The God Delusion

[Tiberius]

In this thread, I'd like to discuss Richard Dawkin's book "The God Delusion". What do you think of the position he advocates in this book? And why do you hold that viewpoint?

Personally, I agree with most of what he says, but not all. I think he makes a fairly good argument, but I can see that there are some things where he has failed to account for the reasoning provided by believers.

NOTE: Please only post in this thread if you have actually read the book. I don't want this thread filled with posts by people who are just guessing at the content of the book.

 

[AlexBP]

I read the book almost five years ago, so some of the things I remember may be a little hazy. Overall, I was not impressed by it. It's not the worst thing I've ever read, but it's quite a bit below the level that one would normally expect from a professor at Oxford. There's a lot of loose play with facts, logical fallacies, and apparent ignorance of important points.

For instance, at one point Dawkins says "Christianity was invented by Paul of Tarsus." (Or something like that; like I said, I'm working from memory here.) Of course Christianity was actually invented by Jesus Christ. The theory that Jesus was a fictional character invented by Paul, or that Jesus existed but that Paul invented his own doctrine, has been advanced by a few cranks, but I know of no real scholar of early Christian history who takes it seriously.

Dawkins dismisses all religious experience by insisting that it's the result of hallucination. Such a sweeping claim would certain call for a little bit of backup, yet none was forthcoming, as I recall. At the very least, Dawkins ought to have mentioned the results put forth by researchers such as William James and Rudolph Otto and offer some counter to them.

Regarding Dawkins' central argument against the existence of God, I find it so weak it's hard to know how to respond. He argues that a God powerful enough to create the universe would have to be more complex than the universe, and hence the probability of such a God existing is extremely low. That begs the question of how he's defining complexity and how he's defining probability. The textbook definition of probability only defines it in the context of repeatable experiments. Such a definition doesn't apply here, so a clear explanation of what probability means in this context is called for.

I found the later chapters equally unconvincing. For instance, during one chapter he tries to argue for a negative association between religion and morality by pointing to a study of crime rates in America's red states and blue states, but states are divided into "red" and "blue" by how the majority voted in the presidential election, not by religiosity. State-by-state comparisons shouldn't be used at all to argue about the relationship between religiosity and crime when there's a wealth of data available on individuals. This blog post primarily addresses Dawkins' claims about religion and education, but the first two studies listed also show a negative assoication between religiosity and crime. I'd be the first to admit that studies alone do not prove the point, but if Dawkins wanted to honestly deal with the topic, he'd surely inform his readers that there are studies showing a negative association between religiosity and crime.

Dawkins is surely smart enough to see the flaws in these parts of the book and many others. That raises the question of why he didn't correct them. Even if they somehow slipped past his attention, the editor should have caught them. Is he merely hoping that the readers won't be alert to these things?

So to sum up, I found it an unconvincing book with many obvious flaws.

 

[Scottish Knight]

I read it when it first came out. I was hoping for something I would find challenging, hearing the best arguments for Atheism from an Oxford Professor. I was sadly disappointed and think it is a terrible book and I think even other atheists have panned it. It's like Dawkins can't be bothered arguing properly and turns to child's arguments that I even I could recognise as being false.

Here's a link to what I have found to be the best response to the book chapter by chapter:

bethinking.org - Search for ""

 

[Tiberius]

I read it when it first came out. I was hoping for something I would find challenging, hearing the best arguments for Atheism from an Oxford Professor. I was sadly disappointed and think it is a terrible book and I think even other atheists have panned it. It's like Dawkins can't be bothered arguing properly and turns to child's arguments that I even I could recognise as being false.

Here's a link to what I have found to be the best response to the book chapter by chapter:

bethinking.org - Search for ""

Even just reading the first chapter of that, I find his counter-arguments to be derisive and hypocritical and based on the flawed assumption that all religious people are like him.

 

[Tinker Grey]

For instance, at one point Dawkins says "Christianity was invented by Paul of Tarsus." (Or something like that; like I said, I'm working from memory here.) Of course Christianity was actually invented by Jesus Christ. The theory that Jesus was a fictional character invented by Paul, or that Jesus existed but that Paul invented his own doctrine, has been advanced by a few cranks, but I know of no real scholar of early Christian history who takes it seriously.

I, too, read the book about 5 years ago when I was still a Christian. I don't remember this bit, but I will comment that among liberal Christian and some emergent types this theme is reiterated. I read an author, Bruxy Cavey, whose book The End of Religion was largely the point that Jesus never intended to start a religion. (To me, this just makes me question why Jesus couldn't have instructed his disciples better on this point.)

Regarding Dawkins' central argument against the existence of God, I find it so weak it's hard to know how to respond. He argues that a God powerful enough to create the universe would have to be more complex than the universe, and hence the probability of such a God existing is extremely low. That begs the question of how he's defining complexity and how he's defining probability. The textbook definition of probability only defines it in the context of repeatable experiments. Such a definition doesn't apply here, so a clear explanation of what probability means in this context is called for.

I don't recall the probability argument. I do recall the complexity argument--partly because even atheist critics seem to misunderstand his point. (So, either I'm wrong in my interpretation or he really wasn't clear. I'm inclined to the latter. )

The point here, I believe, is that it is creation apologists that insist that the complexity of the universe demands intelligence without explaining the complexity of the god that created it. This then leads to an infinite regression--something that cosmological arguers claim can't happen.

Obviously, Dawkins doesn't believe that complexity is required. That is rather the point of his book Climbing Mount Improbable.

Now what he did miss here is that some apologists, as early as Aquinas IIRC, posited God as the ultimate simplicity--sounding an awful lot like Tillich's ground of being. However, most Christians in my experience have never even heard of such concepts.

I found the later chapters equally unconvincing. For instance, during one chapter he tries to argue for a negative association between religion and morality by pointing to a study of crime rates in America's red states and blue states, but states are divided into "red" and "blue" by how the majority voted in the presidential election, not by religiosity. State-by-state comparisons shouldn't be used at all to argue about the relationship between religiosity and crime when there's a wealth of data available on individuals. This blog post primarily addresses Dawkins' claims about religion and education, but the first two studies listed also show a negative assoication between religiosity and crime. I'd be the first to admit that studies alone do not prove the point, but if Dawkins wanted to honestly deal with the topic, he'd surely inform his readers that there are studies showing a negative association between religiosity and crime.

Again, I could be misremembering, but the point here isn't that there is causation but rather that we can say that religion isn't necessary for morality. Obviously, as C.S. Lewis might say ala Mere Christianity, those states and countries that are highly religious might be much worse off without religion.

It is also interesting to me to note that Phillip Yancey in What's so Amazing About Grace bemoans these same sorts of statistics. (It should be noted that his book was written in the 80s).

Dawkins is surely smart enough to see the flaws in these parts of the book and many others. That raises the question of why he didn't correct them. Even if they somehow slipped past his attention, the editor should have caught them. Is he merely hoping that the readers won't be alert to these things?

So to sum up, I found it an unconvincing book with many obvious flaws.

Even if I am correct in my recollections, I would agree that the book could be improved.

One little irritating thing that I recall is that when extolling the beauty of the KJV, he attributed the phrase Quo Vadis to it. The KJV isn't in Latin and according to Wiki it is part of the apocryphal Acts of Peter.

 

[AlexBP]

I don't recall the probability argument. I do recall the complexity argument--partly because even atheist critics seem to misunderstand his point. (So, either I'm wrong in my interpretation or he really wasn't clear. I'm inclined to the latter. )

The point here, I believe, is that it is creation apologists that insist that the complexity of the universe demands intelligence without explaining the complexity of the god that created it. This then leads to an infinite regression--something that cosmological arguers claim can't happen.

Obviously, Dawkins doesn't believe that complexity is required. That is rather the point of his book Climbing Mount Improbable.

Now what he did miss here is that some apologists, as early as Aquinas IIRC, posited God as the ultimate simplicity--sounding an awful lot like Tillich's ground of being. However, most Christians in my experience have never even heard of such concepts.

The chapter in Dawkins' book is entitled "Why there almost certainly is no God", so I assumed it was intended to justify that claim. I think it does so quite poorly. I'd readily admit that many creationists who try to make the argument that the universe must have been designed are quite sloppy in their reasoning, and if Dawkins had limited himself to tackling their arguments he could have done so quite well.

Let me try to explain my response to what I wrote. The universe is "fine tuned" for the existence of complexity and life, in the sense that many physical laws and constants must be exactly as they are, or else there could be no life in the universe. Dawkins agrees that this is true, citing a book by physicist Martin Rees. He also agrees that the fine-tuning of the universe calls for an explanation, and that attempts to evade the question by means of "anthropic bias" and suchlike do not hold water. Instead he advocates for the multiverse theory: there are an enormous number of universes, possibly even an infinite number, each with randomly determined physical laws and constants. Among them, an infinitesmally small fraction support life, and we live in one of those.

I'm not convinced by the argument for two reasons. First, as Richard Swinburne said:

[FONT=&quot]The postulation of God is the postulation of one entity of a simple kind. The postulation of the actual existence of an infinite number of worlds, between them exhausting all the logical possibilities is to postulate complexity and non-prearranged coincidence of infinite dimensions beyond rational belief.[/FONT]
​

Swinburne does suggest that God is simple, though for my purposes that's not important. Dawkins' argument rests on the supposed complexity of a God capable of creating the universe. As an alternative, he offers a multiverse with an enormous number of universes. Is a God capable of creating one universe be more complex than such an enormous collection of universes? It seems to me unwarranted to assume that it must be so.

The second reason is that even an enormous number of universes wouldn't actually explain the existence of a universe capable of supporting life. In our universe there are physical laws such a gravity, electromagnetic attraction and repulsion, and so forth. Each of these involves a physical constant of a certain number. The multiverse explanation assumes that each universe has these types of laws, while the constants arise randomly, so each universe has a different set of constants. However, even if there were a multiverse, there's no reason why the universes within it should all have similar sets of physical laws. As Paul Davies said:

[FONT=&quot]There are several aspects to this "too-good-to-be-true" claim. The first of these concerns the general orderliness of the universe. There are endless ways in which the universe might have been totally chaotic. It might have had no laws at all, or merely been an incoherent jumble of laws that caused no matter to behave in disorderly or unstable ways. Alternatively, the universe could have been extremely simple to the point of featurelessness--for example, devoid of matter, or of motion. One could also imagine a universe in which conditions changed from moment to moment in a complicated or random way, or even in which everything abruptly ceased to exist. There seems to be no logical obstacle to the idea of such unruly universes. But the real universe is not like this. It is highly ordered. There exist well-defined laws of physics and definite cause-effect relationships.[/FONT]
​

That said, I view debates on this question as mostly an academic exercise. I know of extremely few cases of anyone settling their religious views, one way or another, on these sorts of scientific arguments.

 

[Tiberius]

The chapter in Dawkins' book is entitled "Why there almost certainly is no God", so I assumed it was intended to justify that claim. I think it does so quite poorly. I'd readily admit that many creationists who try to make the argument that the universe must have been designed are quite sloppy in their reasoning, and if Dawkins had limited himself to tackling their arguments he could have done so quite well.

Let me try to explain my response to what I wrote. The universe is "fine tuned" for the existence of complexity and life, in the sense that many physical laws and constants must be exactly as they are, or else there could be no life in the universe. Dawkins agrees that this is true, citing a book by physicist Martin Rees. He also agrees that the fine-tuning of the universe calls for an explanation, and that attempts to evade the question by means of "anthropic bias" and suchlike do not hold water. Instead he advocates for the multiverse theory: there are an enormous number of universes, possibly even an infinite number, each with randomly determined physical laws and constants. Among them, an infinitesmally small fraction support life, and we live in one of those.

I'm not convinced by the argument for two reasons. First, as Richard Swinburne said:

[FONT=&quot]The postulation of God is the postulation of one entity of a simple kind. The postulation of the actual existence of an infinite number of worlds, between them exhausting all the logical possibilities is to postulate complexity and non-prearranged coincidence of infinite dimensions beyond rational belief.[/FONT]
​

But the claim that God is simple is an assumption, and given the nature of God as described in the Bible, it would seem to be quite complex. After all, God does things that humans do - he gets angry, has a child, experiences emotions - so he must be at least as complex as a Human, and yet Humans are complex enough to need a creator.

Swinburne does suggest that God is simple, though for my purposes that's not important. Dawkins' argument rests on the supposed complexity of a God capable of creating the universe. As an alternative, he offers a multiverse with an enormous number of universes. Is a God capable of creating one universe be more complex than such an enormous collection of universes? It seems to me unwarranted to assume that it must be so.

Then how can you claim God is omnipotent?

The second reason is that even an enormous number of universes wouldn't actually explain the existence of a universe capable of supporting life. In our universe there are physical laws such a gravity, electromagnetic attraction and repulsion, and so forth. Each of these involves a physical constant of a certain number. The multiverse explanation assumes that each universe has these types of laws, while the constants arise randomly, so each universe has a different set of constants. However, even if there were a multiverse, there's no reason why the universes within it should all have similar sets of physical laws. As Paul Davies said:

[FONT=&quot]There are several aspects to this "too-good-to-be-true" claim. The first of these concerns the general orderliness of the universe. There are endless ways in which the universe might have been totally chaotic. It might have had no laws at all, or merely been an incoherent jumble of laws that caused no matter to behave in disorderly or unstable ways. Alternatively, the universe could have been extremely simple to the point of featurelessness--for example, devoid of matter, or of motion. One could also imagine a universe in which conditions changed from moment to moment in a complicated or random way, or even in which everything abruptly ceased to exist. There seems to be no logical obstacle to the idea of such unruly universes. But the real universe is not like this. It is highly ordered. There exist well-defined laws of physics and definite cause-effect relationships.[/FONT]
​

That said, I view debates on this question as mostly an academic exercise. I know of extremely few cases of anyone settling their religious views, one way or another, on these sorts of scientific arguments.

But if there is an infinite number of universes, then every possible universe will exist - including one that is capable of supporting life.

 

[AlexBP]

But if there is an infinite number of universes, then every possible universe will exist - including one that is capable of supporting life.

Consider an analogy with mathematics. The sequence of square numbers (1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, ...) is infinite, yet it obviously doesn't contain every whole number. Likewise an infinite sequence of universes wouldn't necessarily contain every possible universe.

It's easy to imagine an infinite sequence of universes that doesn't produce life. For example, a universe without matter wouldn't contain any sort of interesting features. Multiplying such a universe a billion or infinitely many times would only produce a whole bunch of universes with no interesting features.

If Dawkins wants to argue that it's possible that the universe came into existence and supported life without being designed, I suppose we could say that he argued that. Personally I find the argument that he made to be less satisfying, in the sense of leaving more unexplained loose ends, then the argument from intelligent design. You may disagree. Like most good philosophical arguments, this one does readily yield a clinching answer.

Then how can you claim God is omnipotent?

I really don't see what you're getting at here. If you want to claim that God is provably more complex than an infinite multiverse containing every possible universe, it seems to me that the burden of proof is on you. The first thing you'd need to do was nail down a definition of complexity. While I'm aware of definitions of complexity within some fields such as computer science and engineering, I don't know of any that covers the philosophical concepts we're getting into here.

 

[Tiberius]

Consider an analogy with mathematics. The sequence of square numbers (1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, ...) is infinite, yet it obviously doesn't contain every whole number. Likewise an infinite sequence of universes wouldn't necessarily contain every possible universe.

But in that case there is a limiting factor.

And in any case, I don't think the analogy quite works. In the case of the all possible universe scenario, it is describing every possible universe that can possibly exist. The sequence of square numbers does not describe every single number that possibly exists. For example, it says that 9 is the square of a number - but it can't be three squared, because three is not on the list. Therefore, the square number sequence is describing only some of the possible numbers, not all of them.

It's easy to imagine an infinite sequence of universes that doesn't produce life. For example, a universe without matter wouldn't contain any sort of interesting features. Multiplying such a universe a billion or infinitely many times would only produce a whole bunch of universes with no interesting features.

There's an interesting idea going around (although it's just an idea, not supported by evidence, but it makes an interesting thought experiment). It suggests that since our universe began in a singularity - the Big Bang - that maybe the singularity that formed our universe was created in a black hole in another universe.

If this idea is true, then it would suggest that the only universes that can create new universes are the ones that can create black holes, which naturally require matter. If the new universes formed in this way carry some traits of the parent universes - perhaps constants close to the values of their parent universes - then we could have an almost Darwinian sequence of evolution, in which the universes that have universal constants that allow them to create black holes more rapidly are the ones that are able to produce the largest number of offspring universes.

And it would follow that since black holes require stars and planets are a consequence of having stars, and life can develop on planets, that the universes most likely to develop black holes are the same ones that are likely to develop life.

But like I said, it's just an idea, and I'm not going to present that idea as a fact. Just something interesting to think about.

If Dawkins wants to argue that it's possible that the universe came into existence and supported life without being designed, I suppose we could say that he argued that. Personally I find the argument that he made to be less satisfying, in the sense of leaving more unexplained loose ends, then the argument from intelligent design. You may disagree. Like most good philosophical arguments, this one does readily yield a clinching answer.

I don't get your first sentence. If Dawkins wants to say that, he said it? Not quite sure what your point is there.

And I don't see why ID is a more satisfying answer. ID would seem to be unsatisfying be default, considering that it makes no attempt to describe the intelligent agent or where it came from. And in any case, the answer to the question of "Why this particular universe instead of another?" is just as satisfying if not more than "Why an intelligent agent that decided to create a universe." After all, that last question is completely unanswerable.

I really don't see what you're getting at here. If you want to claim that God is provably more complex than an infinite multiverse containing every possible universe, it seems to me that the burden of proof is on you. The first thing you'd need to do was nail down a definition of complexity. While I'm aware of definitions of complexity within some fields such as computer science and engineering, I don't know of any that covers the philosophical concepts we're getting into here.

So you are suggesting that highly complex things can come from very simple things? In that case, why need a god at all? The natural laws we observe in the universe are much simpler than God, wouldn't you say (given that we can understand them, predict the results of them, and write them down and teach them to people)?

 

[AlexBP]

And in any case, I don't think the analogy quite works. In the case of the all possible universe scenario, it is describing every possible universe that can possibly exist.

Okay, I agree that if every possible universe that can exist actually does exist, then it would follow that our particular universe exists. However, the hypothesis that every possible universe that can exist actually does exist is a hypothesis that multiplies entities far beyond any other, and thus according to the concept of Occam's Razor and the standards that Dawkins himself lays out, it's not a desirable hypothesis. Obviously I cannot prove that hypothesis to be incorrect, but I can say that it's an extremely complicated hypothesis. (Regardless of how we define complexity.)

Further, it seems to me that if every possible universe exists, that completely confounds atheists and skeptics. After all, if it's true, then there's a universe where God exists, is there not? In fact, wouldn't there be infinitely many such universes? And there's a universe whose inhabitants precisely match the people who have died on earth and live in unending bliss, so then Heaven exists too. And somewhere else there's a universe where the Loch Ness Monster exists, and another one where Bigfoot exists, and another one where astrology is accurate, and one where Joseph Smith actually received the Book of Mormon on Golden Plates from an angel, and so forth. Everything that atheists and skeptics don't believe in actually exists, if every possible universe exists.

There's an interesting idea going around (although it's just an idea, not supported by evidence, but it makes an interesting thought experiment). It suggests that since our universe began in a singularity - the Big Bang - that maybe the singularity that formed our universe was created in a black hole in another universe.

If this idea is true, then it would suggest that the only universes that can create new universes are the ones that can create black holes, which naturally require matter. If the new universes formed in this way carry some traits of the parent universes - perhaps constants close to the values of their parent universes - then we could have an almost Darwinian sequence of evolution, in which the universes that have universal constants that allow them to create black holes more rapidly are the ones that are able to produce the largest number of offspring universes.

Here's another idea. Suppose that it's true that when black holes form in one universe, they create another universe elsewhere. Suppose there was a universe in which intelligent beings had the ability to create black holes. (This is not far-fetched; many scientists believe that it will eventually be possible for humans to create black holes.) Suppose that one intelligent being created the black hole which produced the universe that we all live in. Wouldn't it be reasonable to describe the intelligent being who created our universe via black hole as "god"?

Of course my idea is no more supported by evidence that yours, but it's also an interesting thought experiment.

 

[AlexBP]

Again, I could be misremembering, but the point here isn't that there is causation but rather that we can say that religion isn't necessary for morality. Obviously, as C.S. Lewis might say ala Mere Christianity, those states and countries that are highly religious might be much worse off without religion.

The question of the roots of morality is a deep one. Unfortunately most online discussion of it gets stuck on questions such as whether one can justify opposition to murder, theft, and such. Now if anyone comes around here making the argument that atheists have no reason to not commit murder, you may flog them with a wet noodle and tell them it came from me. But mere measures of murder and other agreed-upon crimes are not measures of morality. That would be like measuring academic achievement based only on whether students can add two and two.

Dawkins' chapter on morality largely sidesteps the really important aspects of the topic. Again, I don't remember exactly what he wrote, but I recall that he claimed that an absolute standard to measure morality existed within the "universal moral grammar" common to all societies. To defend this, he mentioned hypothetical scenarios such as "runaway trolley" problem that's currently being discussed on this forum. Then he cited this study which showed that an identical percentage of people in all societies responded to three such scenarios the same way.

Well, I don't know about the study. It's hardly from an unbiased source, very limited in scope, and has other problems. But more significantly, the notion of a "universal moral grammar" contradicts what countless other scholars have found. At least among most of the works that I've read, the common viewpoint is that there's no moral standard that all societies hold in common, and hence no objective standard of morality can be derived from any universal viewpoint among all humans.

 

[Tiberius]

Okay, I agree that if every possible universe that can exist actually does exist, then it would follow that our particular universe exists. However, the hypothesis that every possible universe that can exist actually does exist is a hypothesis that multiplies entities far beyond any other, and thus according to the concept of Occam's Razor and the standards that Dawkins himself lays out, it's not a desirable hypothesis. Obviously I cannot prove that hypothesis to be incorrect, but I can say that it's an extremely complicated hypothesis. (Regardless of how we define complexity.)

I see your point, but it would only violate Occam's Razor if you could show that it was unnecessary. If every single possibility does play out in various universes, then it could very well be essential, and thus wouldn't violate Occam's razor at all.

Further, it seems to me that if every possible universe exists, that completely confounds atheists and skeptics. After all, if it's true, then there's a universe where God exists, is there not? In fact, wouldn't there be infinitely many such universes? And there's a universe whose inhabitants precisely match the people who have died on earth and live in unending bliss, so then Heaven exists too. And somewhere else there's a universe where the Loch Ness Monster exists, and another one where Bigfoot exists, and another one where astrology is accurate, and one where Joseph Smith actually received the Book of Mormon on Golden Plates from an angel, and so forth. Everything that atheists and skeptics don't believe in actually exists, if every possible universe exists.

Maybe, maybe not.

If every single possible universe exists, there might not be any universes in which God exists if God is an IMpossibility. Being self-contradictory (both omnipotent and omniscient, for example) would indicate that God is impossible.

Here's another idea. Suppose that it's true that when black holes form in one universe, they create another universe elsewhere. Suppose there was a universe in which intelligent beings had the ability to create black holes. (This is not far-fetched; many scientists believe that it will eventually be possible for humans to create black holes.) Suppose that one intelligent being created the black hole which produced the universe that we all live in. Wouldn't it be reasonable to describe the intelligent being who created our universe via black hole as "god"?

Of course my idea is no more supported by evidence that yours, but it's also an interesting thought experiment.

true, but would you call such a being God? I don't think many people would. Such a being would have no knowledge of us. He certainly wouldn't fit by any stretch of the imagination the God of the Bible or any other religion. If anything, it would be an example of intelligent design, and it leads us to ask, "If the only way our universe, with all its life, could come into existence was through the actions of some entity creating our universe from another universe, how did the universe where this entity lives come into being?"

 

[AlexBP]

I see your point, but it would only violate Occam's Razor if you could show that it was unnecessary. If every single possibility does play out in various universes, then it could very well be essential, and thus wouldn't violate Occam's razor at all.

If the existence of every possible universe was necessary, which is to say necessary in the philosophical sense of it being impossible for such a thing not to exist, then you'd be correct. However, Dawkins certainly doesn't argue that the existence of every possible universe is necessary, nor have I ever seen anyone else do so. Indeed, the idea of a "multiverse" gets tossed around in these debates so easily that it's easy to forget that there's not one iota of evidence supporting the existence of a multiverse. Any discussion of numerous other universes is really better suited to the 'Science Fiction and Fantasy' forum than anywhere else.

 

[Gadarene]

He seems to be arguing against a particular kind of Christianity, and it's not the most subtle form of it (not that the more subtle forms are actually especially subtle outright, but anyhoo) - it's more what he was on the receiving end of from creationists.

His philosophical section is pretty dire - I can't recall whether he misstates the cosmological argument (then again, maybe it was mistated to him), and his objection to the ontological argument is about as short as "LOL modal logic".

That said, I can't really fault his general approach, though I think it's a little shaky in places - he doesn't go for the higher theology that's been inferred and extrapolated over the years, he instead goes for the basic claims about God and shows how they're either in conflict or outright contradicted by events and texts.

And I think that's a good approach, and it is broadly speaking "scientific", or at least consistent with how a scientist would treat a theory. If your theory's base assumptions don't bear out or are in conflict, all the predictions that come from those base ideas, no matter how high-falutin', are wrong.

Not the best of books for atheism, not by a long shot - but it was a good populariser, and I'm rather fond of the old buzzard as TGD was the first book on atheism that I read. (Not the last either, and it wasn't enough in itself to convince me to become an atheist).