[danielmason]

To put it simply, he's trying to get his finger out of a Chinese-finger-trap by pulling, which makes him a moron because every 5-year old will tell you to give up and push your fingers together because its... you guessed it... POINTLESS, just like arguing about an unresolvable argument like whether god does or doesn't exist.

The crux of Dawkin's position is that the question of the existence of God is entirely resolvable. So your statement above is actually a direct disagreement with his position, not a critique of his methods. Have you read The God Delusion?

[electromagnetic]

Did you read the book, because it entirely boils down to Occam's Razor, that the universe is simpler without a god because god has to be so incredibly complex that it's more rational that god doesn't exist.

However, that shows the whole naivety of his argument. We're perceiving the universe from 14 billion years. It's unbelievable in scale and complexity and we've not even moved enough dust to even have started scratching the surface of understanding our universe as a whole. Yet this is the preferable choice under Occam's Razor? Why? Because of a reliance on an as-of-yet unproved hypothesis of a multiverse.

So multiple (by multiple I mean more than a googolplex of universes) universes is the preferable simpler scientific resolution to how we ended up in this universe, at this point in time capable of asking these questions?

So my choice is God vs A universe for every I/O binary action that has ever taken place in the universe.

Dawkin's method and argument is exceptionally simplistic and wholly biased by his perspective, which is exactly why he is hindering the teaching of evolution. If he wasn't making this huge crusade against God, he might have been able to spread evolution. However he's alienating himself from receptive Religious people and he's also alienating those religious people's children.

[lars512]

You do realize that you too are using Occam's Razor in your religious beliefs, since you implicitly believe in only a single "capital-G God". There might be numerous gods, but really, that's too complicated an explanation. One would be enough, hey?

Really though, you're railing at the scientific establishment because the idea of many universes is too strange for you. If you have a better theory that fits the data, advance it and you'll have an audience. Belief in a deity may be a personal substitute for you, but it won't advance the state of knowledge any further; it's instead giving up, choosing to believe that an answer is out of anyone's grasp.

Historically many people gave up on interesting problems. Many now have neat answers based on our better understanding of the world around us.

[electromagnetic]

I'm agnostic, which is why Dawkin's dogma annoys me so. He argues as blindly as the religious right wing, IE out of faith. His theories on god have not been proven, and as yet cannot be proven so he relies on faith that he is right.

The only reason God exists is because people respond to the idea of it. Dawkins like everyone else in the atheist religion of his is waging a crusade against something that will be forgotten with education, but they promote it with idiocy - if you make people choose sides, they'll choose the comfortable one over the rational one.

There's also a way to deal with the devout who are blindly substituting 'god' as a cover for their needs. Give them a few anti-psychotics and see if it clears 'god' up for them like the Schizophrenics who believe god is telling them to kill people.

[rue]

Do you believe in a god? If not, you are an atheist regardless of whether you are open to the option of one existing or not.

[electromagnetic]

No I do not believe in a god, I also do not believe in blind faith of which you blatantly have in the non-existence of god. I'm sorry but blind faith is still blind faith whether you're worshiping a deity or the non-existence of a deity.

I fail to see Dawkins as anything but an Atheist Pope. He speaks politely, he's literate and well read, he's a class act. Except they both command blind followers and make no attempts to educate or direct them.

Sorry, but the parallels are way too disturbing for me. I'm not atheist because I don't believe in god, I'm agnostic because I believe those behaviors of blind faith are what is destructive to our society and our sciences.

Blind unquestioning loyalty has led to nothing good. Dawkin's provides incredible literature on evolution, but I intend to be a logical person and question him, his motives and his work to no end, just like I have questioned the religious, their motives and their works to no end.

I'll remind you that the Scientologists fit the definition of an Atheist religion, and that is definitely the company I don't want to keep.

[rue]

> No I do not believe in a god, […]

Ergo, you are an atheist.

> […] I also do not believe in blind faith of which you blatantly have in the non-existence of god.

There is no proof of such beings existing, no phenomena require their existence to be explainable and assuming their existence may compromise understanding the actual nature of phenomena. Therefore until shown otherwise I have no reason to assume they do exist.

With respect, your "agnosticism" is a distinction without difference and just sounds like an attempt to raise yourself above some arbitrarily defined group of people. Perhaps there really is a significant number of people who somehow have a spiritual belief in Atheist Pope, science or whatever, but your approach is unlikely to change any of that.

[Jach]

Just so you know, the actual number of distinct many-worlds does not hurt the simplicity of the theory. Check out:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/q3/decoherence_is_simple/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/q4/decoherence_is_falsifiable_and_te...

[electromagnetic]

I'm not saying it hurts the theory, I personally don't have a problem with it. I'm just saying the absurdity of it on face value is something not many people are going to grasp or understand.

I'm agnostic, if someone says "Why are we here?" I say "Because you wouldn't be asking the question if we weren't." I ask these questions about the universe because I can. I'm sure there's some little alien critter on another planet who's asking "why are we the only ones here?" and I'm sure there's a few billion of myself in existence, likely in the extreme of beliefs from Religious-right-wing-sociopath to Atheist-left-wing-sociopath.

Although, then again, I'm a writer so I don't really need a multiverse to be that schizophrenic, I already have a family of people living in my head.

[danielmason]

Question for you -- is it a breach of etiquette to respond to something several days old? If so, I apologize, but I was away for a bit and I found your response interesting.

The reason I responded to your initial post is that it seemed to suggest you support Dawkins' ideas but not his methods. I was pointing out that his methods actually follow logically from his ideas. In your follow-up post, I realize that you weren't making an idea/method distinction -- you actually just disagree with him. So it turns out that this is really just a bog-standard debate about theism.

I was all fired up to post a response, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a refutation would really just resemble a series of excerpts from Dawkins' book. In other words, I think he's already addressed your position quite convincingly. If you read it and didn't feel the same, I'm unlikely to do better.

But one last point. You've misattributed the "boil down" of the book. Dawkins is doing something like this:

  1. Here's why it's illogical to be a fence-sitting agnostic
  2. Here's why it's illogical to posit God as an explanatory philosophy of the universe
  3. Here are some specific problems with common theist arguments
  4. Okay, now that we've got all that out of the way, here are some interesting theories on how things got to be the way they are

In other words, the part of his book that you single out is the part that he attaches heavy disclaimers to. The fact that you chose to focus on it suggests to me that your belief that "it's impossible to know for sure one way or the other," is even more of a gut-feeling assertion that you're accusing him of.

My personal context: I'm also an agnostic, but I am what Dawkins would describe as a Temporary Agnostic in Practice, whereas you seem to be what he would describe as a Permanent Agnostic in Principle. I disagree with Dawkins on many things, but I found his arguments against fence-sitting agnosticism to be persuasive.