Why Christianity survived.

[ippy]

What charismatic prophet? Artheists don't characterise Richard Dawkins as a prophet, people like you do when they set up their straw men.

What sacred texts?

You've built a straw man version of atheism that has no bearing on reality, at least as not as the son called four horsemen are concerned.

Couldn't help noticing this post of J P's to you Vlad and when you add to this post the fact you don't fully understand secularism, it doesn't bode very well for the credibility of your posts Vlad.

ippy

[ippy]

Hmmmmm, Dawkin's Looks eh, well there is I suppose paleontological evidence there of him having once been a looker, but I can't decide whether it is evolution or plate tectonics which has left him with the expression of a slapped arse.

Jealousy talking.

ippy

[SteveH]

And I'm  a crappy football player. But I don't claim to be a footballer and Dawkins doesn't claim to be a philosopher.

Ho comes up with philosophical ideas, i.e. deductive arguments about life, the universe and everything, which don't bear much scrutiny. For example, in 'The Blind Watchmaker' he famously arguead that if organised complexity needs an intelligent designer, that designer must be even more complex, so who designed the designer? It was soon pointed out that that isn't true - a simple computer programme, for example, can produce very complex patterns.

[Shaker]

Ho comes up with philosophical ideas, i.e. deductive arguments about life, the universe and everything, which don't bear much scrutiny. For example, in 'The Blind Watchmaker' he famously arguead that if organised complexity needs an intelligent designer, that designer must be even more complex, so who designed the designer? It was soon pointed out that that isn't true - a simple computer programme, for example, can produce very complex patterns.

... except that computer programs, no matter how simple, are also designed, which is the missing part of the refutation-that-isn't.

[SteveH]

... except that computer programs, no matter how simple, are also designed, which is the missing part of the refutation-that-isn't.

The original point was that Dawkins is no great shakes at philosophy.

[Shaker]

The original point was that Dawkins is no great shakes at philosophy.

It would have to be, since the point you used as an illustrative example is a sizeable pile of steaming horseshit. Great for the roses, but nothing else.

As for Dawkins: given that philosophy isn't science and doesn't adhere to the same canons of empirical evidence and therefore proof and disproof, there's no law that says trained academic philosophers are the sole proprietors of philosophical thought. Dawkins is as free to make philosophical arguments as I am or you are. Those arguments stand or fall on their own merits qua arguments, not on who makes/made them. They may be good arguments, they may be bad arguments or some mixture of the two; but if you're going to hold up any particular one as an example of a bad argument, pick a better one because the last attempt was crap.