I don't think that's exactly true; from what I've read, Dawkins, being the scientist he is, isn't in the business of "proof" -- "proof is for alcohol and mathematics". His position is, as I understand it, that we have no evidence supporting the "god-hypothesis" that cannot be explained more simply without the god-hypothesis, and that claims about various gods are either in conflict with observed reality, self-contradictory, or indistinguishable empirically from the "no-god-hypothesis".sultan2075 wrote:That's not really satisfactory though, is it? The major error Dawkins makes, I think, is that he seems to think that the existence of God is the sort of thing that reason can prove or disprove, an error that stems from the fact that he has not sufficiently considered the limits of reason. The entire metaphor breaks down precisely because even Dawkins has metaphysical* presuppositions that he does not adequately account for or explain. He wants to make what are, by definition, metaphysical statements ("God does not exist") without engaging the considerations necessary to determine whether statements such as "God exists" or "God does not exist" can even be uttered in a meaningful way.
And forgive me, but I'm wary when people start arguing presuppositions; it sounds to me as if you're going to start in on some sort of transcendental argument for the existence of God, which quite frankly strikes me as useful as Anselm's ontological argument; they are both simply attempts to redefine the rules of logic so that Christianity automatically wins.
The "intellectually sophisticated believer" may retreat to a deist-style first-cause-only-god when arguing with Dawkins, but generally pushes the goal-posts back out to the interventionist Yahweh when preaching to the flock.sultan2075 wrote:The other major criticism one might make is that he consistently engages in straw-man tactics, i.e., the theism he critiques is not the sort of theism that a philosophically aware believer would take as legitimate anyway--he tends to go after the "God is an old man in the sky" view (in various degrees of complexity), which makes for good copy and entertaining ripostes, but is hardly an accurate represenation of what the intellectually sophisticated believer accepts. If he wants to beat up on fundamentalist literalists and young-earth creationsists, or even intelligent design sorts, that's fine, but he shouldn't expect to be taken seriously--it's the equivalent of taking candy from a baby. If he wants to seriously prove that he is correct, he needs to do a lot of philosophical heavy lifting that he thus far has shown no inclination toward doing. Until he does, he's simply a gussied-up version of the angry high-school atheist out to shock the establishment.
The intellectually sophisticated version is a minority belief anyway; the "God is an old man in the sky" view, is what most "grass roots" believers actually believe isn't it? Some flavour of creationism is accepted by most of America's Christians, (although admittedly probably not Europe's) as well as the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims. It's hardly a straw-man when he is arguing against what people believe.
And forgive me, but you do seem to be arguing PZ's courtier's reply as I posted earlier, when you talk of "philosophical heavy lifting".
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