(July 22, 2014 at 9:35 am)vodkafan Wrote: His main argument seemed to be " Well, I am a really intelligent person, and I don't believe in God; therefore, anybody who believes in God must be less intelligent than me."
I don't think we read the same book.
In just one chapter alone he discusses;
Thomas Aquinas's 'Proofs'
The Ontological Argument and other a priori arguments
The Argument from Beauty
The Argument from Personal 'Experience'
The Argument from Scripture
The Argument from Admired Role Models
Bayesian arguments
Irreducible Complexity
The worship of gaps
The Anthropic Principle: Planetary Version
The Anthropic Principle: Cosmological Version
Not once does he claim that these are bad arguments because he's "really intelligent and I don't believe in god". He dismantles them using superior logic.
While I agree, there are better books on atheism than this one, Dawkins makes many great points based on logic, biology, problems with the Bible, and others.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
