(August 8, 2010 at 7:57 pm)ssmutters Wrote: Adrian, I became a full fledged atheist after reading The God Delusion and Letter to a Christian Nation. Now, it's interesting to hear that you consider Richard Dawkins may not be so good for atheism after all. I am interested in knowing your reasons for thinking Dawkins is not good for atheism. I am also thinking of buying some atheism books from this site, so whom would you suggest?Sam Harris is a good person, and in my opinion a good influence for the atheist community. He has studied philosophy and so knows what he is talking about when it comes to the whole "god" issue.
Dawkins on the other hand, did not. He studied biology and when he talks about that, he is immense. He can describe evolutionary processes in very simple ways, and is a great public intellectual. However, "The God Delusion" was a piss poor attempt at a philosophical work; all he did was rehash old arguments, and when he tried to come up with his own ideas, or refute some religious ones, he often failed miserably.
Two examples spring to mind; the one which I am most critical of is his scale of belief, which for some explicable reason puts agnosticism in the dead centre. This is a clear indicator in my opinion that Dawkins doesn't know what agnosticism is, which is odd considering it was developed by the close friend of Darwin, Thomas Huxley.
The second example I can think of was his defense of the argument "Can God create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?", which attempts to disprove omnipotence. The argument, however, is a loaded question fallacy; something a good philosopher would have spotted instantly.
As for Maher, I'm still not sure where he actually stands. He has often says in interviews "I'm not an atheist" because for some reason he thinks atheists are people who say "there is no god" rather than people who just lack a belief in a god.
He is a great person if you want to be anti-religious; but he is less of a skeptic and more of an uneducated fool when it comes to things like vaccines and other medical related things.
