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Richard Dawkins

PostPosted: March 29th, 2007, 7:57 pm
by Jesse

PostPosted: March 29th, 2007, 8:28 pm
by Karen
Alister McGrath has written two books about Dawkins: Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life (2005) and the just-published (in the UK) The Dawkins Delusion?, which hasn't been released in the US yet.

My Debate

PostPosted: March 30th, 2007, 9:23 pm
by Jesse

Re: My Debate

PostPosted: April 1st, 2007, 1:24 pm
by JKolbitar

PostPosted: April 1st, 2007, 5:06 pm
by jo

PostPosted: April 1st, 2007, 6:41 pm
by Jesse Hove

PostPosted: April 1st, 2007, 6:47 pm
by Sven

I have no registered

PostPosted: April 2nd, 2007, 5:55 am
by Jesse Hove

Re: I have no registered

PostPosted: April 2nd, 2007, 6:05 am
by The Bigsleep J

PostPosted: April 2nd, 2007, 11:54 am
by westsands410
Alister McGrath seems to be the chief writer who has chosen to tackle Richard Dawkins over here. McGrath's The Twilight of Atheism may be helpful in your discussion, and he's published (more recently) a couple of books which I have on order, but can't remember the titles offhand unfortunately... Even if you're not UK-resident, I think you can still order the recently published books through Amazon - I've been able to buy books from Amazon US relatively cheaply, although the exchange rate of recent months has helped!

Welcome to the Wardrobe.

Alex

PostPosted: April 2nd, 2007, 12:36 pm
by jo
I saw a copy of the Dawkins delusion in the window of a church gift shop not long ago but as there was a pane of glass between me and it, alas I could not browse through it..

PostPosted: April 2nd, 2007, 6:54 pm
by nomad

PostPosted: April 3rd, 2007, 12:43 am
by Leslie

PostPosted: April 3rd, 2007, 2:07 pm
by postodave
The person who has not yet been mentioned who has written from a Christian perspective against Dawkins is Keith Ward. I have glanced at 'The God Delusion' and know that Dawkins mentions Ward in passing but really fails to get to grips with what Ward was saying in his book 'God, Chance and Neccessity' His latest response to Dawkins is called 'Is Religion Dangerous?' I have not read it but I did read an excellent review of Dawkin's book by Ward In 'Third Way' magazine. Ward is an Anglican Priest and Philosopher of Religion. He is certainly not a fundamentalist, in recent years he has spent a great deal of time exploring the underlying similarities (and differences) of different religious ttraditions. He has sometimes b een suspected of abandoning belief in the Incarnation under the influence of Eastern thought but it seems to me that he keeps affirming his belief in this central doctrine in very clear language. He accuses Dawkins of taking all his examples from the earliest strata of the OT which Ward says is like criticising modern science by having a go at the alchemists. Of not understanding the purpose of the classical arguments for God's existance, ignorance of philosophy, and so on.

On the relation of Christianity and science with a focus on biology I would recoomend Rebuilding the Matrix by Dennis Alexander. But if I had to recommend one book on the grounds for Christian belief it would be this one: I would reccommend reading it before passing it on to anyone because the approach may be unfamiliar. Clouser, another philosopher, argues that experience rather than evidence is the basis of belief. The book is set up as an imaginary dialogue between Clouser and an unbeliever and while being clearly written tackles some quite deep ideas.

PostPosted: April 3rd, 2007, 2:22 pm
by postodave
By the way, on morals, I would say we know basic moral principles, what Lewis calls the Tao or Natural Law by intuiton. That is in the same way that we know 2+2=4 or things are idential to themselves, or things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, or that we are not dreaming. We can have different theories to explain why human beings have these moral intuitions which are largely uniform accross cultures but these explanations refer to something we already know. For example a bilogical explanation would be one possibility, An explanation in terms of God another, a sociological or psychiological one ayet another. These might be either complimentary or conflicting. We may use reason to draw out the implications of our moral intuitions and apply them and we may disagree about these aplications and inferences, just as we can build mathematica on the basic intuitions about number and identity. However the moral intuitions like the ones at the basis of Math and logic are not themselves the product of reasoning but of direct self evident experience. Clouser explains some of this in the book I mentioned above though he does not apply it to morality. The intuitive recognition of God's existance is another kind of basic experience.