Isaac's Meandering Musings

Part VI: Tolle, lege Finally, we come to the ‘argument from scripture’.   Here, Dawkins starts of by citing C.S. Lewis’ ‘Mad, Bad or God’ trilemma regarding Jesus’ alleged claim to be divine. Of course, this trilemma leaves out a possible (indeed, probable) alternative: legend. Perhaps Jesus never claimed to be the son of God, or perhaps, if he did, his claim to be the son of God was not intended as a claim to actual divinity. He might, instead, have been referring to a general sense in which humans could be said to be children of God. So, we are left with four possible options: Lord, Liar, Lunatic or Legend. Dawkins’ ‘honest mistake’ alternative is actually the very option that Lewis was arguing against. Lewis’ point was that a man who claimed to be God , couldn’t just be honestly mistaken. Such a delusion (if it were a delusion) would be far greater than just a belief in God or miracles – which Dawkins himself believes is certifiable. A person might be honestly mistaken about...

Part V: id quo maius cogitari non potest The ontological argument is somewhat unique among arguments for God's existence. Typically, theistic arguments are a posteriori arguments, that is to say, arguments reasoning from the observation or experience of certain features of the world to the existence of a Cause of these features. After this, the theistic philosopher will 'unpack' this notion of a Cause to show that it must have many of the features attributed to God. By contrast, the ontological argument reasons from the definition of God as 'that than which nothing greater can be thought' to God's existence. Kenneth Himma summarises Anselm’ ontological argument in this way: 1.       It is a conceptual truth (or, so to speak, true by definition) that God is a being than which none greater can be imagined (that is, the greatest possible being that can be imagined). 2.       God exists as an idea in the mind. 3.  ...

Part III: de Deo, an Deus sit And now we come to the substance of the matter: Is God, as conceived by theistic believers, real or a projection? (Or could the answer be ‘a bit of both’?) If you’ve followed me this far, and read my previous posts on the new atheism, by now you should have realised that Richard Dawkins doesn’t seem to have done much substantial research on ‘the God argument’. In fact, he seems almost exclusively to have read books and articles by people he knows already agree with him. There is certainly strong evidence of confirmation bias throughout Dawkins' anti-theistic writings. At any rate, he hasn’t carefully studied the views of genuine theistic philosophers – as opposed to the hypothetical 'religious apologists' that many pop atheists spend their time disparaging at length. By ‘carefully studied’, I mean that he may have read or browsed some of their works, in part – maybe – but hasn’t taken the time to understand their arguments fully. Inst...