fivepointcalvinist
Puritan Board Sophomore
*note what the author (also an atheist) says regarding Dawkins embracing conjectural explanations for our existence. again atheism cannot stand on it's own presuppositions.
Richard Dawkins's Cosmology Delusion
Being a shallow, self-absorbed sort, I ran out to buy The God Delusion yesterday after someone told me that Richard Dawkins mentions me in it. In a section titled “An Interlude at Cambridge,” Dawkins recalls his participation as a speaker in the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship for Science and Religion in the summer of 2005. He notes that I was a participant too, and that I later wrote an “endearingly ambivalent” article for the Chronicle of Higher Education about the fellowship, which is funded by the pro-religion Templeton Foundation.
First, a correction: Dawkins quotes my recollection that the faith of one Christian journalist “was wavering as a result of Dawkins’s dissection of religion.” After my article was published, that journalist informed me that I had misunderstood him; his doubts really stemmed from an ongoing internal process and had nothing to do with remarks by Dawkins. In an email, the journalist said: “I find [Dawkins] to be completely unconvincing in terms of argument, because his initial standpoint is so harshly fundamentalist as to strip his points of all merit.” Ironically, during the fellowship Dawkins listened sympathetically—without a hint of condescension--as this journalist attempted to explain a religious experience that involved paranormal phenomena.
I left the fellowship mightily impressed by the intelligence, courage, passion and integrity of Dawkins’s assault on religion. I have intellectual disagreements with him, though. In The God Delusion, Dawkins embraces the tautological anthropic principle and untestable multi-universe theories as potential explanations of the riddle of existence.
Richard, substituting pseudo-scientific creation theories for religious ones is not a step forward! Better to accept that some mysteries may lie forever beyond our ken.
Richard Dawkins's Cosmology Delusion
Being a shallow, self-absorbed sort, I ran out to buy The God Delusion yesterday after someone told me that Richard Dawkins mentions me in it. In a section titled “An Interlude at Cambridge,” Dawkins recalls his participation as a speaker in the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship for Science and Religion in the summer of 2005. He notes that I was a participant too, and that I later wrote an “endearingly ambivalent” article for the Chronicle of Higher Education about the fellowship, which is funded by the pro-religion Templeton Foundation.
First, a correction: Dawkins quotes my recollection that the faith of one Christian journalist “was wavering as a result of Dawkins’s dissection of religion.” After my article was published, that journalist informed me that I had misunderstood him; his doubts really stemmed from an ongoing internal process and had nothing to do with remarks by Dawkins. In an email, the journalist said: “I find [Dawkins] to be completely unconvincing in terms of argument, because his initial standpoint is so harshly fundamentalist as to strip his points of all merit.” Ironically, during the fellowship Dawkins listened sympathetically—without a hint of condescension--as this journalist attempted to explain a religious experience that involved paranormal phenomena.
I left the fellowship mightily impressed by the intelligence, courage, passion and integrity of Dawkins’s assault on religion. I have intellectual disagreements with him, though. In The God Delusion, Dawkins embraces the tautological anthropic principle and untestable multi-universe theories as potential explanations of the riddle of existence.
Richard, substituting pseudo-scientific creation theories for religious ones is not a step forward! Better to accept that some mysteries may lie forever beyond our ken.
