Anthology Essay Plan Flashcards
Introduction
Mcgrath aims to show that Dawkins argument for secularisation is weak and fallacious and that he has a fundamental misunderstanding and misrepresentation of religion, whilst it could be argued it has strength at undermining his views by pointining out Dawkins logical inconsistencies, it could also be argued he fails to truly falsify his fundamental argument that faith is a delusion.
Paragraph 1: Faith is infantile
-Dawkins suggests faith is an infantile delusion comparible to belief in the tooth fairy, argues those with critical thinking skills will realise its untrue
+Does make a flawed analogy and shows how Dawkins ridicules the other sides argument to make it look weaker undermining his argument as he uses unfair tactics and shows he cannot prove faith is infantile as he overlooks the reasons why adults have faith-e.g the existence of design, weakness of evolutionary arguments etc
+Valid in saying secularisation would also lead to an indoctrination of children-cannot show we shouldn’t teach any religion to children
-Doesnt address the fundamental reasons why Dawkins criticises faith for being a delusion-because he sees belief in the existence of a God etc as contrary to evolutionary science and emperical evidence, doesn’t really weaken his fundamental argument and cannot entirely show faith is not a delusion.
Paragraph 2: Arguments for the existence of God fail
-Criticises Aquinas cosmological arguments from causation thought to show faith in a God is rational and based on emperical observation as they are unable to emperically prove any God
-Additionally they lead to an infinite regress and we have to ask who made God so are themselves not absolute explanations and make the existence of God ‘improbable’
-Argues Dawkins is misunderstanding the nature of the arguments which is to show belief in a God is likely as well as consistent with observation of design, and causation in the universe, it shows belief in God is rational, not to emperically show there is undoubtedly a God
-A Belief being unable to be proven doesn’t mean it is invalid, some scientific beliefs are not emperically proven but are still valid, e.g gravity still existed before it was able to be emperically proven-Strong argument as it shows Dawkins cannot disprove the existence of a God and is weak at undermining design arguments
C: Does not attack the idea of an infinite regress so cannot entirely weaken his argument-needs to mention Kalam cosmological argument to undermine it as its not true to say they always cause an infinite regress
Paragraph 3: Limitation of McGrath-doesn’t undermine his fundamental argument the existence of a God is disproven by findings from evolutionary biology which show we were not created by a purpose by a creator but evolved-to dawkins this proves faith in God is a delusion held without evidence
-he could refer to the fact that evolution isn’t an adequate explanation that disproves the existence of a God, a God or first cause is still required to explain how the universe with the capacity for evolution came to be (i.e what caused the big bang) and what caused the first cell to evolve- he could show God is the best explanation and its not a delusion to believe in God to truly undermine the argument but because he doesn’t he cant really undermine dawkins argument
Conclusion:
McGrath shows inconsistencies and the weaknesses of Dawkins argument but he does not suceed in undermining Dawkins fundamental argument that belief in God is a delusion making it weak.
