johnmuise said:
I am inclined to ask why?
Well, I gave you a link. Italicized sections are from the link:
McGrath agrees that we should not base our lives on delusions, and that we all need to examine our beliefs, but disagrees that faith is infantile, saying many thinkers came to believe in God as adults.[8] He argues that faith is not irrational, suggesting that Dawkins's presentation of the normal as if it were pathological is neither acceptable nor scientific and abandons even the pretence of rigorous evidence-based scholarship: "Anecdote is substituted for evidence; selective internet trawling for quotes displaces rigorous and comprehensive engagement with primary sources."
comment: Dawkins does not claim that all religiously indoctrinated children end up to be in that religion. He says that most are, which is supported by statistics. By definition, widespread statistical evidence is nearly the opposite of anecdotal evidence.
McGrath suggests that rather a lot of scientists do believe in God (including 40% of American scientists (though whether or not mathematicians, theoreticians, or physicists are included is not mentioned).[13] He points out that Owen Gingerich, Francis Collins and Paul Davies had produced theistic books in the same year as The God Delusion. (pp 39–40) and claims that "Dawkins clearly has no mandate whatsoever to speak for the scientific community at this point or on this topic. There is a massive observational discrepancy between the number of scientists that Dawkins believes should be atheists, and those who are so in practice....Dawkins is clearly entrenched in his own peculiar version of a fundamentalist dualism".
comment: This is such a disingenuous implication. Dawkins goes in depth about which beliefs in God would be beneficial for science, such as Einstein's deism for example. If McGrath wanted to carry any weight, he would have cited statistics for THEISTIC scientists and not merely ones who believed in God. 100% of scientists could believe in God (as deists) and Dawkins wouldn't care. He made it quite clear in the book that his argument was primarily about the "creator, personal" theistic God. In the case of a deist or pantheist, God is just a metaphor for the presupposition of science... that the world is intelligible and we can understand mechanisms behind it.
McGrath objects to Dawkins' use of Bertrand Russell's teapot analogy.[14] McGrath says this is a flawed analogy since nobody actually believes such nonsense...
comment: Assuming this is true, he honestly thinks that the fallacy of argument ad populum is support for a position. The teapot analogy is intentionally picked to be something laughable because it utilizes the exact same logic to show that 'just because something can't be disproved, it doesn't mean we should pay it any mind what-so-ever.' By the very same logic he just used, if a lot of people believed in the teapot, then it would be an accurate analogy. This alone shows how the criticism of Russel's teapot is upheld.
johnmuise said:
I am a book hound, I've already picked up on many issues which dawkins and his ignorance towards the Christian faith, i believe John Lennox pretty much covers it.
I certainly hope you aren't referring to the "debate" that was sponsored by those Christians to smear Dawkins... the one that wasn't a debate so much as an attack piece designed not to allow a dialog.
I'd love to see (in a new thread) of what Lennox covered that was so substantial to you.
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