Dawkins dissed again and again (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, April 25, 2014, 14:02 (3865 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

I had drafted my reply to Romansh before seeing Tony's response. I agree with almost everything you have said, Tony, apart from three points:-TONY: You either believe, disbelieve. In this one particular sense, agnostics and atheists are on common ground. It is fairly binary. Choosing not to believe because of lack of 'proof' is disbelief.-Earlier in the same post, you said it was a "ternary" question, and that I agree with. You have now left out "don't know", and I think it's essential to distinguish between actively saying there is no god (disbelief) and saying I don't know if there's a god (= non-belief but also non-disbelief).-You've questioned the need for discussing definitions. I wish you were right. But when Dawkins and Romansh argue that people who don't believe in ancient gods or in the Christian version of God are atheists, I think we need clarification.-Teaching ID. I regard evolutionary theory and big bang theory as science, but as we've seen on this forum these theories can be interpreted in different ways ... theistically and atheistically. I think they should be taught in science classes as theories (including the gaps which prevent them from being accepted as facts), but I would confine the interpretation to philosophy lessons. In my view, however, there is no way you can treat the existence of God as a science subject, and you cannot divorce ID from God; therefore it belongs in the philosophy class. We shall probably have to differ on that!