This post follows that posted last Sunday, March 23
Dear Joe, I hope this finds you and your family well. My wife and I have been extra busy lately with our planned household move, and I'm neglected my blog. But today, while going through boxes from the attic (to decide what to throw away, what to donate to charity, what to try to sell, what to keep), I remembered my comment in last Sunday's post (made on Thursday, March 27) to Tom Sheepandgoats, in which I made a joke:
What I got to thinking today was that it need not be an annoyance for you to quote the McGrath & McGrath book to me (as it certainly is, generally, whenever anyone quotes the Bible to me). I am already on record (in a comment on Tom's blog) that my third reading of Dawkins's The God Delusion will be a critical reading, with me suspending my belief as much as I can and challenging his arguments.
The McGraths have presumably read Dawkins very critically indeed, so arguments they make against his position would be good for me to consider as a tool to assist my own critical reading....
So, if you read their book and feel inclined to quote one or more of their arguments against Dawkins, well, then feel free to do so! I'll consider what they (and you) say and do my best to respond in an intelligent and fair manner.
Thank you much, Joe. I appreciate it.
Dear Joe, I hope this finds you and your family well. My wife and I have been extra busy lately with our planned household move, and I'm neglected my blog. But today, while going through boxes from the attic (to decide what to throw away, what to donate to charity, what to try to sell, what to keep), I remembered my comment in last Sunday's post (made on Thursday, March 27) to Tom Sheepandgoats, in which I made a joke:
I forgot to ask Joe whether there really is a new book out titled The Dawkins Delusion. Have you heard of it? I guess I should amazon it....Yes, Amazon.com lists The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, by Alister E. McGrath and Joanna Collicutt Mcgrath...Oh, no! Joe'll probably start quoting it to me now.I guess the italicized sentence wasn't a joke at the time, actually, although I meant it good-naturedly.
What I got to thinking today was that it need not be an annoyance for you to quote the McGrath & McGrath book to me (as it certainly is, generally, whenever anyone quotes the Bible to me). I am already on record (in a comment on Tom's blog) that my third reading of Dawkins's The God Delusion will be a critical reading, with me suspending my belief as much as I can and challenging his arguments.
The McGraths have presumably read Dawkins very critically indeed, so arguments they make against his position would be good for me to consider as a tool to assist my own critical reading....
So, if you read their book and feel inclined to quote one or more of their arguments against Dawkins, well, then feel free to do so! I'll consider what they (and you) say and do my best to respond in an intelligent and fair manner.
Thank you much, Joe. I appreciate it.
Yo,
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have started to realize, more recently than before, is how polarizing (no god vs One God) these two positions can be. Just in reviewing our posts from last week and looking around on the internet at other threads. The arguments can become quite heated.
I accept the challenge, would like to pick up both books this week and start the quest. I too agree to do my best to respond in an intelligent and fair manner, realizing posts may be kinda spread out since you are in the middle of a move and I have a 7 month old right on the verge of crawling...scary.
Excellent, Joe, and I look forward to it. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAnd we both know that we need not split a gut over this, with everything else going on. In fact, I sort of feel at though I might already have split a gut lifting a 5-drawer chest on Saturday....
Hi moristotle,
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying your site.
I haven't read "The Dawkins Delusion" yet, though I skimmed over it quickly. If you do read it please don't lump me in with this guy. McGrath isn't totally on the mark with the overall message of Dawkins book. Though he punishes Dawkins on the areas concerning the Bible.
I'll be interested to read you opinion on it.
Mr. Showme, good to hear from you. It may pass by and by that I form some opinions of the McGraths' book. If I do, I will likely reveal them on this blog. I have, by the way, already begun my third (this time more critical than previous) reading of Dawkins's THE GOD DELUSION. I'm thinking of reading it as well for the fourth time concurrently (in the sense of reading chapters of the printed book with my eyes, then listening to them in a book-on-tape version I've borrowed from the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped).
ReplyDeleteOne point that has sort of bothered me about THE GOD DELUSION is Dawkins's position (if I understand it) that in positing "God" to explain the existence of the world we have something even more improbable than the world that we need to explain in turn (i.e., "God"). While this seems to make sense, I want to test it more stringently than merely walking through Dawkins's own arguments for it. I of course also want to evaluate the merit of simply making do with there not being an explanation for the existence of the world. Philosophically I already don't think that positing "God" is much different from not having an explanation at all, for we haven't any reliable sense of what "God" means. Sure, we've got what the philosophers and the mystics have told us, but I'm not sure it amounts to anything. Not to anything, at any rate, that satisfies me personally.
The great question mark of "the mystery of being" can be rather satisfying. And it doesn't require me to fall down and worship anything or go meet with people on a given day of the week in order to sing stodgy hymns and listen to homilies.