Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The God Delusion

Any post from here on out will not be directed specifically toward Brett. My response to him is complete. I will, however, sporadically interact with the issues brought up by this discussion. Much of Brett’s concepts and conclusions seemed to be echoed in Dr. Richard Dawkins’ ideas found in his best-selling book, The God Delusion. Dawkins is currently the most intense and most vocal popularizer of the Atheistic/Evolutionary dogma today. John Lennox (Christian) responded to the claims of The God Delusion in the debate between himself and Dawkins (link on previous post). Dawkins and Lennox go at it two more times after that initial Birmingham debate. I repeat the Birmingham debate link and also give the other two audio links.

1. Birmingham Structured Debate (BSD): http://www.dawkinslennoxdebate.com/
2. Informal office discussion (IOD): http://richarddawkins.net/article,2834,Conversation-between-Richard-Dawkins-and-John-Lennox,Richard-Dawkins-John-Lennox-Fixed-Point
3. Oxford Discussion (OD): http://richarddawkins.net/article,3911,Richard-Dawkins-and-John-Lennox-at-the-Oxford-University-Museum,Richard-Dawkins-John-Lennox

I found Dawkins to be a highly skilled orator, certainly passionate, and persuasive in regard to what he believes. I also concur with Dawkins’ concerns about a lack of critical thinking among many religious folks (the same could be said of most people in general, secular or religious). I do assert that Lennox, while an equally skilled, orator was logically superior. Lennox was able to articulate a more comprehensive, consistent, and coherent worldview while pointing out the deficiencies of Dawkins’ worldview. Obviously I’m biased, but Dawkins cannot logically account for certain elements in his professed worldview. One weakness with Lennox is that he hedges when pressed by Dawkins as to whether or not he believes in any form of evolution (which I assume they are speaking about macro-evolution, OD). He could have easily pressed Dawkins with “scientific” evidences from secular scientists that dispute the evolution hypothesis. Another weakness I observed with Lennox was that he did not compellingly demonstrate that Dr. Dawkins also has a “faith” stance. Dawkins sees himself as a man of “science” while Lennox is a man of "faith.” Thus, Dr. Dawkins would seemingly say that he is absque fide without any primo fide. Although Lennox attempts to address Dawkins’ “faith,” the effort is not convincing. Being without initial, starting point, faith assertions is philosophically indefensible and impossible. For Dawkins, his primo fide is his belief that realtity consists of only matter and therefore all things can be explain in a naturalistic way. This assertion can not be proven. Thus it is "faith." The question, now for Dawkins is what warrants his belief that reality is only matter and science can explain everything?

Nevertheless, as I watched and listened, I am reminded of certain truths that stood out to me from the Scriptures. This debate is certainly not new. It is millinia old. In the next posts I will make three observations about these discussions.

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