Dad links son's suicide to 'The God Delusion'

[josef rosenkranz]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?f...geId=81459

A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.

"Three people told us he had taken a biology class and was doing well in it, but other students and the professor were really challenging my son, his faith. They didn't like him as a Republican, as a Christian, and as a conservative who believed in intelligent design," the grief-stricken father, Keith Kilgore, told WND about his son, Jesse.

"This professor either assigned him to read or challenged him to read a book, 'The God Delusion,' by Richard Dawkins," he said.

Jesse Kilgore committed suicide in October by walking into the woods near his New York home and shooting himself. Keith Kilgore said he was shocked because he believed his son was grounded in Christianity, had blogged against abortion and for family values, and boasted he'd been debating for years.

This is of course a tragedy, anyone will agree. But it shows again how theists completely miss the point on atheism.

Yes, that is a tragedy. I feel sorry for the family.

Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" was tackled by Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Factor.

Bill O'Reilly, "You can't prove Jesus Christ wasn't God."
Richard Dawkins, "That's correct, but you cannot prove to me Thor and Zeus were not gods."

Richard Dawkins doesn't realize that he was "set-up" by Bill O'Reilly on that question. Dawkins shot himself in the foot when he replied to O'Reilly. Because that means Dawkins cannot disprove any God in any manner. So, why write a book on something that cannot be disproved? Opinions are not fact.

Dawkins claims, "Lack of evidence leans towards there being no god."
However, once again, Dawkins is not using his tiny brain. The only way the final result can be "Lack of evidence" is when every option has been thoroughly examined. Has anyone in human history been capable of exploring the entire Universe?


Secondly, Richard Dawkins is a Biologist not a Psychiatrist. He was asked to prove God is a delusion, and he couldn't. What's up with that? It sounds like Mr. Dawkins suckered a million people into buying his book. It's sound a bit crazy to write a book called 'The God Delusion' if he cannot prove God is a delusion. That is a delusion in itself.

You are right to believe that O"Reilly didn't get the right answer from Richard Dawkins because his Darwinistic method of disproving God does not give a direct answer to the question put by O'Reilly.
The direct and simple answer is that God is a creation of man motivated by a string of clearly provable causes, the main of them being the help he gets from this belief in his dayly struggle for survival.
Being a creation of man, God can not reside in any place than in the mind of the person who is thinking of him.
That does answer also to the question which each religious person sees as a blasphemy, namely:"WHO CREATED GOD?" to which religion has no positive answer.
Science of nature, is by no means, able to totally disprove the existence of God ,by the very simple fact that Man being a link in the evolutionary chain of life on earth has not yet the answer to all problems of the Universe.His knowledge of Nature is therefore limited to the level of his momentarily physical and mental development.
Would Man be in possession of all answers he would be himself God,which he is not because God does not exist.
The inexistence of God makes the O'Reilly question irrelevant.
The existence of Jesus is sustained by the Gospel which is also a creation of man. The appearance of Christianity is a complex phenomenon explicable by a lot of causes of historical,social,economical and theological reasons all
of them provable by a series of writings of the history of 300 years since the appearance of Jesus in ancient Judeea till it's political acceptance by the emperor Constantinus.
Atheism does not mean to despise religion or religious people but to convince people of the truth of reason against the irrational belief in God.

But that doesn't disprove God anymore than the almost certain disprove that Dawkins gives in TGD. Just how there can be ZERO evidence and God can be EXTREMELY improbable and complex and STILL not be completely disproved. God can look so OBVIOUSLY man made but it still doesn't disprove him. He can look totally man-made and still have not been man made. And still exist. He's merely, lets say, almost infinitely improbable. Just as with Dawkins solution. Which is that 1. There is no evidence of God. 2. God is so extremely complex and improbable. The universe is extremely fine tuned but any God capable of creating such a complex and improbable fine tuned universe would therefore have to be EVEN MORE complex, improbable and fine-tuned.
Its a massive solution. I'd say, its less obvious, but an even stronger argument than the one you give. Such a MASSIVE improbability of God's existence arguably makes God more improbable than the merely obvious fact that God is man-made. You can have all the evidence that it appears man invented God. But I don't think it directly attacks the issue. because there's no evidence of any God to disprove in the first place. You can prove that man invented the word "God". And the texts. But you cannot address the supernatural issue itself this way. Not as satisfactory as Dawkins' argument atleast. In my opinion. Since the fact that there is both ZERO supporting evidence that supports God and the fact that he is MASSIVELY complex and fine-tuned. And would have to be even more complex fine-tuning and improbable than the constants of the universe - because he is supposed to have created them...
I think thats more of a massively powerful argument than yours. That's my opinion anyway. I certainly don't think Dawkins' argument is weak. I think its incredibly strong.
And I even more strongly, certainly think that Dawkins argument DOES address the issue in question.
I think that the fact that "Who created God?" brings about an inescapable regress from which God cannot escape because he always must have come from somewhere. I think that is a stronger point of the impossibility of the supernatural because it goes against natural law for God to exist. Than the fact that God was man made. Although I believe he obviously was. I think the inescapable infinite regress is a stronger answer to the question.

There is obviously more than one way to disprove the existence of God.
I consider my way as less lectured from the height of an university
professors' chair but as a more to ground one with a direct access to the way of thinking of religious people.
Every member of this forum has the right to defend his opinion.
Dawkins was trapped by a silly request by this O'Reilly (who is he
anyway) and instead to answer that he is capable to prove that Jesus is not God because God does not exists he gave him an answer fit for two persons who argue who's God is the right one.
Now,I am not competing with you about who's way of disproving God is the better one. I am not rejecting the basic Darwinistic approach to the problem by Dawkins at all, but I argue that the man-made God approach should
be also used because ,between others,it gives a direct answer to the crucial problem of religions ,namely WHO CREATED GOD.