Atheism

I am still enjoying a lot of TED talks and discussing them with friends. An interesting talk is the talk of Richard Dawkins on militant atheism. I am a christian myself, but I think it is important to keep the connection with the world around and have some knowledge of alternate viewpoints. What surprises me is that I expected to feel much more of an attack to my faith, but this is not the case. Even if I would have experienced that, than the last sentence of his talk ("Let's stop being so *** respectful") would have wiped this away because it communicates in hatred, at least in my opinion.

His arguments are not convincing to me because the most:

• Attack the church, not personal faith in a personal God
• He does not answer the real fundamental questions; If things came into existence through evolution, how did the process of evolution come into existence and why?
• He violates scientific rules, for example when he states that 5,5 % of biology scientists and 7,5 % of physical scientists believe in a God and that he would be surprised if this percentage differed in other fields such as history or philosophy. I think this is a generalisation you cannot make this simple.
• States opinion instead of fact, for example:
  "The scientific world view is more exciting, poetic, more filled with shere wonder than anything in the poverty stricken arsenals of religious imagination"
  In my opinion the beauty in science states the grandeur of God because science only tries to explain what God has created. Science only worked with the material given by God, it never created by itself.

Richard specifies why he believes in atheism and not in:

• Agnosticism, who say they do not know whether there is a God or not. Richard says atheism is better because as an agnostic you would have to prove there is no God. He says as an atheist you state that it is the problem of the creationist to prove there is a God.
• Humanism, because it is not about humans, we are just one species among thousands
• Naturalist, because it is to vague and confusing
• Non-theist would maybe be better, because it is not a taboo, but the taboo mabye better because it has more impact if people can be reached with it.

Further I think his talk mostly communicates his faith in science. I call it faith, as faith is conviction or believe that surpasses what is objective measurable. We christians have faith in a God that is not objectively measurable. I think Richard has so much expectations of and confidence in science that it much more than is objectively justifiable. So I would say science is his faith.