@ehBeth,
ehBeth wrote:the original question seems to have been answered on page one
True, but when has an A2K thread ever stuck to the original question?
One tangential question that continues to intrigue me is where farmerman gets the idea that Dawkins's atheism books, especially
The God Delusion, are somehow unbecoming of a scientist. To pursue this question, I skimmed
The God Delusion with an eye towards chapters and passages that lack "scientificness". Here is what I found:
(A) After going over what he sees as the rules of engagement (chapter 1), Dawkins starts his argument by stating "the god hypothesis" he intends to rebut in his book. Then he proceeds to state his own counter-hypothesis (chapter 2).
Richard Dawkins wrote: [God hypothesis:]
There exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.
[Dawkins's counter-hypothesis]
Any creative intelligence , of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.
(B) Having stated the two hypotheses, he rebuts the traditional arguments Aquinas, Descartes, and other have offered for the existence of god. (chapter 3), and defends his hypothesis that there almost certainly is no god (chapter 4). Dawkins uses no more than critical-thinking-101 techniques for the former part and no more than science-literacy-101 and logic-101 techniques on the latter. I sort of understand if farmerman feels insufficiently dazzled by Dawkins's science skillz, and that Dawkins's just-plain-science books dazzle him more. But as I said before, middle-school skills are all it takes, and nothing in Dawkins's line of reasoning seems incompatible with science to me.
Indeed, the best argument against the book I have heard so far is that the existence of god is
not a scientific hypothesis, and that treating it like one is fundamentally misguided. Dawkins's book, according this argument, is a 400-page error cascade caused by missing the point at the outside. As it happens, I disagree with that, but let's assume for the sake of discussion that it's right. In that case, Dawkins's sin isn't that he's arguing like a scientist, it's that he's arguing like
too much of a scientist.
(C) Having disposed of the common arguments for god's existence, and having made his own case that she probably doesn't, Dawkins then addresses what he calls "belief in belief". That's what he calls the view that although belief in god is ill-supported by evidence, one should
still believe in her, or at least defer to people who do, because of the morals religion teaches and the good behavior it encourages. To address this viewpoint, Dawkins sketches the evolution of religion (chapter 5) and morality (chapter 6), demonstrates that we
do not, in fact, get our morals from our holy books (chapter 7). He concludes that this is a good thing because the Bible, for example, teaches terrible morals (pro-slavery, pro-genocide, etc) and encourages atrocious behavior (chapters 8 and 9). Atrocious enough to kill the belief-in-belief rationale. Dawkins concludes with a few brief remarks about kicking the religion habit and drawking inspiration from the natural world instead (chapter 10).
Is Dawkins's argument against belief in belief unbecoming of a scientist? To be sure, his history of morality and religion draws almost exclusively on evolution and evolutionary psychology; he could probably have improved it by seeking the input of sociologists, historians, and cultural anthropologists. But again, that would be a problem of Dawkins being
too much of a scientist, insufficiently versed in the humanities.
Independently, notice that "belief in belief" isn't a scientific position. It's a
moral position in favor of endorsing the god delusion
even if it is scientifically unsupported. The proper course for rebutting it, then, is to offer moral counterarguments (which Dawkins does). There would have been no need for Dawkins to use scientific arguments at all.
So again, if there's a problem with Dawkins's "scientificness" in
The God Delusion, it's that he argues
too much like a scientist. The notion that
The God Delusion tarnishes Dawkins's standing as a scientist is absurd.
