re: #617 Spenser (with an S)

I think it was simply more of an agnostic statement than a hard-core atheist statement, which I actually have more respect for.

Yes, I agree. Part of me wishes that Dawkins would limit himself to debating neo-Darwinism, an arena in which I think he’s unassailable, not only because of his own skills in explaining science but also because of the underlying solidity of the theory. Debating the existence or non-existence of God seems to me to be better done by theologians and philosophers. The Master of my old college wrote a short but dense philosophical work in which he considers the question of whether or not belief in God is rational. In the best of philosophical traditions, he doesn’t come to any firm conclusion, but he does illuminate the problem in a way that’s difficult to fault. Also, deliberately or otherwise, if you agree with his argument, you’re led towards an agnostic viewpoint. I remember that the Master was lamenting to me the fact that Richard Dawkins was reluctant to debate with Alvin Plantinga, a Christian philsopher and IDer who is one of the few people still pushing the ontological argument. Dawkins wittily but erroneously attacks the ontological argument in The God Delusion. I’m still not sure what he would have been asked to debate with Plantinga. This was several years ago, and at that time, Dawkins made a point of not debating neo-Darwinism in public, if he could avoid it (he alludes to this reluctance even in The Blind Watchmaker).