"Dawkins’s uncompromising literalism is nowhere more obvious than in his astonishing insistence throughout The God Delusion that the notion of God should be treated as a scientific hypothesis, subject to the same verificational procedures as any other “scientific” hypothesis."I simply cannot see -- or imagine -- why the notion of "God" should not be treated as a scientific hypothesis.
What is "astonishing" about this? Please, someone -- anyone -- please tell me.
Electrons should be treated this way, no? Neptune, too. Extra-dimensions, supersymmetry, the properties of an ideal gas.
Why does this one "thing" -- "God" -- get to escape such proof, merely because you can't provide it? If you can't provide the proof, then you can't scrape by by imaging this thing as part of all those things that a person can't ascertain. What a royal copout.
I just can't see how a person can make this kind of intellectual argument and still look at themselves in the mirror in the morning. It's absurd.
They believe intuition can be a source of knowledge, and they believe their intuition is telling them that there is something knowable no other way, and that's "God," as are so many other things in the word game that is religious speech.
ReplyDeleteFunny, isn't it? Believers want to insist that god can't be proved by evidence when they're challenged to produce evidence. But do they act with indifference to the scent of evidence, as in the "James Ossuary?"
ReplyDeleteNo, suddenly evidence is all-important, all-consuming, the subject of magazine covers and tv documentaries devoured eagerly by believers.
And then the evidence is found to be fake, and evidence goes back to being declared unimportant.
It's not so different from watching a puppy chase its own tail -- hilarious the first time, then more and more sad with repetitions.