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Originally Posted by Pookie
There are certainly better written and more entertaining books on the subject of the superstition we call religion. On that we can probably agree. Dawkins' arguments are accurate but indeed very basic.
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When it comes to Charles Stanely or Paula White than I agree with completely but otherwise you obviously haven't read any
good books on religion. And no, Dawkin's arguments are far from accurate, that is precisely my beef with him. It is not that he tries to discredit theology, no that is fine, it because he absolutely fails to do such with any accurate arguments. He uses nothing but straw man and red herring fallacies, he rarely tackles the crux of the issues head on. For example, he says that God(s) are just human anthropomorphic creations from our collective imagination, which may be true, but he just leaves it there, no evidence or documentation. He doesn't use any science or data to support this, which he could. He could just the general rules of Mechanics to point out how the Muliverse doesn't exactly operate in a way which our religions describe, and in fact suggest a randomness. Further, he could add psychological research data which points out that humans inherently seek meaning and pattern behind EVERYTHING they perceive/conceive of, and that God(s) are just a continuation of that naturally human trait. Humans look for meaning behind every rustling bush, and we inevitably draw up the conclusion that it is God(s) and this very well may be simple anthropomorphizing of otherwise natural or coincidental events. If a sophomore English student turned in an essay with the verbatim arguments I would give him a C+ for effort but ask him to elaborate and dig deeper..
Of course conversely, deep theologians argue the opposite, that the inherent and instinctive search for meaning by humans is precisely there to find God(s) in the first place, instilled in us from Creation just as hunger is a natural drive for food, this human curiousness for meaning is a hunger for the Divine. Without necessarily agreeing with either perspective, surely we can criticize the shallowness of Dawkin's argument
my beef is not Dawkins, but rather that so many people acclaim his poor writing as if it were actually good writing. I do not criticize the context or subject he is arguing, rather I am criticizing his otherwise poor writing style. It is a shame really, quite a waste. I have read his published scientific papers so I know he knows how to write, he just opted not to with these muckraker collections