I think Paxman did our side some damage by implying that the only real argument against atheism is that belief in God makes people happy.
Well, he cares about truth. The truth as he knows it. I'd say he cares far less about dialogue.
Wow. That's me to a Tee when I was an Athiest. It's downright scary to see it now in someone else.
The man deserves our prayers because, assuming I'm reading him right to be so like I was when an athiest, he is honestly seeking the Lord (truth).
It may just be a figure of speech, but I find his final line fascinating.
"I don't believe we're put here to be comfortable."
Put here?... By whom?
Good point, Mike B! I don't think many people would have caught that.
Sadly, the good prof. probably doesn't realize that without Christianity's recognition that we live in a finite, created universe with rational laws of nature, there would be nothing like modern science.
He starts off showing his ignorance. The universe doesn't "contain a god."
I couldn't finish the video, I kept wanting to skim.
Richard Dawkins has always been a sort of a mystery for me. Dawkins represents the sort of atheist extremist who can't see any existence for God, and would usually ascribe to an either/or existence for God. A commentary against an essay by Richard Swinburne:
http://www.royalinstitutephiloso...icle.php?
num=17
displaus this. Prof. Dawkins is an intelligent man, without a doubt, but I suppose he's placed mostly his faith, foremost, on science, and secondly, has chosen, ina pseudo-Randian style, to do away with the possible existence of the mysterious.
To paraphrase what Chesterton would say, Dawkins would be the sort of man who'd deny the possible existence of fairies. Not that they do exist.... but they could.
Did he say actually "faith heads" (about a third in)?
He said "we aren't put here to be comfortable." I didn't know an atheist thought we were put here at all. We should have just happened. As for love? An illusion. Words made up in an attempt to keep the DNA going. If Dawkins is smart enough to realize God is the result of trying to make sense of the world, and thus we should abandon it; shouldn't he, upon realizing that the concept of love is just the same really, also abandon love?
Yep, he said faith-heads. Better than dead-heads, I guess 
I think if Dawkins is sincere in seek the Truth, that is a wonderful thing; yet I question his sincerity, because of his monstrous ignorance of early Christian history. But I do empathize with his emphasis on seeking truth, in fact, The Truth. My own continuing quest for a deeper understanding of Truth, through reason, continues to lead me to a deeper belief in the historicity of the physical resurrection of Jesus; in the objective, historical truth of the origin of Christianity. N.T. Wright has been of enormous value in that regards. Every 5-7 years or so I experience these crises of doubt, which oddly enough seem to coincide with periods of unhappiness or discontent with some aspect of my life which, never-the-less, my faith tells me I must accept, or sacrifice, or suffer for. Knowing that something I'm unhappy about couldn't *possibly* be God's will, ergo, the entire Christian schema must be therefore suspect, I plunge deeper into modern New Testament scholarship, convinced that *this time* my faith is probably a goner, that it is all just a useful dream to keep us happy and give us a mythical reason to live--which is odd, because the periods of doubt coincide with periods where some conflict between my faith and my life is making me profoundly *unhappy*. But more than anything, I simply want THE TRUTH. Even it means discovering my life is based on a myth. Yet much to my surprise and delight, as I pour over the works of radicals like Ehrman, Funk, Crossan and crowd, then read side by side the works of Wright, Evans, Habernas, et al, I come to an ever deeper faith. Through reason, through the pursuit of truth, I see the overwhelming historical probability of the resurrection, when post-enlightenment materialist assumptions are discarded and we look at the evidence and ask, "did it really happen?" Dawkins may be a scientist; he is utterly ignorant about the history of early Christianity; it did not arise from an amalgam of Greco-Roman pagan mythology; it was thrust upon Greco-Roman mythology and then killed it. Christianity arose virtually spontaneously(and even most radical scholars acknowledge this) from 2nd Temple Judaism, which is a very different thing than the Greco-Roman world view. And it didn't mildly evolve; it was a sudden and culturally inexplicable mutation, several mutations, each distinct and an enormously radical shift in Judaic thought; an enormous historical discontinuity that demands an historical explanation: Jesus Christ is, to use the terms of physics, the naked singularity of History; the resurrection akin to the big bang of Christianity. Wright, in "The Resurrection and the Son of God", notes the following: In a span of just a few years, the resurrection went from being a view on the periphery to dead center. The views on the resurrection go from being vague to being a clearly defined view of transformed physical immortality. Unlike the spectrum of life-after-death viewpoints in Jewish and Roman thought, there is a singular viewpoint and development from Paul to Tertullian about precisely what resurrection would mean(Gnostics excepted). In contrast to the Pharisaic conception of the resurrection being something that happens at the end, the concept of the resurrection is historically bifurcated; the "first fruits", the resurrection of Christ, then the general resurrection at his coming. The concept begins functioning in an entirely new metaphorical fashion; in Judaism, a metaphor for the return from exile; in early Christianity, this disappears, and is used instead with reference to baptism and holiness. And finally, NOBODY expected a Messiah who would be raised from the dead, as nobody conceived of a messiah who would DIE. Not only did the early Christians believe this, they made the resurrection the proof of their claim that Jesus was the Messiah. What caused these radical transformations within Judaism? The earliest Christians belief in the bodily resurrection of their lord. Judging by their willingness to die for that belief, arguments proposing they made the story up to maintain their "peasant-revolutionary" (and a Marxist anachronism) power structure and employment are simply rubbish. Every messianic movement 100 years either side of Jesus, and there were many, ended when their "messiah" was killed--thus proving he couldn't have been the messiah. Or a relative took over the leadership of the movement. Note that James, upon Jesus’ death, did not proclaim himself to be the Messiah. What was so different about this particular self-proclaimed Messiah from the myriad of others, that his followers maintained his Messianic status after his death? Apparitions? No, apparitions don't prove someone is alive, they prove he is DEAD. Maybe in Heaven, maybe blessed by God, but surely and steadfastly DEAD. There isn't space here to go into the books upon books possible to evince the historical probability of the bodily resurrection, but it is telling that over the last 30 years, there has been a dramatic trend of New Testament scholars freeing themselves from the ghost of Bultmann and coming to conclude that the weight of historical evidence, both internal and external to the Gospels and Tradition, point to a literal, not metaphorical, belief that Jesus truly rose from the dead. People may die for an ideology, but who dies for a metaphor? It really is a remarkable shift in paradigm for New Testament studies. An area of knowledge that it is clear Dawkins is utterly ignorant of; after all, if you already know something can’t be true, why bother looking at the evidence that it just might be? There are many alternative explanations for Christian origins, all holding at least this in common—“We know Jesus isn’t the Son of God and didn’t rise from the dead, so what theory can we come up with and how can we twist textual studies to make them support that theory?” A somewhat flawed methodology, if you ask me.
I don't buy for a second that Dawkins is interested in seeking the Truth. He's interested in his preconceived biases being the truth. If he were interested in finding Truth and matching his opinions to it, rather than bending "truth" to match his opinions, then many of his opinions would have changed long ago.
For instance, considering the many years that he's been bashing Christianity, he's had *plenty* of time to learn about its origins. His continued ignorance shows that he just doesn't care about truths that may be inconvenient or uncomfortable to him. Or consider his claim that raising children in religious households is "child abuse". The science on the medical and life benefits of faith proves him wrong on this, but that's not going to stop him, because that truth isn't something he wants to accept.
As for his claim that "I don't believe we're put here to be comfortable", according to his undiluted Darwinian view, we weren't put here to do anything, including finding truth.
Dawkins follows the prophet, Darwin. In the beginning there was nothing, and from that nothing came something. Then that something began changing, into many things, for no apparent reason.
If you want to read a comical example of magical Darwinistic thinking, look up Dawkins explanation of how the eye evolved from a light sensitive spot to its current complexity in human beings. His theory has absolutely no support from the fossil record or any other field of science.
It's interesting to note the contrast between Pope BXVI's insistence that we use reason and Dawkins insistence. Pope BXVI is not afraid of looking closely at scientific evidence. Dawkins appears to be afraid to consider anything that not pro-Darwinian, including scientific theories that question the truth of Darwinism. So much for his search for the "truth."
"If there were no God there would be no atheists." --G.K. Chesterton
"The gods love atheists; gives them something to aim at." -- Terry Pratchett
His theory has absolutely no support from the fossil record or any other field of science.
It actually has plenty of support. Read Carl Zimmer's book (for one example). In fact, the eye has evolved in separate 'branches' of the tree of life independently over and over again, which is a fascinating subject of its own.
He has not taken the Christian claim seriously. Therefore, he loses all authority to comment seriously on Christianity. God is only non-sense to him because he cannot make sense out of God. I know few Catholics who are afraid of science, but I know more Scientists who are afraid of Catholicism.
Dawkins =/ Darwin
Darwin =/ the theory of evolution
If you want to read a comical example of magical Darwinistic thinking, look up Dawkins explanation of how the eye evolved from a light sensitive spot to its current complexity in human beings. His theory has absolutely no support from the fossil record or any other field of science.
Since soft tissue is rarely, if ever, preserved in the fossil record, one wouldn't expect very much support from it. As John Farrell pointed out, the evolution of the eye is well supported by many fields of science.
And if Dawkins can be chastized (often in a mocking tone) for having rudimentary knowledge of the history and origins of Christianity, it's only fair that when people spout of ignorant BS about science that they get called out.
I noticed another little passage, when he said that scientists who have a religious faith really have compartmentalized their thinking, to which the interviewer replied that in fact he did not understand how such harmony could exist. He agreed.
To me that is the crux of the matter and something that I see extremely frequently: confusing "I do not understand" with "It does not make sense". And I agree with Michael that this confusion applies to proclaimed atheists who reject the idea of God as well as to people who reject scientific theories without really understanding what such theories say and why.
Thanks, Michael.
BTW, re: Dawkins, I find it interesting, too, that atheists, such as he and other bloggers (whom I enjoy reading), like Jason Rosenhouse are as trapped in their limited idea of creation as the fundies they enjoy combatting. They are in essence, the other side of the same coin, that insists it's all about creation with a small c, and design--and nothing else.
So it's not surprising Dawkins basically sets up a straw man--not God, but rather some daemon, just as subject to the laws of nature as anything else, and easily "refutes" it. Who couldn't?
Zippy!!!
C'mere! John Farrell and Michael are acting up again.
Excuse me, but I'm off to propagate my DNA..
After reading him for so many years, I found hearing and seeing him a bit of surprise. I expected a load of fire and brimstone, but he comes off as just another low-key, almost diffident, English academic. Almost what Americans would call a weenie.
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