I recently found a PDF document by David Marshall on his website (http://christthetao.homestead.com/) in which he attempts to lay out (at the time of this writing) 160 "Errors, Gross Exaggerations, and Highly Dubious Claims" of Richard Dawkins' The god Delusion.
I don't plan on going through the whole thing since I've already wasted my time destroying his silly book "The Truth Behind the New Atheism," but I will cover several of his 'Errors, Gross Exaggerations, and Highly Dubious Claims.'
Many of these can already be found in my review of his book, but I will go through some of his most absurd ones.
Each of his claims will be in bold and my reply will be after.
#3 "Atheists do not have faith." (51)
As we have seen, by “faith” Dawkins means "belief not only without evidence, but in the
teeth of the evidence." The best way to cast this sweeping generalization in doubt may be to simply name a few of the most influential modern atheists. Karl Marx. Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Engels. Sigmund Freud. Ayn Rand. Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Edward Said. Mao Zedong. Joseph Stalin. Is it really true that none of these people, or their hundreds of millions of followers, ever believed things like the wisdom of the North Korean community party, without evidence, or in the teeth of the evidence? The evidence, I think, shows that atheists often DO have faith, in Dawkins own rather skewed sense – as of course, do other kinds of people. (A bit like what Judeo-Christians call “idolatry.”)
I argue that the more orthodox Christian sense of faith means, “holding firmly to and acting
on what you have good reason to be is true.” In that sense, I think we all live by faith.
This is clearly not true because all the word atheist means is a person who lacks a belief in a god - it is a negative, as I've explained before. Because of this, atheism has no doctrine, or set creed for anything. Communism, however, did have beliefs attached to it but as I've explained elsewhere, communism and atheism are not related. This is one of the most absurd arguments I've ever heard.
#117 If teaching about hell is child abuse, what about atheism?
"Jill Mytton herself had been brought up to be terrified of hell, had escaped from Christianity as an adult, and now counsels and helps others similarly traumatized in childhood: 'If I think back to my childhood, it's one dominated by fear. And it was the fear of disapproval while in the present, but also of eternal damnation. And for a child, images of hell-fire and gnashing of teeth are actually very real. They are not metaphorical at all . . . Hell is a fearful place. It's complete rejection by God. It's complete judgment, there is real fire, there is real torment, real torture, and it goes on for ever so there is no respite from it.'"
In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis points out that the Bible offers a variety of metaphors, not all of which fit popular Medieval images. His own quite different images in The Great Divorce may have been partly based on the experiences of the Indian Christian mystic, Sundar Singh. Lewis' point is that hell is NOT rejection by God, it is rejection OF God by us – and that in a free world, we must be allowed a choice.
Dawkins presents the teaching of eternal punishment as "child abuse." But if that is true, wouldn’t it also be "child abuse" to tell children that no matter what they do, at the end of their lives they just die and fall to pieces? Both are harsh. But the Christian story at least leaves a way out, the possibility of a happy ending. Should atheists then be charged with child abuse? I’m not sure that’s a helpful question to ask. I don’t think any parent should be chastised for kindly and lovingly teaching his children what they honestly believe to be true, especially if they are careful to admit to the incomplete state of their own knowledge. Dawkins' complaint also runs up against more systematic research, which shows that highly religious people tend to be happier than highly secular people. Obviously, Dawkins is not telling us the whole story, or even half of it.
This is another absurd rationalization put forth by Marshall. Hell, god, etc. cannot be proven and therefore any argument about it is just foolish, and pointless, so I will go after his other stupid comment.
David Marshall presents a complete strawman argument because no one has ever said that when we all die we just "fall to pieces." That's not really what happens anyway; the human body slowly decomposes. It's not as if our body parts will just fall off, as Marshall makes it sound. More to the point is that this is the truth. Human beings do not live on after their deaths (as far as scientific knowledge can tell us at this point) and I don't see why parents should lie to their children. I think it's up to the parents what they want to tell their kids about death, but I don't think they should tell them religious fairy tales about people living in heaven. I think in their own way, depending on how their child might handle the truth, a parent should tell the child as close to the truth as possible.
True, tales of life after death are comforting for children (and most ignorant adults too) but their empty faith in such things is nonsense.
Also, parents telling their children about what really happens when you die is not only the truth, but their goal is not to scare, but to educate. This cannot be said of hell.
Also, there are many studies which show that atheists are better off then the religious. "Ventis (1995), after surveying the literature, concludes that the nonreligious are psychologically healthier than religious individuals and hypothesizes that this may be related to 'a sense of personal competence and control, self-acceptance and self-actualization, and perhaps open-mindedness and flexibility'" (Source: The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Edited by Michael Martin, pages 305-306).
Clearly, there are studies that both sides can tout, but I've heard this argument many times before and I think I might understand why this is. Religious people belong to a congregation and often times have many get togethers with other members. They have a lot of support with all those people. Anyone who has a lot of social support is bound to be very mentally healthy.
Of course, something Marshall neglects to tell you is much of the torment that comes with religious belief when you decide to go to another church, or join another faith, your one time friends often abandon you. There are several stories of this happening. Another aspect of losing faith is the mental anguish that can occur when a believer leaves the faith completely. The stories of Dan Barker and John W. Loftus and their trauma of feeling rejected by the christian community are good examples. Barker's was even more painful, in my opinion, because he pretended to be a believer and preach because that was his only job he had. The inner conflict Barker recounts in his book is one example of the emotional issues that christianity can cause.
#13 How do scientists know evolution is true?
"By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence." (282) Actually, too many of Dawkins' "facts" are gleaned haphazardly from the Internet (as can be seen from his anemic bibliography) and turn out wrong, as we’ll see. But even when he gets his facts right, is this process accurately described as “studying the evidence” as opposed to “reading a holy book?” I open The Selfish Gene at random, to page 168. On that page, Dawkins writes about how he thinks bird calls evolved. He credits P. R. Marley for noticing that bird calls seem ideally formulated to be difficult to locate. He envisions unlucky early generations of birds who were found easily by predators, until surviving relatives got the correct modulation down and escaped. Did Dawkins get his facts about bird calls from books (holy or otherwise) and from other scientists? Or did he personally wait in blinds around the world with tape recorders, then test how which sounds hawks and coyotes can hear best? In fact, Dawkins’ works on evolution are based on reports from around the world, in many cases from people he has never met, often at the end of a long series of something very like what he calls “Chinese whispers” in another context – from bird to field researcher’s ear, from ear to nerves, from nerves to brain, from brain to finger to pen to paper to computer keyboard to screen to modum to Comcast and MSN employees to screens on the other side of the world, to the eye of a colleague, an editor, and so on until it finally catches the eye of Richard Dawkins and is established as Scientific Fact. The same is true of Origin of Species. Darwin did not believe in evolution because he "studied (all) the evidence (for himself)," but because he read reports by scientists and breeders and explorers and curators from around the world, each in contact with a few quanta of data. Darwin studied evidence directly, too, of course – maybe more than Dawkins has been able to -- but whatever personal time he found for finches in the Galapagos or pigeons in England was only a minute fragment of the total evidence required to support his theory. I believe Jesus died and rose from the dead for much the same reason -- because people I have reason to trust give credible reports that it really happened. This is what "studying the evidence" means in the context of both scientific and religious conversion.
Marshall's example of Dawkins citing another scientist on the evolution of bird calls, and claiming that the knowledge might be inaccurate is stupid. The scientist Dawkins cited undoubtedly did research to come to the conclusions he did, which is why Dawkins repeated the man's opinion. Scientists do research which can be confirmed by anyone if they wish, and one is free to dispute the findings. This is a far cry from claiming that just because some ignorant peasants believed some man rose from the dead, then copied that information down years later after the supposed event took place, doesn't mean that you should believe it. The texts in question were continuously copied over the ages, in which we know for a fact that errors crept in, and scriptures changed. How Marshall can say this with a straight face is just insane.
#14 Is scientific belief in evidence a matter of faith?
"Philosophers, especially amateurs with a little philosophical learning . . . may raise a tiresome red herring at this point: a scientist's belief in evidence is itself a matter of fundamentalist faith . . . If I am accused of murder, and prosecuting counsel sternly asks me whether it is true that I was in Chicago on the night of the crime, I cannot get away with a philosophical evasion: 'It depends on what you mean by 'true.' Nor with an anthropological, relativistic plea: 'It is only in your Western scientific sense of 'in' that I was in Chicago. The Bongolese have a completely different concept of 'in," according to which you are only truly 'in' a place if you are an anointed elder entitled to take snuff from the dried scrotum of a goat.'" (283)
This is fun, but evades the point. In fact, the prosecuting counsel can only prove Dawkins was in Chicago by means of faith: "holding firmly to and acting on what you have good reason to believe is true." He assumes faith in the intellectual capacity of jurors. He assumes their ears accurately transmit sound waves, and brains decode them and reconstruct them conceptually in juror's brains. He assumes light transmitted from the murder weapon travels through optic pathways to brains capable of decoding the and comprehending the signals. He relies on witnesses who saw Dr. Dawkins bird-watching on Lake Michigan. He also places faith in police who describe how they found certain fingerprints on a switchblade buried in a deep dish pizza wrapper, and in fingerprint experts who explain why they think they belong to a particular Oxford don.
Christianity does not encourage philosophical or anthropological evasions when it speaks of faith. What it calls for is honest consideration of the evidence.
The court room scenario is a completely false comparison. Truth is truth no matter what someone's senses tell them. Just as it's believed by Marshall that some man rose from the dead, there is not one shred of evidence that he can point to that is not severely flawed. Faith is invoked when there is no evidence to consider, as with god, and that's that. Marshall's twisting of the definition of faith is disingenuous.
#15 Would Dawkins abandon evolution overnight?
"We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it." (283) That would be one way to shock the world.
But as Thomas Kuhn argues in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, scientific paradigms do not, in fact, vanish overnight when evidence begins to undermine them. Often proponents need to die off before the new way of seeing things is widely accepted. And given the true history of science, rather than the fairy-tale story Dawkins is presenting here, I doubt even strong evidence against evolution - the fabled rabbit in Pre-Cambrian rocks, or even a herd of such rabbits – would quickly dissuade Richard Dawkins from the theory on which he has based career and fame.
This supposed argument is just plain ludicrous. Marshall is claiming that because some scientists in the past were stubborn in accepting a new scientific finding, Dawkins would continue to accept evolution if evidence was found that contradicted it. How this counts as evidence is just beyond me, and shows the absolute stupidity of David Marshall.
It is true that many scientists are stubborn when it comes to abandoning their theories, but the scientific establishment does change its views when enough evidence is gathered to put any doubt to rest. Of course, no one could ever say the same thing about religion. Despite all the evidence that evolution has occured many religious people doubt this. Yes many religious people have come to accept this fact, but many have not, while the entire scientific community (excluding religiously motivated "scientists," like Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells) is in agreement with this. The same goes for the age of the earth. This goes to show that science is way ahead of many religious faiths because of their acceptice of evidence.
#8 "It is not obviously silly to speak of a meme pool." (192)
It is. The image of a “pool” adds an extra layer of confusing poetic license to the idea of memes, which already seem a "meaningless metaphor” to many observers. What Dawkins really seems to mean, in plain English, is that we get ideas from other people. Why not just say so?
Huh??? What kind of 'error, gross exaggeration, or highly dubious claim' is this??? It's simply a scientific term, which from this comment, it's clear Marshall hasn't got a clue about scientific matters. This is also evidence against the many claims of Marshall's moronic supporters that he actually knows about science. If he did he would've understood the term instead of take some meaningless shot at Dawkins.
#10 Does thought damage theology?
"There are some weird things (such as the Trinity, transubstantiation, incarnation) that we are not meant to understand. Don't even try to understand one of these, for the attempt might destroy it. Learn how to gain fulfillment in calling it a mystery." (200)
In fact, as physicist-turned-theologian John Polkinghorne has pointed out, Christian “dogmas” are a lot like theories in science. Far from assuming that critical thought will destroy them, theologians have subjected these theories to hard thinking, and tried to explain what they mean, for thousands of years. (Whether or not Dawkins takes the time to understand their explanations.) Like scientific theory, not all religious truth is immediately comprehensible to the imagination, but that does not render it irrational. But in his debate with Francis Collins, sponsored by Time Magazine, Dawkins complains that the God of the Bible is too "comprehensible" to be real: “If there is a God, it's going to be a
whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.” Which is it? Is the Christian God false because we understand Him, or because we don't? Dawkins tries out both arguments, as if throwing mud and stones against a church wall, to see which knocks it over. Perhaps what is really happening is that the "incomprehensible" God Dawkins demands has shown up, and Dawkins has decided that, after all, he’d prefer one he can figure out. (Without the trouble of reading theologians who try to explain him!)
This is another one of Marshall's stupid claims about theology. god's image has been changed throughout time. This can even be seen in the bible: the old testament god is vengeful, while the new testament he is more forgiving, however, god still does seem to have a temper since in Hosea 13:16 he murders pregnant women and their unborn babies, as well as smashing children's heads on rocks.
Theologians have no evidence whatsoever for the magical claims they make of god, heaven, hell, angels, etc., and people are supposed to take their arguments seriously??? That's like taking seriously the arguments theologians used to have about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!!! It's ludicrous and pointless. That's the same as me arguing over whether or not superman or spiderman would win in a fight.
#21 Is theology convoluted?
Dawkins quotes the 3rd Century theologian, Gregory of Neocaesarea, or Gregory the Miracle-Worker: "There is therefore nothing created, nothing subject to another in the Trinity: nor is there anything that has been added as though it once had not existed, but had entered afterwards: therefore the Father has never been without the Son, nor the Son without the Spirit: and this same Trinity is immutable and unalterable forever."
Dawkins replies: "Whatever miracles may have earned St. Gregory his nickname, they were not miracles of honest lucidity. His words convey the characteristically obscurantist flavour of theology, which -- unlike science or most other branches of human scholarship -- has not moved on in eighteen centuries." (34)
The first error in this statement is (I think) his evaluation of the quotation. It seems perfectly lucid and clear to me (certainly more so than many social science texts I have read!), and it is hard to see anything obviously dishonest about it. Could Dawkins simply mean he doesn’t understand it?
I don't see how Dawkins' comment about a phrase is pointless or that it's incorrect at all. As I said earlier, any kind of argument is pretty much meaningless because you have no hard evidence for your god or any other supernatural agent, or force to begin with.
The trinity is one example that is pure nonsense. Even though theologians explain what it is in terms of "god, jesus, and the holy spirit," that doesn't really answer the question. I commented on this absurd piece of doctrine in my review of Marshall's book already. EDIT: In my revision of the review, this part has been taken out.
#31 Darwinian evolution . . . shatters the illusion of design within the domain of
biology . . . " (118)
This is not a demonstrable error, but it is, I think, at least premature. (For reasons I give in chapter 3, Some Riddles of Evolution. See also Mike Gene, The Design Matrix, for an eyeopening glimpse at just how far biology is from “shattering the illusion of design.”)
Actually this isn't a "premature" statement at all. Science has been able to consistently answer questions about the world, and so far evolution has also been able to counter just about every "god of the gaps" argument that theists throw out. Going after gaps in science's knowledge in no way means that their god exists. And I destroy many of his retarded claims from his third chapter in my review of his book (a link can be found at the end of this post).
# 34 What is “Irreducible Complexity?”
"'What is the use of half an eye?' and `What is the use of half a wing?' are both instances of the argument from `irreducible complexity.' A functioning unit is said to be irreducible complex if the removal of one of its parts causes the whole to cease functioning. This has been assumed to be self-evident for both eyes and wings. But as soon as we give these assumptions a moment's thought, we immediately see the fallacy. A cataract patient with the lens of her eye surgically removed can't see clear images without glasses, but can see enough not to bump into a tree or fall over a cliff. Half a wing is indeed not as good as a whole wing, but it is certainly better than no wing at all. Half a wing could save your life by easing your fall from a tree of a certain height." (125)
First of all, the term "irreducible complexity" was coined by Michael Behe. Behe does not usually talk about eyes and wings, but about microscopic cellular systems, which he knows more about. More importantly, the question is not what happens when half of a complete structure is missing. The question is what happens when half the PARTS are gone. What good is an eye, for example, without an optic nerve? Or a wing without tendons? In some cases, the mechanism may still work, in others not. But whether Intelligent Design arguments (like a
bird with no tendons) will fly or not, Dawkins has sketched them inaccurately. A wing without a tendon could NOT save your life by easing your fall, anymore than a toaster without a cord will heat bread. By linking a series of three mutations, scientists have been able to produce a fruit fly with two sets of wings. But the wings are useless, because they lack muscles. Whether or not this is an impediment to evolution, Dawkins has explained the problem inaccurately.
Marshall uses this stupid argument in his book, but it's just as stupid now as it was when I first read it.
Here is an excerpt from my review of Marshall's book:
"Well first I must ask, what is the difference between "structure" and "parts"? I see no difference here...
According to information I found on the TalkOrigins.org website, an eye doesn't have to have an optic nerve in order to function, and there are animals who have cells without a nerve (Source: www.talkorigins.org / Index to Creationist Claims, Claim # CB301), so an early stage in human eye evolution most likely didn't "need" an optic nerve to help with sight."
His other criticism is unfounded because each and every system that Behe claimed could not work without all its parts has been shown to be false. Once again, "irreducible complexity" is nothing more than a "god of the gaps" argument and proves nothing.
#157 Do “individual atheists” do evil in the name of atheism? "Stalin was an atheist and Hitler probably wasn't, but even if he was, the bottom line of the Stalin / Hitler debating point is very simple. Individual atheists may do evil things but they don't do evil things in the name of atheism." (278)
But Stalin wasn't an "individual atheist." He was one of millions, not only in the Soviet Union but in China, Cambodia, North Korea, Romania, Albania, Vietnam, Cuba, and other countries, who put a third of the human race behind barbed wire and mines, destroyed great art, transformed great cities into endless, soulless stretches of grey concrete, turned children against their parents, and tortured and murdered tens of millions of innocent people. To pretend atheism had "nothing to do" with all this, is either ignorant or delusional. Again, Aikman, and my short discussion in The Truth Behind the New Atheism, are good places to start. See also chapter 3 of
my Jesus and the Religions of Man, "Where Did Marx Go Wrong?"
So what if there were "millions of atheists" who did something horrible? The entire point is that it was not atheism which inspired the atrocities. There is no evidence whatsoever that atheism itself had anything to do with communism. I have yet to see one shred of evidence to the contrary. I've covered this topic fairly extensively throughout my writings. Please see Communism and Atheism.
#73 "Much of what they wrote was in no sense an honest attempt at history . . . "
(96)
Dawkins does not explain how he knows this. In fact, as I and others have shown, the Gospels bare tremendous evidence of being honest reports. Given the many internal markers of honesty -- the willingness to show Jesus doing and saying embarrassing things, the harsh rhetoric directed at him, the inimitable genius of his language, and other markers I and others point to, at best Dawkins' claim is dubious.
This is an absurd claim because the gospels are contradictory and archeological evidence has disproved much of the bible - but some evidence has confirmed a small amount as well. Just because Marshall wants to exagerate the historical accuracy of his bible doesn't make it true. I've covered these facts elsewhere.
#89 Are biblical women seen as “property?” "Women are no longer regarded as property, as they clearly were in biblical times." (265)
“In biblical times” is pretty vague. What about “in the Bible?” Are Eve, Jezebel, Ester, Ruth, the "woman of noble character" in Proverbs 31, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the "woman at the well," or Priscilla, really portrayed as "property?"
This is another absurd statement also because it is a fact that women, overall, were not treated kindly in the pages of the bible.
Deuteronomy 24:1-2" "Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife."
1 Corinthians 14:34-35: "...women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must remain in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."
2 Samuel 13: 11-14: Amnon raped his sister, Tamar in this verse. "But when she took it to him to eat, he grabbed her and said, 'Come to bed with me, my sister.'
'Don't, my brother!' she said to him. 'Don't force me. Such a thing should not be done in Israel! Don't do this wicked thing....But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her" (NIV).
I've covered more verses like this in other writings. A few more can be found in my review of David Marshall's book.
Marshall looks to contradict himself in this next example. In his book he claims that the bible doesn't teach one to care only for the "in group" when he is talking about Dawkins' discussion of the "'Love your neighbor" biblical passage in which Dawkins claimed that this passage only meant a fellow member of the group. However, in this paper Marshall admits that in the bible they "cared mostly for the "in-group..."
What the hell???
How can Marshall deride Dawkins for two and a half pages in his book about this "error" and then completely claim the opposite in another work?!
This current edition of Marshall's bullshit doesn't include his ignorant claims of Dawkins wishing to keep children from being taught religion. Maybe he finally learned his lesson after debating me...
He never did admit to his errors, he seems to have just decided to ignore it. How dishonest of him.
I think I titled this post well. After picking apart is asinine rationalizations it's clear that David Marshall is deluded.
delusion:
noun
1.(psychology) an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary
2. a mistaken or unfounded opinion or idea; "he has delusions of competence"; "his dreams of vast wealth are a hallucination"
3. the act of deluding; deception by creating illusory ideas
WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
Yep, that pretty much sums up Marshall's entire world view, and his comments about Dawkins and his book The god Delusion. Not to mention the majority of his claims in his pathetic book The Truth Behind the New Atheism.
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