1

Joe,

Thank you for featuring my post on Bible reading at Cerulean Sanctum. Your support means a lot. Blessings.

2

"This weekend I made it to my local bookstore, grabbed a copy of the “The God Delusion” and sat down with a cup of coffee to read it immediately — even before buying it. Imagine my shock and even horror to discover that Dawkins’ book is trite, facile and just plain, well, dumb."

One must really ask themselves how the above statement is any different than, say, "I sat down today in anticipation to read the New Testament. Imagine my shock when I found that it was trite, ridiculous, boring and without merit."

When the the reviewer of Dawkins' "God Delusion" includes a few reasons for her opinion, well, maybe then we'll consider her opinion more than simple rendition of a burp. Until then, all we can assume is that he author of this post hit a wall after #19.

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Uhhhh.... Darwin? That was an intro. The reviewer gave reasons. Damn good ones, at that.

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The link on the religious gender gap is interesting. The author clearly has a better hypothesis than Stark and Miller. Still, Caplan seems to overreact against the view that attributes everything to socialization (which both he and Stark & Miller oppose); Caplan seems to allow no possibility that socialization could actually affect anyone's beliefs.

In societies with more intense socialization, the gender gap narrows; Caplan says this means irreligious men are pressured into hiding their irreligion. No doubt that's true to some extent, but couldn't it also be the case that in societies with less intense socialization, people are more likely to just follow their natural predispositions without ever questioning them, while in societies with more intense socialization, people are more likely to question their natural tendencies and live more deliberately? With less socialization, people experience less conflict between their natural predispositions and their socialization, and so are more likely to just live out their natural predispositions; with more socialization, at least some people (though not all) will have conflict between natural predispositions and socialization, and conflict means a choice must be made.

All of which is a long way of saying that people do make choices rather than simply living out their natual predispositions, as Caplan seems to imply.

5

Kevin But the argument is about stem cells pure and simple - which do form embryos, that form fetuses, that form infants, that eventually may form persons.

Good grief, Kevin, you’re not really claiming that embryos are formed from stem cells are you? Surely you are more scientifically literate than that.

More to the point, he continually, baldly, obliviously, conflates "human being", "human species", "biologically human", and "moral person", using the terms interchangeably and often in successive sentences.

His point is rather clear “human beings” are both “biologically human” and “moral persons.” They are also a subset of the “human species.” It’s not that difficult to understand.

But what there is is grounded on the undergraduate-level error of the "naturalistic fallacy"…

This is something I’ve never understood. Why do naturalist invoke the “naturalistic fallacy?” The naturalistic fallacy claims that an argument draws an ethical conclusion from natural facts. But naturalists/materialists believe that “natural facts” is all there is.

All in all, it's a typical piece of work from Robert George.

Typical. Those who can’t argue against Robby George’s brilliance whine and complain but never offer a solid counterargument.

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"Uhhhh.... Darwin? That was an intro. The reviewer gave reasons. Damn good ones, at that."

Well let's look at her main complaint with Dawkin's "God Delusion":

"1)attributing every bad decision in the distant past to religion, (2) ignoring all of the bad decisions made by atheists in the recent past and (3) ignoring all of the good decisions that religious people made in the recent past.

What we have here are three nicely created straw men. First Dawkins does not "Attribute every bad decision in the distant past to religion." This claim is without merit. He attributes many unfortunate instances to the delusion that is a belief in God. Second, her insistance that Dawkins ignores "bad decisions made by atheists in the recent past", while attempting to be parallel to her first claim is in fact quite different. Dawkins is not concerned with bad decisions that happen to be made by religous folks but rather that can be attributed to folks delusion that there is a God. Why would Dawkins be concerned with atheists that make a bad decision about, say, eating bad shell fish if it was not related to their world view? What the author should have worried about is that Dawkins ignores bad decisions by atheists that can be seen to be explicitely rationalized by the fact that they are not deluded into believing in a God. I'm curioius what those would be.

Finally, she is concerned that Dawkins ignores the good decisions that those deluded into the belief in a God have made in the past. Again, I don't think that Dawkins ever assumes that all decisions made by believers are based on their religious worldview. As a result he has not need to note that religious folks to good thing, even good things that can be attributed to their world view. His point is that all these good things can be equaly accomplished, and are equally accomplished, without being deluded.

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