Friday 25 February 2011

The Dawkins Delusion

Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion denounced all religion on the basis of suicide bombers and other obviously crazy people. Anybody can do that, and plenty have. The problem is that it's similar to saying all clowns are evil because some people in clown makeup rob convenience stores.

What would have been actually impressive would be to show, logically and step-by-step, that religion is patently dangerous because it leads to people like Mother Theresa. If Dawkins could show, irrefutably, that the most well-known and best example of Christian goodness was a blight on the world, then he would be saying something worth hearing. As it is, he has cut off the worst end of a long continuum of religious morality, leaving a very large part unaccounted for.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If he could have done it the other way, I'm sure he would have.
PPS - Personally, I can't imagine such an argument.

2 comments:

Charles said...

I am agnostic-ish, but even so, I still am dismayed by Dawkins' ridiculous arguments. His work in "The Selfish Gene" is some of the coolest most interesting science I have ever read. But the concept of militant atheism, which he embodies, is preposterous. The idea that there can be no creator, or no greater order to the universe, just because we can comprehend evolution, is a huge logical leap.

His "faith" in atheism is identical to the "faith" that he condemns in the religious.

http://arealgoodblog.blogspot.com

John said...

Exactly. There are certain things that cannot be proven, one way or another. They must be assumed, or taken on faith. No logical argument is possible without assumptions, and Dawkins begins by assuming his atheism.