Are we deluded?
I'm in the process of finishing Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I have already read Sam Harris' The End of Faith and A Letter to a Christian Nation.
These books, along with Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great (which I hope to read before school starts) are current shots at the basics of theism. The basic premise of Dawkins and Harris (and maybe Hitchens) is that religion is bad for two reasons. First, religion is bad because some religious people are bad. Even someone with a basic grasp of logic sees right through this argument. Is it logical to say that all Germans are bad because some Germans do bad things? This argument, that religions are bad based on bad religious people, does nothing to prove that religion, in and of itself, is bad. It just proves that it's possible that religion is frequently misused.
The second argument Dawkins and Harris use to discredit religion is to attack the nature of faith. They say that religion is based on faith. Then they go on to make a logical fallacy of setting up a straw man. (That is, they present a representation of something and then attack that representation; unfortunately, the representation does not link to what they are really attacking.) They say that faith is believing in absence of evidence. This is the farthest thing from the truth!
Faith is the exercise of an action that is reasonable based on evidence that might not be readily available but that is logical based on other beliefs. I would say that this is an accurate definition of faith throughout the Bible. I strongly believe that C.S. Lewis would buy into it, although he would say it with much more elegance. I believe Dawkins and Harris use this kind of faith all the time. When they go to the pharmacist and receive a bottle of pills, they exercise faith when they pop one in their mouths without performing extensive laboratory research on the chemical makeup of each pill. They don't have comprehensive evidence that a pill is not poison, but it's reasonable to believe this based on other logical beliefs they hold, such as the pharmacist has never given poison pills before.
So, even though Harris and Dawkins are brilliant people, their logic simply doesn't hold up.
Comments
I don't know if you ever read the Tuesday Morning Quarterback by Gregg Easterbrook on ESPN, but there was a nugget in there that I think you would find interesting. First the link: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/070807&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab5pos1
I know it is long sorry for that, but it is important to read so you won't get my messed up summary and think it is wrong. About middle of the way down he starts to talk about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Not uncommon for lots of sports writers to bring out something current to talk about. However, what he brings up is fascinating, at least I thought. He says that post WWI and WWII Britain has come with three best-selling book series that have children as the main characters. C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia which are very pro-Christian. Philip Pullman and the Golden Compass which are very anti-Christian. And now J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter. The fascinating thing that he points out is the prominent role of Christianity in the Deathly Hallows. He spends a good amount of time (approximately 4 paragraphs) discussing the what is entitled "God and Man at Hogwarts."
You might want to read it, I won't spoil it for you since you should be a free thinker!
Good post.