The Obama/Romney debate that actually means something

The 3^rd US presidential debate takes place tonight.  It is intended to focus on foreign policy, therefore it is the only presidential debate of actual significance. This is not because economic policy is unimportant, but because the US president does not and cannot determine US economic policy. That is done by the US Congress over which the president has no control.   

Article 2 of the US Constitution vests the president with executive powers (the power to take certain actions), but not legislative powers (the power to make laws). The president’s executive powers include the power to enter into foreign treaties, to appoint foreign ambassadors and to act as Commander-in-Chief of the US armed forces.

The fiery debates about economic policy cast a lot of heat, but no light, on what sort of presidency each candidate can actually offer. Tonight’s debate is therefore the most meaningful indicator the world will get as to whom should command the world’s biggest military for the next four years.

Dawkins' Delusion

I recently purchased a copy of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. I had been considering reading it for some time.  The blurb on the cover by Ian McEwan: “A very important book, especially in these times… a magnificent book, lucid and wise, truly magisterial” certainly heightened my enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, the book was a magnificent disappointment. Though it is entertaining, it is certainly not important, Ian McEwan's views notwithstanding.

The essence of Dawkins’ book is this: old, religious concepts of God are wrong.  Thank you, Richard, for taking 420 pages to point that out.

Dawkins defines the “God Hypothesis” as follows: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. He then argues that “God, in the sense defined, is a delusion” and spends the rest of his book ridiculing the ridiculous.

The problem with defining God in such specific and limiting terms upfront is that what masquerades as an argument against theism is not an argument against theism at all, but merely some forms of theism, and already discredited ones at that.

Whether it is delusional to conceive of God as a responsive form of systemic consciousness is not something that Dawkins appears to want to consider. He argues, evasively, that to even begin to reconceptualise God is to commit intellectual heresy, because God has historically come to mean a certain thing and we should not permit the term to drift towards any newer meaning.

This is disappointing coming from an avowed evolutionist.

Why does he run from truly considering a more evolved concept of God, perhaps by pondering, even briefly, why Steven Hawkins ends his “Brief History of Time” with the words “For then we shall truly know the mind of God”?

Dawkins, by contrast, ends his book with an appendix entitled “A partial list of friendly addresses, for individuals needing support in escaping from religion.”

His book is not a genuine work of philosophy, but a political piece penned by an atheist activist.  He seeks to discredit traditional religion in the hope that he might undermine theism itself. Dawkins knows this is a non-sequitur, but he seems to have been incapable of resisting a devilishly easy chance to commit it.

Instead of expending his energy rebutting religion, Dawkins would better serve the cause of philosophy if he attempted a rebuttal of newer formulations of our oldest beliefs, such as are summarised in the Simunye Hypothesis, and left the “God Hypothesis” to the dark ages, where it probably best belongs.