Questions for Atheists

No, he was not talking about the most elementary particle, he was talking about the most fundamental entity. It may well be the case that the most fundamental entity is something akin to the quantum field. The point being that the most fundamental entity interacts with itself much like a wave might be said to do.

Hey mike, His argument is

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We explain our existence by a combination of the anthropic principle and Darwin's principle of natural selection. That combination provides a complete and deeply satisfying explanation for everything that we see and know. Not only is the god hypothesis unnecessary. It is spectacularly unparsimonious. Not only do we need no God to explain the universe and life. God stands out in the universe as the most glaring of all superfluous sore thumbs. We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable.

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Which is true. There is an ever increasing amount of things that we garner explanations about, time and again naturalistic explanations are ultimately the successful ones and the supernatural ones are time and again the ones that don't help at all. As Dawkins also puts forward, this kind of track record that science keeps racking up 'boosts our confidence' in its ability to tackle future questions.

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Even before Darwin's time, the illogicality was glaring: how could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable? The entire argument is a logical non-starter, as David Hume realized before Darwin was born. What Hume didn't know was the supremely elegant alternative to both chance and design that Darwin was to give us. Natural selection is so stunningly powerful and elegant, it not only explains the whole of life, it raises our consciousness and boosts our confidence in science's future ability to explain everything else.

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So in essence, there is no need to postulate that God might explain such and such a thing. One can entirely rationally believe that the application of science can provide an explanation: one does not need the God hypothesis which had previously been the only contender.Hopefully that clears that up.

I'm fairly sure several threads have been dedicated to it, but I have yet to see how Dawkins manages to give the appearance that atheists are dangerous anti-religious fanatics - especially in contrast with the likes of Harris and Hitchens.Harris is far more vocal against Islam than Dawkins, perhaps because Dawkins is concentrating his criticism against moderate and extreme homegrown Christian-related issues he is regarded as more of a dangerous anti-religious fanatic?

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The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas. --Sam Harris

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This is far more violent and anti-religious rhetoric than anything I've seen Dawkins come out with. In its full context, Harris is making a good point - but it does strike me as odd that he is always regarded as the squeaky clean peaceful hippy type, and Dawkins is regarded the militant fanatic.

Indeed, but why would anyone need to establish that? And I think that ascribing it to being the craftwork of a superpowered father figure who is himself a chance consequent of reality is a bigger claim. You don't have to make that assumption. Dawkins argues that the tremendous explanatory power of science has shown us time and again that it can explain so many of the fundamentals of our universe it seems that it will continue to do so. Our confidence is boosted in science by virtue of its successes. Why postulate that God explains what parts science hasn't yet been able to explain? One can reasonably believe that science will provide further answers and this belief requires no God. We have a fairly decent start of explanation for the universe. We've got almost its entire history mapped out in broad details and we're getting to the nitty gritty on others.Adding gods in there is just adding entities that we don't need and which themselves require explanations that we cannot even fathom.God is only parsimonious if God is required to explain something that we know exists. God is not required to explain 'purpose' since we do not know if 'purpose' exists. If there is motivation, purpose etc. Then God would be one explanation. It might not be parsimonious depending on what the purpose is really.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.