SISTER EVA'S SPEECH FOR THE PROSECUTION
by Hamlet



Dawkins clutched his bruised face reeling from the stinging slap he had just
received from Sister Marissa the Court Bailiff who had grabbed him hard by the
neck and slapped him across the face 'He had just shouted out to the Mother
Superior that 'This court is a complete farce! It shows the stupidity of all
religious beliefs! Religion is both a source of conflict and a justification
for belief without evidence. Religious faith""belief that is not based on
evidence""is one of the world's great evils and this is demonstrated by this
ridiculous court! Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the
need to think and evaluate evidence! Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps
because of, the lack of evidence!I refuse to answer any questions by a court
that has no jurisdiction based on a fascist country Norseland in the Pacific
Ocean thousands of miles away. I was taken here by force while I was lecturing
to my students at Oxford without any justification at all!

;RELEASE ME NOW YOU EVIL HARIDANS!!

Sister Marissa shouted in his face.

'Don't you dare address the court like you worm brained fake!If you continue
to speak like that I will put you into strapado.That means I will first tie
your hands behind your back and you will be suspended in the air by means of a
rope attached to your wrists, which most likely will dislocate both your arms.
I may add weights to your body to intensify the effect and increase the pain.'

BEHAVE YOURSELF OR YOU WILL BE IN CONTEMPT OF COURT!!

The Motherr Superior Athena then addressed the court

'Ladies and Gentlemen Good mornig Chief Prosecutor Senor Sister Professor Very
Senior Sister Eva Harvested will now present the case for the Prosecution!

Sister Eva stood before the court looking so muscular dressed from head to toe
in Her Nun's habit of black shiny latex

'Good morning Ladies and gentleman.I am Sister Eva Professor of Apolegetics at
the University of Kristianskobing in Norseland.I am privileged to be able to
prosecute Dawkins who is before this Court on the very serious charge of
blasphemy.'

What is the, meaning of Apologetics? It certainly does not mean to apologise
for our Faith In fact it comes from the Greek word 'apologia' which means to
defend as in a Court of Law just like this one the Catechising Court. The
Bible commands us to defend our faith against unbelievers. We are urged to be
prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope
that is in you yet do it with gentleness and respect (Peter 3 15) The Warrior
Nuns believe the best form of defence is attack and we are engaged in a War
Against Crime and Terror from which We will emerge victorious. We are treating
Dawkins with gentleness in allowing him into the Convent and giving him three
meals a day in his cell for which he should be eternally grateful for the
concern We are showing him in not allowing him to continue in his sins.'

'The question is why are we bringing Dawkins to trial here? This because it is
an essential l part of a Holy War and Dawkins here represents everything We
are fighting against. A spiritual struggle for the soul of mankind is being
waged right now. Secularism is our enemy, the world view that allows no room
for the supernatural ,miracles ,Divine Revelation and God and is hell bent on
eliminating religion from all public life. The new atheists such as Dawkins
and my opponent Sam Harris would like to exterminate all religious belief
entirely.'

'From my frequent visits to the USA and to Europe I realise that these
societies have become post and anti Christian and hostile to religion
altogether. This contrasts with My Nation where the RLC (Royal Lutheran
Church) headed by Her Supreme Majesty the Queen Goddess is supreme and where
religious beliefs are indoctrinated into children from birth which explains
why we are the most moral Nation in the world and where crime is effectively
nonexistent.

'Yet when I look at the USA I realise that no films from Hollywood portray
Christians in a positive way. Everywhere we see Christians and all those
holding religious beliefs as portrayed as being narrow minded and bigoted
hypocrites'.I have here I a cartoon by the American cartoonist Chambers that
depicts religious people as ridiculous and dangerous curiosities who must not
be allowed to have any influence in our society at all. We live in a culture
exemplified by the prisoner Dawkins here.'

'When I come to Western Europe I can honestly say how hard it is for people to
respond to the message of Christ. We must therefore combat the beliefs of
Dawkins Harris the new atheists in the most vigorous way possible, using force
if necessary.'.

'My aim is to totally destroy I the arguments in his book 'The God Delusion'
The main argument he puts forward against the existence of God is on pages
157-158 of his book.

One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how
the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual
design. .

. The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately
raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.

4. The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by
natural selection.

5. We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.

6. We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics,
something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

I now intend to refute this argument by of Dawkins in front of the whole
world!

T

This argument is invalid because the atheistic conclusion that "Therefore, God
almost certainly does not exist" seems to come suddenly out of the argument.
You do not need to be a philosopher to realize that that conclusion doesn't
follow at all from the six previous statements.

Indeed, if we take these six statements as premises of an argument implying
the conclusion "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist," then the
argument is patently invalid. No logical rules of inference would allow you to
draw this conclusion from the six premises.

A kinder interpretation would be to take these six statements, not as
premises, but as summary statements of six steps in Dawkins' cumulative
argument for his conclusion that God does not exist. But even on this
charitable construal, the conclusion "Therefore, God almost certainly does not
exist" does not follow from these six steps, even if we concede that each of
them is true and justified.

What follows from the six steps of Dawkins' argument? At most, all that
follows is that we should not infer God's existence on the basis of the
appearance of design in the universe. But that conclusion is quite compatible
with God's existence and even with our justifiably believing in God's
existence. Maybe we should believe in God on the basis of the cosmological
argument or the ontological argument or the moral argument. Maybe our belief
in God isn't based on arguments at all but is grounded in religious experience
or in divine revelation. Maybe God wants us to believe in Him simply by faith.
The point is that rejecting design arguments for God's existence does nothing
to prove that God does not exist or even that belief in God is unjustified.
Indeed, many Christian theologians have rejected arguments for the existence
of God without thereby committing themselves to atheism.

So Dawkins' argument for atheism is a failure even if we concede, for the sake
of argument, all its steps. But, in fact, several of these steps are plausibly
false. Take just step (3), for example. Dawkins' claim here is that one is not
justified in inferring design as the best explanation of the complex order of
the universe because then a new problem arises: who designed the designer?

This rejoinder is flawed on at least two counts. First, in order to recognize
an explanation as the best, one need not have an explanation of the
explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best
explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science.

'If archaeologists digging in the earth were to discover things looking like
arrowheads and hatchet heads and pottery shards, they would be justified in
inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and
metamorphosis, but products of some unknown group of people, even though they
had no explanation of who these people were or where they came from.
Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back
side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that it was the product
of intelligent, extra-terrestrial agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever
who these extra-terrestrial agents were or how they got there. In order to
recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't be able to explain the
explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of
explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be
destroyed. So in the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent
design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe,
one needn't be able to explain the designer.

Secondly, Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine designer of the
universe, the designer is just as complicated as the thing to be explained, so
that no explanatory advance is made. This objection raises all sorts of
questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing
explanations; for example, how simplicity is to be weighted in comparison with
other criteria like explanatory power, explanatory scope, and so forth. But
leave those questions aside. Dawkins' fundamental mistake lies in his
assumption that a divine designer is an entity comparable in complexity to the
universe.

As an unembodied mind, God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical
entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like
self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In
contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable
quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such
a mind may have complex ideas""it may be thinking, for example, of the
infinitesimal calculus"", but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity.
Dawkins has evidently confused a mind's ideas, which may, indeed, be complex,
with a mind itself, which is an incredibly simple entity. Therefore,
postulating a divine mind behind the universe most definitely does represent
an advance in simplicity, for whatever that is worth.

Other steps in Dawkins' argument are also problematic; but I think enough has
been said to show that his argument does nothing to undermine a design
inference based on the universe's complexity, not to speak of its serving as a
justification of atheism.

I will now commence my cross examination of Dawkins. Based on his book The God
delusion as follows:

1. The absurdity of atheism.

2. Why does anything exist?

3. The Cosmological argument.

4. The Design Argument

5. The Moral argument

6. The existence of suffering

7. The evidence of Christ

8. The fallacies of evolution.

The Mother Superior turned to Sam Harris THE defence counsel.

Thank you very much for that presentation Sister Eva.

Mr Harris you may make your statement for the defence but be warned!

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY!!

Any comments to norselandic@hotmail.com