The God Delusion

[Anto Kennedy]

By 'guide' I thought you meant morals...since you were saying you weren't talking about God's actual existence. Ok...not moral guidance...what kind of 'guidance' are you speaking of then?

A spiritual guide.

I believe he explained spot on why it's a delusion. Because there's no evidence and because God himself is even more complex and improbable than the explanation he is supposed to provide.

Yeh I never got that reasoning, it just went way over my head.

God doesn't exist because God is improbable, God doesn't exist because God is complex (says Dawkins), therefore belief in a non-existing God is a delusion.

Is that it?

And this Definition of God I am speaking of is the same definition as Dawkins clearly defines him in the beginning of chapter Two, "The God Hypothesis" - and that is pretty much that God just = The Supernatural Creator of the Universe. So deistic Gods included too.

Who says God is "super" natural, why not wholly natural.

Well as I have said, his reasons above are that God (as Dawkins defines him in Chapter Two) lacks any evidence whatsoever and is highly improbable. So that makes God a delusion.

I really don't get it. God is improbable, and since "belief" in the improbable is a delusion, belief in God is a delusion?

That's piss poor reasoning. It's a weak arguement. That's why I feel the book is poor.

The point is not that he's saying that religions cause 'all the problems in the world'. But that religion itself does cause a lot of problems.

Any evidence for that statement?

Could religion solve a lot of problems too, or do we not look at both sides of the arguement anymore?

In the sense that if a lot of the horrible stuff in religious books are taken entirely literally and believed - this can lead to a lot of problems that wouldn't happen if religion wasn't there...

It would. It could be communism, it could be nationalism, it could be Freedom & Democracy inc., but people will buy into an ideology, wholly believe in it's tenents and start some "problems".

When 911 happens because a small group of Muslims think that in such an act they are going to go to a Martyr's Heaven and get 72 virgins for themselves

That isn't why 9/11 "happened". Most intelligent people (and by that I really mean people that specialize in geo-politics, Middle-Eastern history etc....which excludes me) would acknowledge other factors.

"Faith" in their literal, fundamentalist, highly dogmatic and zealous and absolutist interpretation of the Koran...and interpretation of their "God"

Could you elaborate on what this interpretation that caused 9/11 is?

Religion plays a big part.

Religion is all encompassing in society, so obviously it's going to have an involvement in events. That's what I was trying to say, religion is too important to be brushed off in such a weak book as the GD.

Well whether there can be evidence...or not... if there's no evidence then there's no reason to believe

Why is there no reason to believe in the absence of evidence?

so it is delusional to believe anyway completely irrationally

I don't understand what your trying to say, "believe anyway completely irrationally"....doesn't make sense.

in the sense it's believing in a 'false belief' by definition basically

What is a false belief?

And especially when such a "God" is highly improbable.

Is what you're trying to say this, "belief in God is especially delusional considering the existence of an infinite, immortal creative being, that created this universe (and maybe others), and to which all things return, is highly improbable."

Why does the improbability of this being existing make it less likely to reflect reality if you belief in the being?

And where did you get the idea that God is improbable from anyway? Did Dawkins just make it up? What has probability got to do with it, and what bookmakers drew up those odds?

That's why God is a delusion.

Did we just skip the whole coherent arguement thing-a-ma-jig and cut straight to the resolution, because I saw no clear reason in you're post to accept that statement.

YHWH is nothing more than a moon god, and not a very nice one at that.

LMAO, okay mate.

Where is the "supernatural?" What is its frame of reference? Where is it located? Define its properties.

I don't deal with morality, and I don't deal with the supernatural. All is natural, how could it be otherwise.

What is with the Euro-snobbery?

It's true though, the correct term for it is, "culturally inbred".

My Dad fought in WWII and pulled your Euro-asses out of the fire when you were trying to kill each other, which by the way, seems to be your biggest tradition.

The Irish were never in the fire. And it isn't technically euro-snobbery either, since all Africans and Asian likewise have long cultural traditions.

Americans make poor artists, poor writers etc. Too legalistic, not enough imagination. There's a reason why this peculiar blend of atheism started in America, and why the peculiar fundamental form of Christianity originated in the US.

You are putting too much credit into religion, and I get that from your comment here: Religion is a too important aspect of human behavior to be dismissed in such a weak book as the GD.

Well you should get that from my comment, because that's what I wrote, you understand what I want you to understand, it's called communication.

Anyway, your beef is with Evidence vs. Faith, he seems to think religion is responsible for a lot (not all) of the world's problems, meaning he gives religion a lot of credit in world & historical events.

I’ve been alive long enough to read many books on the subject, as well as sharing as many as possible with my children over the years, and I did not see where Dawkins was lacking in comparison.

Well I did.

I was using our senses to simply show that we can understand something simply by using them.

No we can't. If we see something we only see it. Understanding involves a lot more than sensory perception, it requires imagination (to fill in the gaps)

God could be considered a gap filler, an abstract image used in absence of any information regarding the time before the Big Bang.

The question you have to ask yourself though is, "would you rather have a gap filler for a question that will never be answered, or will you be happy with a void."

It's a trick question, the void is the gap filler

I would say pure ignorance would be better in this case.

O rly?


p.s. stop asking me questions on theology, I only wanted to comment on the GD as a book, I wasn't really interested in discussing it's contents to any great degree.