mel: Dawkins appears to know none of these proofs and in his book commits so many logical fallacies, appeals to authority, and so much sloppy thinking that even a sympathetic reading by someone familiar with these prior proofs would show that he was either unaware of them, too lazy to do his homework, or just has no aptitude for well structured systematic thought. If the atheist position depended on him for its defense, then he has set it back a thousand years.
[Krimel] I think that Dawkins is one of the best and most lucid science writers of the past 30 years. His work in print and on television has done a lot to educate the public about the beauty and wonder of Darwin's theory. As for neglecting "proofs of God," here is a website that lists more than 500 such proofs: http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm This one appears to be Zen: http://proofsofgod.com/ Maybe Dawkins as an empiricist dismisses such rationalism out of hand. Or perhaps he really never has heard any proofs of God that were "...elegant and marvels of sustained creative energy". Me either. Got one to share? I would suggest to you and Dave that if Dawkins produces such an emotional reaction perhaps it isn't reason and lucidity or the lack there of, that is the cause. But either of you are welcome to provide some issue of substance where you find Dawkins' arguments defective. What I read here from both of you is on a par with Pirsig dismissal Kant as "ugly". [mel] Some wag, somewhere, stated that Science and Religion both explain man's place in the universe... [Krimel] For Science place means the world around us, spatial location. For Religion it mean place in the sense of one's role. Christianity was in fact a synthesis of the Greek mode of thinking of place as space and Jewish ethics that dealt with one's role in society. But beyond this I would suggest to you that science and religion are both illusions in the sense that they provide schemas for understanding ones relationship to the world and others in the world. One can in fact make Gestalt shifts between them; seeing the world one way and then the other. That kind of shifting of perspective is not for everyone of course and it can give you a headache but it does help provide a better handle on the issues that separate the two. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
