I actually met someone whose faith had been shaken by Dawkins!

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davidv said:
You suspicion is not well grounded. The Church teaches that all faith communities have truth, some more than others, with the CC having the fulness of the Truth.
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A great test of what religion has the fullness of truth is which one is attacked most frequently and with venom.
 
davidv said:
You suspicion is not well grounded. The Church teaches that all faith communities have truth, some more than others, with the CC having the fulness of the Truth.
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people often complain that dawkins is arguing against a childish conception of god that doesn’t apply to them. but those arguments are still valid against that childish conception of god that sadly many many people do actually hold to.

i am sure that people who believe in every religion of the world have lots and lots of true beliefs. that is not the point. the point is that as a catholic you believe that many of their belies are false and you would likely have the same reasons for thinking so as dawkins. for example, why do you doubt that an angel gave joseph smith a book of golden plates?
 
buffalo said:
A great test of what religion has the fullness of truth is which one is attacked most frequently and with venom.
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that makes no sense whatsoever. but then, by your reasoning it must therefore be true. 🤷
 
buffalo said:
Then why is the Catholic Church attacked most often?
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is it??? and even if it is, why would that be evidence that the catholic church is more likely to be right than the the LDS on ultimate reality?
 
Greg27 said:
Dawkins is a very good public speaker, television presenter and writer, but his expertise is in science rather than theology and philosophy.
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presumably, just like dawkins and i, you find the evidence in support of the mormon claim that in the early 1800s, joseph smith was handed some magic golden plates from an angel to be incredible. does one really need to understand the nuances of mormon philosophy and theology before coming to the conclusion that smith was an ordinary con man rather than a prophet?

does one need to know every last detail about the venerable tradition of invisible royal fabrics before he can apply his common sense to point out that the emperor has no clothes?
 
buffalo

*A great test of what religion has the fullness of truth is which one is attacked most frequently and with venom. *

Another great test of the religion with the fullness of truth is that this religion does not yield its doctrines to assault from every side. The Catholic Church, unlike the Anglican, has not changed its teachings to suit the fancy of liberal nitwits. 😃

Anyone whose faith was challenged by reading Dawkins did not have much faith to begin with. Just as Dawkins could not have had much faith to conclude that Darwin had provided the necessary proof to make atheism respectable.
 
_Locke said:
Could post the link please? In December 2004 Flew stated that he still stood by the argument presented in The Presumption of Atheism, despite his conversion to deism. I don’t want to hijack the thread for something else, I’m just interested.
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All you have to do is read his book “God and Philosophy” in which he presented a series of arguments against the existence of God. I don’t know what he wrote in The Presumption of Atheism but it didn’t prevent him from renouncing his atheism - and by implication those very arguments. Whatever he believed he wasn’t inconsistent!
 
The only problem is that people credit Dawkins for a philosophical ideology, along with Dennet. Personally, I can’t stand Dawkings, and much more of a reader of Colin McGuinn
 
Richard Dawkins is very smart (which is stating the obvious). In ‘The God Delusion,’ he wages a scathing attack on a Fundamentalist reading of the Bible, and by implication on any church that uses the Scriptures in it’s teachings. So, by implication (and also directly) he attacks the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, an inattentive Catholic reader might be caught off-guard and might end up feeling rather bruised. Perhaps, such a reader will need to remind himself that the Catholic Church does not endorse the Fundamentalist reading of the Scriptures, in any case. A more correct statement is perhaps that one should read the Scriptures as interpreted by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, critics are inclined to omit the second part of the phrase. Then, of course, any private interpretation will do!
 
DL82 said:
On a plane back from a recent holiday, I was reading some theology books for an essay for my PhD, and a guy next to me engaged me in a conversation about it. He was wondering whether the book I was reading was pro- or anti- the existence of God, and I tried to explain that it was a little more complicated than that but…

Anyway, he got to explaining to me that he’d been brought up Catholic but had begun to question his faith, and that Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion had really shaken his faith to the limit. He still went to mass and sent his kids to Catholic school, but I think his faith was all but gone. This made me realise how dangerous a badly-written book like that can be to those who haven’t the background to appreciate its’ flaws.

I shared some of my own testimony as a convert to Catholicism, and suggested that he read Ecclesiastes, as I think that has something to say about the fact that doubt is a natural part of faith. All the same, I was a bit confused about what to say. I didn’t want to insult this man’s intelligence by pointing out all the many flaws in Dawkins’ arguments, but it made me really mad at Dawkins. I finally understood what he had done, it wasn’t intended to be a well-written academic critique of religion, it was designed to be a bargain-basement bestseller, alongside Dan Brown or Jeffrey Archer or some such, a very intelligent man patronisingly manipulating those he knew were less well-informed in order to hammer home his point and score cheap points against religion.

Only problem is, Dawkins’ cheap points aren’t cheap at all, they are the souls of good men and women, people of simple faith, and those are very valuable indeed!
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My first reaction to this was, so what? People believe all sorts of stupid things for stupid reasons. As far as Dawkins’ cheap points go, whatever they are, I think it’s safe to assume that he is at least sincere. And so I can’t help wondering if a sincere atheist might not be better off (closer to the truth) than an insincere Christian. Being able to say “yeah, I’m Catholic” isn’t going to get us to heaven.
 
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