Do mimsy atheists gyre and gimble in the wabe?

[Purple Rabbit]

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Nowadays it seems that an advanced course in theology is needed to comprehend the deeper meaning of the Christian God, to find the really, really, real Christian God.

Certainly. But that is not any kind of criticism because such is the case for pretty much any subject. An advanced course in astrophysics is needed to deeply comprehend the structure and nature of the cosmos. Who do you think would have a more accurate understanding about the cosmos: (a) a high school dropout, or (b) an astrophysicist with an advanced degree? Now, we cannot all take advanced courses in this or that field, but that is why we rely on those who have. If I am going to speak about 'X', I had better either have a sufficiently advanced education about it or rely on people who do. When it comes to speaking about God, Dawkins clearly had neither the former nor bothered to interact with the latter.

This is preposterous. So the christian world fills the heads of millions of children with information that is incomplete. To appreciate the real god you need to have an IQ that matches someone doing advanced astrophysics. The god concept is unattainable for the uneducated and the intellectually restricted. You are rowing the boat upstream, my friend, for statistics show that higher education means lower rates of belief in the supernatural. You suggest that there is a relation between the complexity of nature and the complexity of god, but the more science advances and the more the complexity of nature unfolds the more the gap between that complexity and the emptyness of what the god concept offers shines through. The god concept as invented by academic theology is not capable of explaining any detail of the complexity of nature at all. Nada, zilch, nope, nothing. There is not a shred of relevance of all academic theologian effort on questions still open in the study of nature. And that while is claimed that god created it purposefull with omniscientic capabilities. The scenario that unfolds here is not that god is complex but that the god concept is too empty to keep up with the magnificence of nature and that academic theology is indulging in an perverted attempt to reclaim authority with a claim of complexity of the god concept.

Dawkins is no more interpreting God than any of the thousands of Christian denominations.

And he is basing his interpretation upon... what? Theological ignorance, which he proudly admits. That is the salient point.

Emptyness is what you get if you try to sum up the tenets of christian dogma without comprimising certain flavours in advance. It is the incompatability of christian denominations and flavours within them that mock up the place, not ignorance of its reviewers. How would you reconcile Schillebeekx with Anselm, Gregory of Nazianzus with George Fox, Willbur Fisk (who opposed abolitioners) with Hugh Price Hughes. In an environment where there is no final touchstone of reality, anything goes. If you claim that some advanced consistent and coherent god concept can be found in this mess, then please let me now. But one thing though, I will not wait for you to write the next conclusive and comprehensive work on the meaning of the god concept that requires the brilliance of an advanced atrophysicist to read but offers no verifiable statement regarding the plain reality we live in.

Instead of presenting clear evidence for their divine claims, they merely repeat Christian dogma and try to discredit the approach and person of Dawkins.

Non-sequitur. Presenting clear evidence for divine claims is irrelevant in a critique of Dawkins' claims.

Non-sequitur. To conclude that I thought it relevant in a critique of Dawkins' is missing the point. I was simply commenting on the attempts thusfar made by the vast army of apologetical authors to discredit Dawkins' TGD..

This is quite basic. The old trick on the burden of proof again.

It is not much of a trick. Dawkins shouldered the burden of proof and failed to meet it.

How did he shoulder the burden of proof? By staking the claim that belief in the existence of God is a delusion. Does he succeed at meeting this burden by assessing the state of evidence for belief in God, as you allude to? Absolutely not, because even if there is no evidence whatsoever for belief X, that does not prove it delusional. Remember, Dawkins affirmed—correctly—that a delusion is a false belief persistently held in the face of evidence that contradicts it. That is a very basic element of the definition: that the belief is false. "Not proven true" does not mean "proven false" (see argumentum ad ignorantiam). Yet proving that X is false is precisely what Dawkins' claim required of him.

Dawkins is not evaluating the claim of existence of god(s) as an issue seperated from any context or definition, he’s evaluating the proof for a god concept with specific characteristics. It is the belief in any definite god concept as a whole that his verdict is about. All such god concept are made up of multiple claims about characterics and capabilities of the god in question. To state that the belief in this god concept is delusional is legit when
a) there is strong evidence that contradicts a number (but not necessarily all) of claimed characteristics and capabilities of that god and
b) there is no positive evidence for remaining characteristics.

Dawkins is not required to give a rigorous deductional proof of non-existence when there is no direct evidence for his existence. IOW in the absence of hard positive evidence for existence or non-existence of specific gods, the label ‘delusional’ is valid when is shown that contradictory evidence of certain claimed characteristics of the god concept is disgarded by believers.

It pretty much compares to the claim that fairies exist. If fairies have no specific characteristics, i.e. they have no definition, then indeed there would be no ground to call the belief in fairies delusional. However if fairies are claimed to be macro-sized material entities with magical powers such as the capability of flight through walls and other material objects and appearance out of nowhere, then these definitional claims can be subjected to research. In the absence of verifiable evidence (i.e. validated pictures of fairies, live captures of fairies) in favour of the existence of these entities, disgarding evidence that contradicts the possibility of flight of material objects through walls indicates delusional belief.

Dawkins indeed shows this for a number of claims present in the mainstream god concept. To name a few:
The claim that the bible is the word of god and shows his impeccable moral
The claim that the bible is consistent throughout showing divine origin
The claim that god answers prayer
The claim that god's existence is traceable through the supposed irreducible complexity in nature
That there is evidence of god's purpose with man in nature (anthropic principle)

Requiring a higher standard of evidence will certainly keep away the delusional predicate from believers in gods and fairies, but disgards common sense arguments about the difference between special pleading and non-biased assessment of evidence. There is no direct evidence of god's existence and the claims of indirect evidence either are contradicted by clear evidence or bear the marks of cherry picking.