Dawkins is a biologist, not a philosopher. His book is definitely a no go because It has a huge deal-breaker: Its central argument, ‘Who created God’ (which embarrassingly was the one that swayed me) is false. If I had promptly found out back then that this particular argument was false, I would have probably stuck with the theist position.
I like have discussions with religious people, so I have a sense of what works and what does not work. I have tried many approaches and I think for an approach to work, you have the present the strongest argument in the simplest form with the least amount of offence.
The best argument that fits these criteria IMO is that the universe in its current form is different than the way it would have been if an intelligent entity had created it. For example, why are there billions of billions of stars and planets without any purpose? Why did God wait 4.5 billion years since the inception of the universe to create the Earth, and another 9 billion years to create humans? Why does the human body have an appendix, whose only purpose is to inflame and rupture, killing many people before the invention of surgery? Why is the human heart, a vital organ, incapable of adequately rebuilding itself after a heart attack?
This line of arguing is great because
It is strong You can spend hours giving examples on how poorly the universe is designed, and I have debated many theists and none so far has managed to provide a good counterargument.
It is simple The theist already knows the universe is vast. The theist already knows the heart does not regenerate well after a heart attack. You don’t have to show him scientific papers. You don’t have to waste time explaining a philosophical argument.
It is non-offensive You are just saying his God is a poor designer. You can do much worse than that.
Of course, lukeprog has evolved a lot since then. He has recently launched a great website www.worldviewnaturalism.com, which apparently concludes/summarizes his efforts at commonsenseatheism.com. I am pretty sure he also made a post here in lesswrong about this topic.
Edit: Forgot to add. According to this source: http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2012/02/results-of-the-.html
Theists perceive the argument from evil as being very powerful. So I think you should use the argument from evil too, but in the very end of your discussion, because the theist might be offended and decide to terminate the conversation.
Don’t want to debate Luke’s video here, but I also disagree with you about “who created God?” being the God Delusion’s central argument. The central argument is the “Ultimate Boeing 747″, which essentially argues that the Bayesian prior for the likelihood of God should be very low. This applies whether or not God is “necessary” or “non-contingent”, and has nothing to do with how good an explanation for anything God is.
What’s wrong with the “who created God?” response? Remember, it’s not an argument against the existence of God, itself. It merely nullifies an argument for the existence of God: That we need God to explain the universe.
I’ve always regarded the arguments that Luke cites against Dawkins’ central argument as being awfully weak.
Yes, theists believe that God is eternal and necessary, a “non-contingent” being, as they say. But you could just as easily say that the universe itself is necessary and non-contingent. It doesn’t seem to have existed in its current form forever, but that doesn’t mean that the process which gave rise to the Big Bang ever had to be caused by anything, or could possibly have not existed.
Maybe the universe is necessary and non-contingent, maybe not. But the fact that it exists is established beyond reasonable doubt. We’re not taking up a big unnecessary complexity burden by positing the existence of the universe. God, on the other hand, is a big complexity burden. You can say that he’s non-contingent, that he couldn’t possibly not exist, but you could say that about anything, and we don’t have any actual evidence for that assertion.
When dealing with a causal chain, you’re ultimately going to end up with an infinite regression or an uncaused cause. What Dawkins argues is that if you’re going to posit an uncaused cause, God, as an intelligent being, is a far more complex explanation than a simple uncaused cause, such as some sort of basic physical principle.
Some believers will respond that God is simple, he has no moving parts and is ontologically basic. But of course, again, there’s no end to the hypothetical entities you could posit and say that they’re ontologically basic, but they can’t even establish that intelligent ontologically basic entities is a coherent idea, and even if they could, it would leave the question of how we single out their conception of God as the specific ontologically basic causal agent to believe in. He has qualities attributed to him which you could not attribute to an ontologically basic causal entity, so as an explanatory hypothesis he can’t be minimally complex.
An actual reply:
The question “How did the universe arise?” is equivalent to “How did God arise?”. You do not have to explain how the universe came into existence in order to accept that the universe exists, and the same applies to God.
Your main point in your reply is that God fails occam’s razor. He does not help us understand the universe nor the physical phenomena; He is just a less embarrassing replacement of the word magic. God has poor explanatory power, and this is a good argument.
If from the beginning you do not accept that God is a good explanation for our existence, you do not have to play the theist’s game. If you do, then you cannot afterwards tell the theist to provide an explanation for his God or you won’t believe in Him, because 1)this question is irrelevant as shown earlier and 2)his theology already provides an adequate answer for this question once you conceded/entertained the thought that God could provide a good explanation for our existence.
2)his theology already provides an adequate answer for this question once you conceded/entertained the thought that God could provide a good explanation for our existence.
I’d contest that it provides an adequate answer, although it certainly offers answers.
An actual reply:
The question “How did the universe arise?” is equivalent to “How did God arise?”. You do not have to explain how the universe came into existence in order to accept that it exists, and the same applies to God.
Your long reply can simply be summarized by saying God fails occam’s razor. He does not help us understand the universe nor the physical phenomena; He is just a less embarrassing replacement of the word magic. God has poor explanatory power, and this is a good argument.
If from the beginning you do not accept that God is a good explanation for our existence, you do not have to play the theist’s game. If you do, then you cannot afterwards tell the theist to provide an explanation for his God, because 1)this is a meaningless question and 2)his theology already provides an adequate answer.
For an example of DH7 in action, see Wielenberg (2009). Wielenberg, an atheist, tries to fix the deficiencies of Dawkins’ central argument for atheism, and then shows that even this improved argument does not succeed.
Why does the human body have an appendix, whose only purpose is to inflame and rupture, killing many people before the invention of surgery? Why is the human heart, a vital organ, incapable of adequately rebuilding itself after a heart attack?
I agree with the general thrust of this, but note that specific case of the uselessness of the appendix is controversial.
My list for this argument starts with the fact that it would be much better if the trachea and esophagus didn’t intersect, with the nostrils on the side of the neck—no one would ever choke, a circumstance of death usually associated with children (typically exemplifying the morally blameless for most religious people).
I can argue back that each of the two discrete pathways would be narrower than the one common pathway we have, so having a common pathway is not as stupid as you are making it out to be. This answer is poor because the risk of choking is much more problematic than having a narrower airway.
Earthquakes are also mildly useful in that they bring out precious metals to the surface of the earth. I am pretty sure an omnipotent god could have brought out such materials without having to kill millions of people each time he did it.
Regarding the appendix, I frankly don’t care if a handful of doctors claimed the appendix had some trivial functions. The way I see it: people without an appendix are indistinguishable health-wise from people with an appendix, while until a very recent time, people with an appendix had to worry about dying when it inflames and ruptures. Humanity would have been much better off without an appendix.
Dawkins is a biologist, not a philosopher. His book is definitely a no go because It has a huge deal-breaker: Its central argument, ‘Who created God’ (which embarrassingly was the one that swayed me) is false. If I had promptly found out back then that this particular argument was false, I would have probably stuck with the theist position.
I like have discussions with religious people, so I have a sense of what works and what does not work. I have tried many approaches and I think for an approach to work, you have the present the strongest argument in the simplest form with the least amount of offence.
The best argument that fits these criteria IMO is that the universe in its current form is different than the way it would have been if an intelligent entity had created it. For example, why are there billions of billions of stars and planets without any purpose? Why did God wait 4.5 billion years since the inception of the universe to create the Earth, and another 9 billion years to create humans? Why does the human body have an appendix, whose only purpose is to inflame and rupture, killing many people before the invention of surgery? Why is the human heart, a vital organ, incapable of adequately rebuilding itself after a heart attack?
This line of arguing is great because
It is strong You can spend hours giving examples on how poorly the universe is designed, and I have debated many theists and none so far has managed to provide a good counterargument. It is simple The theist already knows the universe is vast. The theist already knows the heart does not regenerate well after a heart attack. You don’t have to show him scientific papers. You don’t have to waste time explaining a philosophical argument. It is non-offensive You are just saying his God is a poor designer. You can do much worse than that.
This reminds me of a 30-minute lecture lukeprog gave long ago, which communicated a similar message: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Sli34Dw3U
Of course, lukeprog has evolved a lot since then. He has recently launched a great website www.worldviewnaturalism.com, which apparently concludes/summarizes his efforts at commonsenseatheism.com. I am pretty sure he also made a post here in lesswrong about this topic.
Edit: Forgot to add. According to this source: http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2012/02/results-of-the-.html Theists perceive the argument from evil as being very powerful. So I think you should use the argument from evil too, but in the very end of your discussion, because the theist might be offended and decide to terminate the conversation.
Don’t want to debate Luke’s video here, but I also disagree with you about “who created God?” being the God Delusion’s central argument. The central argument is the “Ultimate Boeing 747″, which essentially argues that the Bayesian prior for the likelihood of God should be very low. This applies whether or not God is “necessary” or “non-contingent”, and has nothing to do with how good an explanation for anything God is.
What’s wrong with the “who created God?” response? Remember, it’s not an argument against the existence of God, itself. It merely nullifies an argument for the existence of God: That we need God to explain the universe.
Watch the video I linked to earlier. lukeprog explains it better than I ever will: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Sli34Dw3U
I’ve always regarded the arguments that Luke cites against Dawkins’ central argument as being awfully weak.
Yes, theists believe that God is eternal and necessary, a “non-contingent” being, as they say. But you could just as easily say that the universe itself is necessary and non-contingent. It doesn’t seem to have existed in its current form forever, but that doesn’t mean that the process which gave rise to the Big Bang ever had to be caused by anything, or could possibly have not existed.
Maybe the universe is necessary and non-contingent, maybe not. But the fact that it exists is established beyond reasonable doubt. We’re not taking up a big unnecessary complexity burden by positing the existence of the universe. God, on the other hand, is a big complexity burden. You can say that he’s non-contingent, that he couldn’t possibly not exist, but you could say that about anything, and we don’t have any actual evidence for that assertion.
When dealing with a causal chain, you’re ultimately going to end up with an infinite regression or an uncaused cause. What Dawkins argues is that if you’re going to posit an uncaused cause, God, as an intelligent being, is a far more complex explanation than a simple uncaused cause, such as some sort of basic physical principle.
Some believers will respond that God is simple, he has no moving parts and is ontologically basic. But of course, again, there’s no end to the hypothetical entities you could posit and say that they’re ontologically basic, but they can’t even establish that intelligent ontologically basic entities is a coherent idea, and even if they could, it would leave the question of how we single out their conception of God as the specific ontologically basic causal agent to believe in. He has qualities attributed to him which you could not attribute to an ontologically basic causal entity, so as an explanatory hypothesis he can’t be minimally complex.
An actual reply: The question “How did the universe arise?” is equivalent to “How did God arise?”. You do not have to explain how the universe came into existence in order to accept that the universe exists, and the same applies to God.
Your main point in your reply is that God fails occam’s razor. He does not help us understand the universe nor the physical phenomena; He is just a less embarrassing replacement of the word magic. God has poor explanatory power, and this is a good argument.
If from the beginning you do not accept that God is a good explanation for our existence, you do not have to play the theist’s game. If you do, then you cannot afterwards tell the theist to provide an explanation for his God or you won’t believe in Him, because 1)this question is irrelevant as shown earlier and 2)his theology already provides an adequate answer for this question once you conceded/entertained the thought that God could provide a good explanation for our existence.
I’d contest that it provides an adequate answer, although it certainly offers answers.
An actual reply: The question “How did the universe arise?” is equivalent to “How did God arise?”. You do not have to explain how the universe came into existence in order to accept that it exists, and the same applies to God.
Your long reply can simply be summarized by saying God fails occam’s razor. He does not help us understand the universe nor the physical phenomena; He is just a less embarrassing replacement of the word magic. God has poor explanatory power, and this is a good argument.
If from the beginning you do not accept that God is a good explanation for our existence, you do not have to play the theist’s game. If you do, then you cannot afterwards tell the theist to provide an explanation for his God, because 1)this is a meaningless question and 2)his theology already provides an adequate answer.
I will just leave this paper here, which lukeprog mentioned in his Better Disagreement article:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Wielenberg-Dawkins-Gambit-Humes-Aroma-and-Gods-Simplicity.pdf
To quote:
I agree with the general thrust of this, but note that specific case of the uselessness of the appendix is controversial.
My list for this argument starts with the fact that it would be much better if the trachea and esophagus didn’t intersect, with the nostrils on the side of the neck—no one would ever choke, a circumstance of death usually associated with children (typically exemplifying the morally blameless for most religious people).
I can argue back that each of the two discrete pathways would be narrower than the one common pathway we have, so having a common pathway is not as stupid as you are making it out to be. This answer is poor because the risk of choking is much more problematic than having a narrower airway.
Earthquakes are also mildly useful in that they bring out precious metals to the surface of the earth. I am pretty sure an omnipotent god could have brought out such materials without having to kill millions of people each time he did it.
Regarding the appendix, I frankly don’t care if a handful of doctors claimed the appendix had some trivial functions. The way I see it: people without an appendix are indistinguishable health-wise from people with an appendix, while until a very recent time, people with an appendix had to worry about dying when it inflames and ruptures. Humanity would have been much better off without an appendix.