The mother can 'know' her son because he is something that can be properly described by her. Also, her son's facial image is well known to the part of her brain that performs the function of 'facial recogition'. So, 'knowing' a person feels inductive, but really it is highly rational and mathmatical at the neurological level.

Now contrast the womens son with God. God cannot be properly described or defined with any satisfactory noun. God can only be described using a string of verbs or adjectives such as loving, merciful, and big.

And so,the question: "What would a merciful look like if it walked in the room?" is a meaningless question consisting of nonsense. But that is what the theologian attempts to answer. What a waste of time. You may as well speculate the miraculous strength of Superman, and why kryptonite weakens it.

It is surpising that anyone takes Dawkins seriously anymore after the tragedy that was The God Delusion, because according to a lot of people he lost his credibility a long time ago. I haven’t read the book myself (one flick through in a library was enough to convince me that it wasn’t worth wasting my time on), but pretty much everyone says his arguments range from weak to laughable, and that it was an incredibly poorly researched piece of work. The ironic thing is that he wrote a book that railed against fundamentalism and fundamentalists, and in the process revealed himself to be a fundamentalist of the most vitriolic kind. And it’s not just Christians who have been saying this, it’s atheists too- Dawkins has been criticized from numerous high profile atheists like Thomas Nagel, Michael Ruse, Julian Baggini etc etc.

But anyway enough on Dawkins. This article was interesting and I always enjoy discussions around the philosophy of science and the meaning of science

trav,

1) baker's article was on dawkin's view of science, not religion. as to why baker chose dawkins? because, like you, he seems to presume dawkins is on the nose. thus, choosing dawkins as (what he thinks is) an easy target, is a step up for baker's own nonsense ponderings.

it would be nice if someone actually returned to baker's actual topic.

2) i won't enter here into the religious debate. it is true that dawkins has some prominent atheist critics. it is also true that dawkins has many defenders, including myself. some attack his arguments, some attack his style. i have no great problem with either. your suggestion that there is some quasi-universal condemnation of dawkins is simply false.

and your appeal to authority is just silly. for what it's worth, the last piece i read by michael ruse was pure garbage. i don't; care how big such people are: if they write crap, they write crap.

Hi Trav,

If you want to understand Dawkins impact on popular culture then I highly recommend, 'Richard Dawkins. How a Scientist Changed the Way we Think.' The book is a collection of essays by various scientists, writers, and philosophers. Most of the essays are a critique on Dawkins most influential work, 'The Selfish Gene.' A personal favourite is, 'What the Whale Wondered: Evolution, Existentialism, and the Search for Meaning.' by David Barash. It's brilliant.

Dawkins would stand up as a great research scientist in his own right. However, his real genius is centred on his ability to extract groundbreaking philosophical conclusions from the reality of biological evolution. And so, the shear (philosophical) logic of works like 'The Selfish Gene' and 'The Blind Watchmaker' remains ironclad to this day despite numerous attacks by opponents. Why is the (philosophical) logic ironclad? Because it is founded on hard scientific evidence.

TR says that God cannot be described and he is perfectly right because we believe that God in inscrutable.He cannot be contained in human language.Language is a cultural construct.

It is popularly believed that God is out there somewhere,he is king and loving,he is all-powerful and so on.It is the practice of all religions to portray God with the highest and best and noblest of human virtues.They overlook the likelihood that God is also cruel,kills millions of people,is not all loving and noble.I say this to be consistent with what I said earlier,that language cannot contain God and as TR rightly said that we cannot imagine or describe God.
There is a widespread tendency to see God as Coming into being,a process,and human beings play little or no part in this process.There are 400 million galaxies with their own suns and planets.We are situated at the outer edge of the galaxy known as the Milky Way.rom any observatory you can see entire constellations dying in a blaze of colors and you can also see the birth of new GALAXIES AND CONSTELLATIONS BEING CREATED, CREATED BY no one, BUT JUST AS A PROCESS. If pressed to give some idea of what comes neartest to describing God I'd have to say "evolution" which is a process of coming into being,developing. This makes God very vulnerable to decay andre- forming.There is no such thing as death,but only into transforming,Coming Into being.

socratease

I have no problem with your version of God socratease. If you want assign gravity (the most important force in the Universe) some kind of divine status with creative powers then that's fine by me. The trouble is I don't see the point. A God that doesn't know I'm here and doesn't impact me directly is of no consequence. I have more interesting things to contemplate.

As for your comment - 'There is no such thing as death, but only into transforming, Coming Into being.'- well that sounds like a load of religio-speak bollocks. I will bet my house that you have not the slightest idea what 'Coming into being' means or how it is acheived.

On the other hand. I do know that once I die, and the atoms in my body become scattered back into the biosphere, I become nothing. I return to the same state I was in before I was born. For individual atoms without order cannot think.