7 Quick Takes VIII

1. To those who live rural or small-town or small-city communities, the idea of a harvest fair or festival is probably not just an academic sort of thing but more of an experiental one. And I'm not just talking about dressing up for Hallowe'en or eating turkey at Thanksgiving, either, but rather about going to a real honest-to-goodness Fall Fair or Agricultural Fair or Plowing Match or something similarly named.

Well, Fort McMurray has some things vaguely approximating this idea, and one of them is the Country Fair, which has for the last few years been venued by Heritage Park. By now you can guess what that means...

This past weekend I was working at the Park. Because of the events in the Park, the executive director decided to open Chateau Gai Hot Dog Café, our concession stand. Due to the sudden absence of any summer slaves (I mean "summer staff"), I was called to work the whole thing. My Dad volunteered the Saturday, and my Mom volunteered the Sunday. Technically, Dad was there for some of Sunday, too, since we called him in but then didn't need him, so he left again.

On Saturday, my Dad and I ran the barbeque and hamburgers while the girls--Susan and Laura--ran the actual concession stand itself, taking money and suchlike. On Sunday, we didn't have Laura, so my Mom ran the barbeque while I helped Susan in the concession. However, we were worried that it would be too busy for my Mom to handle alone, and called Dad in. It turns out it really wasn't that busy on Sunday. Overall, it was a pretty slack couple of days, considering that I was in fact working. (This all means that I have worked for 12 days straight now. Ho-hum, actually.)

2. I painted some at the Marine Park. I put some aluminum paint on vents and the like, and I put black paint on other things. I also painted the great big auger (which is quite distinct from an augur, even though I would have spelled them the same if I hadn't looked it up just now) aluminum, which I don't personally think was an improvement. It does look new and shiny and eye-catching now, but I think it's eye-catching enough without the shine. Its twisted, snaggle-toothed, rusty, menacing mass was enough to grab my attention on the first day, at any rate.

I wore my knee-pads, of course, and I hadn't been on my knees all the time, but I can still feel the weakness and stiffness and pain in my joints from last week, and I feel it all the more when I'm working on those decks, pads or no. (Sorry for the hypertactic sentence, there.)

3. And on the note of things I did at the Marine Park, I once again rode up high in the Genie with my supervisor to paint things I couldn't otherwise reach. I note this in particular because, as my folks will readily attest, there was a time when I would be too utterly terrified to do it. I am afraid of heights (I know too much about phobias to claim I am acrophobic any more), and yet I am not so often afraid any more.

For instance, I was utterly fine in the Genie, despite the fact that it's basket has a grill bottom, through which I can easily see. It's strange: not only am I unafraid, I get somewhat sleepy, in a contented way. It's the same sort of feeling (though not as strong) as that I get sometimes when I am getting a haircut, or someone for another reason is playing with/working on my hair.

4. I have begun, very tentatively, to work on the virtual museum exhibit that will occupy much of my time for the next six months. When it is completed, the museum will be hosted by the Virtual Museum of Canada. Specifically, it will be part of the Community Memories deal. A good example of an exhibit, like that I would wind up making, is Ava's Story. (Isn't she pretty?) Anyway, I won't be e-curating about Japanese-Canadians in BC, of course, but that is the format of what I'll be doing.

In the end I only installed and messed with the software, looked for computers to work from, and did very very very preliminary research. But I have begun.

5. Let's see, now. There were books in there. I finished Prince Caspian. I started and finished Taran the Wanderer, by Lloyd Alexander. That was a good one, which I had never actually read before. I read all of the other Prydian books as a kid, but not that one. I also started and finished A Wrinkle in Time, and have been chipping away at The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia. I think, for a number of reasons, I will struggle with the latter; some of those are differences in literary-analystical interests and methods (for instance, I think Lewis' biography is of far less importance than the author seems to believe), but others are more personal. The author, as you can tell from the title, is against the whole Christianity thing, and loves the books despite their theological moorings. And I think most of us know the emotional toll anti-Christian sentiment plays on me.

6. And if you didn't know the emotional toll anti-Christian sentiment plays on me, you will soon find out. I had the idiocy of reading the page on Dawkins in Wikiquote. I have no idea what made me go there, but for some reason I did. You know, I've been good lately. I haven't read very many comment threads, I haven't gone scouting out for atheist blogs (I do this looking for some thread of open-mindedness, and so far I haven't found enough to stitch together a hole in your sock), and I haven't been reading the sorts of books that are likely to irk me. But, for whatever reason, I read some quotes from this man.

Atheism in general distresses me, but I don't make a fuss about it because, let's be honest, that's almost the worst thing you can possibly do. I have lots of atheist friends and even if I'd like the 'atheist' part to change, it seems rather important that the 'friends' part remains the same. So I don't make a fuss or attempt conversions or preach or make leading remarks or talk Christianese. Atheism may bug me, but I don't let that influence my behaviour.

But that man (Dawkins, I mean). He just drives me up the wall. I read that page for maybe ten minutes, and I spent the rest of the evening angry, frustrated, scared, and hurt. I had such trouble dealing with it. While I knew that everything he said was wrong, and I could articulate reasons why it was wrong, I still couldn't shake the convincingness of it. He's like that. He's good at these sorts of rhetorical games. He's so f***ing persuasive. Part of the problem is that the man rides on probability and dismisses possibility, and part of the problem is that he tends to isolate things. Everything makes perfect sense in the little nuggets he presents them in, but they tend to look less relevant and less convincing when you realize that he's looking at a very small part from a very narrow angle. In the end, of course, he has it wrong. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't look like a fine piece of reasoning taken on its own terms.

This, I think, is how he gets so persuasive. He says things people suspect or want to believe, and then backs it up with these little philosophical tricks of the light. He adds in a great deal of the sort of dry humour which includes those who believe what he says and utterly degrades those who don't, and he layers on top of that huge piles of self-confidence in his own rightness. The humour and the confidence, though, are only hiding the hatred and arrogance that make up his whole project.

At least, I know there is arrogance and I suspect there is hatred. There is likely also fear and confusion and doubt and love in him somewhere, but I cannot see it and almost do not want to believe it is there.

So anyway, sometime later that evening I was having a shower and outright fretting about this man and his clutch of rabid followers, and I didn't know what to do. I felt I had to do something, but I couldn't for the life of me think of what. I wanted badly to just sit down and give the whole thing up (not that I could have told you what that meant) if it weren't for the fact that I knew that not only the organized church, but also Christianity, humanity, and the whole of existence would cease to exist if I didn't fight.

And then I remembered a few fundamental things. The first was that so long as I believed and lived that belief, then I've done all I was supposed to do. The second was that God would make things OK. I might not understand how he was going to do that, and I might not even be able to recognize the OK-ity of it at first, but in the end all things glorify God. I just have to deal with that, and it's something I do for and within myself. I don't need to "fight"; at least, not here and for this. The third was that all the screaming and arguement and proof and sophistry is not going to move someone who really believes, be it in the existence of God or the non-existence of God. I can provide arguments to weaken Dawkins' hold on people, but in the end these arguements will not win people over to the side of God. Just calming down would be a better bet than to go in swinging. To say, "Yes, I understand what you are saying. Yes, I can see how these things are convincing. And yet, I still believe," might be more powerful than any arguement there is.

So after my shower I was a bit better. But I've still rankled a little here and there for the rest of the week, and my back, just beneath the shoulder blades, still crawls a little with pre-fight or flight tension.

7. This Take requires some background: starting at the end of next week, I will be taking a vacation to my home province of Ontario, visiting three campuses altogether (Sheridan - Oakville campus, Kingston, and St. Clare).
I had been planning on leaving on Friday at 1:00 or so at night. On Wednesday night, I looked an my travel itinerary and noticed something interesting. Due to the obvious error we made, I am actually leaving very very early on Friday, at 1:00 in the morning. Yes. I leave a full 24 hours early than anticipated.

Which actually works out quite well, because I now get to spend a whole other day with my brother. We plan to go see 9.

My employers are fine with it, in case you were wondering.

This means that my next 7 Quick Takes will be written from Oakville, perhaps in the late morning, even.

That is all. My, what a long post for such little occurence.

You know the drill: http://www.conversiondiary.com/2009/09/7-quick-takes-friday-vol-49.html

Disinterest

G'day.

As you may have noticed from the lack of such posts, I am growing disinterested in disproving Dawkins' silliness. I will tackle a few other posts as time goes on--there's one about salvation theory, there's one about the role of the veil, there's one speculating about his Darwinian biases--but I feel like I have covered sufficient ground. I am bored of him and don't want to give him much more attention, which will only flatter him. Also, it has been brought to my attention in small group that such arguments only "lower myself to their level," as I believe the phrase went, and that's their turf, where presumably they will win anyway. Now, I think I've done a pretty solid job, but there's maybe some truth to what he said. If I allow myself to get distracted into tight little arguments over minutae, I'll lose sight of the big picture and the important stuff goes undone (not unsaid...things that are said are usually unimportant anyway).

I do think there is merit in defeating Dawkins' position, because it holds cultural currency and really oughtn't. This militant atheism doesn't look very good, and I would like it's soldiers to recognize that and desert. However, it would also be fair to suggest that many of them wouldn't get through my arguments, and wouldn't really listen even if they did. I hope that is not the case--I've been assured that it's not the case--but I am scared that it is.

So, you'll see a few more of these yet, but they'll be few and produced slowly. I don't feel argumentative. I am growing sick of argument. Very, very sick. The world is being rotted by it.

And yes, I know this follows a new Dawkins-related post, but I'll be honest with you. I through the final two lines on tonight, but the rest of it I had written over a month ago and then let grow stale in my drafts. I thought I'd get it out tonight so that I could get the process of the Dawkins' Dispute over.

I should go to bed.

God bless.
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To Directory.

Disputing Dawkins IV

So far I have dealt with Dawkins' attempts to demonstrate that religion is unlikely. I will no longer deal with this at length because Dawkins has nothing more to add on the topic. Dawkins tries to demonstrate that religion could have evolutionary origins. If you want to read a better account of such speculation than Dawkins, you can read Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer. This doesn't really worry me at all, though, and I'm not going to deal with it. Instead, I will move on to Dawkins' discussion of morality. Namely, Dawkins argues for

Religion's Disconnection from Morality

The general direction of Dawkins' arguement is that religion does not generate morality, and therefore appeals to morality are not sufficient to argue in favour of religion. He also claims that major religious traditions are somewhat immoral, and he uses Christianity as an example.

Of course, Dawkins presupposes here that there is no God. Unlike in previous posts, I will not accept Dawkins' premises for the sake of arguement. I will try as much as possible to refrain from religious explanations, but there are particular points where I will demonstrate that Dawkins' logic falls apart if these premises are not adhered to.

To begin, I will look at the following statement: "the only reason that you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment" (p 226). I'm going to clarify that Dawkins isn't saying that approval-seeking is the only reason people are good; he's more implying that this is the religious sense of ethics. One of his criticisms is that morality of this sense isn't really moral at all, but strictly self-interested. First, I'm going to emphasize that, even if this were true of Western religions, it's not true of all religions--Confucianism, for instance, or traditional Native beliefs do not even suggest that there is a personal reward for goodness, or anyone's approval to seek. Second, the Western religions do not universally support this either. Certainly, there is a sort of popular, media-based belief that Christians are moral in order to please God and receive his blessing by means of a ticket into heaven and perhaps worldly goods. First off, this is not a particularly Protestant view, nor is it even an entirely Catholic view. Islam perhaps espouses this philosophy more, but it is far more nuanced than that. So, what is the Christian view?

The grass-roots theology that I have heard is that we are good as a way of giving thanks to God. We are grateful for our life, for God's love, and for our undeserved salvation. Therefore, as a way of paying back, even though we know it does not come close to matching that which we received, we act in ways we believe please God. Do you see the difference? Dawkins suggest we are cashing in morality tokens for rewards; Christians believe we already have all the rewards and are behaving morally as a response.

Obviously this requires that the practitioners believe in God in order for this to be at all sensible. But note that, if you yourself do not believe in God, this doesn't mean that the Christians are only moral for self-interested purposes. So long as they believe that God has already rewarded them, morality of a non-self-interested nature can follow; the actual existence of God is not necessary for this to be true.

As an aside, the Zoroastrians are good because good behaviour saves the universe from destruction; the Confucians are good because proper relations ensure social harmony; those adopting Native beliefs are good because proper conduct prevents illness in the community and disorder in nature. Again, we see non-selfish motives for morality.

Now, Dawkins does concede that there are more sophisticated moral arguements than the caricatures he provides. Good for him. The question then is, why doesn't he refute them? Because he does not have the time? If this is the case, why did he spend so much time attacking the caricatures? Is it because he does not have the knowledge? Then why doesn't he gain the knowledge? Or it it because he does not know how to refute them? My supposition is that it is for some combination of the three: he hasn't sufficient time, knowledge, or ability. Regardless, he can hardly have considered the case closed (as he seems to do) if he doesn't deal with the objections that he acknowledges exist.

Dawkins also structures an arguement as follows: if you will not follow all of the religious text but will instead only choose those parts you agree with and those parts you don't, then can you really say morality comes from that text? In other words, what are the criteria by which you choose which passages to follow, and why not simply adopt those criteria as your moral standard? Dawkins suggests removing "the middle man," as it were.

This is where Dawkins' atheism comes in. This only makes sense if you already agree that there is no God--or, in this case, Holy Spirit. Christian theology, you see, has an answer for this. St. Paul, in fact, provides it. This is that the Holy Spirit moves us through our conscience, prompting us to do what is right and to avoid what is wrong. This even applies to deciding whether or not it is right to follow particular instances of the Jewish law. Biblical scholars suggest that Paul did not want to make authoritative judgements on certain issues (ie. whether to eat meat from pagan sacrifices) but to tell people to follow the Spirit; he only made these judgements because early Christian communities wanted a firm hand. Obviously many Christians will dispute this claim, but I think the point remains: the criterion used is nonetheless a religious one, so even if you dropped "the middle man," what you have is the Holy Spirit's hand.

Unlike my previous arguement, this one may seem to require religious belief in order to be valid. This is not quite true: it requires that the reader at least concede that a Holy Spirit might exist. This is different from believing in that doctrine. Dawkins, of course, is unwilling to concede this. I hope that by now any readers I have will be more inclined to concede it by dint of my other arguements. Even more importantly, it seems to me that Dawkins is trying to use this idea--that by picking and choosing parts of the Bible, we implicitly indicate that we have a morality not derived from God--to convince people yet again that religious claims are internally contradictory. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit provides an explanation for this problem by positing an entity, 'powered' by God, that helps us make the correct selections. Dawkins' attack on Christian doctrine through implicit concession of a non-religious morality is thus blocked by the Holy Spirit. I understand that other religions have similar features that will provide the same internal explanation. I know that Islam posits an inherent, God-given, human capacity for goodness, among other things.

Dawkins does provide some explanations of how morality could have evolved as an innate capacity in humans. Again, if you want a better account of it than Dawkins provides, you can turn to Boyer. However, I want to emphasize quite clearly that if you're a Christian (or other religious person) who accepts evolutionary biology, you'd generally consider that evolution is guided by the Divine. Therefore, there is nothing inconsistent in saying that we evolved to be moral and that God made us moral. If you're not a religious person who accepts evolutionary biology, then I don't suppose Dawkins' explanations mean anything to you at all. The up-shot is that an evolutionary account of morality does not effectively de-couple morality from religion unless you are already of an atheistic (and closed-mindedly so) mindframe.

Dawkins goes one further in his separation of religion and morality: he actually claims that Jesus' moral wisdom is exclusive to the in-group. Dawkins says, "'Love thy neighbour' didn't mean what we now think it means. It meant only 'Love another Jew'" (253). This is patently ridiculous...but my explanation belongs in a post of my own. Dawkins Delusion has a strong refutation of it, so I may not need to deal with it. I likely will, however, when I have the time.

So, a summary:
1) Dawkins claims that religious 'versions' of morality are not moral, but inherently selfish, because they are a based on a reward-punishment system; while some religions may have such a system, Christianity 'proper' and most other traditions I know of do not; Dawkins' criticism is invalid.
2) Dawkins claims that religions which have sacred texts practitioners 'pick and choose' through must have a criterion for said picking and choosing, and this will do for a moral standard without the sacred text; at least one tradition in which practitioners sometimes pick and choose explains this phenomenon through a particular mechanism called 'the Holy Spirit'; removing the sacred text makes the morality no less religious; Dawkins suggestion is invalid.

Any questions?

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To Directory.

Dawkins Moment II

Memes

In my notebook, I have this note:

"p. 206 - spends less time on memes than I expected; makes no mention of the criticism that it is an oversimplification, but I can see the allure of meme theory. I'm not a sociologist, though, & it does seem like meme theory is an attempt to make sociological phenomenon explainable by Darwinian natural selection, whether it works or not."

In case you didn't know, Dawkins coined the term 'meme' and and fleshed the idea out. The Dawkins Delusion suggests that meme theory actually adds nothing to the field of sociology, which already had tools perfectly capable of doing the explanatory work of the meme. Does anyone know what the field of sociology makes of meme theory?

To Directory

Dawkins Directory

Instead of actually writing another Dawkins-related post, I'm going to construct a directory to all of my Dawkins-related posts to improve ease of access. Then I'm going to hyperlink the Dawkins posts to this one, and add a thing on my sidebar to get you straight to this post.

If you haven't begun reading any of my refutation of Dawkins' The GOD Delusion, I'll direct you to my Dawkins-related mission statement. From that post you can get a sense of what the different categories of post are and work your way through them as you please.

Also note that I may have other posts concerning Dawkins, and yet haven't linked them here. That is because I wrote them before the beginning of my more organized and directed effort at refutation; that is, I wrote them during the reading of the book. They reflect more my state of mind than the book itself, and so will be left elsewhere. If you want to access them, click the "Dawkins" label on sidebar under "Themes" and scroll to the bottom.

I'll update as I write more.

General Statements
Mission Statement
Disinterest

Disputing Dawkins
I. The Power of Rhetoric
II. Arguement for the Spectrum of Probability
III. Argument for the Improbability of God's Existence
IV. Religions' Disconnection from Morality

Dawkins' Style
I. Offensiveness
II. Lack of Explication

Dawkins' Misrepresentation of Religion
I. Miracles

Dawkins Moment
I. Untitled
II. Memes

Tangentally Related
Following Rules

Dawkins' Misrepresentation of Religion I

Every so often, Dawkins shows that he doesn't know very much about religion. This doesn't mean his arguments are wrong, though it weakens his credibility. Occasionally, though, it renders his point irrelevant, since whatever he said only holds together in the cases where his idea of religion is true. One obvious case (which is relevant to my last Dawkins post, Disputing Dawkins III) is

Miracles.


Here is Dawkins on miracles:


"The God Hypothesis suggests that the reality we inhabit also contains a supernatural agent who designed the universe and--at least in many versions of the hypothesis--maintains it and even intervenes in it with miracles, which are temporary violations of his own otherwise grandly immutable laws." (pg. 58)


First off, the relationship between God and the universe that he portrays seems a little mistaken to me (this talk of "also contain[ing]" is misleading). However, I don't know much about this, so I won't get into.

To say that I am an expert on the theology of miracles is a stretch. I haven't read Lewis' book Miracles, nor read the official theology, nor have any idea how it works in other religions. I can tell you, however, what the standard understanding of miracles is, at least as it is preached from the pulpits I've heard and in the Sunday schools I've attended. And Dawkins does not capture that standard understanding.

Here, again, is his definition of miracles: "temporary violations of his [sic] own otherwise grandly immutable laws."

What's wrong here? Maybe you'll consider it a fine point; maybe you won't. That's up to you. Whether the point is fine or not isn't quite relevant, since even fine points can make a world of difference in certain contexts. The point, anyway, is this: miracles are not violations of natural laws, but are instead a natural part of the universe.

This claim--that miracles are a natural and intrinsic part of the universe--bears explaining. Think of it this way: God made the universe in such a way that he could sustain it and that he could intervene through revelation, miracle, and eventually incarnation. God did not set down a bunch of rules and then go and break them. God set down a system, and then he went and operated within that system. Those inside the system, of course, see the mechanics of the system as laws of nature, and, since they exist within the system, experience these 'laws' as immutable. But the fact is that they are not really laws, and therefore cannot be broken.

Imagine that you are a computer programmer. You create a program that operates self-sufficiently for a while. Perhaps it has assorted parts that interact with eachother, such as in a simulator. Perhaps it has some end or goal (a telos, if you will) that it is supposed to acheive. It is possible that you could create such a program without having programmed in any way for you, as a user of the program, to influence the course of the activity. This would be silly. This would mean, for instance, that you could never turn it off, or stop it, without unplugging the computer. In fact, most programming platforms have a 'stop' function built in. This is the very least of user/creator intervention. Most programs, in fact, allow for considerable data imput or user influence. After all, if the program is messing up and isn't reaching the goal (telos) you desired, you'd want to be able to get in there and fix it.

Now, if you interfered with the program, are you breaking grandly immutable laws? No. Of course, the pieces of code in the program can't operate outside the parameters you set. That doesn't mean that you can, or there's any sense that those parameters are violated by your influence.

Does this help? I realize this is an analogy; it proves nothing. But perhaps it will help readers see how Christians imagine miracles. They are not violations of the natural order; they are rare phenomenon that are fully allowable by and encompassed by the natural order--or the natural order as Christians think of it. This natural order does include "supernatural" agents, as Dawkins defines them, and so phenomenon isn't always explainable by natural laws from the natural sciences. This does not mean that they are violations of any laws.

This is the other side of a problem I came upon in the previously hyperlinked post (see top). That problem was revelation. Why, Dawkins asks, have we never succeeded in measuring or observing a revelation? Other than the obvious--most religions don't suppose there has been a 'large-scale' revelation since the Enlightenment, which is the earliest time someone might be supposed to try measuring one--I could say that the universe is programmed to allow channels of information to enter into it, and yet those pieces of code (humans) within the universe can't apprehend quite where that information comes from, limited as those codes are by their parameters.

As far as I can see, this belief system is entirely self-consistent. If I am wrong, please tell me. Whether it is or not, though, isn't the point of this post. The point is that Dawkins misrepresents religion. Either he doesn't understand it, or he is deliberately misrepresenting it. Neither is particularly laudable, especially since you'd hardly have to go out of your way to find this sort of thing out. My guess is that Dawkins simply isn't willing to try.

Go to the Dawkins Directory

Dawkins Moment I

On page 155, Dawkins writes: "I am not advocating some sort of narrowly scientistic way of thinking."

But, Dawkins, you are. You really, really are.

Go to Dawkins Directory

Disputing Dawkins III

I have previously argued that there is no reason to believe that we can measure the probability of God's existence. Let's ignore that for the time being; let's pretend that we can.

Dawkins suggests that, if we measure God's probability of existence on a spectrum, entering assorted data into the equation, then we will find that God's existence is extremely improbable.

I disagree entirely, and will in this post argue, even positing that measuring God's existence is possible, against Dawkins'


Argument for the Improbability of God's Existence.


Again, I feel manacled by the fact that I don't have a copy of the book to use. Maybe I'll download one. So I'm going by memory and by the (poorish) notes I took while reading. Apologies.

By page 14o of the chapter "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God," I'm quite willing to concede that biodiversity and life's existence do not logically require God's existence, granted a universe for them to exist in. I wasn't ever an ardent creationist anyway. Yet explanations for the origin of the world's phenomenon does not demonstrate that God's existence is improbable; it only demonstrates that creationism isn't necessarily true. This is a hugely important distinction.

After this, Dawkins seems to ask for an explanation for God's existence; this is usually known as the 'who made God?' question. Now, my natural inclination is to write this off as nonsense--no one made God. Sure, I don't understand how this could be. I don't expect to understand everything. I realize that this will not fly for the voraciously curious Dawkins, who insists that all questions he cares to ask are answerable (and, oddly, all questions that he doesn't care to ask are nonsensical). However, I want to point out that we don't know how the universe came about, either. I don't mean to play God of the Gaps, here; it's my guess that there will always be an infinite regress on determining the origins of the universe, but that's not the point. My point is that just as we may figure out how the universe could come into existence, someone may eventually come up with a brilliant and convincing account of how God has always existed. In other words, if I can't say, "Well, science doesn't have an answer for it," then Dawkins can't say, "Well, theology doesn't have an answer for it." I suppose we'll just have to wait for what the future comes up with (or doesn't). (And on another aside, I doubt Dawkins would be convinced with the answer, and not just because he's biased against it; the answer would likely be rationalist and not empiricist, and so he'd never be willing to accept.)

Then Dawkins addresses "other ways of knowing besides the scientific" (p 154). His answer seems to be that personal experience could be illusory, and that revelation would be measurable, and since we've never measured a revelation before, it can't have happened. Now, that personal experience could be illusory is certainly true; the major problem with Dawkins using this line of argument is that he offers no way of determining which experiences are illusory. Why are religious experiences hallucinations--or products of human bias and expectation--while scientific observations are accurate? The answer is pretty simple--that wouldn't help his argument at all. (And if you're of the scientific bent, you'll likely try to tell me otherwise. Go read Haraway. Go talk to some native elders. At the very least, read this story.) Further, I'm not sure why he insists that revelation ought to be measurable. Well, I think I know why; it's just wrong.

Think of it this way. Say God exists, a God who can communicate with humans. This God, as we believe it, operates beyond the known laws of the universe. If God is capable of this, surely God is capable of hiding the means of communication from our observation until it arrives in the human's minds. Why would God do this? Well, I'm not altogether worried about such a question--why anybody does anything isn't something I can know--but, for the sake of argument, I'd guess it might be so that we have the ability to choose whether to believe or not. That's a fairly common line of reasoning, so I don't think I need to outline it here. The point is that if God exists, and beyond humanly-knowable physics, there's no reason that God's communication with us need be measurable.

Dawkins also posits that a God that can communicate with all humans simultaneously, and answer all of their prayers, that God must be extraordinarily complicated. Well, perhaps. But perhaps not. C. S. Lewis anticipates this in Mere Christianity, and as Dawkins has indicated that he's read Lewis' book, it's a bit disappointing that Dawkins bothers to mention this. He does, however, and so I will say what C. S. Lewis said. That is, God is eternal, meaning not that he exists for all time, but that he exists outside of time. It's a bit of a brain-breaker if you're not familiar with this sort of thinking, but bear with me. Imagine the timeline as a line on a piece of paper, and along this line all things from the beginning to the end occur. You can jot down samples along the line if you care to. Now, you can draw on it the portion when you have existed and you can pinpoint the present along the line. As time progresses, the present slides along that line. It goes on inexorably, and doesn't go backwards. Theory of relativity does some interesting things with this sort of demonstration. I don't know much about this, but you could research it if you cared to. Theology also does some interesting things, and that's what I'm talking about here. See, God does not move along the line in some order, as the present does. God doesn't even hop along from one point to another like a time-traveler would. Instead, God exists out of the line. From this point, He can gaze upon any part of the timeline at will, in any order He wills. To say that God must communicate with all praying people simultaneously is silly. He only has to communicate with one at a 'time'. God experiences time differently.

But even if this were not the case, something which produces complicated things does not necessitate that that thing is itself complicated. Dawkins, in fact, provides an excellent example. The process of Darwinian evolution is, in its fundamentals, very simple, and yet it has produced very complicated things.

And then Dawkins claims to have proved that God is monstrously improbable. On pages 157-158, he generates a list that summarizes his 'arguments' and comes to the 'conclusion' he wants. I'll paraphrase the items here:

1) Humanity's greatest intellectual challenge is to exlpain complexity in the world.
2) Natural temptation is to posit 'design' as the answer.
3) The natural temptation is fallacious, as we get to the "Who designed the designer" question; therefore, "design is not a sufficient answer to the question is #1; we need what Dawkins calls a crane, which builds gradually from simplicity to complexity.
4) Most ingenious and powerful crane created so far is Darwinian evolution; design is an illusion; evolution is cummulative.
5) There is not yet an equivalent crane for physics; could be mulitverses, a Darwin-like theory; heavier demands, but anthropic principle allows for more luck then our intuition is comfortable with.
6) We should not give up hope for a crane in physics; current weak cranes are self-evidently better than the "self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer."

And then he says, "If the argument of this chapter is accepted, the factual premise of religion--the God Hypothesis--is untenable. God almost certainly does not exist. This is the main conclusion of the book so far."

Which is utterly preposterous.

He does not provide ANY ANSWER WHATSOEVER to the following question: Why must the first cause be simple? Phrased differently, why must a complex God be the result of a cummulative process?

Now, it doesn't take a person trained in logic to see that his list of premises isn't an argument, because each step does not build off of the previous one. Namely, #4 goes against his conclusion, and then #5 flatly denies #4. There's no proof or argument, but simple assertion. And then all he does is demonstrate that God's existence is not necessary to explain the existence of the world. The closest he comes to demonstrating that God is unlikely is to ask the "Who made God?" question, which fundamentally presupposes a rational materialist framework, and if you're willing to believe in God, you might as well go whole-hog and say God exists outside of that framework. The problem is, Dawkins is unwilling to give up his rational materialism even in limited contexts, or to acknowledge that a rational person could.

Now, there are other big problems with his argument that sit in his fundamental presuppositions: that humans can grasp the universe using logic alone; that humans can grasp the universe at all; that humans can use logic effectively; that the universe follows logical laws; that rationality is the best measure. These problems are laced into the one above, as you can see, so it's harder for me to tease this argument out of these. However, let's just simplify for a second and see where I've come so far.

If we can measure God's existence along a spectrum of probability, I'm willing to concede that the complexity of the universe is not going to push the probability any closer to 100%. That being said, the "Who made God?" question isn't going to push it any closer to 0%, either. And that's where Dawkins leaves us--right where we started. He most certainly doesn't get us within sight of "almost certainly does not exist."
As he argues that a rational person ought not believe in God because of this improbability, and that we therefore must only deal with religion in its this-world effects, and that, since religion's real-world effects are (according to him), negative, we must do away with religion. If God's existence is not improbable, however, then the rest of the argument falls apart.

Of course, I disagree even further back; I don't think we can even measure God's probability. But I will always try to argue this way, and attack each part as individually as possible. That is always the best way to argue.

As a note, I'd like to say I'm less satisfied with the arguments on the post here. While I'm sure all of it's true, some of it feels like a cop-out to me. Specifically, my refutation of the "Who made God?" question feels a little weak. This being said, I'm absolutely certain that that question is nonsensical. I just don't feel I argued it well. My apologies for that.

Go to the Dawkins Directory

Dawkins' Style II

Previously I defined offensiveness as a major part of Dawkins' style. I believe I alluded to the possibility that this is what the more lauding (and therefore less laudible) reviewers may have been refering to when they said he was witty. One of the particularly noticeable parts of his "wit" include his analyses of passages he selected from various religious works or explications.l These are full of grand phrases and exaggerated criticisms. What these analyses almost invariably lack is, most surprisingly, analysis. That is, he doesn't exactly engage with the material, discuss it's points, or draw from it in any way. In the words of a professor, he doesn't explicate--in fact, if I were a TA grading this book as a paper, I would be forced to deduct significant marks because he refuses to explain his discussion of the passages he quotes. Therefore, I title this post as the second characteristic of Dawkins' style:

Lack of Explication

On page 17, Dawkins' presents a passage from a religious text (unfortunately, I returned the book and didn't write the passage down--foolish me). He then analyzes it in the following manner: "Every sentence drips with intellectual and moral cowardice!" He then moves on. Now there's something very important to note here, and that is that, if given only his analysis, the reader can have absolutely no idea what Dawkins' is criticizing. He gives no reasons for how he came to this conclusion. Instead, he treats the matter as though he were pointing out a simple fact, as though the reader has likely come to that conclusion herself and will immediately concur. At the very least, he expects that the reader could detect the "intellectual and moral cowardice" upon going back to the passage.

Now, you might claim, that's not fair. You haven't given us the passage; maybe it is obvious. This is true, and this is why I said, "foolish me." I wish I could give you the passage, and you could see for yourself how less-than-obvious the yellow was. That is hardly the point, however; the point is that he doesn't explicate.

On page 64, he calls an arguement "This grotesque piece of reasoning." If I recall correctly, he was here refering to an explanation of suffering. Perhaps the author pushed the reasoning a little far, or articulated it in an insensitive way. However, it was hardly "grotesque," neither in the actual meaning or the newer one (ie. disgusting). More importantly, he doesn't actual discuss what he thinks is wrong with the passage; he simply calls it grotesque and then says it's "a typical piece of theological reasoning." So he 1) calls one example 'grotesque,' without explanation, and then 2) casts all theology in the same light, without explanation.

On the next page (65), Swinburg's quotation--"Too much evidence might not be good for us"--incenses Dawkins. He rages about it for a few lines, yet in all his upset he doesn't once tell us why it makes him angry. Now, I can guess at why, but that's the thing: it's only guessing. I can't actually deal with his argument, since he never articulates it.

Here I have primarily dealt with explication in the English-major sense--how he does not explain what the quotations he has chosen say. He doesn't pull apart the language and show how he gets his analysis. He gives a quotation, and then he gives a value-judgement. In all of the above cases--and more--he doesn't even remotely deal with the content or the style (and the adjectives he uses seem more style-related than content-related). As a reader, I am at a loss as to where he gets his conclusions. Now, Dawkins is a scientist. The principle of the scientific method is that hypotheses must be theoretically disprovable (this is the primary problem with M-theory). If Dawkins doesn't give explain his analyses, I have no way to disprove them, even theoretically. Therefore, in this book, Dawkins violates the very principles he so vehementally espouses.

I hope that was clear. If not, think of it this way. If you were to write a paper, you'd be asked to show your process. That way, readers could tell how you got there, and would be able to agree or disagree based on something other than your word. They'd therefore be more likely to believe you. Dawkins doesn't show his process. Where does that leave him?

In fact, this doesn't even begin to cover "lack of explication." He often makes assertions, not based on passage-analysis, that he utterly fails to support or explain. That, however, will show up in other posts--likely both Dawkins' Style III and assorted Disputing Dawkinses.

Go to the Dawkins Directory

Disputing Dawkins II

I realize that Dawkins lays down groundwork before this, but I will get to that, I think, in the "Style" segments, because most of it consists of 'lack of explication.' Instead, I will get to one point which is both crucial and ultimately faulty. That point is this:

Argument for The Spectrum of Probability

Dawkins wants to argue that the existence of God is terribly improbable, and that we should therefore not believe in God. A believer's first objection might be that God is not terribly improbable; a believer's second objection might be that, even if God's existence was improbable, that should not necessitate our unbelief--or, more accurately, our belief in God's non-existence. I will get to these. My first objection, however, is that God's existence ought not be measured in probabilities at all.

The first challenge to objecting to Dawkins' claim that we can determine roughly how probable it is that God exists is that he makes no argument in favour of it. In other words, I have no actual proofs or logical process to dismantle. We ought, in spite of this, to look a bit at what Dawkins does say.

"Let us, then, take the idea of a spectrum of probabilities seriously, and place human judgements about the existence of God along it, between two extremes of opposite certainty." (pg. 50)


The thing that I truly enjoy about this passage is his use of the British "judgement" over the American "judgment"; generally I prefer British spellings, and this is certainly no exception. Other than that, of course, I find the passage unfortunate and ludicrous. The thing is that this passage is preceded with not an argument, as the "then" at the beginning would generally indicate, but simply the assertion that he does not reject the idea of determining the probability of God.

The only attempt he makes at persuasion, other than mentioning his personal feeling that indeed this method is useable, is to reason by analogy. There is a considerable hazard in reasoning by analogy; analogies work only along the lines in which the two objects compared actually bear resemblence. I do not know enough logical terminology to make myself clearer, so I will use an example.

"People's personalities are like icebergs; the part you see is only/less than 10% of the whole. That an iceberg seems long and narrow on the surface does not mean that the iceberg is not broad and roundish beneath the water. Similarly, a person who appears to be narrow-minded and ungenerous may in fact be revealed as open-minded and generous after getting to know him."

So far, the analogy works. People and icebergs are similar in discrepency between appearance and reality. Now let's watch the analogy break down a little.

"When icebergs break from the iceflow, they float away to melt in warmer waters, never returning to their origins. Therefore, when people--who are like icebergs--leave their parents' home, they will not last nearly as long as they would at home, and they will never return."

I'm sure any reader will agree that this is a silly arguement, and will be able to point out that, as far as population movement is considered, people and icebergs vary significantly and therefore what is true of icebergs is not also true of people. I am not trying to insult anyone's intellegince with this example. I want to make clear where the reasoning by analogy succeeds and where it fails, and an easy example should help more than a complex one. I hope I have succeeded.

So let's move on to Dawkins. He essentially argues, if it can be called such, for the Spectrum of Probability by calling on Russell's teapot, the Quest unicorn, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. For those who have not heard of these and are not interested in searching Wikipedia, here is a rundown of each.

Russell's teapot: Bertrand Russell once posited the existence of a teapot orbiting the sun that is too small and too far from Earth to be seen by human technologies. He then went on the claim that if he told people that they ought not doubt its existence because it could not be disproven, those people would think him mad; if ancient books and powerful institutions, however, instilled in our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents that this is true ever since they were children, people would think one mad for claiming it can be disproven.

The Quest Unicorn: Camp Quest, which could be called a radically liberal organization if there ever was one, encourages its campers to try and disprove the existence of an invisible, inaudible unicorn that cannot be felt, smelt, or tasted. This is related to the Invisible Pink Unicorn, which has the wonderful attributes of being both colourless and colourful. Camp Quest, of course, was trying to train its campers to be atheists. Don't let anyone tell you that atheist indoctrination doesn't exist.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster: The FSM is the diety of the parody religion Pastafarianism. The religion was founded by a student of a Kansas school to protest the decision by the school board to require Intelligent Design be taught as an alternative to evolution. He crafted a wonderful story of revelation incorporating pirates and Eight I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts. While the Quest Unicorn was a parody of God, Pastafarianism is a parody religion.

Dawkins brings these up to demonstrate this point: we are willing to discuss how probable it is that Russell's teapot, the Quest Unicorn, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster exist, so we ought, by the same token, be willing to discuss how probable it is that God exists. No one can "prove" that any of the four exists or doesn't exist using traditional empirical, or even logical, standards. Therefore, reasons Dawkins, it is perfectly fair--and possible--to try to determine God's probability.

I do not want to make a straw man of this argument. Dawkins is not claiming that we can put a precise number on it. That would truly be absurd. Among other things, the spectrum is a continuum, and the human mind is quite simply incapable of conceiving the difference between, say, 98% and 99%, let alone 98.888...% and 99%. Dawkins is suggesting, I think, of a sort of range in which with think the probability lies, being constantly refined by incoming evidence. This is much more reasonable, and something we do frequently in other cases in our lives.

The problem, instead, lies in the analogies. None of the three Dawkins gives resembles God closely enough for this analogy to bear out. This is why.

Russell's teapot: It is certainly the case that we are, with today's technologies, incapable of proving the teapot's non-existence. In fact, it is possible that we are even theoretically incapable of disproving the teapot's existence, since absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However, the teapot is unlike God in a few significant ways.

First, you'll notice that "today's technologies" feature importantly in the premise. If our astronomical technology improves, we may be able to actually find Russell's teapot. I suppose Dawkins will claim that, if a future astronaut were to see a piece of servingware out the window of a future spacevessel, it could always be a hallucination. That being said, it could, eventually, be possible to scientifically verify the existence of Russell's teapot in the future, given the requisite increase in technology. I really doubt that this can be said of God, and I will argue that in the next point. The difference here is that even if you cannot in theory disprove beyond all doubt the existence of the teapot, you could still theoretically prove its existence, if it exists; the existence of God, alternately, even if true, could not be proven using scientific methods, as far as I am aware.

Second, we can measure the properties of a teapot. We cannot measure the properties of God. Despite the volumes written on theology in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, no one in any of these religions--or no one who really represents any of these religions--claims to have a real idea of what God is or looks like. It would be ridiculous to assume one could. Most of the properties attributed to God include the prefix 'omni-,' or include the word 'ultimate,' or are related to themes like 'infinity,' 'eternity,' or 'perfection.' Notice that these all preclude the very possibility of measurement, which requires some sort of limits. Believers frequently believe that God's existence encompasses, and then exceeds, all reality. My point, then, is that in the case of the teapot, we know what we're looking for. We have examples of teapots to analyze. We can use our examples to determine how quickly the celestial teapot might be moving, how far it may be from the sun, how it might have arrived there, etc. When we don't find pieces of china in the predicted locations when we know we could possibly stumble across it, we can then talk about the probabilities of its existence. However, when we can neither experience the entirety of God, nor be certain that we would recognize whatever part of His presence we might experience, the resemblance breaks down.

A summary of why Russell's teapot can be discussed in terms of probability and God perhaps may not: not only could we theoretically find the teapot some day, but we also know what we're looking for. Put differently, if we never find the teapot, this is not because we never could find it in the first place or that we might not be recognising it when we see it; if we never "find" God, or evidence for Him, it could be because we never could find evidence in the first place or that we might not be recognising it when we see it.

Quest Unicorn: In this case, we cannot be sure that we could ever find the unicorn, if it existed. Further, we're not sure what it looks like or how to measure it when we find it. In these respects, it bears greater resemblance to God than the teapot did. However, it still differs in an important respect. It is entirely contained within the dimensions of reality of which we are aware. It exists along the planes (cubes? supercubes?) of space and time. Not only this, it presumably has a concrete location in both, and absences in both, instead of filling all of both. God, as He is described by most religions, exceeds all of these measures, as we discussed before. Therefore, assuming it is possible to ever come up with a probability for the Unicorn's existence, this may not necessarily transfer to the case of God. It is my understanding that probabilities, as we understand them, refer to things that happen entirely in our world--certainly they refer only to things that our comprehensive faculties can grasp. I'll refer you to the original quotation, and you'll notice that "human judgements" are in fact the measure. In other words, if you not only have little idea what you're talking about, but aren't even capable of conceiving the places where you would have to look to find it, it's pretty unlikely you could determine a probability for it's existence. While the unicorn at least would exist in a way with which we are familiar, God may not.

Flying Spaghetti Monster: This one, of the three, bears the greatest resemblance to God, and is the hardest to dismiss. For one, it is possible to claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists at least partly outside of this reality in the way that God may. The FMS may not be constrained by time and space--I'm not sure about Pastafarian "doctrine," but I will assume for now that they give the FMS most of the attributes of the Abrahamic God, for safety's sake. So why does the analogy not bear out? Well, it may not be a case of the analogy is imperfect. It may be a case that what Dawkins claims about the FMS isn't true.

For one, Dawkins claims that we'd be willing to discuss whether the FMS probably exists. Personally, I don't think I am. I do not believe the FMS exists. If I were forced to wager on it, I'd wager against. But this is not because I think I know what the probability is. Despite Sager's (I think it was Sager) refusal to commit to believing or disbelieving in aliens, I would imagine he'd be able to wager one way or the other if he were forced to (say he has to make a decision between two courses of action; if he takes course A, he will if aliens exist or will live if they do not, while if he takes course B, he will live if aliens exist or will die if they do not). That doesn't mean a probability exists or not; it just means that he has to make a decision and so will make one anyway. My disbelieving in the FMS has nothing to do with probability. It has to do more with intuition--and faith, but I hardly expect you to buy that before recognising that you are of a faith yourself.

But say you push this. Say I am weasling out of this and that, in fact, I do think that it is more probable that the Christian God exists than that the FSM exists, even though I claim not to think so. Maybe I truly believe that I don't think this, but my psychology is muddled and I in fact do. Perhaps it is similar to how I implied that you have a faith whether you know it or not in the previous paragraph. Let us, for the sake of arguement, say this is the case. I would then like to pint out that to claim something is more probable than something else is completely irrelevant to how probable it is on its own. For example, take the following typical puzzle: "John is taller than Jane. Carl is taller that Jane. Mark is taller than Carl, but not Audrey. John is taller than Audrey. Is John taller than Carl?" You can answer this puzzle fairly easily. But what if the final question were replaced with "How tall is Jane?" Obviously you cannot know for sure; in fact, you have no idea at all. But maybe you object that this analogy doesn't work, because height does not have limits...these people could be as small as ameoba or as large as planets. Probabilities, however, are bracketed squarely between 0% and 100%. Fine, I say. How about this: There are two girls (or guys, if you prefer) to whom you are equally attracted in all ways. You are contemplating which to ask out; they are sitting in ear shot of each other, and you can only ask one out--to ask the second out if the first rejects you would insult both of them, and that would ruin any chances with either in the future. You decide, then, to ask out that one which will more probably say yes. Therefore, you choose Bobby, who will be more likely to say yes than Sam (notice gender-neutral nicknames). However, this does not necessarily entail that you know, or really have any idea, how likely it is that Bobby will accept. It's not even necessarily the case that you have any concrete idea why it is more likely. Certainly you don't have to have calculated the probability out for each and then determined which is greater numerically.

You can now step in to object that this isn't really a half-decent probability. This is too subjective; this is too intuitive. Well, perhaps. But I feel the same way about God (Yahweh, Theos, Allah, whichever you prefer) vs. the FSM. You don't need the numbers to say, "Really, I feel Yahweh is more likely to exist than the Flying Spaghetti Monster." And this is all Dawkins can claim people do. I don't think many people feel that they're willing to produce evidence as to why the FSM does not exist. They just feel that it isn't. Maybe it has something to do with this common sense stuff that Dawkins dislikes. Maybe it has to do with the Holy Spirit, a particularly useful entity, at least as far as philosophical arguement goes, which is likely why Dawkins never brings this up (I'll deal with why it's potentially dangerous for Dawkins at a later date). Maybe it has to do with alien thought rays, or the influence of the Tao, or inclinations to a Platonic Truth. It certainly doesn't have to be mathematical probabilities, somewhere between 0% and 100% and adding up to no more than 100. Probable may in fact be more metaphorical than technical language, something like the inverse of phycist's use of 'God' to mean 'laws of the universe' that Dawkins laments so much. We use mathematical language to discuss intuitive notions (or metitative truths).

As I think I have fairly demonstrated, Dawkins attempts to reason by analogy. This is simply not adequate. The first two analogies do not accurately compare, and the third doesn't prove his point anyway. Actually, none of them do. In all three cases, Dawkins says that people are willing to discuss these entities' probabilities of existence. In no way does Dawkins make a legitimate case that we are actually allowed to do so under the laws of logic. Even if reasoning by analogy were valid in these cases, it wouldn't mean anything--the cases he is making the analogy with only prove that people are willing to talk about it, regardless of whether they should. Dawkins ought to know this. His argument actually depends on the majority being wrong.

Unfortunately, I have failed at any semblence of brevity. While a shame, I think that this long exposition has been necessary. This is very close to the core of Dawkins' argument, and if I succeed in dismantling it, his whole enterprise will collapse. After all, if God's existence cannot be measured for probability, then God's existence cannot be enormously improbable. If God's existence is not enormously improbable, it is not irrational to believe that God exists. If rational people can believe that God exists (and if we believe that truth is valuable, as Dawkins seems to), then we cannot legitimately abolish belief in God, regardless of the evils it supposedly generates.

And I will point out that a sizeable number of the other "steps" in Dawkins' "argument" are faulty. I will deal with those later. I will even deal with them as though this premise were true. But I must emphasize that if I succeeded in proving that you cannot determine the probability of God, or at least that Dawkins does not demonstrate that you can, then it must follow that Dawkins' argument fails, as he builds from this premise. In fact, if a reasonable person could even think that you cannot determine the probability of God's existence, then his argument fails. This is why making this clear is of such importance.

Feel free to post rebuttals or calls for clarification. I cannot promise to respond, but I will try. I will promise that I won't dismiss any polite and well-argued objections, and that I will delete any impolite or not-argued objections. And I really don't expect any posts, since I suspect that only 2-4 people read this blog with anything even resembling regularity.

And this link goes to my Dawkins mission statement sort of page, in case you're wondering what's what. At some point I think I'll make a Dawkins-specific directory.

Well, good night, all, and God bless.

Go to the Dawkins Directory

Dawkins' Style I

In my previous post concerning Dawkins, entitled "Disputing Dawkins I," I looked more at Dawkins rhetorical ploys more than his argument. Here, I will again look at his rhetoric, but this time not in the sense of, "How does he try to convince?" but more like a book reveiw, or, "Is his style any good?"

One of the primary features I noticed about his style will nicely double as the subtitle of this post.

Offensiveness

Dawkins spends some time discussing the level of respect that he ought to level toward religions. His conclusion seems to be, "Some, but not much." By this he seems to mean, about the same as the average person affords political views (which is less than traditional good manners suggests). As usual, his semantics are a bit slippery and I'm having trouble deciding what he means by "respect," but I'll let this pass, since it's a digression from my point. This discussion of respect come before the caveat at the end of his introduction that he will not deliberately offend anyone, but he also won't "don kid gloves" when discussing religion. Fair enough. This is how he ends the chapter.

Then he opens the following chapter with this gem (page 31):

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a mysogonistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

These are literally the first words following his claim that he will not be intentionally offensive. Do I need to explicate this? Since one of my up-coming criticisms of Dawkins is his failure to explicate anything he criticizes, I suppose I will. He calls the Judeo-Christian God "the most unpleasant character in all fiction." Perhaps he has not read about or heard of Cthulu, Pennywise the Clown, Flagg, or goodness knows how many baddies that fiction, and the horror genre in general, has produced. That being said, he's got to realize that, even if his litany of insults is true (and that's fifteen adjectives and four nouns), this is an exaggeration.

These first words goes beyond not donning kid gloves. The description is obviously and avoidably offensive, and completely unnecessary for his argument. Anyone who reads this passage must see the offensiveness of it to someone who believes in, and in fact worships, "the God of the Old Testament"; either Dawkins is deliberately insulting, regardless of his claim not to be, or he is insensitive to the point of sociopathy.

This is simply a taste of his deliberate offensiveness. Here's a little more:

• pg. 5: "...dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads..." When's the last time someone called you a ____-head and meant it kindly?


• pg. 16: "...exposes the weakness of the religious mind." Not only do most people no longer use the definite article for a group--imagine the horror such a phrase as "the female mind," "the African mind," "the plumber mind," or, for that matter, "the atheist mind," would provoke--but refering to a whole demographic as weak-minded seems, well, a little offensive.


• pg. 20: "religious readers will be offended by what I have to say, and will find in these pages insufficient respect for their own particular beliefs (if not the beliefs others treasure)." The parentheses' contents, an implication that religious readers are unsympathetic to the religions of other readers, were unnecessary. I was certainly offended on behalf of any Muslim readers for his disgusting comments about their practices and beliefs (see last bullet for an example).


• p. 36: "I suppose that, in the ditzily unreal intersection of theology and feminism, existence might be a less salient attribute than gender." I think he just called feminists ditzy. He claims that his consciousness has been raised by the feminists, but the use of "ditzy" to describe self-affirmed women belies that claim quite a bit.


• p. 252: "Obnoxious as that doctrine [that Jesus asked Judas to betray him] is..." This is about the third time he calls a person or belief "obnoxious." I'm not really even sure what he means by this. It's seems to me that he's just throwing in insults that he feels like using.


• pg. 253: calls some particular belief "barking mad."


• pg. 308: of Islamic children, "nodding their innocent little heads up and down while they learned every word of the holy book like demented parrots." The movement from "innocent little heads" to "demented parrots" was harsh, that's for sure. I can see where he draws the imagery from, but I think most people would agree that there's something wrong about that.

It seems, to me at least, that this is not simply discussing religion with the same respect would of politics or artistic expression. These are deliberate insults that neither advance his argument nor fit, as far as I can tell, under the category of "wit," of which the reviewers on the book jacket claim Dawkins has an abundance. I stand by my previous claim--either Dawkins is intentionally offensive, or he is insensitive to the point of sociopathy. I suppose there are other options, such as idiocy or a Canadian-English/England-English translation barrier, but I'm not convinced by these.

Yet again, this does not disprove Dawkins argument. What this post does do (I hope), is provide some indication why any religious person has the right to be blindingly furious when someone calls this book "amazing," "witty," or "a must-read." Containing as it does blatant stereotyping, hateful language, and an open disrespect for, not people's religions, but people's feelings, self-worth, and sanity, I am horrified to read people's unconditioned support for this book. Had he stuck to his argument I would not be nearly as upset about this book as I am. He has the right, I suppose, to argue against religion. He does not have the right to slander religious people in this way.

And so, to all supporters of Dawkins, heed this warning: if you ever support this book in my earshot without the caveat that the descriptions he uses are appalling, I will publicly accuse you of hate crimes against all religious peoples.

Go to the Dawkins Directory

Disputing Dawkins I

The Power of Rhetoric

Well, I've been wallowing around, waiting to get access to the computer and, to be honest, the courage to attempt to articulate all that I see wrong with Dawkins' so-called argument. I will begin with the Word document I made of the first chapter or so.

As the McGraths pointed out in their book, Dawkins uses extensive rhetorical devices in addition to logical argument. I hadn't the time nor the patience to examine every sentence for this, but let's look at an early one for a taste of it. This passage comes in the introduction--spread over pages 5 and 6, to be precise.

Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design). Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this, which is surely [pg break] a work of Satan. But I believe there are plenty of open-minded people out there: people whose childhood indoctrination was not too insidious, or for other reasons didn’t ‘take’, or whose native intelligence is strong enough to overcome it. Such free spirits should need only a little encouragement to break free of the vice of religion altogether.

Here Dawkins creates a dichotomy for us. The first category is made of "dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads." The second category is made of "free spirits." The faith-heads are religious, the result of indoctrination, who likely won't read the book. Dawkins also indicates, through negative definition, that the faith-heads are closed-minded. Look at this wording: "But I believe there are plenty of open-minded people out there." This is a shift from the first, strongly implying that the open-minded people are a different sort from the faith-heads. If it were a sonnet, it would be called a volta. The second category, the free-spirited people, are open-minded. They are intelligent, or have resisted their "childhood indoctrination," or didn't receive such brainwashing. Those who fit in the open-minded people category, therefore, are already resisting religion by the time they read the book. "A little encouragement" will allow them to break into the free pastures of glorious atheism, escaping from the sheep-pen of "the vice of religion."

Notice what this does: it primes the unsuspecting reader to think of themselves in terms of this dichotomy. The reader can choose between being religious, closed-minded, unintelligent, and brainwashed, or being open-minded, intelligent, independent of thought, and a fledgling atheist. Further, Dawkins almost seems to say, "If you finish this book without having turned atheist, then you are not open-minded and your native intelligence is not strong enough to overcome the intellectual abuses your parents brought upon you." Well, he does say this, but it's all implicit. And if the reader doesn't watch out for this, if the reader thinks the introduction is "safe", if the reader doesn't employ critical reading and just let's the meaning sink it...then the reader will be forced to make a decision between one of the two camps.

What this all leaves out, of course, is that the possibility exists that you could be an open-minded, intelligent, religious person--or, for that matter, a closed-minded, unintelligent, atheistic person. Or, really, someone who falls somewhere else. And I must point out that this part of the book comes before he even hints to a reason why he would consider religious people to be closed-minded. This, then, is not a culmination of a line of thought, but what he opens with.

Let's ask these questions, to which I don't have answers: What does he mean by open-mindedness? What does he mean by "native intelligence"? What methods of immunization would a Christian reading his book have? Does Dawkins suspect that critical reading, or the questioning of motives, methods, and assumptions be among those resistences?

My overall conclusions about this paragraph are fairly simple: Dawkins here attempts to divide his audience between a set of dichotomies that are heavily weighted to one end. (If you know anything about the creation of dichotomies, you won't be surprised to find that all the negative sides correspond, and all the positive sides correspond.) Dawkins then invites the reader to pick one side of the dichotomy by either being convinced by him or not, and he dresses up the side that is convinced to look much prettier than the other side. Easy as pie. Luckily for me, and unluckily for Dawkins, I wasn't fooled.

All of this discussion does not come close to suggesting that Dawkins' argument is faulty. Instead, I begin with this close reading to indicate how Dawkins primes his audience to believe what he wants to tell them. If you are among those who believe(d) what Dawkins writes, and wonder how you could be so convinced without there being any argument at all, as I claimed previously, will claim now, and will substantiate later, then rest with this knowledge: Dawkins had brainwashed you with clever rhetoric, but if you read my words and the words of many others who have seen through his tomfoolery and prestidigitation, you can break free of the vice of Dawkins altogether.

Go to the Dawkins Directory

The Dawkins Debate

I finished Dawkins last night. It had an interesting ending, I must say. Nothing to do with the topic of the book, no conclusion, but...interesting.

I'm not going to start my review/dispute tonight. I'm just too tired to start it now, ya ken? But I'll outline my process, and what I have in mind for future "Dawkins" labelled posts.

At the beginning of the book, I read at the computer with an open Word document in front of me, typing in various responses and comments under assorted headings (poor sportsmanship; needs explication/evidence; concessions I'm willing to make; faulty logic; places where he displays his ignorance of religion; interesting ideas). I realized, though, that I was hogging the computer when I did this, so I transfered to writing in a notebook. This allowed me to read and respond anywhere, including in my bunk before I shut the lights out. It also necessitated that I record everything strictly in chronological order, rather than under headings, but that's actually fine, since the headings limited my responses. As an interesting aside, the notebook I used was the one that I usually bring to church to make notes about the sermon[1]. I thought this notebook was the most appropriate of all my paper caches for this particular project.

I did begin to read The Dawkins Delusion? by the McGraths, but I won't be able to finish it before I have to return the books to the library. It did give me an idea about what the authors thought about TGD and what direction they were going to take in refuting it. This is interesting enough, of course, but I'd already started to sketch out a response throughout the notes I made about the book, and so I'm not too worried about trying to finish The Dawkins Delusion?. Maybe later?

I intend to structure my response to Dawkins' book in various series of sub-themed posts running concurrently. I'll begin with a straight-up refutation of the parts that I can refute and think are worth refuting. This includes the critical points of his book; if I succeed, he will have no remaining argument[2]. As I go, I will try to point out the assorted assertions with which I either wholeheartedly agree or am willing to concede because it isn't relevant/I don't pretend to know the answer. This series I'll likely call "Disputing Dawkins I, II, etc." In these I will stick to argument. I'll also run a series, maybe consistent of only one or two posts, that indicates the places where Dawkins' is deliberately offensive[3]. This will, of course, be non-exhaustive, as I can't be expected to write posts discussing better than half of the pages of a 300-page book. I'll also include assorted stylistic errors. These I will call something like "Dawkins' Style." The third more argumentative series of posts will correct the various misrepresentations of religion as a whole and religious traditions in particular, at least in so far as I know them. These will be something like "Dawkins' Misrepresentations of Religion."

In the interests of being fair, I will also include "Things I Appreciated when Reading Dawkins," which is fairly self-evident, and "Things I Learned Reading Dawkins," which is also fairly self-evident[4]. If there's anything else I want to post about that I isn't covered in any given series, I'll call it "Dawkins Moment 1, 2, etc."

And that's that, I suppose. Oh, I'll mention one basic methodological assumption I'm making. Unlike most papers I have to write for class, I'm putting the onus of Dawkins to make his point. I will try to provide evidence/argument for all of my points, but I want to indicate that Dawkins starts out his book stating that he intends to convert all of his readers to atheism. He sets up that his goal is to convince me, the reader, of his views. My only goal is to throw as many wrenches as possible into his argument. I seek not to convert anyone in these posts; I instead want to 'block' Dawkins from being able convince any of my readers, or to show them that Dawkins' book isn't in fact convincing at all. So if there is a case in which I will only be able to throw doubt on the issue instead of argue effectively for a certain position, than that is enough for me. [5]

That's all on that for tonight.

Goodnight, all.

________________________________
[1] The practice of taking notes in church seems odd to some people, I realize. My church actually gives space on the bulletin for sermon notes, and provides pens in most of the pews. It is a student church, and notetaking is a habit most of us share. Usually, if I don't write it down, I'll lose the trajectory of the sermon.
[2] Some hypothetical readers would point out that Dawkins didn't actually have anything you'd call an "argument" in the first place. I'll get to this in the "Disputing Dawkins" posts.
[3] It will be convenient to point out at this juncture that I am constructing a fictional entity called "Dawkins" to describe the speaker-figure, and not the historical person of Richard Dawkins who did the actual penning of the book. I write the following for formalist readers who would prefer that I use "speaker" instead of "Dawkins," as per avoiding the Intentional Fallacy: most of my readers will be more comfortable with a name instead of a phantom construction, and I will always try to be clear that I cannot attribute any of the ideas I point out to the historical Dawkins himself. In this case, though, I think it's clear that the historical Dawkins is either deliberately offensive, or insensitive to the point of sociopathy.
[4] These things I learned will be more a self-discovery than the reception of interesting facts provided by Dawkins.
[5] And speaking of method, I'll talk about these footnotes. I noticed that I use parentheses too often, and so I will now try to point parenthetical ideas to important to omit but too tangental to include in the body into these footnotes. I hope it works.

Go to the Dawkins Directory

Halfway through Dawkins

Alright, I just finished the chapter on "Why There Is Almost Certainly No God."

Has anyone read this book? Has anyone gone past this chapter? Does he ever explain why (he thinks) there is almost certainly no God? Does he? If so, please let me know. Because I seemed to think it might happen in this chapter, and it didn't. (Or maybe I missed it...somehow?)

I especially thought it might have been supposed to happen in the chapter when he ended it by saying (paraphrased very slightly for effect), "And that is why there is almost certainly no God." I was left to think, "Wait, what is why...?"

As I said before, I want to wait until I've finished the book before a launch a formal response. However, if he is really done arguing for God's improbability, and is really now working on explaining 1) why there is religion and 2) why it is bad, there's going to be a bit of a problem. He hasn't even done what he said he had wanted to do/had succeeded in doing with this chapter, and the rest of the book promises to rest on this chapter having proved its point.

OK, he gives a shot at it. But he starts with all sorts of interesting premises (some of which I find problematic anyway), and then he tries to refute a few points, and then he makes some assertions, and then he assembles them all into a list. But he never explains where his assertions come from, he tries to justify his premises (or those he explicitly states) with reasoning by analogy (which will send any half-decent philosopher's alarm bells ringing, and I suspect that any self-respecting scientist--who really is a special type of philosopher--wouldn't even both with reasoning by analogy anyway). And then he touts his refutations as proofs. And the list, when assembled, doesn't even prove God's improbability anyway.

To break down what I just said into more logical terms: 1) his premises are problematic; 2) his method is faulty; and 3) he doesn't even arrive at his point.

Really, I must express shock and frustration. Shock because I had heard how rational this man was supposed to be, and frustration because so many people seem to buy into this.

If I have any readers at all, some of them will likely be angry at me by this point. I am assuming, angry readers, that you believe that Dawkins argument makes sense. Please, I ask you, if you made sense of it, explain it to me. It's possible, I suppose, that his style just sucks and I can't make out the argument because it's poorly presented.

Perhaps, though, you ought to hold on to your explanation until I post about my reading of it. Then you can see where I'm coming from, and what my specific objections to his "argument" are.

The point of this post, of course, was to vent about that chapter more than to refute it. It's a sort of, "Here's where English Clergyman is right now, emotionally and intellectually speaking." I was told by a friend that he prefers reading blogs about people's lives, which he finds interesting, and less about other stuff--perhaps he meant short fiction and links/excerpts I find interesting, which is what this blog started out as. Well, this is about my life today, I suppose. More accurately, this is about my general frustration in this last hour or hour and a half.

Bah. I no longer like this project. Also, I have to return the book on Wednesday. I likely won't have the time to read The Dawkins Delusion?, which I was looking forward to.

Update

G'day.

Haven't finished Dawkins' TGD yet, but I'm working on it. I'm starting to see a real argument develop. I just got through his refutation of arguments for the existence of God; this interested me only in the rhetorical devices Dawkins used and the places where he betrayed his ignorance of religion. I generally don't stand much by the proofs of God, myself, and so don't care much whether or not he disproves them--he'd hardly be the first. Ever since I've been dissuaded from thinking that Pascal's wager is convincing, I've generally taken to shooting down proofs of God when I see them, too. Proof, really, is not the point, and most religious people will tell you that with no qualms at all. But I'll get to this later when I refute the book for real.

I'm just getting into his evolution bit, concerning "Why there is almost certainly no God." We'll see how that goes.

The problem is that I generally have much more fun reading Freakonomics, which is terribly clever and witty. I don't know whether it's good economics, but it's certainly thought-provoking. I don't want to get all jittery before I try to go to bed, and that's usually what an intellectual argument--even with a book--does to me. Freakonomics doesn't do that to me.

Well, I ought to go to bed soon. I wish I could relate some cool anecdote here, but, alas, I ought to go.

In that case, adieu.

Dawkins' book

Well, I started reading The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. It seems to be a book that is surrounded with controversy and has a lot of popularity in undergraduate academia...or at least the particular part I'm in. I was pretty sure from the outset (when I first heard the premise) that the book would be laughable, but given the amount of people, presumably reasonable people, who say it's convincing (albiet ones who were already convinced before reading it), I thought I'd really better read it before judging.

I had expected it to be either an intelligent book that was slightly infuriating in its good logic (ie. it wasn't easy for me to shoot down), or a book full of ridiculously transparent arguments. The latter would have been immediately satisfying, but worrisome in the long run (ie. how can so many people buy this? what's the world coming to?); the former would be more frustrating, also worrisome in the long run (ie. what if he manages to convince too many people?), but more rewarding when/if I puzzle my way through the argument.

What I did not expect is a book with no argument at all, but almost pure rhetoric, laced with logical fallacies. Now, I am not even half-way through yet, so I can't come down on Dawkins too hard. By now I know it's stylistically flawed and that, were I a TA, I would be forced to give him a poor grade for lack of explication and general organizational problems. But I cannot yet speak for the argument. I had just expected for there to be one by this point (page 70 something, I think?).

Anyway, when I'm done I'll post my assesment of it. Don't worry, atheist readers (if there are any--I don't really think my blog is terribly well-read), I will concede the good points he has made, and the parts that really are funny. But I will also point out the parts that seem calculatedly offensive (or at least some of them; there are many) and the parts where he claims to have proved his point when he hasn't even begun to prove it.

I have to take breaks when reading it, though, or else I get all hyped up on thinking and can't sleep, and then I'm all stupid at work.