Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
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Posted on 12/13/2005 8:34:28 PM PST by tbird5
The renowned biologist talks about intelligent design, dishonest Christians, and why God is no better than an imaginary friend.
British biologist Richard Dawkins has made a name for himself defending evolution and fighting what he sees as religiously motivated attacks on science. Dr. Dawkins sat down with Beliefnet at the World Congress of Secular Humanism, where his keynote address focused on intelligent design.
You're concerned about the state of education, especially science education. If you were able to teach every person, what would you want people to believe?
I would want them to believe whatever evidence leads them to; I would want them to look at the evidence, judge it on its merits, not accept things because of internal revelation or faith, but purely on the basis of evidence.
Not everybody can evaluate all evidence; we can’t evaluate the evidence for quantum physics. So it does have to be a certain amount of taking things on trust. I have to take what physicists say on trust, for example, because I'm a biologist. But science [has] a system of appraisal, of peer review, so that I trust the physics community to get their act together in a way that I know from the inside. I wish people would put their trust in evidence, not in faith, revelation, tradition, or authority.
(Excerpt) Read more at beliefnet.com ...
Actually, it seems that the evidence is only accumulating as far as quantity, not quality, so to speak. You can find more and more fossils, but they are still fossils. The creation account doesn't really allow for the account to "evolve" but that doesn't invalidate the creationists belief.
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Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
See my profile for info
So why is it that people equate ignorance with believing in God? "Smart people don't believe in God." Why not? Since science can't prove or disprove the existance of God, there is no reason to state that intelligence is the determining factor. Besides, someone forgot to tell Newton that he shouldn't have believed in God. Or I guess Newton wasn't as smart as they thought? Dawkins needs to stick to Biology.
Can you say anything about the quality of evidence, other than state it hasn't changed? Do we know nothing more than what Darwin published in 1859? What Einstein tried to argue, and what you seem to be rejecting without saying so, is that creationist thinking has been "pushed" out of the weather (so to speak), but of course if you just look back a few years this would apply to so many other things that we now take for granted. You want immediate proof for a process that took eons, but one that left an extremely suggestive trail of evidence. I can't really argue with you, though, because I've seen you and RWP go at it; I'm not going to convince you of anything. I can only suggest you re-read his earlier posts.
I'm not sure what this means. We've found some remarkable new discoveries in the last twenty-five years: Confuciousornis, Ambulocetus and much of the whale ancestry, Icthyostega and several other intermediates between fish and tetrapods. These have filled in most of the evolutionary gaps that existed in 1980.
I think his evidence comes up short.
It's quite telling when a person spends so much time and effort trying to convince you that someone doesn't exist.
Two extremes: to exclude reason, to admit reason only.
Blaise Pascal
I agree with him that we should trust evidence. Is not the incredible miracle that is the universe not evidence of something? I think he's showing blind faith in the authority of the academic science establishment by throwing out that evidence.
I agree to skepticism about revelation, as many revelations will simply be mixes of a person's imaginations and emotions. But not all of them. Throughout history saints and ordinary people have had direct experimental evidence of the Divine, not invalid, in my opinion, because that evidence is subjective and not objective.
Many of the greatest scientists have been filled with awe at the Supreme Being they infer from the wondrous objects of their study.
If he's lucky, Dawkins might have 100 years of life to spout this nonsense - he'll have all of eternity to REGRET it!
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Exactly. Dawkins and others like him strive to put themselves on a level with God, in part by applying "logic", "reason" and their scientific principles. It is arrogance indeed to believe that man can understand the mind of God.
I'll have to respectfully disagree on this point.
Suppose a judge asked someone, someone with good intentions and meaning no harm, to consider some points about two different doors leading out of the courtroom, door A and door B. He's given some reports about what others have said about what's behind the doors. After reading the reports for one minute, he's forced to choose immediately.
He picks door B, and is sentenced to life in prison, with torture. If he'd picked door A, he would have been given a beautiful island with every luxury to live out his days. The man regrets his choice, apologizes, and asks humbly for the chance to choose again. He's denied a second chance. I think we might agree, that is not a fair or righteous judge.
Sentencing a well-intentioned but mistaken man to not a quadrillion years of torture, but eternity, with no reprieve if he repents, is the cruelest thing I can imagine. I have to think there is something wrong with this interpretation.
No need to reply if you're not in the mood for an early afternoon theological discussion :) , but I always think of this when ther subject of eternal damnation comes up.
Because there are no scientifically acceptable methods or devices available which would make God apparent, he does not exist, the personal experience and testimony of millions notwithstanding.
But truth is independent of knowledge and discovery. X-Rays were happily bouncing around the universe the whole time, unknown by scientists for millennia. The world has been spherical in shape even during periods of intense unpopularity. And God lives, whether there is even one believer drawing breath, He lives anyway.
Millions of people know for themselves, independent of any research or study, that He lives. A scientific explanation in no more necessary to prove that my prayers are answered than to convince me that I am alive. It is an absolute truth with no need for scientific proof, since the real proof of the fact is always individual.
With few exceptions, God reveals Himself to them who first believe. Skeptics will always want it to be the other way around, but that's not their decision to make. The principle of faith is true and real. The lack of a "faith meter" by which it could be measured and detected does not change the fundamental truth: God lives anyway.
I don't know what Hell will be like, but I know it is eternal separation from God.
And I know that Heaven is described as something so wonderful that our eyes have never seen, our ears have never heard and our minds can't imagine it.
I know that the Creator of the Universe sent his Son to pay the debt in blood to make it possible for every person to experience Heaven. The horrific nature of the crucifiction should give us some concept of how crucial it is to avoid this place of eternal punishment. I don't think Jesus died to give us a slightly better option A.
I think that each individual who does not accept the finished work of Christ on the Cross will have a glimpse of what they rejected and live with that eternal regret. In addition, people who don't accept the free gift of eternal life miss the joy, beauty and peace of knowing God in this life.
The man is not getting advice from the judge or the lawyer, he's getting it from the reports (the Holy Bible, the findings of science, the books of other religions). Jesus is not walking the earth today, and God the Father is not incarnate, either.
You may interpert the reports as advocating door A. Another good man and sincere seeker of truth (like Richard Dawkins) may choose door B. After one hundred years of consideration, he may make the wrong choice. One hundred years to decide for eternity is absurdly more capricious than one minute to decide for the rest a human lifetime. I can't see how God could be infinitely more cruel than the judge in the analogy.
I don't understand why God would keep a man alive eternally, just for the purpose of suffering. Wouldn't death be enough, or death after a few trillion millenia? For a crime commited after a mere hundred years, and committed not maliciously but out of ignorance or misunderstanding? Why such cruelty?
What's really happening is that he has chosen to believe in evolution so he will have an excuse not to believe in God. Any honest evolutionist, no matter how strongly they believe in the theory, will say that belief in evolution does not supplant belief in God.
The problem with Dawkins is that he thinks he is God. He will find out he is not.
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