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Prince Joyous Lising Argumentation

3-LM

Richard Dawkins’ Theory of Morality is Highly Defective

CHAPTER I

Background of the Study

Being a student the hunger for knowledge is inevitable. Curiosity leads the way to new

grounds. I am a student of philosophy and as a student of it I was curiously motivated to

know why there are people who despise the idea that all things are created by God, but

what intrigues me most is the fact that most of them are scientists. Of course as a student I

look up to scientists and one of the most prominent in his own field of science is Richard

Dawkins. Richard Dawkins is the Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at

Oxford University. He is an enthusiastic advocate of Darwin’s theory of evolution by

natural selection. But he doesn’t just stop there. He goes further to argue that God or a

superior being than us is not only untrue but moreover a delusion and the belief of this

superior being or a God through the teachings of religion is a virus of the mind and is

deeply damaging to the people and to our world.

Statement of the Problem

The purpose of this research is to show that Richard Dawkins’ theory of morality is highly

defective.

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The following sub-questions will help me to conduct the research on this area:

1. What are the fallacious arguments used by Dawkins to support his claim?

2. Are the arguments given by Dawkins enough to support his theory of morality? What are

its defects?

Significance of the Study

Knowledge is abundant in these times because of the vast medium any person could use to

present their own opinion people should know and their eyes be opened to the fact that not

all opinion that are presented to them are to be accepted and are true.

Review of Related Literature

Richard Dawkins would want to occupy the role of the hero of the world that hates God

and His existence, and because of that he uses all of his strength and knowledge to

convince every people he can communicate with that his ideals are true and strong. And

what does he use to do this? All of his intelligence and life, and how is he doing this? Well

he throws arguments and questions that have been long answered and just reopening them,

remaking them into something like brand new to confuse people or worse to make them

believe that he is right. He is a man of science and science is his way to peoples’ hearts,

particularly biological science. He is orchestrating a choir to delete God from the minds of

every people in this world in every ways he can. And the song he is teaching to all the

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people is almost very soothing to the ears of those who are not very vigilant and to those

who are in-tune with his music. But one thing that Dawkins did not think of is not all

people are laying their guard down at all times. Some are very observant and easily found

out that there are loops on his claims and have proven that he is simply out of tune.

One of the people who are very observant and have seen Dawkins’ off beam arguments is

Dembski. Dembski as what it partly reads in an article by Peter Williams

(http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_purposeoflife.htm) is the leading intellectual

theorist of Design. According to Edward Sission: ‘If Thomas Huxley was “Darwin’s

Bulldog”, Dembski is the man with the leash and the obedience training technique to bring

Darwinism into check.’ Dembski’s leash is an ‘Explanatory Filter’ that identifies intelligent

causation by detecting what chance and natural law alone are extremely hard-pressed to

produce, namely ‘specified complexity’ or ‘complex specified information’ (CSI): ‘the

filter asks three questions in the following order: (1) Does a law explain it? (2) does chance

explain it? (3) does design explain it?’ If something can reasonably be explained by chance

and/or necessity, then (by Occam’s razor) it should be so explained (it is, at most,

designoid ); but if such an explanation is inadequate, then an inference to the more complex

but more adequate hypothesis of design is warranted. Intelligence easily accomplishes

what unintelligent causes find all but impossible, the creation of specified complexity;

hence the detection of specified complexity, while it does not prove design beyond all

possibility of doubt, does prove design beyond all reasonable doubt.

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http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_purposeoflife.htm




According to Dawkins: ‘Complicated [i.e. complex] things have some quality, specifiable

in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by random chance alone. In the

case of living things, the quality that is specified in advance is, the ability to propagate

genes in reproduction.’ Dawkins thinks that random chance can produce CSI when

combined with a non-random law of natural selection. Dembski argues that natural causes

are not up to the task of creating CSI. First, he eliminates necessity: ‘Because information

presupposes contingency, necessity is by definition incapable of producing information,

much less complex specified information. . .’ Then he turns his attention to contingency:

‘Either the contingency is a blind, purposeless contingency – which is [random] chance, or

it is a guided, purposeful contingency – which is intelligent causation. . .’ With Dawkins,

Dembski argues that ‘pure [random] chance. . . is incapable of generating CSI.’ Whenever

we know the causal history of an object or event exhibiting CSI, we know it was produced

by intelligence. Hence we can infer that all examples of CSI are probably produced by

intelligence: ‘Chance can generate complex unspecified information [e.g. a random string

of scrabble pieces], and chance can generate non-complex specified information [e.g. a

short word in scrabble pieces]. What chance cannot generate is information that is jointly

complex and specified. . . [e.g. a book by Dawkins]’ Dembski’s argument requires one

more stage:

If chance and necessity left to themselves cannot generate CSI, is it possible that chance

and necessity working together might generate CSI [as Dawkins believes]? The answer is

No. Whenever chance and necessity work together, the respective contributions of chance

and necessity can be arranged sequentially. But by arranging the respective contributions

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of chance and necessity sequentially, it becomes clear that at no point in the sequence is

CSI generated.

By a process of elimination, and on the basis of experience, intelligent design is the best

explanation for CSI: ‘Since chance, necessity, and their combination characterize natural

causes, it now follows that natural causes are incapable of generating CSI which is

contradicting unto what Dawkins proposes. (Is Life Designed or Designoid? Dawkins, Science and

the Purpose of Life by Peter Williams) http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_purposeoflife.htm

In these days of technological advances people have access to every inch of information

they need to get what they want or to say what their minds think of. But does this mean that

what they say is true? Well that goes to Dawkins to. It does not follow that a person

published a book and writes in the internet that says anything he wants and think of is true

or as true as what he wanted to portray to the people.

This is exactly what Terry Eagleton wants to convey in his article “ Lunging, Flailing,

Mispunching” his article is partly like this; Imagine someone holding forth on biology

whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough

idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists

like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand

Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since

they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth

understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious

faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion,

the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment

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on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the

question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy

old travesty will pass muster. These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather

less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.

What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between

Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or

Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious

young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its

toughest case? Dawkins, it appears, has sometimes been told by theologians that he sets up

straw men only to bowl them over, a charge he rebuts in this book; but if The God

Delusion is anything to go by, they are absolutely right. As far as theology goes, Dawkins

has an enormous amount in common with Ian Paisley and American TV evangelists. Both

parties agree pretty much on what religion is; it’s just that Dawkins rejects it while Oral

Roberts and his unctuous tribe grow fat on it.

A molehill of instances out of a mountain of them will have to suffice. Dawkins considers

that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe

unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar

school thought that. For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have

always played an integral role in belief. (Where, given that he invites us at one point to

question everything, is Dawkins’s own critique of science, objectivity, liberalism, atheism

and the like?) Reason, to be sure, doesn’t go all the way down for believers, but it doesn’t

for most sensitive, civilized non-religious types either. Even Richard Dawkins lives more

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by faith than by reason. We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational

justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain. Only positivists think that

‘rational’ means ‘scientific’. Dawkins rejects the surely reasonable case that science and

religion are not in competition on the grounds that this insulates religion from rational

inquiry. But this is a mistake: to claim that science and religion pose different questions to

the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered in Palestine, the pope

should get himself down to the dole queue as fast as possible. It is rather to claim that while

faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it. For my

claim to love you to be coherent, I must be able to explain what it is about you that justifies

it; but my bank manager might agree with my dewy-eyed description of you without being

in love with you himself.

Eagleton also added that Dawkins holds that the existence or non-existence of God is a

scientific hypothesis which is open to rational demonstration. Christianity teaches that to

claim that there is a God must be reasonable, but that this is not at all the same thing as

faith. Believing in God, whatever Dawkins might think, is not like concluding that aliens or

the tooth fairy exist. God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO, about whose

existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in. Theologians do not believe

that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His

transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch

Ness monster. (Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching by Terry Eagleton)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

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Anybody can claim that he is saying the truth but most importantly he must show facts, real

facts that could really be the corner stone of his arguments and not like a bunch of papers

compiled and when you remove some piece of paper would all crumble down and has

become a bunch of trash.

Scope & Limitation of the Study

This study will pass through the theory of morality that Richard Dawkins convey,

especially in his book the God delusion. This study will not tackle the totality of evolution

but it will be partially included as to where Dawkins used the evolution theory.

Conceptual Framework

Methodology

Definition of Technical Terms

8

Richard Dawkins

Theory of

Morality

Defects of

Dawkins Theory

of morality

Fallacious

arguments by

Dawkins

Richard Dawkins

Theory of

Morality is HighlyDefective



Meme - constitutes a theoretical unit of cultural information, the building block of culture

or cultural evolution which spreads through diffusion propagating from one mind to

another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another

as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

Evolution - is a change in the inherited traits of a population from one generation to the

next. This process causes populations of organisms to change over time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Sociobiology - is a neo-Darwinian synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to

explain social behavior in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages the

behaviors may have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology

Zeitgeist - is originally a German expression that means "the spirit of the age", literally

translated as "time ( Zeit ) spirit (Geist )". It describes the intellectual and cultural climate of

an era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zietgeist

Altruism - is selfless concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many

cultures, and central to many religious traditions. In English, this idea was often described

as the Golden rule of ethics.

9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_diffusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait_(biology)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Darwinism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_behavior

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geist_(philosophy)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Era


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_diffusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Darwinism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_behavior


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geist_(philosophy)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Era


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism

Darwinism - is a term for the underlying theory in those ideas of Charles Darwin

concerning evolution and natural selection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinism

Eugenics - is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary

traits through various forms of intervention. It is also regarded as a social

responsibility, an altruistic stance of a society, meant to create healthier and more

intelligent people, to save resources, and lessen human suffering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

Natural selection - is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common

in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable

heritable traits become less common.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

Naturalistic fallacy - is often claimed to be a formal fallacy. It was described and named by

British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica. Moore stated that a

naturalistic fallacy was committed whenever a philosopher attempts to prove a claim about

ethics by appealing to a definition of the term "good" in terms of one or more natural

properties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

10


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_responsibility




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_(trait)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritable



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organism


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._E._Moore





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_(trait)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffering


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritable



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organism


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy





Symbiosis - is used to express the relation of one organism to another from various degrees

of close relationship between organisms of different species. The term was first used in

1879 by the German mycologist, Heinrich Anton de Bary, who defined it as: "the living

together of unlike organisms".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis

Chapter II

The Fallacious Arguments Used by Dawkins to Support His Claim

Richard Dawkins is the Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford

University and has published various books about science. Maybe that is why some people

cannot see pass through the outstanding achievement this man has acquired. And they

easily believe that all that he is saying are true. Well I do believe that what he is saying are

all lies; remember the strongest lies are half true and half false. But one thing is for sure a

lie may it be wholly or partially, is nonetheless a lie. And a lie is not true. However

soothing as it sounds like or even though it is so realistic that you may find it hard to tell if

it is a lie or not, there is a saying that goes “all lies will be revealed, in God’s time.” And

what do you know, there have been many times other people showed evidences that

Dawkins’ arguments are erroneous and they commit fallacies people might not be seeing.

Now lets start exposing the “magician’s secrets.”

Dawkins, in his book the God delusion particularly the chapter 4 of it says that it is his

most convincing argument that no gods exist. He calls this argument the "Ultimate Boeing

747 gambit." Dawkins asserts that the "The argument from improbability, properly

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycologist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Anton_de_Bary



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycologist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Anton_de_Bary




deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist." Now is Dawkins correct in his

belief that his “Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit” is most convincing? We must start first

knowing what Dawkins calls as “Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit.”

According to Rich Deem in his webpage ‘Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion’, The

Boeing 747 allusion is from Fred Hoyle's famous argument against the probability of life

spontaneously assembling itself on the primordial earth. According to Hoyle, the

probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the probability that a tornado,

sweeping through a junkyard, would assemble a working Boeing 747 airliner. However,

Dawkins turns the argument around, and concludes that any designer must be even more

improbable:

However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the

designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.

Dawkins does not present the argument formally, but here it is extracted from the few

sentences he actually devotes to the argument:

• Premise #1. Every existing entity that shows evidence of design requires a designer

superior to itself

• Premise #2. God shows evidence of design in himself

• Conclusion #1. Hence God requires a designer (another God) superior to himself

Argument #2:

• Premise #3. Infinite regressions are not possible

• Conclusion #1 implies an infinite regression (an infinite number of gods)

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• Conclusion #2. Hence, Conclusion #1 is not possible, so no god can exist

Although Dawkins does not believe that premise #1 is true, he accepts it as such,

supposedly being a premise that all theists would accept as true. However, theists make no

such claim that all possible entities require design. Specifically, we can't know for sure if

God shows evidence of design, since He is not even a physical entity (God is a spirit). The

proof that the first premise is false can be shown by using it against Dawkins' own

preferred universe designer - the multiverse. Here is Dawkins' argument turned against

itself:

• Premise #1. Every existing entity that shows evidence of design requires a designer

superior to itself

• Premise #2. The universe shows evidence of design in itself

• Conclusion #1. Hence the universe requires a designer (a multiverse) superior to itself

Argument #2:

• Premise #3. Infinite regressions are not possible

• Conclusion #1 implies an infinite regression (an infinite number of universes)

• Conclusion #2. Hence, Conclusion #1 is not possible, so no universes can exist

Obviously, the universe does exist, so there must be something wrong with Dawkins'

argument! Dawkins argument falls flat because premise #1 is false. Entities can be either

contingent or necessary. The Creator (or creator) of the universe is a necessary entity and is

not contingent upon anything nor requires a designer. This must be true or no universe

would exist at all. So, Dawkins' argument is formally fallacious. Dawkins' failure to

distinguish between necessary and contingent entities also assumes that cause and effect13



operates upon all entities. However, the evidence indicates that time itself began at the

beginning of the Big Bang. Without the existence of time, cause and effect do not operate.

So, whatever or Whoever created the universe lies outside of time and space and has

"always" existed. What was Dawkins thinking? (or was he?)

And as Rich deem concludes: Richard Dawkins' Ultimate Boeing 747 argument is shown

to be formally fallacious, since premise #1 (every existing entity that shows evidence of

design requires a designer superior to itself) is shown to be false. Applying Dawkins' own

argument to his favorite universe designer (the multiverse) would show that no universe

exists, if the argument were valid. Obviously, we have observational evidence that

contradicts this hypothesis. (Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 4: Why There

Almost Certainly Is No God by Rich Deem)

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/the_god_delusion4.html

In the other chapter of Rich Deem’s article he continous to reveal Dawkins commiting

several fallacies and he goes like this:

Dawkins quoting out-of-context

Dawkins goes on to quote several founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, John

Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, who made statement against the religion of their time.

John Adams is quoted as saying, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there

were no religion in it." However here is the complete quote in an April 19, 1817, letter to

Thomas Jefferson:

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"Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out,

'This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion at all!!!' But in this

exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this

world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell."5

In quoting John Adams out-of-context, Dawkins has made it seem that Adams said exactly

opposite of what he really intended. No wonder he left out the part where Adams said the

world would be "hell" "without religion." Adams directly refuted Dawkins' major premise

of the book - that religion is the great evil in the world - and affirmed the opposite - that

religion keeps the world from becoming completely evil. In fact, John Adams said some

things about Christianity that Dawkins probably won't be quoting any time soon such as,

"The Christian religion, in its primitive purity and simplicity, I have entertained for more

than sixty years. It is the religion of reason, equity, and love; it is the religion of the head

and the heart."

Dawkins also quotes James Madison out-of-context, "During almost fifteen centuries has

the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less,

in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,

superstition, bigotry and persecution." The quote comes from his dissent of James Madison

to a bill introduced into the General Assembly of Virginia, to levy a general assessment for

the support of teachers of religions. Madison's objection was not to Christianity, but to the

establishment of state-sponsored "Christianity." This is evident from the first sentence of

the quoted section, which Dawkins conveniently leaves out:

15

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/the_god_delusion2.html#n05

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/the_god_delusion2.html#n05



"Because experience witnesseth that eccelsiastical establishments, instead of maintaining

the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen

centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity..."

It is clear from the context that Madison objected to the "legal establishment of

Christianity" - not to Christianity itself, which he indicates has "efficacy." Dawkins fails to

quote some of the other things Madison has to say about religion and Christianity in the

same document:

•

"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only

as he believes to be acceptable to him"

• "Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be

considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe"

• "Because the policy of the Bill is adverse to the diffusion of the light of

Christianity"

The really funny thing is that James Madison would have never accepted Richard Dawkins

"as a member of Civil Society," since he has not subjected himself to the "Governour of the

Universe."

Dawkins finishes chapter 2 with a discussion of the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He

maintains that we must remain agnostic on this issue, since there are many points of

ignorance regarding values that can be assigned to the Drake equation. Although it is true

that many of the values cannot be determined with much certainty, the results are coming

in - and they don't support Dawkins assertion that the "principle of mediocrity" applies to

16



our solar system/planet. Dawkins briefly mentions the anthropic principle, but dismisses it

by saying, "if our solar system really were the only one in the universe, this is precisely

where we, as beings who think about such matters, would have to be living." Dawkins

doesn't seem to understand that declaring our existence on this planet as the reason why our

planet is special is a logical fallacy (converse accident).

Dawkins describes the possible existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life as being

"superhuman" as opposed to "supernatural," and speculates that if we detect any other

advanced civilization that is must be vastly superior to ours (especially if their telltale

signal has been traveling through space for thousands of years (which seems likely at this

point). He says that if those beings appeared to us, they would seem to possess magic and

would "god-like." Dawkins even accepts the possibility that our existence is just part of a

computer simulation and says that "I cannot think how to disprove it." Dawkins ends the

chapter saying that all intelligences are the product of a form of Darwinian evolution. This

assertion, Dawkins proclaims, means that no gods can precede the evolution of natural life

forms. ( Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 2: The God Hypothesis

by Rich Deem )


Now Dawkins’s basis for morality is what we would expect. Natural selection. The

problem though is that it does not imply an ought. What happens when I learn there’s

nothing outside of myself I am accountable to? Heck. What happens when I learn good

17

http://www.godandscience.org/contact.html


http://www.godandscience.org/contact.html




does not exist outside of me? What happens when I learn that good and evil are just

subjective?

An article published last February 15, 2008 which talks about “Dawkins on Morality in the

God Delusion”. And it goes like this:

Dawkins goes into moral dilemmas. Please be clear on this people. Moral dilemmas do not

destroy absolute morality. If there is no absolute morality, there is no such thing as a moral

dilemma. Moral absolutism does not claim that we know the best and right thing to do in

every situation. It just claims that there is one.

Dawkins speaks of a study of Hauser and Singer that shows that atheists and religious

believers seem to make the same judgments when predicted with these dilemmas. Dawkins

proudly says that this seems to be compatible with the view that he and many others hold

that you do not need God in order to be good - or evil.

At this point, D’Souza would say “This is what happens when you let the biologist out of

the lab.”

I read this and thought “It’s no shock to me.” Here’s why. As a Christian, I believe in the

natural law which is rooted in God and is in all of us as we bear his image. You do not need

to hold to a religious worldview to know that murder is evil. God places that knowledge in

you innately. As soon as you understand what life is and what murder is, you know that

murder is evil.

18



Now Dawkins asks if we really need moral surveillance to be good, and while he’s

skeptical, he tells a story of how in Montreal the police went on strike. Chaos had come

about by the end of the day. Dawkins simply asks why the fear of God did not stop most

people? I would answer it’s because most people don’t have it.

Dawkins later makes the claim that absolute morality is driven by religion. This is not the

claim of a natural law believer though. It can be revealed in religion, but the source is God

and one does not need a religion to know what is good and what is evil. Dawkins seems to

think that until the Ten Commandments were spoken, no one knew murder was wrong.

And in the end, Dawkins never gives one thing. He never gives an objective basis for good

and evil. He simply says that we know what actions are good and what are evil. By what

criteria? How does he differentiate? Without an absolute standard of good and evil, we

cannot say. The actions are either good in themselves or not good. It’s interesting Dawkins

says this while saying that it’s fortunate that morals do not have to be absolute.

Again, this is what happens when you let the biologist out of the lab. (Dawkins on Morality

in the God Delusion)

http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/dawkins-on-morality-in-the-

god-delusion/

19

http://deeperwaters.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/dawkins-on-morality-in-the-god-delusion/






A webpage made by Paul Taylor also detected fallacies on Dawkins claims here is a part of

what he wrote:

Ignorance of Scripture

Although The God Delusion is ostensibly about all religions, in practice it is about

Christianity—and evangelical Christianity in particular is the focus of Dawkins’ attacks. In

his arguments against Christianity, he makes much use of Scripture. However, his use of

Scripture is highly suspect. It appears that he has done very little research into the structure

or history of the Bible. This is unsurprising, as almost every statement he makes on the

Bible reveals that he has not approached it with an open mind. “The God of the Old

Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction”. (p. 31, The God Delusion

by Richard Dawkins)

Statements like this are loaded with prejudice. He goes on to make several more specific

accusations about the character of God. Most of his accusations are unsubstantiated. Some

are due to Dawkins’ own presuppositions about what is right and wrong (for example, his

accusation that God is “homophobic”), some are due to his failure to have read the history

leading up to particular events, and some are just plain wrong. That an intelligent man like

Dawkins was so skimpy on his biblical research is incredible. One is reminded of Paul’s

quotation of the Psalms in 1 Corinthians 3:20: “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise,

that they are futile.”

We need to study a few examples by Dawkins of this lack of research regarding Scripture.

20



“The historical evidence that Jesus claimed any sort of divine status is minimal”. (p. 92 The

God Delusion by Richard Dawkins)

Some of the most striking evidence is not immediately obvious in English translation, but

would have stood out like a sore thumb to contemporaries. One of the clearest of the many

times Jesus claimed to be God is His use of the divine name, “I AM.”

This divine name was told to Moses, when he met with God (who appeared as a burning

bush).

And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the

children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’.” (Exodus 3:14)

The Hebrew word translated here as I AM is often transliterated into English as YHWH.

The Name is usually translated as LORD, with four capital letters.

Jesus used the style “I am … ” very frequently, most notably in John 10.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. (John 10:11)

Apart from the fact that God is frequently referred to as the Shepherd, the people listening

to Jesus would have been very familiar with the words of Psalm 23.

The LORD is my shepherd. (Psalm 23:1)

Remembering that the word LORD is basically the same as I AM, the people listening to

Jesus were in no doubt that He was claiming to be God. This is not a code, or an obscure

point. Jesus knew that His words were reminiscent of Psalm 23 and so did the people. This

21



is why in John 10:31, the people had picked up stones and were ready to stone Jesus,

accusing Him of blasphemy. Jesus’ claim to be divine was obvious to them.

Notice Dawkins’ misunderstanding of the lineage of Jesus.

In any case, if Jesus really was born of a virgin, Joseph’s ancestry is irrelevant and cannot

be used to fulfill, on Jesus’ behalf, the Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah should be

descended from David. (p. 95)

Luke’s gospel has a genealogy in chapter 3, which most commentators agree is the descent

of Jesus through Mary. Thus Jesus traces back an actual blood relationship, through Mary

to David, via David’s son Nathan. Jesus also traces an adoptive relationship through his

father Joseph, through the kings, to David, via David’s son Solomon (in Matthew 1). Thus

both Joseph and Mary are descended from David, but Jesus’ bloodline is only through

Mary—He truly is the “seed of the woman” prophesied in Genesis 3:15. However, Jesus

could inherit from Joseph, even if He was not a blood descendent. Therefore, Joseph’s

lineage is important, because, through Joseph, Jesus inherits the kingship. None of this is

very difficult to research, and Dawkins should have done so.

Circular reasoning

This fallacy occurs when your presupposition is actually what you wish to prove. Look at

this example:

Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore

cannot be responsible for designing it. (p. 31)

22

http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=john+10:31&version=NKJV

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%203;&version=31;


http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=1&version=31


http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=john+10:31&version=NKJV





The logical fallacy is breathtaking. Evolution is first assumed, in order to prove that

evolution is true rather than intelligent design: “creative intelligences, being evolved … .”

It is Dawkins’ presupposition that all creative intelligences have evolved. It is an idea not

supported by, for example, information science.

Ad hominem

This sort of fallacy involves attacking the opponent instead of the argument. In the UK, this

is referred to as “playing the man instead of the ball”—a soccer reference, implying that

the tackler has deliberately aimed to kick his opponent, rather than attempting to kick the

ball.

There are several examples of this, such as a particularly nasty attack on a schoolteacher,

who happens to be a creationist. Notice, on page 95, how Dawkins describes certain

American educational establishments:

He moved up the hierarchy of American universities, from rock bottom at the “Moody

Bible Institute”, through Wheaton College (a little bit higher on the scale, but still the alma

mater of Billy Graham) to Princeton in the world-beating class at the top. (p. 95)

Why are the three institutions arranged hierarchically? What is the basis for Dawkins’

assessment of standards at each place? He doesn’t say, but we assume that it has to do with

belief in the Bible. Why is it implied that, because they number Billy Graham among their

alumni, this is a negative for Wheaton College? [Editor’s note: It is ironic that Dawkins

would have a problem with Wheaton College, since it does not adhere to a plain

interpretation of Genesis.]

23

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/infotheory.asp


http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/negative_15October2001.asp






Straw men

The well-known “straw man” logical fallacy occurs when the debater misrepresents (often

by oversimplifying) his or her opponent’s position for them, then argues against this

invented position, rather than against the actual arguments of the opponent. An example of

this is seen in the mocking tone used as he attempts to dismiss arguments based on

intelligent design.

I [insert own name] am personally unable to think of any way in which [insert biological

phenomenon] could have been built up step by step. Therefore it is irreducibly complex.

That means it is designed.

Although Dawkins uses this argument frequently, it is a complete misrepresentation of the

intelligent design position. A biological mechanism is not labeled as irreducibly complex

because it is complicated and the labeler cannot think how it could have evolved. It is so

labeled because it can be shown that it is not possible for it to have evolved.

Inconsistency

It is noteworthy that Dawkins’ arguments are very inconsistent. For example, Dawkins

frequently returns to a criticism of the so-called “God of the gaps” approach that uses the

supernatural to explain what science cannot currently explain. Compare that attitude with

his own, on page 132, where he comments on gaps in evolutionary knowledge:

A lot more work needs to be done, of course, and I’m sure it will be.

24



In Dawkins’ view, it is inappropriate for a scientist to appeal to the Creator to make a

scientific explanation, even if that explanation is logically sound. On the other hand,

Dawkins writes as though it is perfectly acceptable, when faced with dilemmas that

evolution cannot explain, to suppose that an evolutionary scientist will have a naturalistic

answer someday, even if the science is consistent with a biblical approach. Such double

standards allow Dawkins to self-justify poor logic, while refusing to acknowledge the

strength of those who oppose him. (Deconstructing a deluded Dawkins by Paul Taylor)

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/1127dawkins.asp

CHAPTER III

The Defects of Dawkins Theory of Morality

25





Science has and always has fascinated the minds of many people in every generation

including now. Science has triumphed through the years become more advanced and as

they say this is the generation where science and technology have offered so much that

scientist have become a status where people have sometimes tagged with genius know-it-

all, the walking encyclopedia and such other that people have instilled in their minds that

whenever they hear a scientist’s name they feel like they are safe with them, all that they

say is true, and even trust their lives by following every thing they say. I have nothing

against scientist, but what I would like to say is that even if a person is a scientist and

science has offered us so much we should always be watchful to what scientist says. They

are still humans and we all commit errors. Now if what they say is and have been proven

then we have no reason not to accept them but as long as it is not, we should be wary.

Toby Baxen has written an article about Dawkins and titled it as “The Richard Dawkins

Delusion.” He dedicated this article to show the errors and defects of Richard Dawkins.

Baxen stated that Dawkins is a natural scientist and his method of reasoning is firmly

rooted in 20th century scientific positivism. Prior to Karl Popper’s Logic of Scientific

Discovery (1959), it was assumed that a scientific proposition could only be maintained if

it accorded to established fact. Popper pointed out that no theory could be maintained if it

is refuted by some data of experience. Popper was contrasting say a mathematical proof,

which is entirely in the mind (such as 2 + 2 = 4) which needs no empirical testing to prove

it, with for example the fact that water will boil at a certain temperature, which needs to be

empirically expressed before one believes it. The next step in the process is to declare a

theory "un-scientific" if it cannot be refuted by experience. This is reasoning a posteriori

26



dependant on experience. In applying scientific method to the question "does God exist,"

the answer from Dawkins is a resounding NO!

If these are the rules of the game, then we can only but agree with him. Only the data of

experience will now prove to Dawkins that God exists. As we have none that seems

credible, it is a matter of Faith. Faith v Science, for the Modern Mind, places most

reasoning people in the camp of Science. The un-reasoning mind is therefore deemed to be

the religious and mystical mind and somewhat prejudiced and backward and or primitive.

Dawkins, in the name of science and what he understands as reason, proceeds to demolish

some of the more wildly mystical and witch doctor interpretations and commands of

religion with some aplomb. Fair play to the man for sure as they deserve to be savagely

attacked by an acute mind such as his.

However, as man can introspect as say a chemical or a stone, a gene or any subject of the

natural science can not, we have open to us another method of acquiring knowledge, that is

via reason independent of experience i.e. knowledge derived a-priori. It should also be

noted at this point, that for a thoughtful introspecting human, being capable of making

abstract deductions, experience is history and nothing else. It cannot tell us anything but

past history, past data series. It can yield up no irrefutable truth, just very good

associations, correlations etc. In fact as Dawkins points out, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

is very highly probable to be true, but it has the possibility of being refuted by other

experience. As such Darwinian Theory is scientific, but we cannot say for sure, for 100%

certainly, that it is true. Whilst Evolution has mounds of scientific data to support it, lots of

experience, lots of history, God does not. As Dawkins admits, this does not kill God off

27



stone dead; it just makes God very, very highly improbable whereas something like

Evolution, very, very highly probable. I would disagree with Dawkins on this point, God as

a scientific proposition is not a conjecture that is capable of being refuted: God is not open

to proving or disapproving via experience.

Indeed we have open to us introspecting beings the beauty of knowledge acquired a-priori.

Subjects of the natural scientist are denied this; the subject of the Human science is not.

God exists via the realm of the a-priori, independent of experience, and can never exist in

the realm of the a posteriori; by the data of experience or history.

What is a-priori correct reasoning? How do you correctly reason?

Aristotle worked out that there were three Laws of Logic the formal explanation is as

follows:

1. A=A: The Law of Identity. A table is a table because it just is so.

2. Not (A and not A): The Law of Non-Contradiction, if I am being boring, then it is

not the case that this talk is not boring

3. A or not A: The Law of the Excluded Middle, if you have two contradictory

properties i.e. green and not green, all things are either one of the two, green or not

green, and certainly not both.

Any argument that contradicts the above needs to be discarded.

A great example of how you can use logic to reason correctly is in maths. For example, we

all know that if 2 x X = 20, X must be 10; if you tried to argue it any other way, you would

28



conflict with the Laws of Logic. However, any which way you turn around the equation,

with a logical argument, will always lead to a truthful answer, as the premise is correct.

This is very powerful because we can establish truthful propositions in logic that can only

be refuted should their premise or the deductions from them fall foul of one of Aristotle’s

a-priori laws of logic. Not only are the truths of mathematics rooted on the a-priori, so are

the truths of the human sciences. For example; the Austrian polymath Ludwig Von Mises

shows in his masterful book Human Action (1949) how all the laws of economics can be

deduced from the axiom that humans act purposefully. As Mises shows, in order to be, we

act purposefully. Not being , we would not act , indeed we would not exist . We act upon

satisfying our most urgent needs first, then our second most urgent needs, and so on a so

forth. Ranking preferences, with the most urgent needs/demands being satisfied first, the

least urgent, the furthest away in time. From this hierarchy we derive the law of demand,

the downward sloping demand curve, the law of diminishing marginal utility (see here for a

good illustration) and on and on it goes. Lord Lionel Robbins in the masterful 1932 book,

The Nature and Significance of Economic Science shows in very clear terms how all the

laws of Economics are derived from the a-priori thought process. No data of experience is

needed to establish that a demand curve is always downward sloping. This has real

meaning in life and imparts upon how man acts in society. Experience cannot refute these

laws although many modern economists will produce sets of statistical data that seem to

contradict some of the Laws of Economics, but in reality, they have just got whatever they

are trying to correlate wrong. A-priori knowledge contains real truths that are not just

meaningless tautologies.

29

http://www.mises.org/store/Human-Action-The-Scholars-Edition-P119C0.aspx?AFID=1


http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap7sec1.asp


http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Significance-Economic-Science/dp/0814773907/sr=1-1/qid=1168201214/lewrockwell/




http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Significance-Economic-Science/dp/0814773907/sr=1-1/qid=1168201214/lewrockwell/



To try to refute it, you cannot, as you act purposefully to do so. Just as Pythagoras’s

Theorem is implied in the concept of a right angle triangle-and we knew about the concept

of the right angle triangle before Pythagoras "discovered" his Theorem, so, to do the laws

of economics flow from the one irrefutable axiom that humans act purposefully. It is a bit

like saying Darwin "discovered" the Theory of Evolution, when what he actually did was

articulate it and find very plausible data sets to help explain it to the sceptical mind.

Evolution was always there.

For all positivist science, it seems to rely on the very negative contention that the existing

state of understanding is correct only because nothing has refuted it. This does not mean

that what the laws that science rest on may well be truthful, full stop and unqualified. If

Euclidian geometry is tautological, as a positivist would argue, it can tell us nothing useful

about the world we experience. For example, in engineering, the laws of Euclidian

Geometry applied to construction. The fact that you would not want to knowingly walk on

a bridge not constructed within the confines of the laws of Euclidian geometry, as it would

fall down, implies that these laws have a great benefit to our understanding of the world

and are not mere tautological propositions that can deliver up no knowledge capable of

being acted upon. Likewise, the Laws that govern how this paper has been written on a

computer, or transmitted via the internet to someone-else will not be capable of disproving

and are therefore un-scientific, they are right otherwise this would never be written and

transmitted.

30



My contention is that God exists a-priori and that Dawkins in his dismissal of the

cosmological argument of Aquinas in particular, shows his lack of understanding of that

argument and the distinction between a-priori and a-posteriori knowledge.

Dawkins summarizes (page 77) three of the "five proofs" of Aquinas as "all involve an

infinite regress – the answer to a question raises a prior question, and so on ad infinitum."

In his own words, he proceeds to list the three as follows;

1. The Unmoved Mover. Nothing moves without a prior mover. This leads to a

regress, from which the only escape is God. Something had to make the first move,

and that something we call God.

2. The Uncaused Cause. Nothing is caused by itself. Every effect has a prior cause,

and again we are pushed back into regress. This has to be terminated by a first

cause, which we call God.

3. The Cosmological Argument. There must have been a time when no physical thing

existed. But, since physical things exist now, there must have been something non-

physical to bring them into existence, and that something we call God.

He continues: "All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of a regress and invoke God

to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is

immune to the regress. Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a

terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is

absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed

to God."

31



So to Dawkins, it is an "unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the

regress." He does not say why. Why, Richard, is it unwarranted? If it is so self-evident (and

needs no further explanation to his readers) that this is unwarranted, why is it not stated? I

suspect it is because Dawkins does not know.

In the physical universe no physical property is infinite. If this was the case, only it would

exist. It does not, as you and certainly I exists along with countless other physical things.

So how did we come into existence?

The Unmoved Mover of Aristotle (introduced to us specifically in his Metaphysics Book

VI, X1, XII and in Physics, Book VII and VIII) comes into play here. The human mind

cannot conceive of anything physical without postulating another physical cause for that

thing. Cause and effect are a category of the human mind: absent it, and you have no

human mind. All material things have cause and effect; one physical thing bounds another

physical thing with nothing being infinite. If nothing is infinite, there simply must be a first

cause. Therefore logic clearly dictates that the first cause, if it cannot be physical or

material, must be immaterial. We call this God.

Unless you are prepared to boot out Logic as a valid system for ascertaining truth, then you

cannot escape the undeniable existence of God.

www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/baxendale2.html

Other defects of Richard Dawkins argument are stated by Peter Williams in his article

“Calling Dawkins’ Bluff”. Here he rebutted Dawkins' attack upon several other arguments

in favour of the existence of God.

32

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/baxendale2.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/baxendale2.html



The Ontological Argument

Jim Holt points out that Dawkins:

dismisses [Anselm's] ontological argument as 'infantile' and 'dialectical prestidigitation'

without quite identifying the defect in its logic. He seems unaware that this argument,

though medieval in origin, comes in sophisticated modern versions that are not at all easy

to refute. Shirking the intellectual hard work, Dawkins prefers to move on . . . Dawkins'

failure to appreciate just how hard philosophical questions about religion can be makes

reading [The God Delusion] an intellectually frustrating experience.'

Alvin Plantinga, a contemporary defender of Anselm's line of thought, defines God as a

'maximally great being' and argues that a maximally great being must exist if its existence

is possible because 'necessary existence is a great-making property.' (A great-making

property is one that is objectively good and allows for a logical maximum. The goodness of

existing per se is a great-making property that allows a logical maximum in necessary

existence. And although - as Hume and Kant pointed out - saying that something 'exists'

does not add to the list of its properties, to say that something 'exists necessarily' does add

to its list of properties.) Given the additional premise that 'the existence of a maximally

great being is possible', it follows that a maximally great being therefore 'exists, and exists

necessarily.' Contra Dawkins, the ontological argument can be expressed as a logically

valid syllogism:

Premise 1: By definition, if it is possible that God exists, then God exists

Premise 2: It is possible that God exists

33



Conclusion: Therefore, God exists

Faced with the ontological argument, the atheist does have a 'get out' clause; but embracing

this get out clause is not without its price. The ontological argument shows that 'the person

who wishes to deny that God exists must claim that God's existence is impossible.' That is,

denying the existence of God is not on a par with denying the existence of the Loch Ness

monster. To deny the existence of the Loch Ness monster, one needn't make the claim that

its existence is logically impossible, because one can coherently claim that Nessie simply

fails to exist despite being logically possible. However, to deny the existence of God one

does have to make the claim that God's existence is logically impossible, because one

cannot coherently claim that God fails to exist despite being logically possible. This seems

to be a price that many non-theists are willing to pay, despite the fact that no independent

argument has ever shown the concept of God to be incoherent. Nevertheless, Plantinga

argued that his version of the ontological argument at least showed that belief in God was

no less rational than disbelief :

It must be conceded that not everyone who understands and reflects on its central premise -

that the existence of a maximally great being is possible - will accept it. Still, it is evident, I

think, that there is nothing contrary to reason or irrational in accepting this premise. What

I claim for this argument, therefore, is that it establishes, not the truth of theism, but its

rational acceptability.

He has subsequently contended that the 'modal ontological argument', 'provides as good

grounds for the existence of God as does any serious philosophical argument for any

34



important philosophical conclusion.' The ontological argument may or may not be a sound

theistic proof, but it is not logically invalid.

The Cosmological Argument

In a quotation-free discussion of the matter, Dawkins claims that the famous five 'ways' of

Thomas Aquinas 'are easily - though I hesitate to say so, given his eminence - exposed as

vacuous.' Dawkins should have hesitated more and written less. For example, noting

Aquinas' use of the principle that a causal regress must terminate somewhere (lest, per

impossible, it becomes infinite), Dawkins complains that Aquinas' cosmological argument

makes 'the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress.'

Dawkins fails to recognize that the cosmological argument just is an argument for the

necessity of postulating the existence of a being that is 'immune to the regress'! Consider

the following cosmological argument:

Premise 1: Some things are caused (e.g. this sentence)

Premise2: It is impossible for everything to be caused

Conclusion: Therefore there must exist an uncaused thing

This argument is logically valid, and the first premise seems to be beyond dispute, so the

only question is whether or not it is possible for everything that exists to be caused. As

soon as one asks 'caused by what?' one can see the problem with hypothesising that

everything is caused. Outside of everything is nothing, and 'from nothing, nothing comes'.

35



The Argument from Degrees of Perfection

In the fourth 'way' of his Suma Theologica, Aquinas argued thus:

Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But 'more'

and 'less' are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different

ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more

nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something

best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being [i.e.

maximally ontologically secure]; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in

being, as it is written in [Aristotle's] Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the

cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things.

Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being,

goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

In Aquinas' own words, the fourth way appears to be made up of two overlapping

syllogisms:

1. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like

2. But 'more' and 'less' are predicated of different things, according as they

resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum

3. so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest

and, consequently, something which is uttermost being

4. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus

36



5. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their

being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God

After merely summarizing Aquinas' fourth 'way', Dawkins attempts a reductio ad

absurdum (a 'reduction to absurdity'):

That's an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the

comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore

there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God.

Unfortunately, Dawkins fails to notice that Aquinas' argument works with 'great-making

properties', a class of properties into which 'smelliness' - the subject of Dawkins' rebuttal -

simply does not fall. Christopher F.J. Martin observes that Aquinas is concerned with the

existence of more and less in terms of properties that by definition allow for an intrinsic

and logical maximum, rather than a merely de facto maximum. As E.L. Mascall explains:

Goodness, so the argument claims, demands as its cause a God who is good; while heat,

though it necessarily demands a God whose knowledge of possible being includes an idea

of heat, does not demand a God who is hot as its cause, but only a God who can create.

In modern philosophical terminology, Aquinas is arguing along the following lines:

1. Things exist in the world around us that exhibit finite degrees of great-making

properties (e.g. being, goodness, truth, beauty)

37



2. The existence of something exhibiting a great-making property to a finite

degree implies the existence of something that possesses the property in

question to a maximal degree

3. Therefore, all great making properties possessed in finite degree by beings in

the world around us, including being, are possessed to a maximal degree by

something

4. An effect cannot exceed the greatness of its cause

5. Therefore, there exists a maximally ontologically secure being that possess

every great-making property possessed by its effects to a maximal degree; and

this we call God

It should at least be clear that Aquinas' argument is logically valid, and consequently that

this line of thought cannot be dismissed with a jeering reference to smelly people, which is

all Dawkins does.

Religious Experience

Dawkins' response to the argument from religious experience (which he never actually

bothers to spell out) is merely to point out that experiences can be delusional:

The brain's simulation software . . . is well capable of constructing 'visions' and 'visitations'

of the utmost verdical power. To simulate a ghost or an angel or a Virgin Mary would be

child's play to software of this sophistication.

38



This single observation concludes Dawkins' attempted rebuttal:

This is really all that needs to be said about personal 'experiences' of gods or other religious

phenomena. If you've had such an experience, you may well find yourself believing firmly

that it was real. But don't expect the rest of us to take your word for it, especially if we have

the slightest familiarity with the brain and its powerful workings.

This really is not 'all that needs to be said', since Dawkins' failure to advance more than one

premise means that his supposed rebuttal doesn't even rise to the level of an argument .

Merely observing that the brain can create illusions provides no support for the conclusion

that all religious experiences are illusions. Indeed, without a second premise that both links

and restricts the illusion-giving power of the brain to religious experiences, Dawkins'

rebuttal counts equally against all experiences; including those which lead him to believe

that human beings have brains 'capable of constructing “visions” and “visitations” of the

utmost verdical power.'

The Moral Argument

As Paul Copan writes, the moral argument urges that although, ' Belief in God isn't a

requirement for being moral . . . the existence of a personal God is crucial for a coherent

understanding of objective morality.' Here, then, are the two core claims made by the moral

argument:

1. Morality is objective

2. The existence of a personal deity is entailed by objective morality

3. Given these two premises it follows that:

39



4. Therefore, a personal deity exists

Dawkins' chapter on the roots of morality merely observes that belief in God isn't a

requirement for knowing about morality or for being moral, and fails to engage with the

central question of whether or not the very existence of objective moral values entails God's

existence. As Stephen Unwin comments:

As for Dawkins' assertion that moral behaviour for believers is simply 'sucking up to God',

or that morality doesn't need faith . . . such observations miss the more fundamental

question of why we have moral or aesthetic values at all - such as the ones by which

Dawkins, myself and others venerate rational analysis.

If the moral argument which Dawkins studiously ignores is sound, atheism entails moral

subjectivism (after all, one cannot be morally obligated to, or commanded by, anything

other than a person; but by definition no finite person can ground the existence of an

objective moral order). Self-inflicted defeat looms for Dawkins, since his dissection of

natural theology assumes that people ought to be rational.

Dawkins' critique of the arguments for God's existence in The God Delusion has received

wildly enthusiastic praise from some quarters. For example, biologist P.Z. Myers thinks

that:

The God Delusion delivers a thorough overview of the logic of belief and disbelief.

Dawkins reviews, dismantles, and dismisses the major arguments for the existence of the

supernatural and deities . . . The God Delusion is a powerful argument for how to think

about the place of religion in the modern world. It's going to be a classic, fit to stand with

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Sagan's Pale Blue Dot and The Demon-Haunted World as a call to reason and

Enlightenment values.

Likewise, according to Jim Walker:

Dawkins has written, perhaps, the most powerful set of arguments against the alleged

supernatural god ever written . . . Dawkins leaves no quarter open for theists… No matter

how much the theist tries to run or hide, he will only run into the face of Dawkins powerful

arguments. At best he can only shout ad hominems . . . Dawkins quickly exposes each of

[the theistic arguments] as vacuous . . .

However, such glowing reviews are so way off base that a philosophical GPS (global

positioning system) would be calmly issuing repeated pleas to 'turn around when possible'.

In reality, Dawkins' unscholarly procedure takes the following illegitimate route to what

Terry Eagleton dubs a 'victory on the cheap':

1. Select a far from comprehensive sub-set of theistic arguments without giving a

hint that this is what you are doing.

2. Caricature the selected arguments, referring to (but not quoting) medieval rather

than contemporary versions (as John Cornwell observes, 'there is hardly a

serious work of philosophy of religion cited in his extensive bibliography'), or

simply failing to define the target.

3. Give the appearance of blowing away these arguments with an observation

(rather than an argument) or a charge of logical invalidity that either depends

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upon the fact that you are attacking a straw man, or which completely misses

the point of the argument you are attacking.

Scientist turned theologian Alister E. McGrath has the measure of Dawkins' procedure: 'It

is perhaps his weakest book to date, marred by its excessive reliance on bold assertion and

rhetorical flourish, where the issues so clearly demand careful reflection and painstaking

analysis'. Many laudatory reviews of The God Delusion share the view, expressed by Tim

Gebhart in Blogcritics Magazine, that to believe in God means being devoid of critical

thinking skills:

If The God Delusion suffers a flaw, it is an inherent and perhaps ultimately fatal one. It is

almost impossible to use logic and reasoning to educate and persuade others on a subject

that requires ignoring and rejecting logic and reasoning.

However, the careful application of critical thinking skills demonstrates that such

comments exhibit wishful thinking rather than a sober assessment of the facts. As atheist

philosopher Thomas Nagel's laments concerning what he calls Dawkins' 'amateur' attempts

at philosophy:

Dawkins dismisses, with contemptuous flippancy the traditional . . . arguments for the

existence of God offered by Aquinas and Anselm. I found these attempts at philosophy,

along with those in a later chapter on religion and ethics, particularly weak.

Dawkins accuses 'dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads' of being 'immune to argument'. It is hard to

test this assumption using The God Delusion, since it's arguments against belief in God are

conspicuous either by their absence or by their invalidity. Dawkins hopes that 'open-

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minded' religious believers 'whose native intelligence is strong enough' and who read The

God Delusion 'will be atheists when they put it down', because such people 'need only a

little encouragement to break free of the vice of religion altogether.' Unfortunately for

Dawkins' self-admitted 'presumptuous optimism'on this point, The God Delusion fails to

provide any rational encouragement to this end. Dawkins' critique of the arguments for God

is one long bluff that deserves to be called. The Emperor has no clothes .(Calling Dawkins'

Bluff by: Peter Williams )

http://www.damaris.org/content/content.php?type=5&id=503

Poor logic

In his article “Deconstructing a deluded Dawkins”, Paul Taylor added holes on Dawkins

arguments and said in his article that it must also be said that Dawkins’ arguments

show surprisingly poor logic. Examine this extraordinary sentence:

Although Jesus probably existed, reputable biblical scholars do not in general regard the

New Testament (and obviously not the Old Testament) as a reliable record of what actually

happened in history, and I shall not consider the Bible further as evidence for any kind of

deity. (p. 97 God Delusion by Richard Dawkins)

Look first at the use of the word “probably” in “Although Jesus probably existed.” Why is

Dawkins doubting this fact? There is no good reason to question that Jesus existed. It is

illogical to add the word “probably.”

Look next at the use of the word “reputable.” What is a “reputable biblical scholar”? The

test of reputation has been left undone by Dawkins, but presumably, a “reputable biblical

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http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/jesuschrist.asp








Chapter IV

Conclusion & Recommendation

Richard Dawkins makes numerous assertions, nearly all of which he fails to support with

either logic or data. Examples include the numerous names he gives to God, the claim that

Paul founded Christianity, the claim that Christianity is the bloodiest religion ever, the

claim that there are few strong atheists, all of which are shown to be false. Dawkins is

caught quoting out-of-context, when the original intent of the author was exactly opposite

of what he reported. I'm not sure how he thought he would get away with this kind of

despicable lying. Dawkins' most egregious example of failing to supports his claims is the

assertion that intelligences (including God) must be evolved. Dawkins doesn't seem to

apply his claim to the universe itself, which displays considerable evidence that it is

anything but average. In fact, an average universe would consist solely of thermal energy,

and no matter at all. It is clear that Richard Dawkins dislikes the God of Christianity

primarily because of His desire for moral accountability from people. Dawkins doesn't

want to be morally accountable, and finds a God who demands such accountability to be

evil, instead preferring the non-intervening god of deism.

Christians have nothing to fear from The God Delusion. Far from being a reasoned

argument for atheism, it is a rant. It would be appropriate for Christians to be aware of the

principal arguments of the book, and how they are countered. Maybe one day an atheistic

book will emerge that has more intellectual rigor, but even an intellectually rigorous

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apology for atheism would not concern us for God is a God of wisdom and reason. Time

and again we find that a belief in the inerrancy of Scripture is not just a doctrinal statement,

it is an intellectually satisfying position to take. But Dawkins’ new book is weak, even by

atheist standards.

To end this I would like to tell you one more secret that I have been seeing on what really

is Dawkins trying to do. He is conveying a message, an idea that God is a cosmic killjoy,

intent on denying us pleasure and good things, but this is not new to humanity. In fact, this

ploy is the exact one Satan used on Eve in the garden of Eden to convince her to eat of the

forbidden fruit. In his exchange with Eve, Satan indicated that God was a liar and that He

just wanted to keep something good (the fruit) from her, saying, "God knows that in the

day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and

evil.” Dawkins has bought into Satan's first lie - that God is a cosmic killjoy - even though

he does not believe God exists. I would like to would like to recommend to those who

would like to make another thesis on Richard Dawkins to tackle about The effects of

religion on people to refute Dawkins claims that Religion is the root of all evil. I hope

maybe just maybe this research conducted about the morality Dawkins is preaching did

help in giving the information needed by the people to unmask a certain Richard Dawkins,

because Dawkins’ theory of morality is highly defective.

prince - final final

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