I am vexed. Why? I have recently finished reading “The God Delusion”, the latest effort from Richard Dawkins. And it's a good book – perhaps a bit simplistic in its arguments, it covers too much ground in too little space and is written with Dawkins's characteristic certainty. This is not a bad thing, and given the basis of his argument, almost certainly justifiable, but nevertheless we all know how people respond to what they see as a brutal treatment of their beliefs.

But what has vexed me is the arguments against, not just the book but atheism. Even the brightest minds in the religious arena (and I'm sure no one will dispute there are some superb intelligence who whole-heartedly belief in some form of Abrahamic God) seem to either make arguments in which subtle holes abound, or to fall back to the 'God is outside science' argument.

Prospect Magazine's review is a good example. It makes many elementary mistakes: confusing ideology with a lack of belief in God, the old Stalin and Hitler argument. On the same basis we could [incorrectly] argue the only nation to use atomic weapons was a Christian one and therefore this means Christianity is evil. He calls Dawkins dogmatic, despite that by definition any scientific argument can be traced back to first principles and repeated; unlike dogma, which relies on immovable points of reference. (It's interesting that this lack of certainties and openness to questioning is also derided by many attackers of rationalism.) But worst of all, near the start of the interview it is nicely demonstrated that the reviewer has a lax attitude to rational thought:

This persistence is what any scientific attack on religion must explain—and this one doesn't. Dawkins mentions lots of modern atheist scientists who have tried to explain the puzzle: Robert Hinde, Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, DS Wilson, Daniel Dennett, all of them worth reading. But he cannot accept the obvious conclusion to draw from their works, which is that thoroughgoing atheism is unnatural and will never be popular.

Firstly, many efforts have been made and continue to be made to explain this. Memetics explains it very nicely, however we lack evidence to state this cause with certainly. And yet from this he jumps to an unreasonable conclusion. On the basis on this lazy reasoning we could have assumed around 1800 that since slavery was universal (and the Bible was rather in favour of it) that slavery will always be so. Yet there are few in western civilisation who would argue for such now.

The second piece that has vexed me somewhat is Dennis Prager vs. Sam Harris. Sam Harris is an atheist with an open mind on spirituality – although I'd argue that most atheists are open to such, but seek to explain such things rather than merely marvel at them.

Prager places a lot of weight on Francis Collins's belief in God, while blaming the data showing that as scientific knowledge rises belief in God decreases on a lack of wisdom. This peculiar redefinition of wisdom – that it draws from faith rather than from a search for knowledge – is nothing but semantics and really proves nothing more than his ability to say a minimal amount in the maximum possible space. Further he somehow leaps from noting that western society has grown out of a Judeo-Christain tradition to an assertion that belief in a Judeo-Christian God is essential for the existence of humanity. This is almost on par with his claim that comparing belief-in-Zeus to belief-in-Yahweh is unworthy of a serious atheist. Honestly, if this level of poor reasoning is the best the religious establishment can offer it becomes even more of a wonder that people fall for it.

He ends with what he appears to believe to be a truism:

And with that goal in mind, I will end with my re-wording of a superb summary of the argument for belief in God that was made by Rabbi Milton Steinberg (1903–1950), a rationalist (and non-Orthodox) rabbi: “The believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else.”

This is just as lax. The believer in God has also to account for the existence of God, and hence everything else. And yet they spend their time dodging the question. I leave it to the reader to decide just what this evasion reveals.