering to write this as the man has already fled the scene. Very odd.

I would almost call this a philosophical discussion as much as a religious discussion anyway. If there's one thing we do have in common on this subject, Gordon, it's that I'm probably as baffled as you are as to why someone of intelligence not only wouldn't want to ask these questions, but why they would positively be affronted by other people asking them. I've no time for preachers but I do have time for open-minded, informed discussion.

[howard male]

I must do some bloody work, but I just keep getting drawn back in - curse you, forum!

Con wrote -

As far as I'm concerned, time is a man-made construct - like religion (and mathematics!), it's something we invented in order to make sense of what's happening around us. To that end, the Universe doesn't have to have a beginning or end. It just is and always will be. The reason we can't cope with that idea is because, as you say, we are too thick to cope with it.

I would say that time is a reality - measuring it is a manmade construct.

Our unarguable thickness and limits of perception is why, for me, there is only one reasonable position to take on all things religious. As I've said before - I entertain the possibility. Gordon would have to admit that he doesn't know there is a god - any other answer would be a lie - so from that initial premise there can surely be only one reasonable position to take, that of open-mindedness.

Con wrote -

my son (a confirmed atheist who has believed in reincarnation since he was about 5 - go figure that one!)

I suppose reincarnation can and should be treated as a different issue because it doesn't propose a divine all-seeing, prayer-answering, sin-judging deity. Reincarnation could, in theory, be a part of our self-regulating biological system without any overseeing god needed to make it work.

[Gordon Moore]

I can see that I am going to have to be very precise and careful in what I say as you are quite right Howard, Prof. Dawkins hardly dismisses "it out of hand", but he does seem to start from a quite dismissive point of view! "My" bigotry getting in the way perhaps :)

Okay, since you've mentioned the eye, and this is a particularly useful example, I agree it is easy to postulate an evolutionary stance for this that seems to deny the need for any supernatural creation or intervention. (And by the way Intelligent Design is I think just a euphemism for "creation" and an attempt to make "creation" more "scientific" - it still points to a creator. However, let's not get hung up on the emotional attachment to 6 days and all that stuff. Let's try and keep (for the time being) that sort of religious interpretion out of it.

The human eye: without doubt one of the most incredible pieces of biological machinery in existence.

What can it do? It can see in full colour, though unfortunately not in infra red, or ultra violet which would be rather useful from an evolutionary point of view! i.e. see the perps creeping up on you in the dark. It can see in low light levels and can adjust quite quickly to very bright levels and vice versa. The iris, aperture system, is automatic, though it can only see in grey scale in low light. It can perceive movement very quickly, especially at the sides. It is fully self focussing, being able to change the shape of the clear lens through strategically placed muscles (though my ability at this is deteriorating). It can swiftly scan a scene, and can focus unremittingly on an object in order to study it. Interestingly the eye is actually never still, even when focussed on one object, it is constantly moving in order to maintain attention. It is self cleaning, it has the ability to protect itself from dust and damage having an incredibly quick reaction time to protect the eyeball from contact. It has an inbuilt moisturising sysem. It keeps itself nourished. It has the ability to guage distance through the stereoscopic facility of having two of them working in unison. Then, not only that, but it is connected to even more cybernetic machinery that is capable of re-representing the electricl impulses generated by the light to electrical impulse trnasducers (in the retina) and making sense of it. Said "brain" is also capable of exerting it's will upon these objects.

Now, this is not just complex, but is indescribably complex. Even the most sophisticated camera system yet developed cannot reach that level of complexity and stuff it into a globe a few cm across. And that is with intelligent people working on it.

Now Hawkins and he is not alone, postulate complexity theory as a way of overcoming these serious difficulties. Granted even a simple? mathematical system can give rise to an incredible amount of turbulent, chaotic behaviour, but they have never been shown anywhere to give rise to even a simple protein or other organic compound. To quickly pass over these difficulties and glibly assert that such systems are capable of giving rise to [b]all[\b] the mechanisms required is disingenuous. It's the same when they talk about a "simple" call. Simple cells are far from being simple, they also are incredibly complex and sophisticated. Who has ever manufactured a "simple" cell?

For the eye to function, as an eye, all the bits have to be there. Is evolution really saying that random variation, gave rise spontaneously to all the complex parts required to even form the most rudimentary of light sensing cells, cells which still require some kind of link to a processor/brain and that then this random, spontaneous variation was somehow evaluated as being useful and encoded into yet another incredibly complex protein called DNA.

Let's say a creature aeons ago did develop such a rudimentary eye. That would clearly bestow advantages. But where are the descendents of that creature now? Why would they die out? Why is there not a variable spread of closely related creatures, all with eyes in various stages of development, clearly of ever increasing benefit, around the earth today.

Creatures of all sorts, those that are not so well adapted manage to survive long enough to produce offspring as as those with superbly adapted characteristics. By its nature, surviveability is a continuum, not a discrete jump. Yet all we see today are the "end products". Why have the not so successful died out totally?, immediately on the ascendence of a better offspring? Why are there no people today with mutant eyesight, who are surviving better than we would and so we all automatically die out?

Alternatively, and just as "reasonably", why not accept a premis that a "creator" could do this as well! If it is reasonable to accept the evolutionary argument, is it not reasonable to accept the creation argument? As arguments they both can "explain" what we perceive! I just think it more likely that the "creator" argument is more explanatory. Note also how the evolutionary argument also has to base its tenets on "faith", that is, that there is some unknown, inexplicable or currently unexplained mechanism for creating random variation in toto!

Next!
(phew) :)

[NormanD]

Indeed many of my own arguments are based on mathematical argument and probablilities

Yes, I understand the number 144,000 is of some significance.

Please count me out.

Norman

[howard male]

Gordon wrote -

Let's say a creature aeons ago did develop such a rudimentary eye. That would clearly bestow advantages. But where are the descendants of that creature now? Why would they die out? Why is there not a variable spread of closely related creatures, all with eyes in various stages of development, clearly of ever increasing benefit, around the earth today.

Where are its descendants? All around us. Why is there not a variable spread of closely related creatures? There is. The planet is populated by creatures whose eyesight has various levels of sophistication, many who see much better than us.

I do except the premise that a creator may have done all this, I just think, given all the evidence, it's very likely. Personally I don't believe either scientists or your good self are anywhere near grasping the meaning of life, but the difference between you and Mr Dawkins is you think you have.

And you still haven't answered my question as to who made the infinitely complex creator Himself. If every complex thing needs to have been designed, who designed what is presumably the most complex thing of all, God? If this question can't be answered then surely the whole concept of complex things needing a creator, is flawed.

But the bottom line for me, Gordon, is that you seem to be a very reasonable man, but the book you chose as your guide for living, is a far from reasonable book. What for example are we to make of a God who may say some useful stuff like, don't kill and don't steal, but also prescribes the death penalty for adultery or for gathering sticks on the Sabbath?

Your God is also - particularly in the Old Testament - a racist, misogynistic, homophobic, sadomasochist bully. How do these unsavoury truths (it's all there in the Bible) make you feel? Or is all that Old Testament blood and guts stuff all just swept under the table by JW's? It's a question I would sincerely like an answer to, as I believe some branches of Christianity now disassociate themselves from the Old Testament - do JW's?

[Gordon Moore]

The reason we can't cope with that idea is because, as you say, we are too thick to cope with it. Try explaining to an ant that it's going to die one day. That's about the equivalent of how capable we are of understanding existence. No wonder we need gods to get us through the day.

There is an amazing book by Edwin Abbott Abbott called Flatland which described a society based upon creatures who could only experience flatness. So there were squares and triangles and so on. Now one day a three dimensional being appears to the main protagonist. How can that flatland creature comprehend the third dimension? If you could only experience two dimensions, what would a sphere look like to you? Well as it passed through your dimension you would suddenly see a point that expanded to a larger and larger circle, then would deflate and then disappear. Weird eh. Easily understandable to use higher dimension creatures, but almost inexplicable to the flatlander.

Similarly an ant crawling along a Mobius strip (a shape formed by taking a ribbon of paper, giving it half a twist and joining the ends), as far as it is concerned it is walking on a continuous flat surface, yet we see it on the outside, then the inside of the strip (though actually it only has one side!) and we perceive the true nature of the strip.

Is the universe any more comprehensible to us?

Norman: 144,000? I wasn't counted in either! - very droll :)