FREE THE NEW : TEN ARGUMENTS THAT DONT HOLD WATER PDF

Michael Poole | 96 pages | 01 May 2010 | Lion Hudson Plc | 9780745953939 | English | Oxford, United Kingdom ARIZONA ATHEIST: The 'New' Atheism: 10 Arguments That Don't Hold Water?: A Refutation

Chris Bell. Two contemporary atheists who do not believe exists - Richard Dawkins and - also seem to be overly angry persons. Dawkins reckons that 'good scientists who are sincerely religious Michael Poole, Visiting Research Fellow in Science and Religion at King's College, London, has written a small book of ten chapters - 96 pages - which could and should! His main question: do the ideas of the The : Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water and noisy 'new atheists' hold water? He devotes a little chapter to each of the ten most common arguments for not believing in the existence of God, and in summary, says: Science and religion are addressing different questions. For example, science cannot help us with 'Why is there something rather than nothing? Although Dawkins asserts in one place 'Atheists do not have faith' This illustrates what he calls 'the fallacy of the excluded middle' a recurring phrase in the book - choosing between only two positions when others are logically possible. Most of the favorite theoretical constructs are here: Planck's constant, the god meme, functionalism, instrumentalism, direct vs. The target-audience is obviously undergraduates. The flavour is quite British: Chapter 10 is titled 'Unpeeling the Cosmic Onion' a fascinating discussion of 'universe' and 'multiverse'there's mention of 'grown-up talk' etc. I believe that a serious flaw in Poole's apologetic is the absence of a Christological basis for belief in the existence of God: the approach is mostly scientific and philosophical. Finally how about The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water 'According to Stephen Hawking, a minute increase of about one part in a million million in the density of the universe one second after the Big Bang would have meant a recollapse of the universe after some ten years. A similar decrease in density would have resulted in a largely empty universe after the same time' Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays,p. Something to think about before you go to sleep tonight! Chris Bell UTC. The New Atheism: 10 Arguments That Don't Hold Water?

Thanks for the mention and great write The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water. I try to review books reasonably thoroughly myself, so I know how much work these things are! Thanks for contributing to the body of blogosphere knowledge! Thank you very much for the time spent doing this in such a pleasant way to be read. I've started not long ago watching debates and reading about this kind of topics and must say I'm rapidly getting bored and arriving to the same feeling you describe that apologists don't do anything new. It would seem as they were not even listening to the other side on the debates, It is frustrating to see them repeat over and over the same refuted argument as if they were stubborn children. Being some of those arguments a simple insult to human intellect. I really wish they would stop the bible references and begin a true search for god if what they want is everyone else to agree with them. Thanks for the comment! I'm so happy you enjoyed the review! Take care. Harry Potter? James Bond? All "generally regarded as authentic beyond all doubt"? I find nothing in the gospels which is inconsistent with their being fully fictional. They The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water resemble this more than any other genre. The lack of biographical details, the errors in history, geography and culture, all of these go to their fictional nature. Nothing about them has the ring of truth. Thanks for reading! I agree, though I think the quote was referring to ancient writers not comic strips or novels, but I get your point. For example Plato had mentioned Atlantis and this has caused people to go out and search for it, but now they believe he was just mistaken. What was it about all secular writings taken seriously without question? Just like the bible secular writings are investigated and often found to be inaccurate. This blog is no longer active and is not accepting any new comments. Introduction I am at it again. I've set my sights on yet another Christian author who has published one more in a long line of books seeking to refute the New Atheists. I found this book to be poorly organized and the noted sources are a little difficult to understand at first, but other than that it is well written. It's certainly a different format for a book like this, and is a little annoying, but those are my opinions about how the book is laid out. As for the arguments themselves, let's find out Thanks a bunch John! Chapter 1: Un-natural selection or 'Down with sex! In this first chapter Poole disagrees with Richard Dawkins' and Christopher Hitchens' complaints about the many evil deeds done by religious people. However, I feel that Poole has erected a strawman of sorts. The New Atheists do not view the bad deeds done by religious people as the reason religion is bad, it is the beliefs themselves that cause many people to do bad things, hence the many examples they give in support of their argument. For example, in The God DelusionDawkins says, You don't have to make the case for what you believe. If somebody announces that it is part of his faiththe rest of society, whether of the same faith, or another, The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water of none, is obliged, by ingrained custom, to 'respect' it without question; respect it until the day it manifests itself in a horrible massacre like the destruction of the World Trade Center, or the London or Madrid bombings. They just seem to believe that the bad outweighs the good, and that is my opinion as well. Obviously Hitchens knows that religion has lead to some good things but, again, believes the bad outweighs the good. However, I do agree that the subtitle is an over exaggeration. I believe Poole has erected another strawman when referring to Daniel Dennett's book Breaking the Spell. He wrties, The investigation of the functions served by religion - functionalism - is not, in principle, a threat to the truth-claims of religion. It is a partial, but valuable, study of one aspect of the behavior of individual The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water collective humankind. Given Dennett's beliefs, he suggests The three favourite purposes or raisons d'etre for religion are to comfort us in our suffering and ally our fear of death to explain things we can't otherwise explain to encourage group cooperation in the face of trials and enemies Religion serves these three functions, and why not? They say nothing about the truth or falsity of the beliefs themselves. Even still, this argument is absurd since sex in and of itself is not a human activity that comes with certain beliefs which might influence behavior. Rather, it is the beliefs we often have about the inequality of women, or seeing women as purely sexual objects, that are often a cause of sex crimes, and not sex itself. Religion, on the other hand, does come packaged with certain beliefs that can cause immoral behavior. He writes, In short, [Jesus] is saying: if people don't do or try to do, since we are all fallible what I teach, don't believe them if they claim to have faith in me, and to be one of my followers. Chapter 2: 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so A2 'Faith is irrational' and 'demands a positive suspension of critical faculties. Poole writes, The above views of faith do not reflect how the word is generally used in everyday life. Perhaps both the surgeon and the close friend are trusted because they have proven themselves to be reliable in the past? However, religious beliefs often have no evidential support to speak of. Faith in our senses. This argument has the same problem I spoke of above. Based upon past experience our senses can be trusted and have been proven to be reliable most of the time. In addition, the scientific method has often been helpful in correcting any issues with our senses not accurately representing the world, such as the common example of ghost sightings. Here, our senses are seemingly leading us astray but the scientific method can be used as a way to check to be sure our senses are not deceiving us. There's nothing wrong with having faith I don't feel this semantics argument is an effective one because no matter which word one uses, what matters is how one comes to believe certain things and whether or not there is reliable evidence for those beliefs. The scientific findings of science Dawkins spoke of in his lecture had solid evidence backing his statements, which is a far cry from the claims of religion. I will get to those supposed evidences later on in the book. Chapter 3: People who live in glass houses? A3 Religious beliefs are memes, mind viruses, self-delusion, placebos, wishful thinking and indoctrination. Poole argues, The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water if belief The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water a God is a 'mind virus' that we may not know we have, then the double-edged sword that cuts both ways dictates that belief in no God is also a 'mind virus' that we may not know we have. This leaves the awful possibility that the atheist, too, may be living a life of total self-delusion without knowing it. He provides none. Change 'theological' for 'atheistic' and where does that get us in the debate? Next, the author complains about Dawkins', and other atheists', use of the words indoctrination and brainwashing when referring to the teaching of religion. I've seen the entirety of The Genius of Charles Darwin and part of Growing up in the Universe and Dawkins was educating the children, trying to get them to view the world outside of their religious bubble and encouraging them to view the scientific evidence for evolution. That's what education The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water supposed to do: encourage children to learn of the evidence for evolution and allow them to accept it or reject it on their own, not threaten children with hell if they don't believe your views, as is often done with religious beliefs. True, theistic evolution is a common belief, but it wasn't mentioned by Dawkins because, frankly, it's a view that has not a shred of evidence for it so Dawkins rightfully rejects this viewpoint. Arguing that, 'Well, parents don't always do what Dawkins describes' is no argument to the fact that many parents do precisely what Dawkins is complaining about. Once again, yes, many children do remain with religion despite learning of other views, but at least they did so without pressure from their parents and threats of hell, which is what Dawkins was complaining about in his chapter on children and religion. Even Dawkins would support this though he would highly disagree with their decision and see it as the wrong one, but at least they were not forced into that belief. As he wrote in The God DelusionIf, having been fairly and The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water exposed to all the scientific evidence, they grow up and decide that the bible is literally true or that the movements of the planets rule their lives, that is The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water privilege. The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure. The more your beliefs defy the evidence, the more virtuous you are. Dawkins states that 'Science weighs the evidence and advances. Religion is hidebound belief for belief's sake Poole cites the bible and argues, These testimonies illustrate the point that evidence today will have to be indirect - reported speech. Tests for the reliability of these authors, as well as of other historians such as Tacitus, Pliny and Josephus, draw upon the usual canons of historical evidence. Having been proven wrong on many other issues it is only logical to suspend judgment until the facts can be checked. Until then, The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water most wise to disregard much of what the bible says. In his introduction he quoted Antony Flew, In an earlier philosophical work, Flew cautioned that it would not We have here to insist upon a sometimes tricky distinction: between, on the one hand, the valid principle of the accumulation of evidence, where every item has at least some weight in its own right; and on the other hand, the Ten-leaky-buckets-Tactic, applied to arguments none of which hold water at all. He mentions several standard theistic arguments: 1. Why is there something rather than nothing? The seeming fine-tuning of the universe. The existence of beauty and moral values, including principles of obligation and fairness. Each of these arguments have been dealt with in numerous places. Needless to say, they're all greatly flawed. Once again, the bible is not a reliable book to be basing your beliefs on. Second, there has never been any confirmed evidence of any supernatural occurrences. If they do not occur now, why should we believe they did occur in the past? If supernatural phenomenon occurs at all surely it's on-going and does not just occur in certain time periods, especially not with all of the stories of supernatural phenomenon occurring throughout all periods of history. This is proof people believed in the supernatural throughout the past also, but due to our more advanced technology we are better able now then they were to determine whether or not these experiences were true representations of reality. All evidence to date shows they are not. Price and The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water Jay Lowder. Like the vast majority of this book thus far, Poole has failed to cite any sources for his alleged evidence. The 'New' Atheism: 10 Arguments that Don't Hold Water

New Atheism is a term coined by the journalist Gary Wolf in to describe the positions promoted by some atheists of the twenty-first century. New Atheism lends itself to, and often overlaps with, secular humanism and —most particularly, in its criticism of what many New Atheists regard as the indoctrination of children and the perpetuation of ideologies founded on belief in the supernatural. Some critics of the movement characterize it as "militant atheism" or "fundamentalist atheism". The publication of : Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harrisa bestseller in the United States, was joined over the next couple years by a series of popular best-sellers by atheist authors. In a column entitled "Why I Don't Believe in the New Atheism", Tom Flynn contends that what has been called "New Atheism" is neither a movement nor new, and that what was new was the publication of atheist material by big-name publishers, read by millions, and appearing on bestseller lists. The The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water was videotaped and titled "The Four Horsemen". He wrote: "I don't object to the horseman label, by the way. I'm less keen on 'new atheist': it isn't clear to me how we differ The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water old atheists. In addition, Hitchens served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America. In Hitchens published his memoir Hitch a nickname provided by close personal friend Salman Rushdiewhom Hitchens always supported during and following The Satanic Verses controversy. These publications and numerous public appearances provided Hitchens with a platform to remain an astute atheist during his illness, even speaking specifically on the culture of deathbed conversions and condemning attempts to convert the terminally illwhich he opposed as "bad taste". Daniel Dennettauthor of Darwin's Dangerous Idea[33] Breaking the Spell [34] and many others, has also been a vocal supporter of The Clergy Project[35] an organization that provides support for clergy in the US who no longer believe in God and cannot fully participate in their communities The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water longer. After the death of Hitchens, who attended the Global Atheist Conventionwhich Hitchens was scheduled to attend was referred to as the "plus one horse-woman", The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water she was originally invited to the meeting of the "Horsemen" atheists but had to cancel at the last minute. Hirsi Ali was later involved in the production of the film Submissionfor which her friend Theo Van Gogh was murdered with a death threat to Hirsi Ali pinned to his chest. Many contemporary atheists write from a scientific perspective. Unlike previous writers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent or even incapable of dealing with the " God " concept, Dawkins argues to the contrary, claiming the "God Hypothesis" is a valid scientific hypothesis[48] having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested and falsified. The late Victor Stenger proposed that the personal Abrahamic God is a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by standard methods of science. Both Dawkins and Stenger conclude that the hypothesis fails any such tests, [49] and argue that naturalism is sufficient to explain everything we observe. Nowhere, they argue, is it necessary to introduce God or the supernatural to understand reality. Some New Atheists adhere to the fringe Christ myth theory. Non-believers in religion and the supernatural assert that many religious or supernatural claims such as the virgin birth of Jesus and the afterlife are scientific claims in nature. For instance, they The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water, as do deists and Progressive Christiansthat the issue of Jesus' supposed parentage is a question of scientific inquiry, rather than "values" or "morals". Stenger also argues in his book, God: The Failed Hypothesisthat a God having omniscientomnibenevolent and omnipotent attributes, which he termed a 3O Godcannot logically exist. Richard Dawkins has been particularly critical of the conciliatory view that science and religion are not in conflict, noting, for example, that the Abrahamic religions constantly deal in scientific matters. In a article published in Free Inquiry magazine [51] and later in his book The God DelusionDawkins expresses disagreement with the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that science and religion are two non-overlapping magisteria NOMAeach existing in a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution". In Gould's proposal, science and religion should be confined to distinct non-overlapping domains: science would be limited to the The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water realm, including theories developed to describe observations, while religion would deal with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. Dawkins contends that NOMA does not describe empirical facts about the intersection of science and religion: "It is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims. Popularized by Sam Harris is the view that science and thereby currently unknown objective facts may instruct human morality in a globally comparable way. Harris' book The Moral Landscape [58] and accompanying TED Talk How Science can Determine Moral Values [59] propose that human well- being and conversely suffering may be thought of as a landscape with peaks and The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water representing numerous ways to achieve extremes in human experience, and that there are objective states of well-being. In the context of international politics, the principles of New Atheism establish no particular stance in and of themselves. The theologians Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey take issue with what they regard as "the evangelical nature of the New Atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible. Political philosopher John Gray asserts that "New Atheism", humanism, and 'scientism' are extensions of religion, particularly Christianity. Sociologist William Stahl said, "What is striking about the current debate is the frequency with which the New Atheists are portrayed as mirror images of religious fundamentalists. The atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse has made the claim that Richard Dawkins would fail "introductory" courses on the study of " philosophy or religion " such as courses on the philosophy of religioncourses which are offered, for example, at many educational institutions such as colleges and universities around the world. Paul Kurtzeditor in chief of Free Inquiryfounder of Prometheus Bookswas critical of many of the new atheists. They're anti-religious, and they're mean-spirited, unfortunately. Now, there The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God. But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good". Jonathan Sacksauthor of The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaningfeels the new atheists miss the target by believing the "cure for bad religion is no religion, as opposed to good religion". He wrote:. Atheism deserves better than the new atheists whose methodology consists of criticizing religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity. Religion has done harm; I acknowledge that. But the cure for bad religion is good religion, not no religion, just as the cure for bad science is good science, not the abandonment of science. The philosopher Massimo Pigliucci contends that the new atheist movement overlaps with scientismwhich he finds to be philosophically unsound. He writes: "What I do object to is the tendency, found among many New Atheists, to expand the definition of science to pretty much encompassing anything that deals with 'facts', loosely conceived I would actually go so far as to charge many of the leaders of the New Atheism movement and, by implication, a good number of their followers with anti-intellectualism, one mark of which is a lack of respect for the proper significance, value, and methods of another field of intellectual endeavor. Atheist professor Jacques Berlinerblau has criticised the New Atheists' mocking of religion as being inimical to their goals and claims that they have not achieved anything politically. Roger Scruton has extensively criticized New Atheism on various occasions, generally on the grounds that they do not consider the social effects and impacts of religion in enough detail. He has said, "Look at the facts in the round and it seems likely that humans without a sense of the sacred would have died out long ago. For that same reason, the hope of the new atheists for a world without religion is probably as vain as the hope for a society without aggression or a world without death. Edward Feser has critiqued the New Atheists' responses to arguments for the existence of God, especially Dawkins' and Dennett's. From The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water, the free encyclopedia. Contemporary atheistic movement of thinkers and writers. Concepts The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water. Arguments for atheism. Related stances. Main article: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Main article: Science of morality. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 14 April The New Atheists are authors of early twenty-first century books promoting atheism. The 'New Atheist' label for these critics of religion and religious belief emerged out of journalistic commentary on the contents and impacts of their books. Retrieved 16 March Retrieved 9 March Why are the 'neo-atheists' of today so obsessed with God's nonexistence that they go on media rampages, wear T-shirts proclaiming their absence of belief, or call for a militant atheism? What does atheism have to offer that's worth fighting for? As one philosopher put it, being a militant atheist is like 'sleeping furiously. Oxford Reference. Retrieved 28 March Retrieved 12 February Vanity Fair. The New York Times. Retrieved 17 July Archived from the original on 28 August Retrieved 5 October Retrieved 28 July Long live atheism. Richard Dawkins Foundation. Retrieved 13 April Los Angeles Magazine. As Western society grappled with radical , Harris distinguished himself with his argument that modern religious The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Dont Hold Water had placated us into allowing delusion rather than reason to prevail. Harris upended a discussion that had long been dominated by cultural relativism and a hands-off academic intellectualism; his seething contempt for the world's faiths helped launch the 'New Atheist' movement, and together with Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, he became known as one of the 'Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2 March It is no exaggeration to describe the movement popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism — an atheist fundamentalism. Free Will. The . Four Elephants Press. . Black Swan. Atlantic Books. BBC News. Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Archived from the original on 22 January The Caged Virgin.