I'm taking the man at his word, not out of context, UpAllNight. He says that simple things cannot give rise to things that are more complex than themselves. Actually, I thought this was a rather striking statement, coming from a NeoDarwinist of Dawkins' credentials.
As to whether or not abiogenesis is "a theory," I'll defer to Harold Morowitz for the answer to that question (he argues that life is a spontaneous development arising from the evolution of the periodic table of the elements [initial conditions] and the physico-chemical laws).
Yet as a friend of mine has recently written, "Chemical abiogenesis cannot produce algorithmic and genetic complexity from morphological complexity in the same way as emergent phenomena cannot produce laws of nature." Which is another way of stating Kahre's Law of Diminishing Information (2002): "Physical systems cannot produce more information at their output than what was already present at their input."
As far as this Christian is concerned, I do not believe that God Himself was "caused" by some prior agent. God -- by definition, that goes back to the ancient Greeks and perhaps before -- is the uncaused First Cause and Prime Mover. He is not in space and not in time; and therefore is unavailable for lab tests. :^) Only a fool like Dawkins would ask: "Who (or what) created God?" If God has a cause, the cause must be Himself (i.e., He is sui-generis).
But Christians don't worry about such things; evidently, only atheists do.
Than you for writing UpAllNight!
But Christians don't worry about such things; evidently, only atheists do.
Atheists never seem to concern themselves with the cause of physical causation. They take geometry (space/time) as a "given." I find that amusing...
What you said!