Brief Rebuttal to Dawkins, page 2

Originally posted by rom12345
I can understands Dawkin's desire to debunk religion as false and dangerous confabulations, but not his need to rule out the possibility of God.
He seems to be of the position, that because it is possible there is no God, therefore God does not exist.
This I find arrogant and inherently closed minded. To prove or disprove the existence of God, one would need to know the properties of God, this is where both religious folk, and the likes of Dawkins are very presumptuous.
edit on 9-2-2012 by rom12345 because: (no reason given)

I don't think it is a need. I think it is a conclusion based on critical thinking. For example, I also "rule out" the existence of fairies, gnomes and unicorns. The reason for this is because those are made up and have no evidence. Of course when someone can prove the existence of them, I will change my opinion. But until then, I think discussing about the existence of them is useless. Or in other words, I rule them out.

As far as I know, Dawkins is not rejecting the existence of god in general, but he is rejecting the existance of any god that is claimed to exists by believers. So the person rejecting the gods does not have to determine the properties of god before rejecting such claims, as these properties are supplied by the believers themselves. It is simply the rejection of the claim that a god with such and such properties exist.

I don't think this position is arrogant or closed minded, but rather its healthy to rule out the existence of made up things without evidence. Note that this can become matter semantics. Of course you can never rule the existence of anything out with 100% certainty, but I don't believe Dawkins is doing this (I don't know the man well enough to know his exact position on this, but I think its along the lines of "almost completely certain"). So you can rule out things beyond any reasonable doubt.

And the last point it will make, is that everybody is rejecting the existence of god(s). It is just that some people (or most people) make an exception for 1 or more gods. Do you think that these people are arrogant for ruling out the existence of all those other gods? In this case the rejection is actually stronger that that of the average atheist. A theist will more likely tell you that they rule out the existence of other gods with 100% certainty, as not doing so can sometimes be seen as blasphemy with the result in eternal damnation (according to their believe).