Dawkins - FISH!!!

[NotReady]

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I emailed Alvin Plantinga (the author of the book review) about this fallacy, asking for where Dawkins uses this argument. Here is his response:


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Fantastic. I was thinking about emailing him myself. Would you see if he will comment on some of the criticisms in this thread? Especially the anthropic issue and the tractor thing. Maybe I'm dreaming but perhaps you could get him to join in.

[Magic_Man]

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[ QUOTE ]

I emailed Alvin Plantinga (the author of the book review) about this fallacy, asking for where Dawkins uses this argument. Here is his response:


[/ QUOTE ]

Fantastic. I was thinking about emailing him myself. Would you see if he will comment on some of the criticisms in this thread? Especially the anthropic issue and the tractor thing. Maybe I'm dreaming but perhaps you could get him to join in.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes please. We promise to be polite.

[_Z_]

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Fantastic. I was thinking about emailing him myself. Would you see if he will comment on some of the criticisms in this thread? Especially the anthropic issue and the tractor thing. Maybe I'm dreaming but perhaps you could get him to join in.

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I pointed him to the thread and invited him to participate. Hopefully he will, though I'm not going to bother him any more than I already have.

Z

[ChrisV]

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We need some third parties to weigh in on my claims about Platinga's naturalism comment. We completely disagree here.

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New thread

[David Sklansky]

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[ QUOTE ]

I emailed Alvin Plantinga (the author of the book review) about this fallacy, asking for where Dawkins uses this argument. Here is his response:


[/ QUOTE ]

Fantastic. I was thinking about emailing him myself. Would you see if he will comment on some of the criticisms in this thread? Especially the anthropic issue and the tractor thing. Maybe I'm dreaming but perhaps you could get him to join in.

[/ QUOTE ]

Either one of you do it and I send you a free book.

[John21]

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NotReady,

We need some third parties to weigh in on my claims about Platinga's naturalism comment. We completely disagree here.

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Plantinga gives the reasons for why he thinks the book is bad.

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One of Plantinga's main claims is that Dawkins has made a stunningly bad logical gaffe. He does this without quoting the passage and without providing a reference, and the logical gaffe he references is not contained in the book that he's reviewing. Therefore, no one is able to comment. We are forced to take Platinga's extraordinary characterization of Dawkins as true. Does this seem reasonable to you?

Vhawk covered the rest.

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Platinga's position would be pretty hard to follow without some familiarity with various philosophical theist's arguments.

One of the fundamental points he made…

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So why think God must be improbable? According to classical theism, God is a necessary being; it is not so much as possible that there should be no such person as God; he exists in all possible worlds. But if God is a necessary being, if he exists in all possible worlds, then the probability that he exists, of course, is 1, and the probability that he does not exist is 0. Far from its being improbable that he exists, his existence is maximally probable. So if Dawkins proposes that God's existence is improbable, he owes us an argument for the conclusion that there is no necessary being with the attributes of God—an argument that doesn't just start from the premise that materialism is true. Neither he nor anyone else has provided even a decent argument along these lines; Dawkins doesn't even seem to be aware that he needs an argument of that sort.

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…probably won't mean much to Dawkin's or anyone else who hasn't studied different theological arguments, but it's a major one to theists. And if you were to poll philosophy professors, I'm fairly certain most would agree that particular theist argument is valid and has yet to be effectively refuted. That Dawkins seems to be completely unaware of the argument hints at his lack of real understanding of the theist position, and I think this had something to do with Plantinga referring to Dawkins' arguments as sophomoric.

[NotReady]

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That Dawkins seems to be completely unaware of the argument hints at his lack of real understanding of the theist position, and I think this had something to do with Plantinga referring to Dawkins' arguments as sophomoric.


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Thanks, John, you say it so much better than me.

[Phil153]

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Platinga's position would be pretty hard to follow without some familiarity with various philosophical theist's arguments.

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I disagree.

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So why think God must be improbable? According to classical theism, God is a necessary being; it is not so much as possible that there should be no such person as God; he exists in all possible worlds. But if God is a necessary being, if he exists in all possible worlds, then the probability that he exists, of course, is 1, and the probability that he does not exist is 0. Far from its being improbable that he exists, his existence is maximally probable. So if Dawkins proposes that God's existence is improbable, he owes us an argument for the conclusion that there is no necessary being with the attributes of God—an argument that doesn't just start from the premise that materialism is true. Neither he nor anyone else has provided even a decent argument along these lines; Dawkins doesn't even seem to be aware that he needs an argument of that sort.

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…probably won't mean much to Dawkin's or anyone else who hasn't studied different theological arguments, but it's a major one to theists. And if you were to poll philosophy professors, I'm fairly certain most would agree that particular theist argument is valid and has yet to be effectively refuted. That Dawkins seems to be completely unaware of the argument hints at his lack of real understanding of the theist position, and I think this had something to do with Plantinga referring to Dawkins' arguments as sophomoric.

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Dawkins specifically addresses the main theological arguments at the start of his book.

Platinga's quote above is summarized like this: "Classical theism is pretty damn certain that God exists due to the pure reasons of things like:

1.The Unmoved Mover.
2 The Uncaused Cause.
3 The Cosmological Argument
4 The Argument from Degree
5 The Ontological Argument
etc

and so on. The burden of proof is on Dawkins to show why this isn't so, because he can't just use material proof".

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And if you were to poll philosophy professors, I'm fairly certain most would agree that particular theist argument is valid and has yet to be effectively refuted.

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You're fairly certain? Where are you getting this from? Do you have an actual poll, or just faith? I'm just reading a couple of lectures from stanford and harvard and the criticisms of these pure reason "proofs" are pretty damning. <u>I'm</u> fairly certain that most philosophy professors at reputable universities would consider the arguments from reason to be extremely weak. Words are cheap, no? Since you brought it up, let's see some evidence.

Anyone who thinks they can prove the existence of an actual being or physical thing through pure reason deserves scorn and derision. The tiniest ounce of common sense will tell you that they're pure rubbish. Other things like the argument from design do have validity, and can't be dismissed out of hand except through observation of the world and the understanding that we can't jump to conclusions just because we can't conceive of something.

BTW, I'm now reading the Blind Watchmaker now and nowhere can I see the characterization of Dawkins that Platinga provides. He certainly does not claim:
1. We know of no irrefutable objections to its being biologically possible that all of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes; THEREFORE
2. All of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes.

as Platinga characterizes him as doing. The argument he makes is that evolution by natural selection is the only reasonable theory for the development of the complexity of life. This is a long way from what Platinga claims he says. The supposed "logical gap" between premise and conclusion (which Platinga incorrectly characterizes) is nothing of the sort - it is filled with very interesting and cogent arguments not related to the premise. Nowhere is there a "because 1 therefore 2" argument in any form. I don't think Platinga has a very good grasp of the subtlety of Dawkins' arguments. There are genuine weaknesses in some of the arguments, but they are not of the kind Platinga claims.

The lack of common sense that NotReady displays in wholly accepting this extraordinary claim about Dawkins is amazing. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof; NotReady hasn't even read the book and he swallows it wholeheartedly. Embarassing.

BTW has any theist here actually read the book? There are valid points of contention but not the ones that the feeble-minded Platinga has brought up. NotReady, I suggest putting your intellectual faith in better hands. There are some highly intelligent and respectable theist scholars and an intelligent man like yourself should be choosing better sources.

[chezlaw]

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The lack of common sense that NotReady displays in wholly accepting this extraordinary claim about Dawkins is amazing.

[/ QUOTE ] amazing that a committed religonist is very credulous about something he would like to be true!!

nothing to see here.

chez

[NotReady]

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How is this a strawman, again?


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Well, for example, the irreducible complexity idea was from a scientist. So how does that square with your caricature and Dawkins' statemement?