I have stopped recommending Dawkin’s work to people who are on the fence about religion. The God Delusion utterly destroyed his effectiveness at convincing people against religion. (In a world in which they couldn’t do an internet search on his name, it might not matter; we don’t live in that world, and I assume other people are as likely to investigate somebody as I am.) It doesn’t even matter whether his facts are right or not, the way he presents them will put most people on the intellectual defensive.
This has come up before in other discussions, but Richard Dawkins has converted a not insiginificant number of people. I’m sure that there are people who’re put on the intellectual defensive by reading The God Delusion, but I also personally know people who were converted by it, and have heard testimony by people who had been exposed to atheist arguments on many prior occasions who found that The God Delusion effectively addressed their own positions and converted them where other arguments had not.
It’s a simple fact that most arguments intended to divest people of their religious beliefs do not work on most believers. Some arguments, and I’m counting presentation as part of an argument, work on some believers, while different ones work on others, but all arguments do not work on most. If anyone had found a reliably effective way of arguing most believers out of their religion, it would almost certainly have been implemented on a mass scale already.
Richard Dawkins’ attempts at arguing people out of their religions are mostly unsucessful, but so are everyone else’s. I suspect you’d be hard pressed to name an individual who’s personally responsible for a greater number of deconversions from religion. Different people respond to different approaches, but if you believe that he’s chosen an approach to arguing people out of their religions that ranks low on the effectiveness scale, when compared to other approaches to arguing people out of religion, I think you’re mistaken.
I believe his original approach of not trying to argue them out of it at all was a more effective one.
Partly because his argument was so wildly misaligned. His disproof of God is laughably bad from a religious perspective—although it makes perfect sense from an atheistic one. (It makes a number of assumptions about God that few, if any, deists actually agree with.) Partly because of the tone, which sets any reader who has an emotional buy-in looking for flaws which are readily found.
There is a hint there about when a negative tone might be more effective, though—when there aren’t flaws to be found. When your opponent is so angry he looks for any possible argument, and finds none.
There is a hint there about when a negative tone might be more effective, though—when there aren’t flaws to be found. When your opponent is so angry he looks for any possible argument, and finds none.
Flaws can always be found. Just because an argument against God is logically valid and based on true premises doesn’t mean that believers won’t be able to argue against it, they’ll just need an unsound counterargument. If most believers found logical flaws in religious arguments easy to spot, they’d have argued themselves out of religion already.
That presumes they care to argue about it with themselves at all, a rather faulty assumption relating to a philosophical doctrine which discourages such questioning.
Additionally, I’ve yet to see a logically valid, based-on-true-premises argument against deism. (Certain -versions- of deism, yes; deism generally, no.) The strongest argument I’ve seen is that a god is unnecessary/possesses no explanatory power—which as far as I am concerned is as much of an argument as you need, but hardly an argument against god, per se.
What would you regard as an argument against deism, if you wouldn’t regard that as one? If such a god is unnecessary and has no explanatory power, then it follows that there’s no evidence for it (evidence being observations that are more likely in light of the truth of a proposition than its falsehood, a proposition should always help “explain” why you make observations that are evidence for it.) And we should not believe in complex propositions without evidence, not because it defies some etiquette of rationality, but because they’re probably not true.
Most theists are, if not acquainted with arguments against the existence of God (although many are familiar with some formulations of such arguments,) but have a number of arguments for belief in God, which they will rehearse whenever they encounter arguments against God. Being entirely sheltered from thinking about the reasons for believing is the exception rather than the rule.
Note that Luke claims a single logically sound argument against God (for which you can check the video ElGalambo links in this thread,) but in his experience with actually deconverting people, he has not found any particular argument as effective as creating an impression of being a smart, likeable, good person, while treating religion as low status and uncool.
Your second paragraph only applies to deists who in fact engage in arguments about belief, rather than ignore them. There’s a selection bias at play there.
Additionally, given that there is (can not be?) evidence against god, any evidence for, however weak, is pretty substantial.
As for what an argument against deism would be, it would be an argument which demonstrates that god is unlikely, which is not necessarily the same as unnecessary. (To distinguish between the two, I will point out that from a deist perspective, evolution is unnecessary.)
And before we continue, I will add that I have met deists who believe that the universe itself is god. Deism is so broadly defined that a complete proof against it would also be a proof against the aforementioned universe, duck eggs, and wombats.
I address the argument of a simple god in this comment.
And before we continue, I will add that I have met deists who believe that the universe itself is god. Deism is so broadly defined that a complete proof against it would also be a proof against the aforementioned universe, duck eggs, and wombats.
How do they distinguish believing in a god that is also the universe from believing in the universe, but no god?
As opposed to Gods that can be described in only a few bits. I am not sure what the lower limit on information complexity on a God is, but if it is going to do the sorts of things people generally claim a God does, it is going to be a complex proposition.
Saying that “the universe is God” is disprovable without disproving duck eggs and wombats. If the Universe is God, then there must be some classification “God” that is at least epistemically different from “Universe” or else the statement is meaningless. Saying that the universe does not fit into the class “God” is not saying that the universe doesn’t exist.
Which people, and which claims? Complexity is not necessary to beget complexity; evolution, for example, is a remarkably simple process.
One deist’s position was that the universe as god had a particular goal in mind, cohesion. His particular god was impersonal and disprovable (as he claimed the contraction of the universe to a single point was the purpose of that god, if that were not the case, it would be a contradiction), and had a particular theistic ramification; the dead joined the universal consciousness, which was, as far as I could tell from conversation with him, a strictly experiential existence, devoid of thought and possessing only purpose—the aforementioned cohesion.
One deist’s position was that the universe as god had a particular goal in mind, cohesion. His particular god was impersonal and disprovable (as he claimed the contraction of the universe to a single point was the purpose of that god, if that were not the case, it would be a contradiction)
Have you ever questioned him on whether the discovery that the rate of universal expansion is accelerating, suggesting that the universe is unlikely to end in a Big Crunch, affects his beliefs?
This has come up before in other discussions, but Richard Dawkins has converted a not insiginificant number of people. I’m sure that there are people who’re put on the intellectual defensive by reading The God Delusion, but I also personally know people who were converted by it, and have heard testimony by people who had been exposed to atheist arguments on many prior occasions who found that The God Delusion effectively addressed their own positions and converted them where other arguments had not.
It’s a simple fact that most arguments intended to divest people of their religious beliefs do not work on most believers. Some arguments, and I’m counting presentation as part of an argument, work on some believers, while different ones work on others, but all arguments do not work on most. If anyone had found a reliably effective way of arguing most believers out of their religion, it would almost certainly have been implemented on a mass scale already.
Richard Dawkins’ attempts at arguing people out of their religions are mostly unsucessful, but so are everyone else’s. I suspect you’d be hard pressed to name an individual who’s personally responsible for a greater number of deconversions from religion. Different people respond to different approaches, but if you believe that he’s chosen an approach to arguing people out of their religions that ranks low on the effectiveness scale, when compared to other approaches to arguing people out of religion, I think you’re mistaken.
I believe his original approach of not trying to argue them out of it at all was a more effective one.
Partly because his argument was so wildly misaligned. His disproof of God is laughably bad from a religious perspective—although it makes perfect sense from an atheistic one. (It makes a number of assumptions about God that few, if any, deists actually agree with.) Partly because of the tone, which sets any reader who has an emotional buy-in looking for flaws which are readily found.
There is a hint there about when a negative tone might be more effective, though—when there aren’t flaws to be found. When your opponent is so angry he looks for any possible argument, and finds none.
Flaws can always be found. Just because an argument against God is logically valid and based on true premises doesn’t mean that believers won’t be able to argue against it, they’ll just need an unsound counterargument. If most believers found logical flaws in religious arguments easy to spot, they’d have argued themselves out of religion already.
That presumes they care to argue about it with themselves at all, a rather faulty assumption relating to a philosophical doctrine which discourages such questioning.
Additionally, I’ve yet to see a logically valid, based-on-true-premises argument against deism. (Certain -versions- of deism, yes; deism generally, no.) The strongest argument I’ve seen is that a god is unnecessary/possesses no explanatory power—which as far as I am concerned is as much of an argument as you need, but hardly an argument against god, per se.
What would you regard as an argument against deism, if you wouldn’t regard that as one? If such a god is unnecessary and has no explanatory power, then it follows that there’s no evidence for it (evidence being observations that are more likely in light of the truth of a proposition than its falsehood, a proposition should always help “explain” why you make observations that are evidence for it.) And we should not believe in complex propositions without evidence, not because it defies some etiquette of rationality, but because they’re probably not true.
Most theists are, if not acquainted with arguments against the existence of God (although many are familiar with some formulations of such arguments,) but have a number of arguments for belief in God, which they will rehearse whenever they encounter arguments against God. Being entirely sheltered from thinking about the reasons for believing is the exception rather than the rule.
Note that Luke claims a single logically sound argument against God (for which you can check the video ElGalambo links in this thread,) but in his experience with actually deconverting people, he has not found any particular argument as effective as creating an impression of being a smart, likeable, good person, while treating religion as low status and uncool.
That presumes a complex god.
Your second paragraph only applies to deists who in fact engage in arguments about belief, rather than ignore them. There’s a selection bias at play there.
Additionally, given that there is (can not be?) evidence against god, any evidence for, however weak, is pretty substantial.
As for what an argument against deism would be, it would be an argument which demonstrates that god is unlikely, which is not necessarily the same as unnecessary. (To distinguish between the two, I will point out that from a deist perspective, evolution is unnecessary.)
And before we continue, I will add that I have met deists who believe that the universe itself is god. Deism is so broadly defined that a complete proof against it would also be a proof against the aforementioned universe, duck eggs, and wombats.
I address the argument of a simple god in this comment.
How do they distinguish believing in a god that is also the universe from believing in the universe, but no god?
As opposed to Gods that can be described in only a few bits. I am not sure what the lower limit on information complexity on a God is, but if it is going to do the sorts of things people generally claim a God does, it is going to be a complex proposition.
Saying that “the universe is God” is disprovable without disproving duck eggs and wombats. If the Universe is God, then there must be some classification “God” that is at least epistemically different from “Universe” or else the statement is meaningless. Saying that the universe does not fit into the class “God” is not saying that the universe doesn’t exist.
Which people, and which claims? Complexity is not necessary to beget complexity; evolution, for example, is a remarkably simple process.
One deist’s position was that the universe as god had a particular goal in mind, cohesion. His particular god was impersonal and disprovable (as he claimed the contraction of the universe to a single point was the purpose of that god, if that were not the case, it would be a contradiction), and had a particular theistic ramification; the dead joined the universal consciousness, which was, as far as I could tell from conversation with him, a strictly experiential existence, devoid of thought and possessing only purpose—the aforementioned cohesion.
Have you ever questioned him on whether the discovery that the rate of universal expansion is accelerating, suggesting that the universe is unlikely to end in a Big Crunch, affects his beliefs?