But we must take heed in how we walk. Here is just one verse for you and i.

“This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”
Galatians 5:16

“But, it may be that sometimes some people might be having more anti-christ-like thoughts and/or actions”.

i agree mehere and we must look to scriptures to fulfil the spirit, so that as we walk, we walk for the Glory of God and His spirit that is in us.

Mehere go, go and walk in the spirit and away from the anti-christ

He does, however, agree with Dawkins on many points. From the article:

I also share Dawkins’ concern about other aspects of religions, even after they are understood as complex group-level adaptations. Religions can be ruthless in the way that they enforce conformity within groups. Most alarming for a scientist, religions can be wanton about distorting facts about the real world on their way toward motivating behaviors that are adaptive in the real world.

I agree with Dawkins that religions are fair game for criticism in a pluralistic society and that the stigma associated with atheism needs to be removed.

and my favorite:

American democracy can be regarded as a cultural super-super-organism. The founding fathers realized that religions work well for their own members but become part of the problem at a larger social scale. That is why they worked so hard to accomplish the separation of church and state, along with other checks and balances to prevent some members of the super-super-organism from benefiting at the expense of others. In this context I share Dawkins’ concern that some religions are seeking to end the separation of church and state in America.

You two are discussing one of my favorite topics, so I hope you don’t mind if I add my thoughts.

I just finished Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” last night and it was a fantastic read. It actually changed my Theology. Dr. Dawkins is clearly a brilliant man, but that doesn’t make him infallible. First, he successfully refutes the classical arguments for God’s existence, including the one you two are debating, but he did so in one of its most primitive forms.

As Outsider correctly points out, the form of the Cosmological Argument in Dawkins’ book, the Aquinas version, relies on the assumption of causality. And since causality is likely an attribute of the universe, it has no meaning ‘before’ the existence of the universe. Philosophers long before Dr. Dawkins have pointed this out. Philosophers have also refined the argument to avoid the problem of causality. Read this link for a full description of contingency version of the argument. Dawkins fails to even address this more modern version of the argument.

The second mistake Dr. Dawkins makes is that he extrapolates without sufficient justification from his extensive knowledge of evolution. He assumes that since complexity in biology comes about via slow changes from simpler things, the same must be true for physics as well. But biological evolution is a very specific physical process. Like all spontaneous complexity, it comes about in an open system (thermodynamically speaking) through which energy flows. The universe, by definition is a closed system and hence, by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, complexity decreases globally (though it can increase locally, as has been seen on the surface of the earth).

Furthermore, physics exhibits both spontaneous complexity, evolution, and spontaneous simplification, a supernova, for example. We cannot generalize from one example of spontaneous complexity to a general principle of spontaneous complexity, nor can we suppose the opposite. In other words, we cannot know whether the ultimate cause (in the contingency sense) is simpler than the universe or more complex. It is still an open question.

In short, the Cosmological Argument is still valid, but it only proves the existence of a metaphysically necessary being. We must remain agnostic about the nature of that being. It could be simple, such as a singularity, or it could be complex, such as an intelligent creator. It could even be something in between the two.

In other words, you are assuming a dimesion of time that does not exist to a creator being. (Or, more accurately, does not need to exist.) It’s not illogical to assume that the being that created everything is outside of the limits of his creation.

That being said, it is not “intellectually lazy” to say that the reasoning involved suffices. (BTW, I was joking about the circular reasoning. It’s not; it’s a different form of reasoning in that it involves nontemporal elements.) I, stating my assumptions, prove that those assumptions are self-contained and non-conflicting. In other words, given the existance of a God being, it makes sense that He can exist. Your argument is that he cannot exist without a creator, which just puts the problem up a level, leading to Gods ad absurdium. My argument is that the logic you use is flawed, and you’re ‘intellectual laziness’ is apparent in the fact that you avoid thinking outside of our frame of reference.

The logic is there. The assumption that God exists does not automatically invalidate itself, as much as you would like it to. Now, whether or not that assumption is valid is another point entirely. But, again, that’s not what you started this by saying. You stated that the existance of God implies a problem in that God needs to be created, and I just showed you that it does not.