McGrath Attack on Dawkins

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Fortunately I am not a daily mail reader so I was spared the latest fallacy riddled diatribe by Alistair McGrath (who has been mentioned here in the past). Even more fortunately the excellent Nullifidian Blog did endure the nonsense and wrote about it highlighting the (numerous) logical fallacies McGrath is employing.

Dawkins, McGrath and the Daily Mail

I would never go as far as suggesting reading the Daily Mail, but it may well be worth getting in touch (via email or whatever) to let them know what you think of the article.

Extra ironic comedy points are awarded to some of the comments currently on the newspaper’s site. The bog-standard appeals to false authority are very prevalent:

Dawkins’ view of the universe is very 3 dimentional. Surely a great mind rules nothing in and nothing out without proof. Einstein was fully aware of that argument. – Martin Hazelgrove, Bristol, UK

Yeah, and what exactly did Uncle Albert know about evolutionary biology or theology? Just because he was a fantastically gifted physicist doesn’t mean he has any greater authority on this topic than the next person. Might as well have said “My granny was fully aware of that argument” for all the value it provides.

The Cornish Catholic Church is on hand to present a variation on the appeal to fear, appeal to ridicule and the appeal from personal incredulity:

I’m all for removing our delusions and the ‘agnostics’ and ‘atheists’ have plenty. The big question is ultimate, adequate explanation of what we see around us. That has to be. Then to relate our lives to this explanation of explanations. Without this relationship we remain unfulilled and live with more and more delusions.– Father Bryan Storey, Tintagel Catholic Church, Cornwall

If you haven’t already done so – buy the book (The God Delusion…).

4 thoughts on “McGrath Attack on Dawkins”

  1. Thanks for the linkage. I was initially inclined to, as you did, deconstruct the comments on the article, but put most of these down to general basic misunderstandings.

    I will point out something I noticed with what Storey posted. His comment points out that we have no understanding of the “why” of the universe. What he fails to grasp, however, is that this isn’t necessarily a coherent question. There may not be a “why” question to answer: he has presupposed that the question is valid but has provided no evidence to support such a premise.

    He’s then makes the leap that if we don’t attempt to answer this question, we’re just deluded. I would point out that, attempting to answer a question that may or may not be answerable and then having to answer further presupposed questions for which there is no evidence either is a greater scource of delusion.

  2. Thanks for the comment – the main reason I had to look at the responses to the daily nonsense mail page was that you had sufficiently demolished McGrath’s nonsense there wasn’t anything else for me to pick on!

  4. Pingback: Why Dont You Blog? : Dawkins Delusions - Deluded Reviewers?

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