Dawkins - FISH!!!

[NotReady]

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NotReady's biggest fear
so he is convinced
which in his mind
So, he feels
NR thinks


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I'm taking a wild guess here but what I really think is you flunked Mind Reading 101.

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I don't think I've ever seen Dawkins advance an argument like that, but I might be wrong.


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Platinga quotes from God Delusion. I also seriously doubt he was misrepresenting anything Dawkins said. If you disagree I'm sure you can make a demonstration.

[Magic_Man]

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NotReady's biggest fear
so he is convinced
which in his mind
So, he feels
NR thinks


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I'm taking a wild guess here but what I really think is you flunked Mind Reading 101.

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I don't think I've ever seen Dawkins advance an argument like that, but I might be wrong.


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Platinga quotes from God Delusion. I also seriously doubt he was misrepresenting anything Dawkins said. If you disagree I'm sure you can make a demonstration.

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In fact Platinga barely quotes from God Delusion. Can you show us where in Platinga's review he quotes Dawkins argument? The only quotes are saw are the ones intentionally chosen to irritate Christians.

[NotReady]

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Well, I can't just quote all of TGD, but the above is in essence the scientific method


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I think Plantinga was making the point TGD isn't a science book.

[NotReady]

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Dawkins, Plantinga, Russell ... none of these people are even close to being mo rons. The only truly moronic thing here is this thread.


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Dawkins, Russell and Sagan are when they deal with Christianity.

[Magic_Man]

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Well, I can't just quote all of TGD, but the above is in essence the scientific method


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I think Plantinga was making the point TGD isn't a science book.

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In fact part of the purpose of The God Delusion is to examine the validity of Theism as a scientific theory, which Dawkins claims that it is. This is literally on the second page of the book, so that's probably why you didn't see it.

[Subfallen]

NotReady - a few questions if I may...

1. How old are you?
2. What denomination did your family raise you in? (I would take almost any odds betting that you were raised in a Christian home, but correct me if I'm wrong.)
3. At any point in your life have you actively disbelieved Christianity? I emphasize, actively disbelieved, not merely doubted or questioned.

Obv a quick visit to Plantinga's wiki and a quick survey of his "spiritual autobiography" take care of those questions for him:
1. 74 years old.
2. 5-point Calvinism.
3. No. He felt the beginnings of doubt during his freshman year at Harvard, but had an epiphany walking back to his dorm in a rainstorm:
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It was dark, windy, raining, nasty. But suddenly it was as if the heavens opened; I heard, so it
seemed, music of overwhelming power and grandeur and sweetness; there was light of
unimaginable splendor and beauty; it seemed I could see into heaven itself; and I suddenly saw
or perhaps felt with great clarity and persuasion and conviction that the Lord was really there and
was all I had thought. The effects of this experience lingered for a long time; I was still caught
up in arguments about the existence of God, but they often seemed to me merely academic, of
little existential concern, as if one were to argue about whether there has really been a past, for
example, or whether there really were other people, as opposed to cleverly constructed robots.

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This experience, along with the experience of attending a class at Calvin University wherein the professor:
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...was lecturing about modernity: its various departures from historic Christianity, the sorts of substitutes it
proposes, how these substitutes are related to the real thing, and the like. (Emphasis mine.)

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Led him to drop out of Harvard and enroll in Calvin University to become this professor's disciple. His career has evolved forthwith.

So Plantinga we know of...but you I'm still interested in.

Hoping you'll indulge my curiosity,
Michael

P.S. Hi to everybody here at SMP, I hope to drop in more often and undoubtedly learn a lot!

[NotReady]

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in fact Platinga barely quotes from God Delusion.


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It's a book review in a light Christian publication. Demonstrate where Plantinga misrepresents Dawkins.

[Phil153]

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Especially funny is this:

The premise he argues for is something like this:

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;

and Dawkins supports that premise by trying to refute objections to its being biologically possible that life has come to be that way. His conclusion, however, is

2. All of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes.


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NotReady,

I have downloaded The God Delusion and I can find no such argument made anywhere. I demand that you give us the pages where this claim is made (your hero does not, which is a sign of a poor and dishonest reviewer given the incredible nature of the claim he's making about Dawkin's intelligence).

You absolutely have to be kidding posting a review severely lacking in rigour, without having even read the book to see if the review is accurate. The claims your hero makes about Dawkins are incredible - it's like me claiming that the pope argued "God exists, cause I said so", without giving any reference for same so I could check the accuracy of the characterization for myself.

I demand the book quote that backs up this passage. You are an intelligent man despite being a theist and I expect more than this sloppy second hand quoting of incredible, non referenced claims.

[NotReady]

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In fact part of the purpose of The God Delusion is to examine the validity of Theism as a scientific theory


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I assume you mean invalidity. I didn't realize he said this. Other than IDers, who claims theism is scientific? And why does Dawkins get into attempted logic and philosophy if it's a science book?

[ChrisV]

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You're the one who missed the point. Plantinga is simply pointing out that the anthropic principle doesn't explain how we got here though Dawkins appears to be making that claim.

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Reread the section I quoted. The anthropic principle isn't being used here to explain OUR existence, it's being used to explain the existence of a so-called fine-tuned universe.

Well, of course our universe would have to be fine-tuned, given that we live in it. But how does that so much as begin to explain why it is that alpha is fine-tuned? One can't explain this by pointing out that we are indeed here

Why not? That's what Plantinga never explains.

anymore than I can "explain" the fact that God decided to create me (instead of passing me over in favor of someone else) by pointing out that if God had not thus decided, I wouldn't be here to raise that question.

Very bad analogy, since ANYONE can raise that question, so it would have been asked basically no matter who God created.

Let's go to a simpler version of the anthropic principle. We live on a planet, the orbit of which is within quite a narrow range. Any further away, and all the water on the planet would freeze. Any closer, and the water would evaporate, or we would not have an atmosphere. Since, due to some special properties of liquid water, it appears to be necessary for life, there is thus a narrow range of orbits in which a planet can sustain life.

Now, the explanation for why we find ourselves on such a rare planet is that on any other planet, we would not be around to be asking the question. Now, Plantinga's claim in that situation is presumably that we can't explain why THIS PARTICULAR PLANET's orbit is "fine-tuned" by "pointing out that we are indeed here". Why on Earth (hoho) not? Is there supposed to be some cosmic reason why this planet is aligned just so?

Once you grant Dawkins the assumptions of infinite universes and varying physical constants (which is all pure speculation, of course) then the application of the anthropic principle follows just as naturally as it does for the orbits of planets.

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The paragraph about the tractors is ridiculous. He's saying that it's OK to explain the complexity of life by palming it off to God, and we can leave explaining the complexity of God for another time.

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You're again missing the point. Dawkins assumes that God has to be complex as we understand that term. But he can't give a basis for that assumption.

Did you miss this from Plantinga?
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The point is we aren't trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity, and we aren't trying to explain organized complexity in general; we are only trying to explain one particular manifestation of it (those tractors). And (unless you are trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity) it is perfectly proper to explain one manifestation of organized complexity in terms of another.


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Huh? Throughout that paragraph Plantinga is granting Dawkins the assumption that God is complex, so it has nothing to do with Dawkins' argument for complexity. What Plantinga is saying is that if you assume God is complex, it is OK to simply use God to explain the complexity of life without being required to go on and explain the complexity of God, just as it is OK to explain tractors by reference to intelligent life, without explaining the intelligent life. The problem with this is that you can write anything off to God like this. Why do the stars shine? God commands them to. And who is God and how does he wield such awesome power? Oh, well, we don't have to explain that. This does not qualify as an explanation of why stars shine.

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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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I don't get this at all. Isn't this just a request to disprove God? Surely the onus is on Plantinga to show that there are such things as necessary beings.