The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

MeditationMom

robindth and zillah - thanks. That's why I am in this thread. Good points! Smart guys everywhere!

by robindth- Just to correct a common misconception. Dawkins DOES NOT claim that god does not exist. Just that he BELIEVES that god, as described, PROBABLY does not exist. The distinction is important and constantly misunderstood

I was afraid of that,and apologize. Typical when someone hasn't actually read the book(s). :rolleyes: I am glad to hear that about Dawkins. Sounds reasonable. The only question I would have for him then is "as described" - which discriptions is he talking about? There are simple-minded descriptions of God and very sophisticated ones that are more like "higher physics". He propably gives the descriptions he refers to in his book. He sounds intelligent and logical and would have to have done that. Then the only question that remains is to which extent does he understand these "higher physics"-kind of descriptions of God?

Here is one of my favorite ones, by Ramana Maharshi: "No one doubts that he exists, though you may doubt the existence of God. If you find out the truth about yourself and discover your own source, this is all that is required."

And your old MeditationMom can second that statement. Scofflaw, I think you may find this statement "reasonable" as well. No doubt, some of the more simplistic ideas about God are more of a hinderance than a help.

by zillah- Please describe an experiment to test the ten commandments. What are its aims and controls?

I have never designed a proper scientific experiment, so would need your help if you know what the rules are. "Aim" would be to prove that people who break one, two, three chosen commandments show higher levels of depression than people who don't, over a given period of time.

Maybe you could follow two groups of people - who consistenly break several, or all commandments, and people who don't - and then measure their levels of depression. You'd have to first be sure that breaking commandments is not a result of depression in the first place. So you'd have to start out with equally happy people to begin with and then have them go in the different directions and see where they would be after a while on the scale of happiness or peace/ contentment. Along the way you would have to eliminate all the people who would have had terrible things like rapes or murders happen to them or people in the "non-or-less-sinning" groups who have given into "temptations" Pretty difficult experiment to design and control especially with House's law that says: "Everybody lies." (Do you have that show - "Dr House"- in Ireland?) So maybe one should just try it, this way, or that way, for oneself. But, if people were serious and commited to this experiment, maybe it could be done.

Scofflaw

Zillah wrote:

Cease your specious sophistry!



No, then you're experimenting whether "Healing Case A" can be explained or not (it is falsifiable). You're not experimenting as to the existence of God.

If the claim is something akin to "God exists and always heals me when I pray like so" then its falsifiable and we can confirm that God does not exist if he ever doesn't heal someone. (But that sort of God only exists in the mind of schizophrenics, most believers are of the type below)

If the claim is simply "My God exists and heals people sometimes when he feels like it", it doesn't matter how many times we prove he didn't heal someone, the statement lacks falsifiability, we can never confirm he didn't heal someone we didn't test. Hence the assertion of God's* existence is not a "theory" as far as science is concerned.

*(the Judeo Christian God and 99.999% of other divinities that are sporadic interventionist Gods)

Truly said. We can never disprove any intervention by God, or some God. For example, God may be confining His interventions to a small tribe somewhere in the Amazon as yet uncontacted.

However, we can look at, say, Christianity, and say: "by their beliefs God is like this, or that". That gives us what we might call a "predictive model" of God as believed in by Christians (and we can break it down further).

This means we can actually say this - "for a given conception of God, we can say that either that this God does not exist, or that He is not like that conception of Him".

We can, in other words, disprove the existence of any specified God, but not the existence of Gods in general.

Christians usually opt out of this by claiming that god is ineffable (and that this is one of His characteristics), and therefore we cannot constrain Him in this way. Unfortunately for them, we can definitely say that their God is not like their conception of Him throughout the historic period. If this is ineffability, it is indistinguishable from simply not being like the God they conceive.

Occasionally, Christians remind me of battered spouses saying "oh but he/she loves me really, it's just a phase, they're not really like that...".

All of this is what makes me an alatrist rather than an atheist - there may well be Gods out there, but there are provably none worth worshipping.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

MeditationMom wrote:

I have never designed a proper scientific experiment, so would need your help if you know what the rules are. "Aim" would be to prove that people who break one, two, three chosen commandments show higher levels of depression than people who don't, over a given period of time.

Maybe you could follow two groups of people - who consistenly break several, or all commandments, and people who don't - and then measure their levels of depression. You'd have to first be sure that breaking commandments is not a result of depression in the first place. So you'd have to start out with equally happy people to begin with and then have them go in the different directions and see where they would be after a while on the scale of happiness or peace/ contentment. Along the way you would have to eliminate all the people who would have had terrible things like rapes or murders happen to them or people in the "non-or-less-sinning" groups who have given into "temptations" Pretty difficult experiment to design and control especially with House's law that says: "Everybody lies." (Do you have that show - "Dr House"- in Ireland?) So maybe one should just try it, this way, or that way, for oneself. But, if people were serious and commited to this experiment, maybe it could be done.

Alas, you would also need to show that the depression (if found) is an indicator of God's displeasure, as opposed to the result of going against social programming.

The best test would be Commandment 1 - after all, it's the only one that doesn't have any social programming sense built in. Are Muslims/Hindus/Shinto/etc less happy than Christians? I think not.

Speaking personally as someone who has broken 9/10 of the commandments, and who continues to break at least four of them every day (pretty much always the same four these days, more's the pity), and five on Sundays - I'm afraid I have a pretty positive outlook on life. Still, I'm not statistically significant!

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zillah

MeditationMom wrote:

I have never designed a proper scientific experiment, so would need your help if you know what the rules are. "Aim" would be to prove that people who break one, two, three chosen commandments show higher levels of depression than people who don't, over a given period of time.

Even if it went perfectly to your plan, all it would show is if the Ten Commandments are a good set of practices for avoiding depression. God doesn't feature in that experiment, those rules could have been written by some clever Middle Eastern guy thousands of years ago.

I'm afraid the only help I can give you is to say that you cannot "test" the ten commandments in relation to the existence of God in any useful manner. By the nature of the subject its impossible.

pH

Zillah wrote:

Cease your specious sophistry!

No, then you're experimenting whether "Healing Case A" can be explained or not (it is falsifiable). You're not experimenting as to the existence of God.

If the claim is simply "My God exists and heals people sometimes when he feels like it", it doesn't matter how many times we prove he didn't heal someone, the statement lacks falsifiability, we can never confirm he didn't heal someone we didn't test. Hence the assertion of God's* existence is not a "theory" as far as science is concerned.

*(the Judeo Christian God and 99.999% of other divinities that are sporadic interventionist Gods)

Even a sporadically intervening God could be detected at a statistical level.

So you're saying that the majority of believers believe in a God, who's prime characteristic is that he is undetectable.

They believe that a universe with their God in it is completely indistinguishable from a version of that universe that didn't have their God in it?

Dades

MeditationMom wrote:

I was afraid of that,and apologize. Typical when someone hasn't actually read the book(s). :rolleyes: I am glad to hear that about Dawkins. Sounds reasonable. The only question I would have for him then is "as described" - which discriptions is he talking about? There are simple-minded descriptions of God and very sophisticated ones that are more like "higher physics". He propably gives the descriptions he refers to in his book. He sounds intelligent and logical and would have to have done that. Then the only question that remains is to which extent does he understand these "higher physics"-kind of descriptions of God?

One thing I've found reading the book is that Dawkins tries to pre-empts every question the reader might have. He's obviously aware through years of experience of the questions he will be asked when he makes an observation. For example in the first few chapters he pre-empts the "what type of god are you talking about" with references to Pantheism, deism, polytheism and so on.

MeditationMom you should pick it up and give it a read. I don't think it's going to change your spiritual outlook - you don't want to give that up - but it'll give you plenty of food for thought and discussion. Of course reading the book is not a pre-requisite for posting here. There are more than enough heathens happy to respond to any posts you make.

Zombrex

pH wrote:

Even a sporadically intervening God could be detected at a statistical level.

So you're saying that the majority of believers believe in a God, who's prime characteristic is that he is undetectable.

They believe that a universe with their God in it is completely indistinguishable from a version of that universe that didn't have their God in it?

Well most believers wouldn't accept that his intervention is undetectable, but then they mostly don't understand science much.

Take for example something good happening to someone, that they attribute to God. You see this all the time at awards and stuff "I want to thank my parents, my cat, my toilet brush, and God".

How do you show that good things are or aren't caused by God?

This is one of the reasons I'm an atheists, the concept of God is too ridiculous to be real and clearly just an invention of humanity

Dades

Wicknight wrote:

"I want to thank my parents, my cat, my toilet brush, and God".

How do you show that good things are or aren't caused by God?

There's still more chance of me thanking God than a cat.
You blame cats, not thank them.

Zombrex

The Atheist wrote:

There's still more chance of me thanking God than a cat.
You blame cats, not thank them.

dog lover!

Zillah

pH wrote:

Even a sporadically intervening God could be detected at a statistical level.

How? You need an average from which to detect deviation as an experimental control. Where do you get that from? We can't be sure God didn't interfere with the average we have taken and so it loses it usefulness as a control.

So you're saying that the majority of believers believe in a God, who's prime characteristic is that he is undetectable.

Yes, exactly; he doesn't exist, remember?

As Wicknight says, most of them aren't very scientific at all and would attribute normal events as evidence of His intervention.

They believe that a universe with their God in it is completely indistinguishable from a version of that universe that didn't have their God in it?

When you subject it to the sceptical eye, yes. But they don't do that.

Wicknight wrote:

dog lover!

Oh no...you're not a cat person are you? :rolleyes:

MeditationMom

Once again, I find myself agreeing with everyone - no more comments until I read this book - see you soon

Scofflaw

Zillah wrote:

How? You need an average from which to detect deviation as an experimental control. Where do you get that from? We can't be sure God didn't interfere with the average we have taken and so it loses it usefulness as a control.

That would be true if it weren't clear (from the Bible) that God intervenes rather spectacularly. The Bible doesn't outline the sort of God that just puts his thumb on one side of the scale.

I agree that Christians do assume a God who intervenes constantly in a myriad tiny ways, but there's no "Biblical evidence" for such a God.

Zillah wrote:

As Wicknight says, most of them aren't very scientific at all and would attribute normal events as evidence of His intervention.

True. The worshipper praises God that the sun rises in the morning.

Zillah wrote:

They believe that a universe with their God in it is completely indistinguishable from a version of that universe that didn't have their God in it?

When you subject it to the sceptical eye, yes. But they don't do that.

Also, they believe that the observed Universe is the one with God in it.

Zillah wrote:

Oh no...you're not a cat person are you? :rolleyes:

All the best people are.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Dave!

New interview on BBC (not the Paxman one):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNjpfBc7Jmw

He's REALLY publicising this book! Comedy Central, BBC, RTÉ...

adam_ccfc

Bought this today. Looking forward to reading it. I've heard good things.:)

lostexpectation

he himself calls it an attack on religion ... go dawkins


awful questions, neehh why don't you go to north korea??? WTF what's north korea go to do with anything


ah he is on colbert dunno of this has been posted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuXpysYEhgA