Post by oldmike on Sept 30, 2007 18:10:05 GMT 7
I have just been reading Richard Dawkin’s “ The God Delusion”
The purpose of the book is explained in Chapter 2, “ The God Hypothesis”
“I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly
There exists a superhuman supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us”
This book will advocate an alternative view
Any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.”
Dawkins lumps together the Creator and the Designer as essential aspects of God.
Taking the Creator first,
In Chapter 3 “ Arguments for God’s Existence”, Dawkins quotes St. Thomas Aquinas,
1: The Unmoved Mover
Nothing moves without a prior mover. This leads to a regress, from which the only escape is God. Something had to make the first move and that something we call God.
2: The Uncaused Cause
Nothing is caused by itself. Everything has a prior cause, and again we are pushed back into regress. This has to be terminated by a first cause, which we call God.
3: The cosmological argument’
There must have been a time when no physical things existed. But, since physical things exist now, there must have been something non physical to bring them into existence, and that something we call God.”
Dawkins then says
“All three of these arguments rely on the idea of a regress and rely on God to terminate it. They rely on the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress. (Snip) To return to the regress and the futility of invoking God to terminate it is more parsimonious to conjure up, say, a “big bang singularity” or some other physical concept as yet unknown. Calling it God is at best unhelpful and worst perniciously misleading.”
Nowhere in his book does Dawkins present a scientific way of producing something from nothing. In other words he is discarding the three arguments above without providing as logical alternative. It would therefore seem that his conclusion is “perniciously misleading.”
Dawkins is implying that the universe is the result of a vast
PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE.
This device, once started, runs until it breaks down or wears out, doing work with no power input. It is, and has been the goal of unscientific tinkerers since the Middle Ages. Nobody has yet produced one. Indeed, modern science deems it impossible to do so.
I can therefore declare categorically,
The day that the first car powered by a perpetual motion machine is put on the market, I will admit that I was wrong about my belief in God and become an Atheist.Having proved, to his own complete satisfaction, that God does not exist on page 36 of my edition, Dawkins goes on for another 384 pages. That would seem to me to be more than necessary, though it is probably easier to sell a book with 420 pages than one with 36.
I am glad I bought the cheap, paperback version.
The purpose of the book is explained in Chapter 2, “ The God Hypothesis”
“I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly
There exists a superhuman supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us”
This book will advocate an alternative view
Any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.”
Dawkins lumps together the Creator and the Designer as essential aspects of God.
Taking the Creator first,
In Chapter 3 “ Arguments for God’s Existence”, Dawkins quotes St. Thomas Aquinas,
1: The Unmoved Mover
Nothing moves without a prior mover. This leads to a regress, from which the only escape is God. Something had to make the first move and that something we call God.
2: The Uncaused Cause
Nothing is caused by itself. Everything has a prior cause, and again we are pushed back into regress. This has to be terminated by a first cause, which we call God.
3: The cosmological argument’
There must have been a time when no physical things existed. But, since physical things exist now, there must have been something non physical to bring them into existence, and that something we call God.”
Dawkins then says
“All three of these arguments rely on the idea of a regress and rely on God to terminate it. They rely on the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress. (Snip) To return to the regress and the futility of invoking God to terminate it is more parsimonious to conjure up, say, a “big bang singularity” or some other physical concept as yet unknown. Calling it God is at best unhelpful and worst perniciously misleading.”
Nowhere in his book does Dawkins present a scientific way of producing something from nothing. In other words he is discarding the three arguments above without providing as logical alternative. It would therefore seem that his conclusion is “perniciously misleading.”
Dawkins is implying that the universe is the result of a vast
PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE.
This device, once started, runs until it breaks down or wears out, doing work with no power input. It is, and has been the goal of unscientific tinkerers since the Middle Ages. Nobody has yet produced one. Indeed, modern science deems it impossible to do so.
I can therefore declare categorically,
The day that the first car powered by a perpetual motion machine is put on the market, I will admit that I was wrong about my belief in God and become an Atheist.Having proved, to his own complete satisfaction, that God does not exist on page 36 of my edition, Dawkins goes on for another 384 pages. That would seem to me to be more than necessary, though it is probably easier to sell a book with 420 pages than one with 36.
I am glad I bought the cheap, paperback version.