Posted: Jul 16, 2010 1:38 am
From reading The God Delusion, that's not really how I take it. True, the name is a retort to Fred Hoyle's fallacy. But the so-called Ultimate 747 Gambit is a central part of the book in supporting that the points that god - as usually imagined - is 1) unlikely to the point of impossibility, and 2) unnecessary in any case re the "design" issue for which christians credit their god.
And therefore, we (Dawkins and other atheists) are justified in suggesting that followers of Abrahamic religions drop their delusion ...
In my opinion, the 747 summary is one of the worst extracts of Dawkins' writing. He either says too much, or not nearly enough -- I think not enough. I read and re-read the whole chapter to get a better comprehension of the argument but could not figure out a competent way to summarize it myself. And I'm not a person who is usually shy about putting words in other person's mouths
