Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Argh (or, In Defence of Dawkins)

One comment I hear a lot in discussions about atheism is that Dawkins (who apparently is the One True Atheist) is very simplistic in his approach to religion. This is semi-true - his book The God Delusion does indeed go lightly the "sophisticated" theology.

However, this seems vastly more acceptable when you realise that very few of the folks at whom his book is aimed will have Plantinga's works on their bedside table. In fact, they're rather more likely to be familiar with crap like this.

Given this, can I say once and for all that, despite not discussing the evolutionary transcendental argument in much depth, Dawkins' book is a fine piece of work that is generally appropriate to the audience for whom it was intended.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

TAM 6 Call for papers: James Randi - little blaspheming atheist fraud and his army of robot zombie followers:

visit:

http://www.disclose.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=94


to see how we stopped Randi's MD paranormal challenge....


and FINALLY:


guess what is inside angel's ENVELOPE:

___________________
|
| RANDI'S HEAD
|
___________________

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YXHGGfeVzI

Lifewish said...

OK, that was... bracing. I think it may have proven my point, but I'm frankly too scared to check the Youtube links and confirm this.

I appreciate that Dawkins' book may not be appropriate for this particular audience member. May I suggest Ritalin?

Bronze Dog said...

The YouTube videos I looked at: Randi accurately pointing out Uri Geller using the ratcheting effect to apparently bend keys.

He'd include a repeat of "look at the angle" as if looking at the angle before the ratcheting and finding it to be unchanged was inherently crazy.

Another couple were music videos.