Being bored, beerless and all my fingers stained with the blood of countless origami roses, I actually did get around to reading your review, and mostly it just reminded me of why I hate books like the one you're reviewing -- because they have a habit of making me angry that I can't argue with the author for being such a poor logician.
"...if the word God is not to become completely useless, it should be used in the way people have generally understood it: to denote a supernatural creator that is 'appropriate for us to worship'."
This definition is useless and if this is the definition of God he is arguing against, he has already made his whole argument useless. He's not arguing against the existence of the conceptual God, he's arguing against the existence of a God with his own specific, amended qualifiers.
The two qualifiers he has added are, "appropriate" and "to worship".
Why must a definition of an intelligent creator of the universe require that He is "appropriate" to worship; or that He must or should be worshipped at all? Does that mean a God that created the universe brick by brick all on His own but is "inappropriate to worship" is not really God? And a God who is not worthy of worship also can't have created the universe?
Why is he confusing two concepts and then using deductive processes against one to disprove the other? Is he stupid?
Chapter four, "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God", explores the lack of any empirical evidence for supernatural forces which interfere in the workings of the cosmos. Dawkins explains clearly and convincingly how science has explained many things once reserved as mysteries explicable only by divine revelation, and why those things which remain mysterious do not provide any logical reason to conclude, "Well, God did it." One example is the fact that science cannot (yet) explain the precise mechanism of how life began in the first place. Yet this lack of knowledge is no (logical) reason to (a) assume that we never will or (b) to decide that "God did it". I don't know specifically where my neighbour got her dogs - should I therefore conclude they were a gift from God?
This was enough to make me hate the book and the author.
A lack of empirical evidence is in no way a supporting argument against the existence of a God/creator. It is an argument against hastily ascribing science to God, but again, either he or your paraphrasing makes it appear as though the author uses "proof" that so many past mysteries that were attributed to God have been scientifically explained is a proof that God does not exist. But logically, that's not an argument against the existence of God, it's an argument against the people who did the attributing.
If I go around my apartment and one by one ascribe everything I can't explain to God's will, and a scientist follows me around and one by one explains the science behind each thing until 100% of the things in my apartment are accounted for -- all that is evidence of is my poor understanding of my apartment. Yet this Dawson guy seems to think that cumulatively, the more things sciences explains -- the more things a scientist follows me around my apartment and explains to me -- that once this number gets past some particular threshold, the evidence starts to be attributable not only against me, but by some kind of negative-association, the thing I am arguing for.
If I go around ascribing the existence of everything in my apartment to Wal-Mart, and the same scientist follows me around with my reciepts and shows that actually, nothing in my apartment comes from Wal-Mart... by yours, and this dork's reasoning... this is evidence that Wal-Mart doesn't exist. That once some magical number of things can be shown not attributable to Wal-Mart that I had hitherto thought I bought there, that with enough of my mistaken memory, some point is passed where the quantity of my mistakes transcends a logical boundary and becomes not only evidence of my poor memory, but evidence against the very existence of the thing I misremembered.
To make that logical mistake is ... well... unforgiveable.
Great. I don't know when the last time was that I hit an LJ character count limit. God fucking damn it.
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-25 05:55 am (UTC)"...if the word God is not to become completely useless, it should be used in the way people have generally understood it: to denote a supernatural creator that is 'appropriate for us to worship'."
This definition is useless and if this is the definition of God he is arguing against, he has already made his whole argument useless. He's not arguing against the existence of the conceptual God, he's arguing against the existence of a God with his own specific, amended qualifiers.
The two qualifiers he has added are, "appropriate" and "to worship".
Why must a definition of an intelligent creator of the universe require that He is "appropriate" to worship; or that He must or should be worshipped at all? Does that mean a God that created the universe brick by brick all on His own but is "inappropriate to worship" is not really God? And a God who is not worthy of worship also can't have created the universe?
Why is he confusing two concepts and then using deductive processes against one to disprove the other? Is he stupid?
Chapter four, "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God", explores the lack of any empirical evidence for supernatural forces which interfere in the workings of the cosmos. Dawkins explains clearly and convincingly how science has explained many things once reserved as mysteries explicable only by divine revelation, and why those things which remain mysterious do not provide any logical reason to conclude, "Well, God did it." One example is the fact that science cannot (yet) explain the precise mechanism of how life began in the first place. Yet this lack of knowledge is no (logical) reason to (a) assume that we never will or (b) to decide that "God did it". I don't know specifically where my neighbour got her dogs - should I therefore conclude they were a gift from God?
This was enough to make me hate the book and the author.
A lack of empirical evidence is in no way a supporting argument against the existence of a God/creator. It is an argument against hastily ascribing science to God, but again, either he or your paraphrasing makes it appear as though the author uses "proof" that so many past mysteries that were attributed to God have been scientifically explained is a proof that God does not exist. But logically, that's not an argument against the existence of God, it's an argument against the people who did the attributing.
If I go around my apartment and one by one ascribe everything I can't explain to God's will, and a scientist follows me around and one by one explains the science behind each thing until 100% of the things in my apartment are accounted for -- all that is evidence of is my poor understanding of my apartment. Yet this Dawson guy seems to think that cumulatively, the more things sciences explains -- the more things a scientist follows me around my apartment and explains to me -- that once this number gets past some particular threshold, the evidence starts to be attributable not only against me, but by some kind of negative-association, the thing I am arguing for.
If I go around ascribing the existence of everything in my apartment to Wal-Mart, and the same scientist follows me around with my reciepts and shows that actually, nothing in my apartment comes from Wal-Mart... by yours, and this dork's reasoning... this is evidence that Wal-Mart doesn't exist. That once some magical number of things can be shown not attributable to Wal-Mart that I had hitherto thought I bought there, that with enough of my mistaken memory, some point is passed where the quantity of my mistakes transcends a logical boundary and becomes not only evidence of my poor memory, but evidence against the very existence of the thing I misremembered.
To make that logical mistake is ... well... unforgiveable.
Great. I don't know when the last time was that I hit an LJ character count limit. God fucking damn it.