(May 11, 2025 at 7:17 am)Belacqua Wrote:The book is entitled The God Delusion, that seems pretty unequivocal to me. However it is asinine to imagine anyone could address every argument for every version of every deity, that humans have ever imagined to be real, in a single book. To me that idea, those criticisms, are what is comedic.(May 11, 2025 at 7:10 am)Alan V Wrote: Yes, and other atheists addressed more difficult questions -- Victor Stenger for instance. No one is good at everything, so we don't usually judge people by what they are not trying to do.
What bothered a lot of people is that Dawkins pointed out how laughable many common ideas of God are. The problem we are trying to address in this discussion is what, exactly, is left of the God-concept after you eliminate the worst ideas? Is there anything useful at all?
Well, OK. If we accept that Dawkins' isn't trying to argue that God is a delusion, but only certain popular ideas of it, then that lets him off the hook.
People seem to criticise the book for what it is not, and what it was never intended to be, while sneering that it critiques belief in a deity they don't believe in, and then miss the irony of course.