The Human Question

I listened to the unedited video of Dawkins' interview of McGrath for the former's BBC TV series titled "The Root of all Evil" or something like that.  They were most courteous to each other, and very careful in what they said.  They DID ask good questions as well as come up with interesting answers.  I really like McGrath, although I think that he sometimes kind of beats around the bush ... perhaps because the more direct, and more helpful answer hasn't come to his mind yet and he's buying time.  But in any case, he makes many excellent points, and is not to be matched for thoughtfulness. One answer that he gave was on target as far as it went but I think a bit incomplete.  Dawkins asked (and I paraphrase), if a whole village with the exception of one child was killed by tsunami or the like, would you thank God for saving the child?  McGrath said yes, thereby avoiding the move of resolving the problem of evil by settling for the God of the deists.  ...

To the proposal of eternal life with the loving Father the Freudian atheist objects with the ad hominem sounding retort that it is to wish to return to infantile bliss. To that objection, one might reply: surely this is a scientifically testable thesis, so how would you test it? I have an idea: look for someone who surely did not experience infantile bliss yet does wish to experience eternal life in union with the loving Father. If the Freudian atheist is correct, then no such person exists, for the only plausible cause of such a wish is the memory of having experienced something like it in the past. Has this experiment been conducted? No? If not, then why does the Freudian atheist pontificate so confidently? What would happen if we found an individual who most definitely did not experience anything like infantile bliss yet desires eternal happiness. Would the Freudian, ala Popper, simply admit that their (as in "her" or "his") claim was false? No, the...

Amazing how Atkins talks dismissively to McGrath about the latter's belief in God as wish fulfillment, and then makes a colossal faith-like act in the ability of science to know all that is. Amazing too how Atkins denies that the universe has a meaning or purpose, and then displays at every point in the discussion, a craving for unbounded knowledge of what is. That atheist is so purpose driven . Then again, Atkins also distinguishes between cosmic purpose (which he denies) and individual desires (which I think he would not deny having), such as the desire to know. But acknowledging the desire to know...(thanking Giussani for help in phrasing this)... reality in all of its factors is not really different from admitting that one has a purpose in life. A purpose that one has not chosen, and in that sense, a natural purpose. Humans see human purposes from the inside. We can suppose that only humans have natural goals, in which case on is engaging in exceptionalism--an ironic...