Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Existence of Something

I learn today via Mark Thwaite at ReadySteadyBlog that Daniel Hind's Threat to Reason, in which I expressed an interest in my last post, is due out from Verso in May. Mark has touched on these topics a few times and has actually read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. He found it "blunt yet shrill". In a brief post on it a couple of weeks ago, he wrote:
...it just made me think Dawkins was a bit of a scary megalomaniac. As an atheist, it didn't convince me as a book, as an argument, but then neither have any of the religious responses to it that I've read. Often these argue well enough for the existence of something, i.e. something spiritual (we can't empirically prove or find love, but we know it exists), but none argue convincingly for the specificity of their own very particular brand of religion. Dawkins doesn't get out of the double-bind of needing a prime mover, but equally that is no justification for thinking e.g. that Christ is the way to salvation, nor that "we" need saving. It is a huge leap from arguing that there is "something out there" to being able to posit that your own version of faith is any kind of truth.

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