Review of Richard Dawkins ’ The God Delusion by Doug Johnson.

Slides:



Advertisements
Similar presentations
Lets Revise ... Believing in God.
Advertisements

Believing Where We Cannot Prove Philip Kitcher
Anselm On the Existence of God. “Nor do I seek to understand so that I can believe, but rather I believe so that I can understand. For I believe this.
Recent versions of the Design Argument So far we have considered the classical arguments of Aquinas and Paley. However, the design argument has attracted.
Criticisms of the Cosmological Argument
Philosophy and the proof of God's existence
Genesis on a laptop God’s operations from the beginning.
Meditations on First Philosophy
Popper On Science Economics Lawlor. What is and inductive inference? Example: “All Swans are white” Needs an observation to confirm it’s truth.
The Substance of Faith An Evidence and Foundational Christian Curriculum Part 2.
Cosmological arguments for God’s existence.  Derived from the Greek terms cosmos (world or universe) and logos (reason or rational account).  First.
The Cosmological Argument St. Thomas Aquinas ( AD) Italian priest, philosopher.
The Cosmological Argument. This is an a posteriori argument There are many versions of it It is based on observation and understanding of the universe.
Purple pen of progress. 1.Explain key words or beliefs e.g. Big Bang, Evolution, Creation. 2.Respond to questions, ideas, arguments, comments in your book.
The Problem of Knowledge. What new information would cause you to be less certain? So when we say “I’m certain that…” what are we saying? 3 things you.
Miracles today Objectives To examine recent miracles Explore the importance of miracles for Christians.
The Teleological Argument October 7 th The Teleological Argument Learning Objective: To analyse the argument from Design, considering its strengths.
Atheist fundamentalism? What is it? Does it really exist?
The Cosmological Argument (Causation or ‘first cause’ theory)
Ross Arnold, Winter 2015 Lakeside institute of Theology Responding to the New Atheists March 13, 2015.
By: Bernard Gumbayan P4 12/13/11. Analyze the ways in which the theories of both Darwin and Freud challenged traditional European ways of thinking about.
Kevin Vandergriff. Prior Probability in Terms of Simplicity Christian Theism Specified Naturalism (Hypothesis of Indifference) 1 - A maximally powerful.
What Christianity explains that Naturalism cannot Naturalism (materialism) and Christianity (theism) are considered the two possible positions or worldviews.
Assessment.  Introduction… “Billions of people around the world are religious, following faiths such as Islam, Christianity and Buddhism…” “Why is it.
Origins: Where do we come from? Evolution/ Creation Intelligent Design.
Supra-Intellectual Faith Believing God in an Intellectualized Culture Part 3.
Recent versions of the Design Argument. Describe the teleological argument for the existence of God. 4KU An argument for the existence of God or a creator.
Why Does Anything at all Exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? Leibniz - the principle of sufficient reason.
Origins: Where do we come from? Evolution/ Creation Intelligent Design.
Belief and non-belief in God Objectives:  To introduce the section ‘Believing in God’ and keywords  To understand and explain what it means to be a theist,
Philosophy 1050: Introduction to Philosophy Week 10: Descartes and the Subject: The way of Ideas.
LO: I will evaluate Hume’s argument against Miracles. Starter: Responses to Andrew Wilson’s chapter.
World Views. How Consistent is Your World View? ( All your presuppositions together) Creation by God & Bible is True (belief in the Bible, and science)
Why I Believe... In God.
Hebrews 11: 6 "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who.
“Facts are not science – as the dictionary is not literature” –Martin H. Fischer If science is not facts, what is it?
In this course we will cover: Why believe in God? What do Catholics believe about God What is the source of these beliefs What do others believe about.
WHAT IS THE NATURE OF SCIENCE?. SCIENTIFIC WORLD VIEW 1.The Universe Is Understandable. 2.The Universe Is a Vast Single System In Which the Basic Rules.
David Hume By Richard Jones and Dan Tedham. Biographical Details Born in 1711 in Scotland. Major work: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) Contains.
Why Does Anything at all Exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? Leibniz - the principle of sufficient reason.
By Arunav, Aran, Humza.
A Conversation Between an Agnostic and a Christian (Con’t)
LO: I will evaluate Hume’s argument against Miracles. Hmk – Prepare presentations for Tuesday’s lesson.
CONCEPTS OF ORIGINS. Cosmology is the field of study that looks at how the universe came into being, why it looks as it does now, and what the future.
© Colin Frayn, The Straw Man Setting up a weaker version of a theory, claiming (falsely) that this is the true theory, and then disproving.
Arguments for the existence of GodProblems/reasons to be against COSMOLOGICAL (FIRST CAUSE) DESIGN/TELEOLOGICAL MIRACLES RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE MORALITY.
WORD STUDIES. The word of the day is “anthropic”
Arguments against the existence of God Do you believe in God? Why or why not?
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun nobody would be able to disprove my assertion But.
Can We Know That God Exists? Learning Set 3 Reasons For Christian Hope Chapters 5 & 6.
L/O: To explore Hume’s criticisms of the Design Argument.
Name three man-made objects Name three natural objects For example: Man-made object: Mobile phone Natural object: Sunflower.
Chapter 1: The cosmological argument AQA Religious Studies: Philosophy of Religion AS Level © Nelson Thornes Ltd 2008 Revision.
Believing in God (You only need Christian knowledge in this unit) Revise key aspects of the unit Create set of revision notes.
Revision Notes Courtesy of Mr Dixon. Instructions This PowerPoint has all the information you need to complete your Revision Booklets for the Science.
By Jagrav and Rahul.  Theist - A person who believes in God  Atheist - A person who believes there is no God  Agnostic - A person who believes we cannot.
The Copleston, Russell Debate Copleston’s Cosmological argument (1948 BBC radio debate)
Religious Studies Sigmund Freud: challenges to the moral argument.
Effective participator Atheism and the Media Richard Dawkins Aim: To understand what Richard Dawkins says about religion(L4). Goal: To consider the factors.
Week 2 Review.
Responses to the Design argument
ATHEISM & AGNOSTICISM HUMANISM - KS3
c) Strengths and weaknesses of Cosmological Arguments:
Dawkins’ The God Delusion: A Public Debate
The Ontological Argument Aim: To explore the attributes of God.
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.
Or Can you?.
Or Can you?.
Richard Dawkins and The God Delusion
Comparing Religions If you were God, which religion would you want people to follow? Why? Are all religions the same?
Presentation transcript:

Review of Richard Dawkins ’ The God Delusion by Doug Johnson

Defining Terms Like Skinner and Wittgenstein, Dawkins wants to define terms as they are used God defined: A supernatural creator that is appropriate for us to worship Avoids problems of idiosyncratic definitions such as “ God is the ultimate ”, “ God is energy ”, etc

Defining Terms Dawkins claims to be an atheist in the sense of a philosophical naturalist, who believes in nothing beyond the natural physical world  No supernatural creative intelligence  No soul  No miracles (besides natural occurrences we don ’ t understand yet)

Consciousness-Raising One of goals of books is to raise consciousness in the same way feminists did. Recognition of how language affects our world view (much like Whorf and Skinner) Example: Herstory versus history. As silly as it was, it focused people on neglect of recognition for women. Now if using word such as “ man ” instead of “ human ”, impossible to not to think of feminism for both feminists and non-feminists alike

Hypotheses Like many scientists, Dawkins invests heavily in Popperian ideas of hypothesis testing and falsification God Hypothesis: There exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence that deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us No God Hypothesis: Any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution

Belief Scale

Dawkins at 6 on scale: Agnostic only to extent agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden Tooth fairy, Mother Goose, unicorns, orbiting space teapots, Flying Spaghetti Monsters, Greek and Roman gods: All are undisprovable, yet nobody thinks existence is just as likely as non-existence.  Most of us tend to be around 6 for these things and consider ourselves atheists regarding them.  No-one says “ I consider the probability of unicorns existing to be 50/50, so we should be agnostic ”  Why not treat God the same? Burden of proof rests with believers  Just because you can ’ t disprove existence of unicorns doesn ’ t mean you can ’ t say they don ’ t exist  Just because you can ’ t disprove existence of God doesn ’ t mean you can ’ t say he doesn ’ t exist

Can ’ t absolutely disprove Unlike Popper, Dawkins does not think all conjectures should be held in equal regard until disproved Rather, some undisprovable things are judged less probable than other undisprovable things Cannot prove God ’ s non-existence, but only to the degree we can ’ t prove the non- existence of anything

Evidence Logical positivists said we don ’ t prove or disprove theories, rather we support a theory because of evidence in favor of it God Hypothesis: No evidence (elaborated next) No God Hypothesis: Evidence in form of evolution and other natural processes. Provides explanation for existence of entities whose improbability would otherwise rule them out

Popular “ Evidence ” for God Hypothesis: Argument from Design Nothing that we know of looks designed with being designed Hypothesis ’ flaw: Evolution counters this argument by providing excellent imitation of design

Popular “ Evidence ” for God Hypothesis: Argument from Improbability Complicated things such as the human eye, zebras, etc could not have occurred by chance The probability of life originating on Earth is as likely as a hurricane going through a junk yard and by chance assembling a Boeing 747

Popular “ Evidence ” for God Hypothesis: Argument from Improbability Hypothesis ’ flaw: However improbable human eyes and zebras being designed by chance, the existence of a even more complicated designer is even more improbable, Philosophers such as Hume pointed this out, although they could not imagine the alternative at the time Pragmatism would suggest our descriptions should be as economical as possible, thus something as complicated as a supernatural designer should be avoided There are alternatives besides either chance alone or design alone

More parsimonious explanation for biological improbability Large numbers: It has been estimated that there are between 1 billion and 30 billion planets in galaxy. At least a billion billion planets throughout the universe. The chemical model necessary for life (spontaneous arising of something equivalent to DNA) need only happen once on one planet among a billion billion planets over billions of years. Chance occurrence is not improbable in this setup

More parsimonious explanation for biological improbability Although chance can explain beginnings of life, cannot explain diversity of life and persuasive illusion of design Evolution supplies a plausible mechanism for diversity and complexity Large numbers combined with evolution is a more probable explanation for life than a supernatural intelligent designer who creates laws of how the universe works and periodically violates his own laws. Incoming evidence continues to support the former and weaken the latter (probability of God ’ s existence certainly less than 50%)

Falsification Dawkins sees scientists as very willing to discard belief if evidence conflicts (more in common with Popper than Kuhn) Recognizes that, in practice, not all scientists would do this. However, all scientists at least pay lip service to it and hold it as an ideal Thinks it is a strength that evolution could be disproved with single disconfirmation such as fossil rabbits in the Precambrian

Evidence Quote from Russell: What would you say to God if he came demanding to know why you didn ’ t believe in him. “ Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence. ” Evidence supports No God Hypothesis God is dangerous idea in that it is unhelpful and misleading. Tends to bring inquiry to an end. Very problematic for the same reasons Skinner thought hypothetical intervening variables as explanatory fictions were a problem One of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding (no need to think about why something happens, just say “ God did it ” )

“ If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him ” Religion might have beneficial effects, but those effects in no way increases the likelihood of religion ’ s claims Religion might help people to be moral, but this in no way increases likelihood of religion ’ s claims  Most people don ’ t get their morals from scripture anyways. Moral code of scripture is very different from moral code of society

Language and indoctrination Dawkins states it is form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs they are too young to have thought about (Jewish child, Muslim child, Christian child, etc) More proper to say “ child of Jewish parents ” or “ child of Muslim parents ” No reasonable person would speak of “ Marxist child ” or “ Republican child ”

End