Dawkins is so thick-headed. He has a bias about how believers think, and applies this to all of his arguments.
Check out this passage from page 6:
DAWKINS: There could be something incredibly grand and
incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.
COLLINS: That's God.
DAWKINS: Yes. But it could be any of a billion Gods. It
could be God of the Martians or of the inhabitants of
Alpha Centauri. The chance of its being a particular God,
Yahweh, the God of Jesus, is vanishingly small--at the
least, the onus is on you to demonstrate why you think
that's the case.
Collins has just told him his definition of God and Dawkins rejects it.
I honestly don't want to jump into an argument on the merits of each side, but intolerance is unacceptable. There certainly exist religious nuts, but this God-delusion belief is itself dogma and is blind to the articulate believers.
PS--in that Ben Stein movie (Expelled) Dawkins himself states that life could have been brought to this universe from a higher being, but that that higher being itself had to come from somewhere. This IS "God" for many people. Not very many people believe God is some guy with a white beard who yells and throws lightning bolts.
DAWKINS: If ever there was a slamming of the door in the
face of constructive investigation, it is the word
miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed
like a miracle. All kinds of things may happen which we by
the lights of today's science would classify as a miracle
just as medieval science might a Boeing 747. Francis keeps
saying things like "From the perspective of a believer."
Once you buy into the position of faith, then suddenly you
find yourself losing all of your natural skepticism and
your scientific--really scientific--credibility. I'm sorry
to be so blunt.
COLLINS: Richard, I actually agree with the first part of
what you said. But I would challenge the statement that my
scientific instincts are any less rigorous than yours. The
difference is that my presumption of the possibility of
God and therefore the supernatural is not zero, and yours
is.
Dawkins is again ridiculous. He's defining "miracle" as "impossible event" which is absurd. He's also supposing that people of faith lose scientific skepticism. The retort that he's the only one denouncing something is brilliant.
Agreed. From my studies, it seems that miracles are generally seen as demonstrations of power over / understanding of the laws by which the universe operates, they needn't be magical in nature. More akin to me being able to change parameter of a computer program I wrote becasue I have intimate knowledge of how it is built and have access to the source code.
Check out this passage from page 6:
Collins has just told him his definition of God and Dawkins rejects it.I honestly don't want to jump into an argument on the merits of each side, but intolerance is unacceptable. There certainly exist religious nuts, but this God-delusion belief is itself dogma and is blind to the articulate believers.
PS--in that Ben Stein movie (Expelled) Dawkins himself states that life could have been brought to this universe from a higher being, but that that higher being itself had to come from somewhere. This IS "God" for many people. Not very many people believe God is some guy with a white beard who yells and throws lightning bolts.