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.  ...

Shermer brings up ETI (extra terrestrial intelligence) as a defeater to theism.  That is, any purported evidence of God, says Shermer, can also be explained by positing extra terrestrials or ETIs. Such an argument actually makes theism look more rational than atheism.  For two reasons. First because in order to avoid a theistic explanation of miracles (including those that might be posited by ID theory), one may have to posit fantastic creatures for which we have no particular evidence.  Granted, an ETI would be sufficient to account for the phenomena in question.  But since there is no evidence of an ETI, isn't this more like an ad hoc appeal to hidden magic when the hypothesis of God would be simpler?  And it would leave science MORE intact than appeal to ETIs.  For one could just as easily suppose that there are water nymphs, etc. as one could suppose that there are ETIs.  In other words, science could break down once we invent finite agenc...