Blui

That is the best retort i have seen in this thread.

Stacey Melissa

Mod note: The discussion about induction has been split to Science & Skepticism, here.

This thread will be locked if participants can't stay on track, as EverLastingGodStopper already directed.

Stacey Melissa
PA&SA Moderator

fatpie42

Dawkins spends most of his time rejecting the more fundamentalist styles of religion which make this-worldly claims to truth e.g. Creationism, interventionism. These Dawkins is quite able to refute due to his scientific knowledge.

Many Christians get extremely annoyed with Dawkins because they don't think the beliefs he rails against have anything to do with them. In the tv programme he did called "Root of all evil?" he had a short discussion with the Bishop of Oxford where they agreed on most things, only to dismiss the more liberal Christianity as cherry-picking. If he had more knowledge of theology he would realise it was nothing of the sort.

So?

fatpie42

In the review of McGrath's "The Twilight of Atheism", I was mostly in agreement. I did, however, have an issue with this part of the review:

Although he gives some links concerning Zacharias, none of those links mention postmodernism.

Obviously McGrath makes claims to truth, but his truth will be open to bias as will anyone who considers his views. The best way to ensure that what he writes is 'reliable' (which is far more important than truth), it would be important for others to deconstruct what he has written, seeing what aspects he has ignored (and there is an awful lot of this, as the reviewer rightly notices).

Post-modernism is not saying there is no such thing as a true state of affairs, but simply recognises that any description of that 'truth' will be subjective. Science is not ignored, because scientific method takes special measures to avoid this subjectivity as best it can (and there is still the chance that biases will cause certain measurements, certain conclusions from the evidence, and more worryingly the choice of where to research is liable to bias).

It must be remembered that religion isn't in its own bubble, completely unaffected by modernism. Modernism has affected all parts of life including religion and we can see in modern Christianity many claims to 'essentially knowable truth'. I would say that the Christian claims to truth are generally much less prepared to recognise their own subjectivity than atheists are. That's why liberal Christians are actually better than more orthodox Christians. They tend to be more likely to recognise that the Bible has not fallen from heaven and is thus open to historical and literary criticism.

Piking Viking

And another irony meter bites the dust. Almost as ludicrous as you saying you were going to debunk Dawkins without even reading his works.

JamesBannon

To some extent I agree with this. E.g., nothing annoys me more than a scientist asserting that science is "value free". This, to be blunt, is sheer nonsense. There is no guarantee at all that any scientist would not be influenced by their own values when conducting research. Even someone like, say, Hawking is not immune from this.


So far as liberal forms of Christianity and Islam are concerned I have much less problem with them so long as they're not expecting me to believe in the ideas of the existence of a Celestial Teapot. However, you have to admit that the voices of the extremists tend to drown out anything said by their more reasonable counterparts. It is these latter people, who are nothing more than walking dogmas incapable of any kind of decent human feeling, that represent the extreme danger. I say good on Dawkins for recognising this.

Stacey Melissa

Mod note, updated by EverLastingGodStopper:

Some nonsense posts regarding a "Fatwah against Richard Dawkins" have been split and moved to ~E~. This thread will be re-opened to discuss the possibility of a debate between Dawkins and Alister McGrath. Please remain on topic.

Wads4

I have read Alistair Mcgrath and am not impressed; he ends up almost agreeing with atheism--a sign of his own confusion. I am nearly finished reading The God Delusion as well. Dawkins made clear in it why he does not debate Creationists--they have no valid arguments. Mcgrath's theological assertions would be made without any evidential back-up, or logical validity and would presumably be a repeat of the long since demolished arguments for God.
Why should Dawkins bother to waste his time on such people? They live in their private artificial ghettoised mental inner world which bears no relation to any sort of objective reality. I doubt very much if Mcgrath has anything to say that Dawkins and other educated atheists have not already heard.

I used to debate Christians but it is a complete waste of time. People who have to read an instruction manual on what to believe, (the Bible), and who believe it is inerrant, are not going to change any of their views as a result of rational conversation--ever!
McGrath kindly mentioned me by name in the last chapter of his book optimistically entitled "The twilight of Atheism", following some comments I made about Humanist ceremonies in the National Secular Society magazine "The Freethinker", for which I thank him; my 15 minutes of fame?

As Dawkins points out, Theology really is a non-subject, and atheist scientists should not sully their hands with it. They should not be enticed onto a battle-ground of a theist's choosing, where they are obliged to debate nonsensical theological conundrums by people who are better versed in nonsense than they are,- but rather should declare the whole topic epistemically void and without content, and refuse to have anything to do with it.

If I were Dawkins I would not feel obliged to have to respond to every "High Noon" wannabee creationist gunslinger who thinks he can have a go.
These people just want to try and accumulate notches on their fundie six-guns. Dawkins is a serious scientist and writer with no time to waste, and if fundies don't like it let them produce serious science themselves, and demonstrate that it works for all to see.

Hubble head

Maybe if religious crackpots stop making threats with violence and death upon those that openly question their 'cartoon from the sky' mentality more of us would.

fatpie42

Who are you to decide what atheists should and should not study? This is like the preists who claim that no Christian should sully their hands with the works of Nietzsche. Such statements only make sense for people who have a weak position. I happen to think atheism is a stronger position than that.

I do not happen to think that theology is a non-subject. I think such a statement is made with the presumption that theology is simply the 'study of God', but theology has a much wider spectrum these days since eastern religions like Buddhism and Confucianism were incorporated.

Not all theological conundrums are nonsensical. Many of them actually caused people in this forum to deconvert. The 'problem of evil', for example, is a theological conundrum....


Apart from that, I generally agreed with you.