Comments on: Yet Another Review of The God Delusion

By: Errancy

Errancy — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:44:08 +0000

I do like Dawkins as an evolutionary biologist, but he should stay away from the philosophy of religion until he’s spent some time studying it. He seems to think that philosophy isn’t a proper subject and so that anyone can discuss it on an equal footing. This leads him to distort and caricature arguments (e.g. he represents Aquinas’s Third Way as being about physicality, when it’s about contingency), and fall back on anecdotes (including one in which he wastes everyone’s time at a seminar because he doesn’t understand the ontological argument) to pad out his superficial and simplistic discussions. It’s more embarrassing than convincing.

By: blueollie

blueollie — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:21:06 +0000

By what criterion do you decide which passages are symbolic, which are literal” (pp. 238, 244)? This is a great question. Unfortunately, Dawkins ignores the fact that biblical scholars can answer it, for they are trained in methods of biblical research, exegesis and interpretation. Had Dawkins actually been interested in his opponents’ answer, he could have had a fruitful and fascinating discussion about whether biblical and theological methods of study meet standards of academic rigor. Instead, he asked the question simply as a matter of rhetoric, because his whole point in this chapter is to argue that westerners don’t actually derive their morals from their holy books (p. 249).
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Actually, Dawkins doesn’t ignore the fact that Bible scholars can answer these questions. The point is that Bible scholars use *the tools of logic and reason* to answer the questions of the following type: “what was the original text? What did the original say? What were the sources? What traditions did this draw from” In short, the “Holy Book” is, in fact, subordinate to reason which effectively rebuts the claim that they get their morals “from the Bible”.

By: Atheistic attacks on Christianity « de-conversion

Atheistic attacks on Christianity « de-conversion — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:34:40 +0000

[...] their overtly negative views. Had I not read The End of Faith and listened to a portion of The God Delusion audiobook, I might have taken quite a dim view of Dawkins and Harris, considering them to be taking [...]