A2. Is God a Delusion?
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This document discusses arguments for and against the existence of God from the perspective of Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion". It presents Dawkins' view that faith is a vice and religion is delusional because it is not evidence-based. It then considers philosophical arguments like the cosmological and teleological arguments for design in the universe. It also discusses scientific evidence from the Big Bang and fine-tuning of universal constants. Skeptical responses are presented, as well as potential ways these lines of evidence could be used to consider God's existence.
![Scientists [are] the
specialists in discovering
what is true about the
world and the universe.
A Devil’s Chaplain, p. 242
9](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/abcapologetics2slides-100523160855-phpapp02/85/A2-Is-God-a-Delusion-9-320.jpg)
![[It looks as if] a super-intellect has
monkeyed with physics as well as with
chemistry and biology.
Fred Hoyle
52](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/abcapologetics2slides-100523160855-phpapp02/85/A2-Is-God-a-Delusion-52-320.jpg)
A2. Is God a Delusion?
- 1. Is God a Delusion?
- 2. reality
- 3. How many people do you know who describe themselves as atheist or agnostic? Why do people not believe in the existence ? of God?
- 4. Dawkins 4
- 5. God Delusion 5
- 6. Isn’t enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it? 6
- 7. I think that a case can made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate. Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion. Richard Dawkins
- 8. Science = Truth 8
- 9. Scientists [are] the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe. A Devil’s Chaplain, p. 242 9
- 10. Science can explain everything 10
- 11. Religion = Delusion 11
- 12. Religion = Unscientific 12
- 13. It cannot be proved 13
- 14. It is not supported by evidence l ly ? re a 14
- 15. experiential evidence 15
- 16. Why is your personal experience of God so important? ?
- 17. philosophical evidence 17
- 18. scientific evidence 18
- 20. 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
- 21. • uncaused • immaterial • changeless • timeless • enormously powerful • personal 21
- 22. scientific evidence 22
- 23. Big Bang
- 24. what kind of universe is it? 24
- 25. Static universe 25
- 26. 1929 – Edwin Hubble 26
- 27. expanding universe 27
- 28. red shift 28
- 29. Big Bang 29
- 30. The Big Bang represents the creation event. The creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of space-time itself. Paul Davies 30
- 32. oscillating universe 32
- 33. Big Bang / Big Crunch 33
- 34. 1965 – Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson 34
- 35. cosmic echo 35
- 36. cosmic echo 36
- 37. microwave background radiation 37
- 38. A cosmic echo 38
- 39. 24% helium 39
- 40. beginning of space and time 40
- 41. Suppose you suddenly hear a load bang, and you ask ‘What made that bang?’ and I reply, ‘Nothing, it just happened,’ you wouldn’t accept that. In fact, you would find my reply quite unintelligible. Kai Nielsen 41
- 42. philosophical evidence 42
- 44. 1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance or design. 2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance. 3. Therefore, it is due to design.
- 45. scientific evidence 45
- 46. 2. The fine tuning of the universe 46
- 47. David Wilkinson Video from God: New Evidence – www.focus.org.uk 47
- 48. If the rate of expansion of the universe one second after the Big bang was smaller by 1 part in 100,000,000,000,000,000, it would have re-collapsed into a hot fireball. Stephen Hawking 48
- 49. Probability of the Big Bang’s low entropy condition arising by chance: 1 in 10 to the power of 10 123 Roger Penrose 49
- 50. Odds against the initial conditions being suitable for star formation: 1 followed by a thousand billion billion zeroes at least Paul Davies 50
- 51. John Polkinghorne Video from God: New Evidence – www.focus.org.uk 51
- 52. [It looks as if] a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology. Fred Hoyle 52
- 53. The evolution of complex life, indeed its very existence in a universe obeying physical laws, is wonderfully surprising – or would be but for the fact that surprise is an emotion that can exist only in a brain which is the product of that very surprising process. . . . 53
- 54. There is an anthropic sense, then, in which our existence should not be surprising. I'd like to think that I speak for my fellow humans in insisting, nevertheless, that it is desperately surprising. The God Delusion, p. 366 54
- 55. In ways can this fine-tuning evidence be accounted for? How could you use this to help people ? consider the existence of God?
- 56. moral argument
- 57. morality
- 58. 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. 2. Objective moral values and duties do exist. 3. Therefore God exists.
- 59. The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . .
- 60. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says 'Love they neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . .
- 61. Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory. Michael Ruse
- 62. Why is the existence of God necessary for objective morality? ?
- 63. Some activities are objectively morally wrong and we ought not to do them.
- 64. morally wrong implies a moral law-giver
- 65. objectively morally wrong external and infinite moral law-giver
- 66. we ought not to do it personal moral law-giver
- 67. external, infinite, personal moral law-giver
- 68. if there is nothing other than a purely material universe, we cannot trust anything that we think
- 69. www.damaris.org www.culturewatch.org www.tonywatkins.org twitter.com/tonywatkins_ facebook.com/tonywatkinspage