Arch Brexiter, unlikely Tory leadership candidate and human Pez-dispenser Jacob Rees-Mogg recently blamed his extreme and unpleasant views on his Catholicisim , which was seen as a valid excuse by many.
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Current placeholder prime minister Theresa May has made a big deal about how her Christian upbringing makes her suitable for the role. And despite the lawful separation of church and state, every official and wannabe US president has had to emphasise their religious inclinations. Even Trump , whose enthusiasm for maintaining the noble traditions of the presidency can be described as limited at best.
Does that not seem … inconsistent? But variations of this comment have been made many times over the years. Psychosis is defined as a loss of contact with reality, and can manifest in numerous ways. These delusions tend to be very resistant to argument, no matter how blatant the evidence to the contrary: But then, that begs the question, why do religious beliefs get a free pass? People are very resistant to those being challenged too. The brain essentially maintains a mental model of how the world is meant to work, and what things are meant to happen and when.
Dawkins states that such experiences boil down to nothing more than that the brain is good at interpreting external data, even random inputs like wind blowing through a keyhole, and making it into something meaningful. He cites a few personal examples of this.
But he fails to engage with any detailed presentation of the argument by a religious believer. He assumes that the fact that one can explain some phenomena in one way means that that way must be correct. All the data needs to be addressed, analysed and explained by a theory before that theory can be tentatively accepted.
If another theory can explain the same data equally well, a decision needs to be suspended and other evidence will need to decide between them. The nature of personal experience does make it difficult to use as a convincing argument for those who have not had such an experience.
He dismisses the idea that the universe could have been created and designed by a Supreme Being because that Being would need to be even more complex, even more intricate than the universe he created — in other words God would need to be even more complex than the laws of physics, or the human brain or a virus or a Boeing Now Dawkins draws his conclusion based on his own experience of the world and his belief that complex things can only arise from simple things through natural selection or the laws of physics.
But even Richard Dawkins has no experience of things that occur outside of the known universe. Speaking as a physicist, I would say that the laws of physics themselves are hardly simple.
Dawkins' Delusions: faith and evidence
Either that or I wasted a lot of time studying for my physics degree. Dawkins is like the eighteenth century Indian maharajah who stated categorically that it was impossible for water to support the weight of an elephant walking across a river. Of course, he had never seen ice — it was simply something that was completely outside of his experience of the tropical climate of India.
In the same way, the possible origin of the universe is outside our direct experience, limited as we are to living within it. But there is other evidence for the origin of the universe, although strangely it is an area that Dawkins barely acknowledges. This is strange, because many Christian apologists propose this as the strongest evidence for belief in God.
For Dawkins to ignore it seems perverse at best, and reminds me of an ostrich at worst.
Is faith delusion? Why religion is good for your health - theranchhands.com
The only thing I can think of that is really conclusive, rather than merely suggestive, is a direct intervention of that God in the world, in other words, a revelation. The Christian claim is that this is what happened in Jesus. The account of his life, death and resurrection in the gospels shows the sort of person that he is. Many have set out to disprove it but have foundered as they have looked more and more deeply into the facts.
Could it possibly be God intervening in the world he created? Dawkins does not seem to be prepared to engage with this question, and we can only speculate as to the reason why. Science works on falsifiability. The challenge for Dawkins is to engage with the best of the arguments for Christianity — not a strawman of his own creation.
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Can Dawkins produce strong counter-arguments to undermine the authenticity and reliability of the gospel accounts and in particular of the resurrection of Jesus? If he truly engaged with these questions, that would be a book worth reading…. I would not say that belief in God must always have scientific or historical evidence to support it, but I do believe that there is good evidence for those who wish to consider it. With transgender issues raising difficult questions, this book from Vaughan Roberts offers a helpful introduction. Pete Lowman asks what happens to the sense of Identity, Purpose, Ethics and Love when a culture tries to live without God.