After discussing with other bloggers and listening to the second debate between Dawkins and Lennox I decided I would share my thoughts and musings on our blogger discussions and the debate. In fact musings in general on atheism. I could split this up into many posts but in a way I already have and will continue to (God willing), here I desire to do an overview of my musings.
(Should you desire to watch the first debate held in 2007 then you can find it under "Something to Highlight" header on the side of my blog...also it will be in "debates" under my "labels". The first debate is in video where as this one is in audio only.)
I do think this debate was more even and better for the debaters to freely exchange their arguments. The first debate, I thought Lennox wiped the floor with Dawkins but this one was a bit more balanced, though nothing new was really discussed.
Firstly I have a number of problems with some of Dawkins' world views and philosophies.
My new logical fallacy invented :)
I decided I would make up my own new logical fallacy, LOL. Well I think it is new?
Dawkins accuses theists of the "god of the gaps" fallacy which basically is placing God in the scientific gaps that are unkown.
My new logical fallacy is "material of the gaps". Dawkins is guilty of this; He assumes that it is most likely that material inhabits unexplained scientific gaps. To me with this view he will forever be an atheist. Why? because he will not accept the idea of God. We cannot scientifically test God so he will never come to believe in Him.
Science is his god even when it is unreasonable and improbable to believe in scientific explanations.
If science as the only way to finding truth then it should stand up to its own testing.
For example: What does "Only those things that can empirically verified have any meaning" Smell like?
Taste like?
Fell like?
Look like?
Sound like?
Science is a piece to the puzzle but it is not the game I believe God expects us to play. God gave us "reason" as the game to believe something beyond a reasonable doubt.
1. In the opening stages Dawkins stated that it was petty to believe in God and small minded.
I disagree. It is petty and small minded in my opinion for him to not be willing to accept the good probability of there being a God. For him to state that there will most likely be a natural answer to everything is presumptuous.
We all know that where we see design, the most logical answer to conclude is that someone designed it.
For example:
If I walked in the middle of a jungle and found 10 leaves perfectly in line, no matter how absurd it would be to conclude that some random person came and placed them there like that, I would be forced to conclude that the probabilities of it "just happening" is highly unlikely and it is most likely that an intelligent mind put them there like that.
The universe is the same. To say it happened by accident and without a guide is not logical and small minded.
This is the logic that God asks of us and I agree with, in Romans 1:20 "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,"
2. Dawkins never really answered how he could trust his own thinking to find truth if this world is random.
If our minds are from a random situation of evolution then I cannot trust my thinking to give me an accurate view of the universe. So for Dawkins to say that it is unlikely that there is a God is then trusting his own thinking which by his beliefs cannot be trusted.
But for the theist, to us our minds are designed so that we can believe that our minds can find truth. We also believe that our universe has order and therefore we can study it and trust that it would be consistent and ordered.
3. He doesn't think he has faith
I find this amusing.
The definition of faith in the Bible is: faith is evidence of things unseen.
There is blind faith and then there is faith with evidence. I should not need to expand on those, they are self explanatory.
I cannot see God therefore I have faith that He is. I have faith that He is, because I see His evidence around me and His effects on life. Just as, you reading this post is giving you evidence that I exist...very strong evidence. But you cannot see me, so you have faith that I exist.
It is also unseen that there is no God. So it takes faith to say there is no God.
Every person has their own worldview by there own choice.
Dawkins has chosen to conclude as the above "leaf" example would explain, that the ten leaves fell in a row by accident until he can find the designer and then run tests to see if he is real and that the designer put the leaves in order.
It takes more faith for me to believe that the universe is an accident. There are gaps that science opens and gaps that science closes.
4. He happily states that faith is evil
It also frustrates me how he is happy to declare all the "evils" that faiths have done when he takes away the right for him to decide what is absolutely evil. If I didn't believe in God then I should be the last person to state whether something is wrong because it would be merely my opinion and as Dawkins would say: Dancing to the music of my DNA. Right and wrong would be a delusion.
C.S. Lewis is correct when he states: "Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later"
5. He thinks it is improbable that God exists
(Note he says this in regard to a natural formation of God)
Well that is easy to refute. I don't believe in the God he doesn't believe in.
No person believes in created God's or "formed Gods". He cannot calculate the improbability of there being a God. But we can calculate the improbability of our universe happening by an accident.
hmmmmmm
Well it is getting late and I'm tired, YAWWN.
Those responses of mine are points off the top of my head. I may need to review them later.
cheers!
DB
Reference to listen to the debate:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3911,Richard-Dawkins-and-John-Lennox-at-the-Oxford-University-Museum,Richard-Dawkins-John-Lennox
Hey DB - Thanks for visiting my blog. I'll give the debate a listen to and get back to you with some comments.
ReplyDeleteCheers
Hey Da Bomb,
ReplyDeleteYour new fallacy.
You'd be right, if it weren't for that fact that it is the remit of science to study that which can be studied. By definition, science cannot explore the supernatural or metaphysical so it can only deal with a naturalistic, material world.
Now, if a supernatural agent interfered in the natural world and left evidence, science can test that (eg Flood, Babel, Exodus, 6,000 year Earth etc), but seeing as the key to belief is faith and science is in the business of evidence, you can't expect people to engage in science by looking to faith-based answers; we just wouldn't get very far.
Your presumption is that science precludes faith. This is clearly not true because of the number of prominent scientists who are theists (including the head of the Human Genome Project) If he can work in genetics and look to science to find material answers to naturalistic problems and yet still find faith through metaphysical thoughts about the 'why' of his work, then there's no reason why Dawkins couldn't either.
Your other points....
1. You would only conclude design in the '10 leaves' scenario because you're aware that that wouldn't happen in an 'undesigned' jungle. However, we don't know what an undesigned or designed universe should look like, so it's not useful to speculate on what we should or shouldn't find if there is a designer behind the universe. We just don't know.
2. This makes no sense. Assume we have evolutionary origins from the primate family (just go with me here), would it be an advantage or a disadvantage to have a mind that presented you with false information about the world? I'd say disadvantageous. So, natural selection would select for brains that harboured a mind that relayed an accurate (enough) portrayal of reality because there is a survival trait in knowing what's going on. As we've developed as a species we can cross-corroborate information to independently verify certain facts so we can be sure that our brains are functioning well enough for us to trust what they're telling us (most of the time).
The very fact that our brains are not perfect is why we have the scientific method, it removes as much human fallibility as possible from the process of studying things.
3. It is also unseen that there is no God..
That's just silly. It is also unseen that there is no invisible pink unicorn, so you must have faith that it doesn't exist. Doesn't work, does it?
Dawkins would most certainly not conclude that the leaves arrived in order by accident - do you take him for an idiot? He'd most likely assume that something arranged the leaves that way and would conduct test to try and find out what it was. If he found no evidence of anything then he, like any reasonable person, would say; "I don't know".
4. Just because you don't believe in a supreme rule-giver, doesn't mean that you're not capable of empathy and altruism. From these two, basic building blocks you can derive all forms of morality. 'Evil' is just a name we give to things that we really wouldn't like done to us.
5. Actually, we can't calculate the probability of our universe happening by accident because we have no idea what it takes for a universe to begin. The assumptions that must be made are so staggeringly huge that any attempt to quantify them is a ridiculously vain effort by those who try.
We just don't know enough about universe beginnings to make any kind of clear decision about it. Perhaps it was a creator. Perhaps it was an unintelligent creator. Perhaps it was any one of the thousands of creator gods created by man (or alien?!). Perhaps it was a cosmic accident. Perhaps it was a rebound from the last Big Crunch. We just don't know!
Cheers,
Hey Matt,
ReplyDelete"Now, if a supernatural agent interfered in the natural world and left evidence, science can test that (eg Flood, Babel, Exodus, 6,000 year Earth etc), but seeing as the key to belief is faith and science is in the business of evidence, you can't expect people to engage in science by looking to faith-based answers; we just wouldn't get very far."
I believe the Bible and prophecy and answered prayer is evidence of this. Also the fact that our world looks designed and ordered.
The reason we can use science is because we know that it is consistant and logicaly assumed that it is designed and meant to be what it is meant to be, not by random processes.
"Your presumption is that science precludes faith"
Um, I don't think I meant that?
I agree in finding natural answers but there seems to be huge unexplained gaps in our world and to say they happened by chance is incredible to me.
If something has a natural explanation then so be it :)
"You would only conclude design in the '10 leaves' scenario because you're aware that that wouldn't happen in an 'undesigned' jungle."
It is a principle that I can apply elsewhere. Where I see order I wonder how it got order? To say that evolution cannot be preceded by design is wrong.
"This makes no sense. Assume we have evolutionary origins from the primate family (just go with me here), would it be an advantage or a disadvantage to have a mind that presented you with false information about the world? I'd say disadvantageous. So, natural selection would select for brains that harboured a mind that relayed an accurate (enough) portrayal of reality because there is a survival trait in knowing what's going on. As we've developed as a species we can cross-corroborate information to independently verify certain facts so we can be sure that our brains are functioning well enough for us to trust what they're telling us (most of the time). "
Your using the assumption that unguided evolution brings us closer to truth...truth about the universe. It is one idea upon another. How do you know that evolution is guiding us closer to truth? Even Dawkins admits that our view of the universe (from memory) is higly unlikely that it is accurate. (Found in the first debate).
atheism trys to get rationality from irrationality.
"That's just silly. It is also unseen that there is no invisible pink unicorn, so you must have faith that it doesn't exist. Doesn't work, does it?"
That is the point! I have faith that there is no invisable pink unicorn! I have not seen any good evidence for it but I have not seen it before so I conlcude that it is by faith that it is not real.
"If he found no evidence of anything then he, like any reasonable person, would say; "I don't know"."
You are propbably right that Dawkins would not think it was an accident. I wonder why he does not assume this universe was designed aswell?
To say "I don't know" would be silly. The typical situation of an agnostic not an atheist. An atheist says "I have faith (believe) there is no God" and an agnostic would say "I don't know if there is a/no God"...commiting intellectual suicide :)
But I am sure the agnostic would live life as if there was no God therefore acting out what the atheist believes and in turn showing that there is no neutral ground for belief.
Regarding your reply to number 4... if there is no bulls eye then how can you decipher how close to the center the target is? What you are stating is relativism which is philsophicaly self refuting because you are stating that absolute truth is relative therefore assuming that relativism is the ultimate truth, which is not relative.
regarding 5.
But we can know, by evidence and taking the most rational answer. Look into the Bible again. If those prophecies are really true then the truth about that book can be applied elsewhere (our universe) even though it is unseen that there is a God.
Thanks for the comment.
Wow I wrote that quick...I'm in my lunch hour. I hope my reply was interesting for you.
Cya
DB
Just another thought:
ReplyDelete"Now, if a supernatural agent interfered in the natural world and left evidence, science can test that (eg Flood, Babel, Exodus, 6,000 year Earth etc)"
We both know that there is no need to have evidence of a world wide Flood or a 6,000 year old earth in order to believe the Bible. RtB give good answers to these problems.
I have just heard Pawson's commentary and he is an old earth creationist and yet a Bible funamentalist.
He put it quite interesting regarding the relation between the Bible and science problems.
He said: Where there is a problem, either the scientist has misinterpreted the evidence or we have misinterpreted the Bible.
He believes that God created the universe in 6 days as it says but the Bible also suggests that time to God is relative. The verse I could think of is 2Pe 3:8 "But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."
Therefore it would be 6 days to God but a long time for us. He mentioned Einstein's theory of the relativity of time.
I will listen to his talk on evolution tomorrow but it sounds like he believes God created creatures but also allowed them to form themselves to a point... Sounds more like micro-evolution over macro-evolution.
He also thought that the reason God used a simple description like Genesis 1 is that it applies to all people throughout history. E.g. If God spoke in scientific terms for the 20th century people then the ancient people would have been absolutely vexed...LOL
But it still makes sense to scientists today.
For what it is worth, I thought his interpretation was interesting.
Oh! nearly forgot, you mentioned the Exodus above and wondered about the evidence. I have already given two videos that give very strong evidence for the supernatural happenings at Mt Sinai and interesting findings at the sea crossing.
cheers,
DB
Da Bomb,
ReplyDeleteI'll try and keep this succinct (wish me luck!)...
Once again you are stating that the world looks designed and ordered, but you have no basis for making this claim because you don't know what an undesigned or unordered world would looks like.
"I agree in finding natural answers but there seems to be huge unexplained gaps in our world and to say they happened by chance is incredible to me.
If something has a natural explanation then so be it :)".
That's the thing. In years gone by, everything that was unexplained was put down to the work of the gods/spirits/etc, but we have since explained all kinds of phenomena in natural terms and are better off for it. Why would we stop seeking natural answers to the questions around us when it has worked so far. Yes there are unexplained gaps in our knowledge at that's what science does - trues to fill the gaps! Who is saying that we should fill the gaps with 'chance'? Are you not just filling the gaps with 'God'? Science tries to fill the gaps with verifiable explanations; I prefer this method.
"To say that evolution cannot be preceded by design is wrong".
Most people don't say this though. Most people will concede that it is possible that the universe or life was designed, but we have no evidence that that is the case - just an assertion from people who already believe in a designer that there is a designer because things look designed; where's the sense in that?
"Your using the assumption that unguided evolution brings us closer to truth...".
No I'm not. I'm saying that natural selection (a non-random process) will tend to weed out traits that are detrimental to a species. Any brain function that results in an individual think that eg, gravity doesn't apply to them, will be weeded out. I didn't say anything about truth at all - evolution means survival of those who are fittest for their environment, if you (as a species) can't interpret data from the world in an effective way then you're not going to last very long.
You have 'faith' that there's no Invisible Pink Unicorn? Ok, well if that's the definition of faith that you're using then your point becomes totally meaningless.
If you seriously think that having faith that something exists is the same as having faith that something doesn't exist - when there's no evidence for that something - then your definition of faith is redundant.
I can't believe you're back to the atheist/agnostic thing, we went over that a million times already.
Dawkins would (probably) say he didn't know....because he doesn't know. That's it. If you're talking about ordered leaves, what do you suggest he puts his faith in? The Great Leaf Liner-Upper?
Regarding #4, where did I suggest there was an absolute/ultimate Truth? Nowhere. I'm saying that our morals are intra-subjective; they're based on complex feedback loops within our society and, most strongly, our family units.
"But we can know, by evidence and taking the most rational answer".
What evidence is there that the God of the Bible created the universe? The Bible itself? Well it's bound to say that, isn't it? This is why I brought up the issue that you picked up on in the second part of your response.....
....
ReplyDeleteYou're now saying that there doesn't need to be evidence of a global flood or a young earth for the Bible to be true. Well, are there any testable claims made by the Bible that we can test? Many Christians would stake their life on the fact that the world is 6,000 years old and the Global Flood happened (and would call you a False Convert for disagreeing with them), so they clearly think that there is evidence.
I guess you have to pick a side. Either the Bible is supported by scientific discoveries or it isn't, but you surely can't keep twisting scripture to ensure that it keeps up with science if the Bible is The Truth; science should be keeping up with the Bible, no?
Interesting stuff!
May I make a suggestion? Lets pick one or two topics out of this mess and focus on them, eh? I don't have time for these mega-comments!
Cheers,
LOL!
ReplyDeleteObviously I agree with you that these comments are quite long :) We will have to agree to disagree on some points obviously.
Well I will pick a couple,
"I guess you have to pick a side. Either the Bible is supported by scientific discoveries or it isn't, but you surely can't keep twisting scripture to ensure that it keeps up with science if the Bible is The Truth; science should be keeping up with the Bible, no?"
I don't think it is twisting the scripture (I use to think that). If it were not possible to give a different interpretation of the Bible regarding an old earth siuation then no Bible believer would be able to do it! And make a rational case for it.
We know that the Bible makes good predictions that were accurate...like our universe having a beginning!
I am saying regarding faith, that EVERYONE HAS THER OWN CHOICE AS TO WHAT THEY BELIEVE.
Is there no longer such a thing as a distinction between an agnostic and an atheist? Or are most atheists simply agnostics?
Talk about changing meanings!
Going on about belief:
"Dawkins would (probably) say he didn't know....because he doesn't know. That's it. If you're talking about ordered leaves, what do you suggest he puts his faith in? The Great Leaf Liner-Upper?"
I would put my faith in the great Leaf-Liner-Upper. That would be the best conclusion of reason, I would not say that it formed itself.
"Once again you are stating that the world looks designed and ordered, but you have no basis for making this claim because you don't know what an undesigned or unordered world would looks like."
Neither do you know what an undesigned universe looks like. I just know that the PRINCIPLES HERE ON EARTH is that where something is improbable it is improbable!
If I want to throw 100 6's in a row with a dice I conclude, that if it happened it would be an unlikely fluke or someone guided it to happen like that! (weighted dice LOL)
How many other planet earths have you found around the place with the ability to have life as we have it today. By this we know that it is IMPROBABLE. Someone must have guided it. This is my belief; to suggest other explanations are incredible to me.
I won't write any more to keep it a bit shorter. Thanks for the discussion! I am enjoying it.
Catchya,
DB
Hi Daniel, Matt here. Just letting you know that you can get the revised edition of Lennox's book here:
ReplyDeletehttp://orders.koorong.com/search/details.jhtml?code=9780745953717
or here:
http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/Religion/Religion_Science/product_info/14661542/?cf=3&rid=1758471167&i=5&keywords=god%5C%27s+undertaker
I'm a little confused with the publishing dates. March & September. Would think that they are the same copy, but maybe not.
Many thanks Matty!
ReplyDeleteI'm keen to purchase the revised one sometime.
Da Bomb,
ReplyDeleteThis is the root of everything we talk about (regarding science, at least);
"I would put my faith in the great Leaf-Liner-Upper. That would be the best conclusion of reason, I would not say that it formed itself".
I would say; "I don't know how it came to be the way it is"
Do you see the difference between the two?
You would posit the existence of a supernatural and untestable being (with a rather strange tendency to arrange leaves) rather than have no explanation. You're suggesting a god of the gaps right off the bat.
I would rather have an explanation that has some evidence behind it. If I can't have that, then I'd rather say that I don't know.
I think this is at the root of our differing world-views, very interesting indeed!
Regards,
Yep, I would agree...
ReplyDeleteOn the atheistic terms and playing with them...
I was arguing with you on the thought that you were an atheist...that is, you would say "there is no God".
When in my books you would be an agnostic..."I don't know if there is a God...there might be and ther might not be".
But you would call yourself and agnostic atheist.
Who cares about meanings NE way. At least I know what your view is. Thanks!
Um, yes I think you put our differences quite well.
I could refrase them aswell I guess.
I believe "In taking the most reasonable and rational answer about somthing that evidence points toward...beyond a reasonable doubt"
You believe "In taking and beliveing only those things that can be tested and proven through science"
As you stated before that Dawkins would say
"I don't know who put those leaves in line".
I would reply...
"don't be silly, it is obvious that leaves cannot fall in a line by themselves, therefore, be reasonable and conclude until further notice that someone has put them there."
This can be applied to miracles (the burnt Mount Sinai etc).
I hope I have got it right on your view.
cheers!
DB
Oh, one more point,
ReplyDeleteEven though someone says they "don't know", it is true that their actions will not reflect this.
If someone does not know if there is a God then most likely they will live like there is no God (or more specificly "no God of the Bible")...therefore choosing a belief. Therefore everyone has chosen a belief.
cheers,
Hope I make sense,
DB