Richard Dawkins argues that there is no rational or moral reason to believe in God or any other supernatural higher power. He says that because atheists are discriminated against in the United States they tend not to be vocal about their views, even though collectively they could be an influential political and social force. Professor Dawkins also reads selections from his new book, talks about his love for science, and answers questions from the Randolph-Macon audience.
Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the author of many books, including The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and Unweaving the Rainbow.
Bio
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins is a world-renowned evolutionary biologist and author. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and, until recently, held the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His first book, The Selfish Gene, was an instant international bestseller, and has become an established classic work of modern evolutionary biology.
He is also the author of The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, A Devil's Chaplain, The Ancestor's TaleThe God Delusion, and most recently, The Greatsest Show on Earth.
Professor Dawkins's awards have included the Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London (1989), the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize for Achievement in Human Science (1990), The International Cosmos Prize (1997) and the Kistler Prize (2001).
He has Honorary Doctorates in both literature and science, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Critique and denial of metaphysical beliefs in God or divine beings. Unlike agnosticism, which leaves open the question of whether there is a God, atheism is a positive denial. It is rooted in an array of philosophical systems. Ancient Greek philosophers such as Democritus and Epicurus argued for it in the context of materialism. In the 18th century David Hume and Immanuel Kant, though not atheists, argued against traditional proofs for God's existence, making belief a matter of faith alone. Atheists such as Ludwig Feuerbach held that God was a projection of human ideals and that recognizing this fiction made self-realization possible. Marxism exemplified modern materialism. Beginning with Friedrich Nietzsche, existentialist atheism proclaimed the death of God and the human freedom to determine value and meaning. Logical positivism holds that propositions concerning the existence or nonexistence of God are nonsensical or meaningless.
Fair point. The essential claims of every atheist can really be reduced to this: "I have no personal experience which verifies or makes the case for the existence of God." Of course their lack of personal experience in this regard has no bearing on the character of MY experience. Millions of people have meaningful experience with the divine--Dawkin's inability to find, access or explain that is utterly irrelevant to the realities of divinity and humanity.
Hard atheism is one of the most critically unsustainable position on the market. Agnosticism is easy to understand. But to embrace hard atheism you need believe it's possible to prove the negative that God doesn't exist. It's amazing (and somewhat amusing) that men as gifted as Dawkins don't see this. It makes it easy to dismiss him/them as mere provocateurs since there is no solidly founded argument for such a relentless rejection of God.