“But atheism requires an evolutionary explanation every bit as much as religious conviction does. And that explanation cannot appeal to the correspondence of the chemical reactions in the head to the events of the outside world — what a contrived business that would be. Given atheistic principles, we have no reason to assign any truth …
And What a Surprise It Was . . .
“Here I sit, Christian convictions bouncing around in my head, and Dawkins knows that this requires an explanation. Why have millions of years of evolutionary selection given us Arkansas Methodists, Brooklyn Jews, Saudi Muslims, and so on, ad infinitum? But in this book, the one set of convictions that requires no explanation at all would …
Look At Us Go
“I simply want to commend him for noticing that, on his premises, wide-spread religion was created by an impersonal process that was favoring the fittest” (The Deluded Atheist, p. 41).
An Epistemological Beach Ball
“God is the only judge. And He says in Scripture that unrighteous men suppress the truth. Their knowledge of God is like a giant beach ball that they have been holding under water for their entire time in the pool, and their arms are getting all trembly” (The Deluded Atheist, p. 16).
Yeah. What If?
“Now, what if the universe we live in has information embedded in it throughout? What if the triune God who spoke it all into existence has left notes everywhere? What if every living cell contains a library that makes the Library of Congress look like my grandkids’ coloring book collection?” (The Deluded Atheist, p. 22)
But Enough About Kant
“If you need to hang some really heavy things from your sky hook, make sure to fasten the socket for that sky hook at least fifteen feet higher in the air than you otherwise would. The bolts work better a little bit higher like that” (The Deluded Atheist, p. 17).
The Explanatory Power of Explosions
“A factory, for example, full of fantastically complex machinery and robots for the manufacturing of various ingenious devices of intricate design, is something that cannot itself be designed. For when confronted with a world full of designed things, it is not unscientific to allow that many of them were in fact designed, so long as …
Any Kind of Fight
“Some Christians, reacting to panicked flame-throwing of fearful fellow Christians, have opted for the opposite error. Tepid, balanced, irenic, and boring, they follow in the steps of the Master, as conceived by effeminate painters of the Victorian era — their caricature of Jesus could have done advertisements for Clairol. For such Christians, any kind of …
Bagpipes and Fallacies
“When Dawkins lights into radical Muslims going crazy over the Danish cartoons, I am right with him. Something really needs to be done about those people. When he talks about how Pope John Paull II made way too many people saints, my Scottish covenanter blood begins to rise, and I start hunting around for the …
Check the Batteries
“But if this is enlightenment, we need to check the batteries” (God Is, p. 102).