Brian Peacock wrote:Your ontology is weak. God is just one of a vast number of mythological agents credited through the ages with the creation of the universe, and imagining God, with his host of blindly asserted and uniquely godly remits and responsibilities, to be a more likely universal progenitor than any of those other mythological agents, than any of the possible as yet unimagined or un-uttered agents, or than no agent at all, because there's no reason to think anything in particular in this regard, is turtles all the way down.
More improbability fallacies. Let's see some actual science here. Where's the detection, inspection, quantification and explanation to a scientific certainty that excludes absolutely all possibility of an intelligent agency we are currently unable to detect, inspect, quantify or explain? Oh, wait, that's self-explanatory isn't it: We don't have any scientific evidence
pointing in either direction, for or against the existence of some intelligent entity that could be responsible for the creation of this universe.
So, it's actually your ontology that's faulty.
Like the Creationist, to posit God on the basis of your own incredulity about the role and ability of science to secure its claims evidentially to your satisfaction is bogus, and hints at a basic misunderstanding about the role and operation of scientific endeavour.
Who's positing God? Not me. I've never posited or claimed that God exists or does not exist. I've repeatedly said quite clearly that I don't know the answer to that question. Dawkins and I happen to agree on the fact that the existence of God or gods is quintessentially a scientific question: Either God/gods exist or they do not exist. According to his own ontological orthodoxy science is able to determine the absolute truth with respect to the existence of God/gods because, ontologically speaking, his religious orthodoxy insists that all things are material and natural and are therefor subject to physical examination using the scientific method, and that nothing "supernatural" (as described by theists) exists except as a figment of human imagination, and therefore, since such imaginary concepts are immune to scientific investigation they are therefor false and imaginary.
Do you see the tautology involved? "God is a non-real imaginary being because theists claim that God is a supernatural being and because something that is supernatural is axiomatically not natural, and because (according to my own religious orthodoxy) all things that exist are natural and therefor subject to scientific examination, God cannot exist because theists claim that God is a supernatural being which must therefor be immune from scientific examination because (according to my own religious orthodoxy) things supernatural do not exist because they are not natural and therefor not subject to scientific examination...."(repeat as many times as you like...)
Dawkins does nothing but use smoke, mirrors and mendacious rhetoric to set up strawman arguments that he can then demolish that sound reasonable to anyone who doesn't see through the fallacies and illogic of his religious arguments. I call this sort of false reasoning "The Atheist's Fallacy" because it is in such common use by Atheists.
My critique is of Dawkin's fallacious premises upon which he bases his criticism of theism in general and Christianity specifically. His entire ontological arguments against religion are self-admittedly based upon
and explicitly restricted to an iteration of the Atheist's Fallacy in which he premises his entire Atheist philosophy on a specific description of a specific deity he deliberately fine-tunes to suit his purpose of denigrating religious belief in favor of his own nihilistic view of reality.
Dawkins is the most prominent purveyor of the Atheist's Fallacy, and certainly the most notable, but he is hardly the only snake-oil Atheist religious orthodoxy salesman out there.
The obvious refutation of Dawkins' iterations of the Atheist's Fallacy is simple enough for a child to understand: "Well, Professor Dawkins, what if the Christians are wrong about the actual nature, intentions and/or abilities of God? What if God exists but is not as the Old and New Testaments describe he/she/it? What if those opinions and interpretations are false, inaccurate, mistaken or flatly made up and God is something else entirely? What if the descriptions and ascribed intentions and wishes of God are the result of human inability to accurately detect, examine, quantify and describe God? How then would this affect your Atheistic orthodoxy? What would it mean to your religious beliefs if God does exist and is not, as theists describe, at all "supernatural" and therefore outside of science's ability to detect, examine, quantify and describe? What if God is entirely natural and is in fact subject to scientific examination, but not by we humans at our present level of scientific expertise and understanding of the universe(s) and their natural functions? After all, Prof. Dawkins, CERN thinks it's discovered yet another sub-atomic particle that was previously undetectable and therefor to our knowledge was "supernatural," right up until it was "discovered." Of course if it actually exists (and isn't some sort of false artifact of the process) then it has probably always existed from the beginning of the universe, and the fact that science didn't know about it doesn't mean it came into existence when CERN "created" it (unless that's what CERN actually did, in a very god-like fashion).
Why then is God not like this new sub-atomic particle in that God exists but we puny human bags of pointless, useless, ultimately doomed to extinction DNA are simply too primitive to detect, examine, quantify and describe the purely physical phenomenon that is, or might be, God?"
Your arguments are non-arguments for the existence of God, one's prosecuted on the basis on a self-declared necessity to take due account, as you see it, of some blindly asserted contingent God-factor.
Well, that would be because they are in no way to be interpreted as arguments for the existence of God in the first place, and you are wrongly viewing those arguments through the distorted lens of your own religious orthodoxy, which is very irrational of you.
Well, the way to address that is to rationally support a God-claim rather than shifting the burden on to others - though I expect your reply to skirt over this and continue your pet project of re-focusing on the supposed 'logic and rationality' of that burden shifting exercise while taking issue with anything and everything any atheist might have to say on this, or any, matter with all the apparent zeal of a true believer.
If you want people to accept God as a rational proposition then the ball is entirely in your court.
Who said I want people to accept God as a rational proposition? Not me.
I merely want people to understand that
rejecting God as a rational and entirely scientific proposition is an irrational act not based in either reason, logic or science.
There's a substantial difference between the two intents.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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