Best Religious/Nonreligious Debate Ever

[_MrStakhanovite]

But I'm afraid that you're incorrect in your assessment of the God Delusion. Just because it wasn't effective to you doesn't mean it's not effective to others. (Quit being so smug... heh)

Actually, it does. Christian Apologists pay attention this stuff, and have the power and ability to turn a medicore book into a nightmare for the atheists that they encounter.

Ok... not sure how much you're exaggerating here, but ok. I have heard of the Secular Student Alliance but know nothing about them.

Okay, here is a random dated newsletter from a large NYC based Atheist group. Here are some neat selections:

As atheists, we were among the citizens who had not been heard or even acknowledged. We were an invisible minority: forgotten, even discredited. Then, on Inauguration Day, something unexpected happened: Our new President with one word
acknowledged us in his inaugural speech—a shocking new word that rang out across the nation and recognized, even embraced, a whole segment of the American population: “nonbelievers.”

This is our opportunity to jump into the void. The time is ripe for us to come out of
our closets and become what I would designate the conscience of America.

We atheists are a miniscule percentage of the prison population in this country, and only among atheists would you find a discussion about Sophocles or Nietzsche touted as highly as a Rolling Stones concert.

We have a lot of work to do, my fellow Atheists: We have books to write, lectures to give. We must run for government offices and school boards. We must start think tanks. We must establish charter schools, start a secular television network, teach courses on atheism in colleges, become Supreme Court justices. There is so much to be done, I can’t wait for the rest of my life to unwind. Nor should you. The next century belongs to us!

Above all, we must identify ourselves as Atheists wherever we go and whatever we do. It is not a crime to be an atheist; it is no longer considered even far-out or antisocial to be an atheist: we can thank Obama for that. We shall become the builders of the new America, we will be its new leaders, its voice and most of all, we shall become its conscience.

This line of thought is standard in almost all groups that self identify as: Free Thought, Rational, Brights, and Secular. If you don't toe that party line, get out heretic and don't come back.

[_miscreant]

there are also militant atheists

True. There are those who are adamant that the existence of God is not knowable by man. I am one.

definite that there is no God/god.

Antitheism. That's different than not knowing.

[_lostindc]

For those that wanted "one or two" things that I found wrong with the The God Delusion, below is a list:

1. Sweeping generalizations of religious groups, conflicts, and culture at large.
2. Same old posivitist argumentation
3. Secular anger
4. Self serving and an absolutely condescending attitude
5. Talking out of place, for example giving out psychological diagnoses on mass groups
6. Complete rambling and senseless words
7. Dawkins lacks even basic theological knowledge. He does not even care to research the context of when religious texts or acts had taken place, displaying a lack of care to do the research.
8. Mischaracterizations of Jesus Christ's life, again a flawed understanding of history which he could gain greater understanding by taken a few theology courses. This exposes his ignorance (not as bad as Some Schmos)
9. The work starts as radical atheist diatribe reflecting much cultural and religious bigotry which he attempts to cover up, in a weak fashion, the same way a racist would by downplaying.
10. His use of probability arguments is the same type of argumentation he often criticizes in lectures when he speaks against creationism.
11. Can he actually be serious when he discusses the origin of religion?
12. by the way, where the hell are his sources? How did he even get through grad school, this makes me question his writing immediately, much like any person who spent descent time in academia should
13. Along with 12, Dawkins fails to take Jefferson's and Einstein's views as a whole and instead disregards easy access to history and chooses to throw them on his side of the fence.
14. Along with 12 and 13, it appears that Dawkins has no interest in displaying the truth but rather winning an argument which he fails to do when he applies his logic mid way through his book.

There really is so much wrong with this book, but likely SomeSchmo and his Dawfags will continue to buy his drivel and spout it off much like seminary scripture and Dawkins will not face extinction. Dawkins has raised a semi-sizable religion and that's the credit he deserves.

[_marg]

My main objection would be from the book itself. On page 157, Dawkins lays out his argument:

This chapter has contained the central argument of my book, and so, at the risk of sounding repetitive, I shall summarize it as a series of six numbered points.

1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect… has been to explain how the
complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design
itself…

3. The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer… It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable [than the design itself]…

4. The most ingenious and powerful [explanation of complexity] so far discovered is
Darwinian evolution by natural selection…

5. We don’t yet have an equivalent [theory] for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory
could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for
biology…

6. We should not give up hope of a better [theory] arising in physics, something as
powerful as Darwinism is for biology…

With those 6 premises, he concludes thus:

If the argument of this chapter is accepted, the factual premise of religion- the God Hypothesis- is untenable. God almost certainly does not exist.

You can't get 'God does not exist' from those 6 premises, it's totally invalid. The paper I sent you tried to fix this, but it still doesn't work.

So I took a look at The God Delusion. Earlier in the book in the paperback ediction p 52 he defines the God Hypothesis as:

there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it. God in the sense defined is a delustion and as later chapters will show a pernicious delusion.

So actually he makes a pretty good argument. Do you see a problem with this argument Stak?

[_marg]

Lostindc ..I'm interested in this one. You wrote with regards to Dawkins "# 8. Mischaracterizations of Jesus Christ's life, again a flawed understanding of history which he could gain greater understanding by taken a few theology courses. This exposes his ignorance."

Can you please explain what he is ignorant about specifically.

[_lostindc]

Lostindc ..I'm interested in this one. You wrote with regards to Dawkins "# 8. Mischaracterizations of Jesus Christ's life, again a flawed understanding of history which he could gain greater understanding by taken a few theology courses. This exposes his ignorance."

Can you please explain what he is ignorant about specifically.

Specifically Dawkins assertion that the Gospels are ancient fiction. At this point it is childish to question the historicity of the gospels and most scholars in the field would agree. More importantly, to answer your inquiry regarding Jesus and Dawkins...Dawkins asserts somewhere in the book that Jesus never claimed to be divinity of any sort. If he cared to understand the history and non-English versions of the Gospels he would understand that Christ referred to himself as divinity on a certain level, hence the trinity debate in earlier times.

[_MrStakhanovite]

So actually he makes a pretty good argument. Do you see a problem with this argument Stak?

No, it's not a pretty good argument, it's invalid. That definition of the God Hypothesis, it's negation does not follow from Dawkin's six point argument.

[_marg]

Lostindc ..I'm interested in this one. You wrote with regards to Dawkins "# 8. Mischaracterizations of Jesus Christ's life, again a flawed understanding of history which he could gain greater understanding by taken a few theology courses. This exposes his ignorance."

Can you please explain what he is ignorant about specifically.

Specifically Dawkins assertion that the Gospels are ancient fiction. At this point it is childish to question the historicity of the gospels and most scholars in the field would agree. More importantly, to answer your inquiry regarding Jesus and Dawkins...Dawkins asserts somewhere in the book that Jesus never claimed to be divinity of any sort. If he cared to understand the history and non-English versions of the Gospels he would understand that Christ referred to himself as divinity on a certain level, hence the trinity debate in earlier times.

Dawkin's doesn't assert Jesus never claimed to be divinity of any sort. If you are going to attack him then have the integrity to attack what he does say, not what you've created in your own mind.

p 117 he says: The historical evidence that Jesus claimed any sort of divine status is minimal.

p. 118 he says: "The fact that something is written down is persuasive to people not used to asking questions like" 'Who wrote it, and when?' 'How did they know what to write?' 'Did they, in their time, really mean what we, in our time, understand them to be saying?' 'Were they unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that coloured their writing?' Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world. All were written long after the death of Jesus, and also after the epistles of Paul, which mention almost none of the alleged facts of Jesus' life. All were then copied and recopied, through many scribes who, in any case, had their own religious agendas."

He is correct, the gospels are a biased source with a religious agenda and are not reliable as to what an actual Jesus may have said.

[_marg]

d.p.

[_lostindc]

d.p.

You d.p. that garbage you replied with, oh my