Vox Day vs New Atheists

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Irrational Athiest, Vox Day's excellent refutation of the anti-religious arguments of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, et. al. My favorite section was Chapter XV "Master of Puppets or Game Designer", since that is the subject of my entire book "Darwin's Dove" and I would argue that it need not be a "completely heretical concept of theodicy" as it gives a remarkably good logical explanation for Christianity.

Vox thoroughly destroys the atheist arguments that Christianity is an evil force in the world. In many cases such as Harris' red vs. blue county data on crime, Vox shows that the atheist's own arguments prove exactly the opposite of what they intended. Vox also rigorously documents the many atheist butchers of the 20th century, a record of evil that should give some pause to the angry atheists.

Vox is also good as he points out that science has no explanation for the origin of the physical laws nor for the origin of the replicating mechanisms that started evolution. Dawkins' delusion argument dissolves into wishful thinking about his hope for a "physics crane". Dawkins' lack of logical or scientific support for his use of the word delusion or for his emotional antipathy toward religion is quite surprising given the growing evidence behind the anthropic principle.

I would have liked Vox to discuss how Gödel's proof—that no formal system can make consistent statements about things outside the system—might serve to place a formal limit on the proper domain of science. Science is silent about the metaverse.

Vox is weaker when he argues against evolution's ability to produce behaviors that can be considered moral. It seems to me that evolution produces both the emergent mathematical beauty of cognizance and altruism, as well as suffering and evil behaviors. Vox's valid point is that only a moral foundation from God can disambiguate the good and evil behaviors arising from evolution. It comes down to the definition of morality or piety, a definition that, as Vox points out, Socrates sheds little light on. Without God's definition, Hitler's eugenics can be considered moral and supported by the motivational underpinnings of evolution.

Vox was a bit weak on Occam's razor. Occam's razor is not a law of science but rather a weak heuristic for choosing the simpler of two theories that equally fit the data and have equal explanatory power, mathematical beauty etc. Dawkins has claimed that it is a more complex theory to believe in an intelligent designer than to believe only in the laws of physics. But Occam's razor doesn't apply for those of us who think—unlike Dawkins—that the explanatory power of Theism is superior. Occam's razor does not advise taking the simpler theory if the more complex one has greater explanatory power, for if it did, we might still prefer the simpler Newtonian physics over the more complex relativistic ones.