otseng wrote:In chapter one, Dawkins states "nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion". But, what we see in this chapter is that he brings out the opponents that haven't seen any action in the ring in this generation or opponents in the strawweight division. By bringing them out, are we then supposed to marvel at his skill in knocking down these strawweights?
I will agree that many of the ancient and revered alleged arguments for the existence of God are lightweight and, as Dawkins demonstrates, easily refuted. However, I have not noticed any arguments for the existence of God used here that is not essentially a version or combination of versions of these arguments, aside from the argument from design. Perhaps I have not been reading carefully.
otseng wrote:He brings up all these arguments (except one) that I have not really seen anyone use nowadays (and at least certainly not on this forum) to argue for God's existence. "The argument from design is the only one still in regular use today" (page 79) If the teleological argument is the only one still in regular use today, then why does he present the others? He defers addressing the design argument until chapter 4. So, we'll have to wait to see how well he does address it.
Since it is currently the most important argument for the existence of God and the most used by apologists for God, Dawkins wisely decided to give it a more thorough treatment, dedicating a full chapter to it rather than quickly dismissing it like the others. Your criticism seems to be more about his style than his substance.
otseng wrote:Also, he had stated in chapter 2 that the God hypothesis is a scientific question. But, interestingly, he doesn't mention any of the scientific arguments for God's existence in this chapter.
Perhaps any of the scientific arguments for God's existence fall into the category covered in Chapter 4. Admittedly, he could have lengthened the book by trying to define the scientific predictions that should be associated with each of the
strawweight arguments and showing that they either do not exist or do not hold, but would that really help anyone?
Dawkins (p84) wrote:[T]he existence of non-existence of God is too big a question to be decided by 'dialectical prestidigitation'.
I think that all of the philosopher's arguments for the existence of God only work to convince those who are already convinced or really wish to be.