DECONSTRUCTED by Peter S. Williams

1. DECONSTRUCTED by Peter S. Williams www.damaris.org

2. Richard Dawkins ‘Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science’ Oxford University www.damaris.org

3. The God Delusion www.damaris.org

4. Dawkins’ Ambition • ‘If this books works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.’ – (p. 5.) www.damaris.org

5. Dawkins’ Cynicism • ‘dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods [such as issuing] a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan.’ On the other hand, anyone: • ‘open-minded [whose] childhood indoctrination was not too insidious… or whose native intelligence is strong enough to overcome it [will] need only a little encouragement to break free of the vice of religion altogether.’(p. 5-6.) www.damaris.org

6. In other words… • People who disagree with me are either the victim of brainwashing, or they are thick www.damaris.org

7. Jim Walker – nobeliefs.com: • ‘Dawkins has written, perhaps, the most powerful set of arguments against the alleged supernatural god ever written...’ (my italics) www.damaris.org

8. P.Z. Myers – Seed Magazine: • ‘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.’ www.damaris.org

9. Agnostic H. Allen Orr – New York Review of Books: • ‘Despite my admiration for much of Dawkins’ work… The God Delusion seems to me badly flawed. Though I once labelled Dawkins a professional atheist, I’m forced, after reading his new book, to conclude he’s actually more an amateur… for all I know, Dawkins’ general conclusion is right. But his book makes a far from convincing case.’ www.damaris.org

10. The Journey Ahead… • Dawkins on arguments for God • Dawkins’ argument against God • Dawkins and the evidence for Jesus www.damaris.org

11. Dawkins on arguments for God • Dawkins’ argument against God • Dawkins and the evidence for Jesus www.damaris.org

12. Dawkins on arguments for God • Dawkins calls Aquinas’ arguments for God ‘vacuous’(p. 77.) • ‘there is no evidence to favour the God Hypothesis.’(p. 59.) www.damaris.org

13. A warning from atheist Thomas Nagel: • Castigates Dawkins for ‘amateur philosophy’ • ‘Dawkins dismisses, with contemptuous flippancy the traditional… arguments for the existence of God... I found these attempts at philosophy, along with those in a later chapter on religion and ethics, particularly weak.’ (The New Republic) www.damaris.org

14. Dawkins’ Methodology… • There are argument Dawkins does not consider • Those he does consider are straw-man versions of the arguments • Dawkins bungles his attack on the straw-men www.damaris.org

15. Religious Experience www.damaris.org

16. Religious Experience • He never spells out the argument from religious experience • He asserts that experiences can be delusional: ‘the brain’s simulation software… is well capable of constructing “visions” and “visitations” of the utmost veridical power.’ - The God Delusion, p. 90. www.damaris.org

17. Religious Experience • That’s all folks! ‘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.’(p. 92) • Dawkins’ rebuttal doesn’t even rise to the level of an argument. He fails to advance more than one premise www.damaris.org

18. Religious Experience • Observing that the brain can create illusions provides no reason for the conclusion that all religious experiences are illusions www.damaris.org

19. Cosmological Argument www.damaris.org

20. Cosmological Argument • The famous five ‘ways’ of Thomas Aquinas (which he does not quote): ‘are easily – though I hesitate to say so, given his eminence - exposed as vacuous.’ • Dawkins should have hesitated more www.damaris.org

21. Cosmological Argument • Dawkins complains that Aquinas makes: ‘the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress.’ • A cosmological argument just is an argument for the necessity of a being that is ‘immune to the regress’! www.damaris.org

22. Cosmological Argument • Consider the following arguments: 1) Something is caused 2) It is impossible for everything to be caused 3) Therefore there must exist an uncaused thing • Something is contingent • It is impossible for everything to be contingent • Therefore something is necessary www.damaris.org

23. The Anthropic Argument www.damaris.org

24. The Anthropic Argument • ‘The anthropic principle… is an alternative to the design hypothesis. It provides a rational, design-free explanation for the fact that we find ourselves in a situation propitious to our existence… What the religious mind… fails to grasp is that two candidate solutions are offered to the problem. God is one. The anthropic principle is the other. They are alternatives.’- The God Delusion, p. 136. www.damaris.org

25. Dawkins is demonstrably wrong about this www.damaris.org

26. The Anthropic Argument • The ‘anthropic principle’ is a synonym for ‘fine-tuning.’ One cannot appeal to the ‘anthropic principle’ to explain ‘fine tuning’ • That would be like trying to use the concept of ‘bachelors’ to explain the existence of unmarried men! • This is what Dawkins attempts, deploying the anthropic principle as an explanation for this observation: ‘It follows from the fact of our existence that the laws of physics must be friendly enough to allow life to arise.’(p. 141.) • Yes, but it does not follow that the laws of physics are necessarily compatible with the existence of life. Dawkins’ equivocates over the meaning of the term ‘must’ (!) - treating the data to be explained as an explanation of the data to be explained www.damaris.org

27. The Anthropic Argument • The problem that needs to be solved is not‘the fact that we live in a life friendly place’(p. 136) as Dawkins says (we couldn’t exist in a life unfriendly place); but the unlikely fact that a life friendly place exists www.damaris.org

28. The Anthropic Argument • Given our existence it is of course likely (necessary) that we live in a life friendly place; but this doesn’t mean it is likely that a life friendly place exists – in fact, it is unlikely! www.damaris.org

29. The Anthropic Argument • Dawkins contradicts his claim that the anthropic principle is an ‘explanation’ of fine tuning • John Leslie’s analogy of the man sentenced to death by firing squad who survives • ‘Well, obviously they all missed, or I wouldn’t be here thinking about it.’(p. 144-145) www.damaris.org

30. ‘he could still, forgivably, wonder why they’d all missed, and toy with the hypothesis that they were bribed…’(p. 145) www.damaris.org

31. The Anthropic Argument • Noting that the sentenced man wouldn’t exist now if the firing squad hadn’t missed doesn’t explain why they missed • Noting that life wouldn’t exist now if the universe hadn’t exhibited certain laws doesn’t explain why it has those laws www.damaris.org

32. The Anthropic Argument • Dawkins admits that the existence of a finely tuned universe is surprising… • ‘This objection can be answered by the suggestion… that there are many universes…’(p. 145.) www.damaris.org

33. Chimps or Shakespeare? • If X number of chimps existed then they could type Shakespeare’s works by chance • Anyone faced with the ‘many chimps hypothesis’ as an actual explanation for a copy of Shakespeare’s works is going to ask whether there is any independent reason to think that X number of chimps actually exist • If not, they will quite reasonably ignore the monkey (chimp) hypothesis and favour the design hypothesis www.damaris.org

34. Dawkins on arguments for God • Dawkins’ argument against God • Dawkins and the evidence for Jesus www.damaris.org

35. Dawkins on arguments for God • Dawkins’ argument against God • Dawkins and the evidence for Jesus www.damaris.org

36. ‘the central argument of my book’ • Dawkins’ “Unrebuttable Objection” to God www.damaris.org

37. ‘the central argument of my book’ • ‘the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable.’(p. 157-158.) www.damaris.org

38. ‘the central argument of my book’ • Two overlapping objections: 1) The ‘who designed the designer?’ objection 2) The ‘explaining something with something more complex’ objection www.damaris.org

39. 1) ‘who designed the designer?’ William Lane Craig: ‘in order for an explanation to be the best explanation, one needn’t have an explanation of the explanation… such a requirement would generate an infinite regress, so that everything becomes inexplicable... believing that the design hypothesis is the best explanation... doesn’t depend upon our ability to explain the designer.’- ‘Why I Believe in God’, in Norman L. Geisler & Paul K. Hoffman (ed.’s), Why I Am A Christian, (Baker, 2001), p. 73. www.damaris.org

40. 1) ‘who designed the designer?’ • The ‘who designed the designer?’ objection applies to all design inferences (archaeology, SETI) www.damaris.org

41. 1) Alvin Plantinga: ‘suppose we land on an alien planet… and discover machine-like objects that look and work just like tractors; our leader says “there must be intelligent beings on this planet who built those tractors.” A first year philosophy student on our expedition objects: “Hey, hold on a minute! You have explained nothing at all! Any intelligent life that designed those tractors would have to be at least as complex as they are.” No doubt we’d tell him that a little learning is a dangerous thing and advise him to take the next rocket ship home and enrol in another philosophy course or two.’ - ‘Review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion’ www.damaris.org

42. 2) ‘explaining with something more complex’ • ‘God… would have to be highly improbable in the very same statistical sense as the entities he is supposed to explain.’(p. 147.) This is incorrect www.damaris.org

43. 2) ‘explaining with something more complex’ • ‘God is a necessary being [cf. the cosmological argument]… Far from its being improbable that he exists, his existence is maximally probable. So if Dawkins proposes that God’s existence is improbable, he owes us an argument for the conclusion that there is no necessary being with the attributes of God... Neither he nor anyone else has provided even a decent argument along these lines; Dawkins doesn’t even seem to be aware that he needs an argument of that sort.’- Plantinga, ‘Review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion’ www.damaris.org

44. Atheist Thomas Nagel: ‘God, whatever he may be, is not a complex physical inhabitant of the natural world.’ www.damaris.org

45. Dawkins on arguments for God • Dawkins’ argument against God • Dawkins and the evidence for Jesus www.damaris.org

46. Dawkins on arguments for God • Dawkins’ argument against God • Dawkins and the evidence for Jesus www.damaris.org

47. Richard Dawkins: • 'Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened... All were written long after the death of Jesus... then copied and recopied, through many different ‘Chinese Whispers generations’… Nobody knows who the four evangelists were, but they almost certainly never met Jesus... Much of what they wrote was in no sense an honest attempt at history… Although Jesus probably existed, reputable bible 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…’ - (p. 37-97.) www.damaris.org

48. Francis Collins: • 'the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were put down just a few decades after Christ's death. Their style and content suggests strongly that they are intended to be the record of eyewitnesses (Matthew and John were among the twelve apostles). Concerns about errors creeping in by successive copying or bad translations have been mostly laid to rest by discovery of very ancient manuscripts. Thus, the evidence for authenticity of the four gospels turns out to be quite strong. Furthermore, non-Christian historians of the first century such as Josephus bear witness to a Jewish prophet who was crucified by Pontius Pilate around 33 A.D.‘ - Francis Collins, The Language of God, p. 223. www.damaris.org

49. Dawkins’ critique is full of false and misleading claims • Dawkins depends upon scholars like Bart Ehrman, who follows David Hume’s argument that miracle claims cannot in principle be supported by evidence www.damaris.org

50. William Lane Craig: • ‘those who are familiar with contemporary philosophy… know that Hume’s arguments are today widely rejected as fallacious. If we are at least open to [God], then miraculous events cannot be ruled out in advance. We have to be open to looking honestly at the evidence…’ (‘Christ and Miracles’, To Everyone an Answer) www.damaris.org