Without having read any of the thread beyond the first post, my problem with Dawkins is that he is an idiot. I heard such glowing things about
The God Delusion that I picked it up. I was looking forward to a read that would, one way or another, bring me closer to the truth. I was ready to go wherever the arguments took me, and, while I was confident in my Catholicism, I was prepared for the possibility that the much-lauded Dawkins would say something that would convince me that atheism is true. Regardless of the outcome, I was certain that reading Dawkins would cause me to grow–toward Catholicism or away from it, but always toward the truth.
I was deeply disappointed. Never in all my years of apologetics and counter-apologetics have I read such a sloppy mish-mash of poor argumentation, weak organization, and unearned arrogance. The man may be a good evolutionary biologist, and indeed his image of “Mount Improbable” was quite usefully illustrative. But his grasp of philosphy and logic is, at best, laughable. He had
no understanding of Aquinas, being utterly confounded by St. Thomas’s reasoning and, indeed, getting it at several points exactly backwards. Worse, Dawkins made it abundantly clear that he had
never read past Question 2, Article 3 of the Summa! He read Q2A3, no doubt in translation, unquestioningly put it into terms that his tiny post-Aristotlean worldview could handle (making another of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ill-founded, ill-serving assumptions he so arrogantly makes throughout the book), and then skipped the next forty-two chapters (~150 articles), all of which serve to answer his key objections! (His core, constantly repeated objection is that any Creator must be unimaginably complex. “On the simplicity of God” is
the very next page of the Summa! Arrrrgh!) The intellectual
bankruptcy Dawkins demonstrates is akin to that of a creationist who reads only the first three pages of
On the Origin of Species before condemning the whole idea of evolution as insane!
And Aquinas is but one (particularly frustrating) example. Dawkins also flubs the ontological argument, which is amazing, because, honestly, it’s not that hard to show clear weaknesses in St. Anselm’s case (even while a clear disproof is hard to come by). But instead of doing actual
philosophy, Dawkins instead
mocks Anselm for a few pages, vomits up a specious counter-example, and calls it a point proved! Go through that entire chapter: Aquinas, Anselm, Descartes (in passing), the baseless skewering of Anthony Flew (I don’t agree with Flew, but at least my critique of him isn’t based on insults)… for page after page after page, Dawkins shows himself to be a self-rightgeous moralizing child who couldn’t argue his way through even a reasonably rigorous undergraduate philosophy course.
Such sloppiness can’t help but spill out of that particular chapter. His attack on the efficacy of prayer was countered more than effectively by C.S. Lewis fifty years ago–and, because Lewis was responding to far more intelligent arguments at the time, Lewis’s defense goes well further. His chapter “Why there is almost certainly no God” is fatally undermined by the intellectual collapse of the preceding chapter. And his general attack on the outcomes of organized religion is flawed eight ways from Tuesday (have you
read a history of the Crusades, Mr. Dawkins?). I’ll bet you’d like me to substantiate such a sweeping charge. That’s how I felt during the whole book, on the rare occasion that I could see his sweeping charges through the haze of mischaracterizations and abject silliness.
You want to be an atheist, fine. There are decent reasons for it, even if they are ultimately flawed. But, for God’s sake, be an intellectually honest atheist. Base your atheism on the arguments of someone reasonably convincing, like Bertrand Russell, or even the far superior Douglas Adams (ironic, because Adams idolized Dawkins, but nonetheless true). To do less would be treason against the intellect. Richard Dawkins is the Jack Chick of atheism.
Hope that answers your question!
EDIT: The “You” in “You want to be an atheist,” is directed generally at the world, and not at you specifically,
wastronian. Didn’t want to put you on the defensive there, so I clarify.
