The God Delusion by Dawkins

[Boxing Pythagoras]

It was my understanding that those who suffer from TLE usually only see very rudimentary hallucinations. Colors, balls, streaks of light, that sort of thing, and that children are the ones who usually experience it. Is there some sort of late stage version of the disorder where you experience more intense concrete type hallucinations?

My particular diagnosis is not Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, but rather (as I mentioned) Occipital Lobe Epilepsy. Still, what I actually see are not concrete hallucinations, which is how I usually know quickly that they are not real. They're more like distortions or vague shapes, as I initially see them, which my brain immediately connects to more familiar imagery. It takes a moment of reflection to come to this conscious realization, however, and exhaustion can intensify the experience, making it more difficult to make the connection.

[Adrift]

My particular diagnosis is not Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, but rather (as I mentioned) Occipital Lobe Epilepsy. Still, what I actually see are not concrete hallucinations, which is how I usually know quickly that they are not real. They're more like distortions or vague shapes, as I initially see them, which my brain immediately connects to more familiar imagery. It takes a moment of reflection to come to this conscious realization, however, and exhaustion can intensify the experience, making it more difficult to make the connection.

I see. Interesting.

[Kbertsche]

In general the findings are similar across all the studies: Scientists are less religious than the general population, and the more competent at science the the person is (e.g. voted members of national academy / royal society by their peers for the quality of their scientific work) the less religious they are on average.

Yes, i agree that this seems to be true today in general. But note that Ecklund's research found that "elite scientists" were only slightly less religious than the general public. And keep in mind that in the early days of the Royal Society, its members were more religiously devout than the general public.

[Jedidiah]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Larson and Witham study seems to be based only on a short survey which used wording from 1913. If so, there is s significant danger of miscommunication and misunderstanding with this approach.

That could be intentional. Surveys are often constructed with the intention of getting desired results.

[Adrift]

That could be intentional. Surveys are often constructed with the intention of getting desired results.

Eh, I don't really have that big of a problem with the survey results. It makes sense to me that the sciences would seem especially attractive to so many who believe that there is no divine; Peering into a telescope or a microscope desperately hoping to find something to offer meaning to life, and the universe around them. Makes sense, even if it's not on a strictly conscious level.

It's always a treat to see great Christian thinkers like Francis Collins, Darrel Falk, Martin Nowak, Alvin Plantinga and the like who demonstrate that Christians are still doing fantastic and innovative work in the sciences and philosophy. No doubt their motivation is quite different than many atheists though. Instead of desperately searching for some way to make sense of the senselessness of life, they're admiring the grandeur of God's majesty, his eternal power, and his divine nature.

I'm far less convinced that intelligence is truly negatively correlated with religiosity and with being liberal. Studies and surveys that suggest there is a correlation is something we hear a lot of skeptics beat their chests about, but rarely do you hear those same skeptics claiming similar studies concerning race and the correlation of intelligence. Maybe a hundred years ago, but in this brave new world, it's better to think you're smarter than some superstitious religionist, than to be labeled a racist for thinking you're smarter than someone from African descent. Both sorts of correlations are bunk of course. Measuring intelligence isn't nearly so clear cut, and certainly not without lots and lots of debate among psychologists, sociologists, and the like. And here I agree with you that surveys are far more likely to be constructed to get the desired results.

[Starlight]

That seems to be true of things we are able to understand, especially with respect to objects that are subject to various forces, but what about someone who is the way they are because they simply want to be this way?

Being a certain way because they want to be strikes me as something tremendously in need of further explanation. In many ways I am what I am because I want to be - many decisions and choices in my life have been made to shape me into the person I now am, and many of them I undertook with serious thought about the kind of person I wanted to be. But all sorts of explanation for my choices could be given in terms of what I thought, what things motivated me to decide in certain ways, what I perceived my options to be. So if the claim is that God is the way he is because he wanted to be that way, then questions that beg to be asked include: What ways of being was he choosing between? What factors led to him making the choices he did rather than other choices? What desires or thoughts did he have that affected the choices?

IMO, there's no way of spinning the Christian God into being a 'simple' and 'necessary' being. That might be possible to do with Buddhism but IMO definitely not with Christianity. I think the best Christianity could do would be to say "God is outside of time and our universe as we know it, and we can know nothing about his origins and his own evolution/creation, but he created our world and wants to have a relationship with us and will judge us in the afterlife etc."

By the way, how much does the earth weigh?

5.972 × 10^24 kg. Incidentally that's a number that's higher than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world, and also happens to be a value that's fairly close to a decent estimate of the number of stars in the observable universe (there are presumably more stars in the parts of the universe that are too far away from us for their light to have yet reached us, but they're not "observable" to us, so the observable universe is defined as a sphere around us whose radius in light years equals the age of the universe).

[shunyadragon]

Yes, i agree that this seems to be true today in general. But note that Ecklund's research found that "elite scientists" were only slightly less religious than the general public. And keep in mind that in the early days of the Royal Society, its members were more religiously devout than the general public.

Pretty much all surveys over recent years show that scientists are in general less religious than non-scientists, and the higher the education in the sciences the more likely they will accept evolution and global climate change influenced by humans since the industrial revolution.

[robrecht]

Being a certain way because they want to be strikes me as something tremendously in need of further explanation.

Absolutely. I would expect a potentially infinite multiverse spawning our entire universe, among countless others, to be very challenging for us to understand.

In many ways I am what I am because I want to be - many decisions and choices in my life have been made to shape me into the person I now am, and many of them I undertook with serious thought about the kind of person I wanted to be. But all sorts of explanation for my choices could be given in terms of what I thought, what things motivated me to decide in certain ways, what I perceived my options to be. So if the claim is that God is the way he is because he wanted to be that way, then questions that beg to be asked include: What ways of being was he choosing between? What factors led to him making the choices he did rather than other choices? What desires or thoughts did he have that affected the choices?

IMO, there's no way of spinning the Christian God into being a 'simple' and 'necessary' being. That might be possible to do with Buddhism but IMO definitely not with Christianity. I think the best Christianity could do would be to say "God is outside of time and our universe as we know it, and we can know nothing about his origins and his own evolution/creation, but he created our world and wants to have a relationship with us and will judge us in the afterlife etc."

To say that God is outside of time and we can know nothing about his origins or evolution, is pretty close to what is meant in the Christian intellectual tradition by God's transcendence or necessary simplicity, which is, in part, the issue that I want to discuss, in comparison with Dawkins' or your view of absolute simplicity.

When you say 'Dawkins rightly rolls his eyes at the traditional theological claim that 'God is 'simple', which blithely asserts in the face of all evidence and reason that God is a non-complex being and does not have any parts ...', I first want to understand Dawkins' (and your) understanding of this traditional theological assertion. It is not simply that God is not complex, not made of parts. It is not that God is perfectly understood in and of himself without need of any consideration of complexities, but more like the very opposite, ie, that God is beyond our ability to understand and define.

That God created the universe out of love and wants us to be in relationship with him relates to our attempts to understand his immanence in all of creation, which I think is even more mysterious than God's transcendence. Christian theology strives to hold both mysteries as central to our faith.

5.972 × 10^24 kg. Incidentally that's a number that's higher than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world, and also happens to be a value that's fairly close to a decent estimate of the number of stars in the observable universe (there are presumably more stars in the parts of the universe that are too far away from us for their light to have yet reached us, but they're not "observable" to us, so the observable universe is defined as a sphere around us whose radius in light years equals the age of the universe).

Thanks! OK, next incidental but interesting question. How much does our galaxy weigh? Does that include dark matter?

[shunyadragon]

Thanks! OK, next incidental but interesting question. How much does our galaxy weigh? Does that include dark matter?

Our galaxy most likely weighs ~1 trillion solar masses (our sun). Other estimates range from ~750 billion to ~2 trillion solar masses.

http://www.space.com/5403-milky-weighed.html

[element771]

As far as philosophical arguments go, he does briefly deal with the 'first cause' argument, by noting that whatever it is that was the 'first cause' of everything cannot itself be a complex entity of any kind. So it cannot have the kind of complex intellect that theists ascribe to God, and thus cannot be the Christian God.

Ok...since I am the one that issued the challenge, I will comment. First, I never asked for Dawkins' most powerful argument but I asked that you give what argument that you found most persuasive. No biggie as that seems like what you have done.

This represents my biggest problem with Dawkins. He views everything through the prism of evolution. In his mind, simply MUST precede complex because that is what happens in evolution. He then goes to apply this rubric of thought to seemingly everything. However, this does not apply to philosophical arguments that are exclusive to how biology works. So to say that the first cause cannot be complex is a categorical error. You can't apply the laws of the creation to the creator. Otherwise, God would not exist eternally because of the second law of thermodynamics. If I applied the laws of thermodynamics to God, I would be laughed out of the room.

But the philosophical discussion that Dawkins spends the most time on in the book is the topic of a designer. Dawkins argues that to claim our world or our universe was designed by a highly intelligent entity is not a particularly helpful type of explanation because it simply pushes the question back to "so who designed the designer?"

No it doesn't. By definition (at least the Christian view), God is eternal and a necessary being. It is another categorical error to ask who designed the designer when the designer is not subject to the laws of the creation.

He argues that evolution is a highly useful sort of explanation because it explains the development of complex entities (like intelligent beings) by a long process of cumulative changes, by which simple things gradually become more complicated through a process of imperfect reproduction and selection. Evolutionary theory thus explains how simple forces can give rise to complex entities like intelligent beings... whereas the design hypothesis simply posits that complex entities like intelligent beings can create other complex entities like intelligent beings which simply gives a regress. Thus if we posit that some sort of intelligent being created our universe the question then becomes "how did that being evolve?"

He is assuming that the laws of the universe apply to the designer of said universe. That is why the arguments are bad. If I asked you, how did gravitational attraction evolve in our universe? You would reply...that doesn't make any sense and you would be correct.

[Starlight]

So to say that the first cause cannot be complex is a categorical error.

Philosophers have agreed for over 2000 years that the first cause cannot be complex. The first cause must be 'necessary' and 'simple'.

If you think the first cause can be complex, then I don't know I have anything more to say to you, as you've basically asserted that 1+1=46 as far as I'm concerned. Your entire post is basically nonsense and I don't really have anything to say to it because it makes no sense at all.

[element771]

Philosophers have agreed for over 2000 years that the first cause cannot be complex. The first cause must be 'necessary' and 'simple'.

If you think the first cause can be complex, then I don't know I have anything more to say to you, as you've basically asserted that 1+1=46 as far as I'm concerned. Your entire post is basically nonsense and I don't really have anything to say to it because it makes no sense at all.

Is this your response!?! Really?!?

If you have nothing to say to it, could it be the case that you don't have a way to respond?

Why can't the first cause be complex? Please enlighten me as to all of the philosophers that agree to this statement.

Ideas like complex and simple are human terms that were coined to describe nature. To say that the first cause cannot be complex is to make the assumption that what we view in nature must also apply to metaphysical ideas.

God may be simple. God may be complex. God isn't an animal that evolves...God just is.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

Philosophers have agreed for over 2000 years that the first cause cannot be complex. The first cause must be 'necessary' and 'simple'.

If you think the first cause can be complex, then I don't know I have anything more to say to you, as you've basically asserted that 1+1=46 as far as I'm concerned. Your entire post is basically nonsense and I don't really have anything to say to it because it makes no sense at all.

Honestly, this seems like a rather egregious Appeal to Authority. The fact that philosophers have held a consensus view for 2000 years does not imply that view is correct. We've seen this time and again: for 2000 years, the consensus of philosophy was that the Sun revolved about the Earth; for 2000 years, the consensus of philosophy was that the continuum cannot be thought to be composed of indivisibles; for 2000 years, the consensus of philosophy was that Euclid's Parallel Postulate must necessarily be true; for 2000 years, the consensus of philosophy was that space and time are absolute.

I, personally, am not convinced that the First Cause (if there is such a thing) needs to be simple, as opposed to complex. Are there any particular arguments which you find convincing in this regard?

[element771]

Honestly, this seems like a rather egregious Appeal to Authority.

This isn't particularly surprising given that Starlight is convinced that the God Delusion is an exceptional piece of nonfiction.

[Starlight]

Honestly, this seems like a rather egregious Appeal to Authority.

It's a long-agreed upon fact in the same sort of way that 1+1=2 is. Someone wanting to dispute that fact has a looooooong uphill battle, and they would need to grapple with all the arguments concerning this that have ever been raised. So when someone disputes it I just want to face-palm rather than try and argue with them, and it's not a subject I'm interested in having any sort of extended argument on, because I don't take the opposition view seriously. The fact that 'everyone has always believed it' might well not be a good reason to believe it, but the fact that everyone has always believed it for a large variety of really good reasons is.

I, personally, am not convinced that the First Cause (if there is such a thing) needs to be simple, as opposed to complex. Are there any particular arguments which you find convincing in this regard?

~sigh~. Alright here's a basic explanation. If something is A and it could have been B, then it is a reasonable question to ask "why is it A and not B?" We can do this any time there exists something that could have been different - e.g. "why is my hair brown and not red?" The existence of A and not B is thus 'contingent', and there is a 'cause' that explains why A exists and B does not. Tracing the causal regress back to the beginning is thus in danger of giving an infinite regress, unless there were something C, that didn't behave in such a way. If that first cause C, were such that it could never have been otherwise, then we say that it exists 'necessarily'. Understanding C we would realize that it had to exist and had no alternatives to its existence, and thus it doesn't have a cause. C has to be 'simple' in the sense that it can have no parts that "could have been different" nor pieces that "could have combined together in different ways", otherwise it would render itself eligible to the question of "why does C exist and not D?" C must thus be something immensely incredibly simple that could never not have been true or existed... something like 1+1=2, or something on the quantum level that resembles that.

P.S. Some further reading on this subject from google:
Divine Simplicity from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Divine Simplicity from the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
God and Other Necessary Beings from the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.