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Last night in Australia there was an interview with Richard Dawkins on TV. I found him quite a likeable character. He is rather shy, surprisingly, given how forthright his opinions are. (Actually my feeling was that he has lead rather a sheltered life; very much the Oxford don, I felt.)
Regardless, I think he is very wrong about religion. I don't say this as a biblical Christian or fundamentalist. I hold no brief for creationism or intelligent design, but at the same time I am someone who feels that there seems to be 'an intelligence behind everything'. It is kind of vague, and I am OK with that. (Besides I never want to argue for the existence of God. Only for the existence of the possibility. That is all I think is necessary, for philosophy.)
The question I have, however, is very specific. Dawkins said in this interview 'God is something for which there is no evidence'. He was very clear about that and in fact looked very pained that anyone could hold such a belief. It clearly annoys him.
So the question is this. If there were a God - let's describe it as 'Deity' - what evidence could there be for its existence?
What are you looking for - footprints? Fossil remains? DNA samples?
It seems to me that Dawkins conception of Deity is rather like those of children who imagine him as a kind of very large, but nevertheless finite, being, rather like a super-person. Presumably a very busy one, dashing here and there, creating things. (Of course, if you see it like this, it is no wonder you think it is absurd.)
If, however, the Deity was not 'a being' whose role is to 'tinker with creation' but the intelligence behind the laws of nature themselves, by the operation of which everything subsequent is generated, how could there be evidence of such a Deity? What what you look for? What would constitute 'evidence'?
That is also a good answer. And yes I think there are many possible answers, or many things that people might offer by way of reply, but I really think the likes of Dawkins ought to take seriously what this question implies. But thanks. I will get to the 'anthropic' arguments in due course.
Dawkins said in this interview 'God is something for which there is no evidence'.
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. This is not to say that religious people believe in a black hole, because they also consider that God has revealed himself: not, as Dawkins thinks, in the guise of a cosmic manufacturer even smarter than Dawkins himself (the New Testament has next to nothing to say about God as Creator), but for Christians at least, in the form of a reviled and murdered political criminal. The Jews of the so-called Old Testament had faith in God, but this does not mean that after debating the matter at a number of international conferences they decided to endorse the scientific hypothesis that there existed a supreme architect of the universe - even though, as Genesis reveals, they were of this opinion. They had faith in God in the sense that I have faith in you. They may well have been mistaken in their view; but they were not mistaken because their scientific hypothesis was unsound.
Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or 'existent': in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.
The point I am making with the 'evidence' argument is that a Dawkins thinks that religion is trying to be like science, only doing it wrong; 'they believe in mythical beings'. Maybe the righteous indignation is actually a defense mechanism. In any case, he doesn't get the meaning of 'transcendent' (which is generally dismissed on the Dawkins forum as 'woo').
The Western attitude to religion is a complex.
Last night in Australia there was an interview with Richard Dawkins on TV. I found him quite a likeable character. He is rather shy, surprisingly, given how forthright his opinions are. (Actually my feeling was that he has lead rather a sheltered life; very much the Oxford don, I felt.)
Regardless, I think he is very wrong about religion. I don't say this as a biblical Christian or fundamentalist. I hold no brief for creationism or intelligent design, but at the same time I am someone who feels that there seems to be 'an intelligence behind everything'. It is kind of vague, and I am OK with that. (Besides I never want to argue for the existence of God. Only for the existence of the possibility. That is all I think is necessary, for philosophy.)
The question I have, however, is very specific. Dawkins said in this interview 'God is something for which there is no evidence'. He was very clear about that and in fact looked very pained that anyone could hold such a belief. It clearly annoys him.
So the question is this. If there were a God - let's describe it as 'Deity' - what evidence could there be for its existence?
What are you looking for - footprints? Fossil remains? DNA samples?
It seems to me that Dawkins conception of Deity is rather like those of children who imagine him as a kind of very large, but nevertheless finite, being, rather like a super-person. Presumably a very busy one, dashing here and there, creating things. (Of course, if you see it like this, it is no wonder you think it is absurd.)
If, however, the Deity was not 'a being' whose role is to 'tinker with creation' but the intelligence behind the laws of nature themselves, by the operation of which everything subsequent is generated, how could there be evidence of such a Deity? What what you look for? What would constitute 'evidence'?