Posted on 04/21/2008 7:23:01 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
In Ben Stein's new film "Expelled," there is a great scene where Richard Dawkins is going on about how evolution explains everything. This is part of Dawkins' grand claim, which echoes through several of his books, that evolution by itself has refuted the argument from design. The argument from design hold that the design of the universe and of life are most likely the product of an intelligent designer. Dawkins thinks that Darwin has disproven this argument.
So Stein puts to Dawkins a simple question, "How did life begin?" One would think that this is a question that could be easily answered. Dawkins, however, frankly admits that he has no idea. One might expect Dawkins to invoke evolution as the all-purpose explanation. Evolution, however, only explains transitions from one life form to another. Evolution has no explanation for how life got started in the first place. Darwin was very clear about this.
In order for evolution to take place, there had to be a living cell. The difficulty for atheists is that even this original cell is a work of labyrinthine complexity. Franklin Harold writes in The Way of the Cell that even the simplest cells are more ingeniously complicated than man's most elaborate inventions: the factory system or the computer. Moreover, Harold writes that the various components of the cell do not function like random widgets; rather, they work purposefully together, as if cooperating in a planned organized venture. Dawkins himself has described the cell as the kind of supercomputer, noting that it functions through an information system that resembles the software code.
Is it possible that living cells somehow assembled themselves from nonliving things by chance? The probabilities here are so infinitesimal that they approach zero. Moreover, the earth has been around for some 4.5 billion years and the first traces of life have already been found at some 3.5 billion years ago. This is just what we have discovered: it's quite possible that life existed on earth even earlier. What this means is that, within the scope of evolutionary time, life appeared on earth very quickly after the earth itself was formed. Is it reasonable to posit that a chance combination of atoms and molecules, under those conditions, somehow generated a living thing? Could the random collision of molecules somehow produce a computer?
It is ridiculously implausible to think so. And the absurdity was recognized more than a decade ago by Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix. Yet Crick is a committed atheist. Unwilling to consider the possibility of divine or supernatural creation, Crick suggested that maybe aliens brought life to earth from another planet. And this is precisely the suggestion that Richard Dawkins makes in his response to Ben Stein. Perhaps, he notes, life was delivered to our planet by highly-evolved aliens. Let's call this the "ET" explanation.
Stein brilliantly responds that he had no idea Richard Dawkins believes in intelligent design! And indeed Dawkins does seem to be saying that alien intelligence is responsible for life arriving on earth. What are we to make of this? Basically Dawkins is surrendering on the claim that evolution can account for the origins of life. It can't. The issue now is simply whether a natural intelligence (ET) or a supernatural intelligence (God) created life. Dawkins can't bear the supernatural explanation and so he opts for ET. But doesn't it take as much, or more, faith to believe in extraterrestrial biology majors depositing life on earth than it does to believe in a transcendent creator?
How do those disciplines test for intelligent design by a diety in their research?
Whether the designer is a diety seems to be an obsession of the detractors of intelligent design not its proponents. If the SETI Project were to detect a pattern of signals which could have only been transmitted by an intelligent agent, what difference would it make if the identity of the sender couldn’t be, at the same time, determined?
Why does Stein present the theories of life being brought here from offworld as being from the established scientific community, rather than as a legitimate part of ID?
ResponseAbility said:
In this physical life, all we are commanded to do is love the Lord and love thy neighbor as thyself. If we can pass this simple test, maybe God has much more in store for us. It seems He just wants us to focus on this simple task now, which some of us just can’t handle.
AMEN!!!
***9 That is what the Scriptures mean when they say,
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared
for those who love him.”****
1 Corinthians 2
Paul’s Message of Wisdom
1 When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan.
2 For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified.
3 I came to you in weakness—timid and trembling.
4 And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit.
5 I did this so you would trust not in human wisdom but in the power of God.
6 Yet when I am among mature believers, I do speak with words of wisdom, but not the kind of wisdom that belongs to this world or to the rulers of this world, who are soon forgotten.
7 No, the wisdom we speak of is the mystery of God—his plan that was previously hidden, even though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began.
8 But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord.
***9 That is what the Scriptures mean when they say,
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared
for those who love him.”****
10 But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets.
11 No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit.
12 And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.
13 When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths.
14 But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.
15 Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things, but they themselves cannot be evaluated by others.
16 For,
“Who can know the Lord’s thoughts?
Who knows enough to teach him?”
But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.
Sorry, I really don’t understand the question.
No, I am saying you are.
You say that the designer being a diety is an exclusive obsession of the detractors of ID, and does not affect it’s proponents. If that’s the case, why doesn’t the film present the theories of life being brought here from offworld as examples of Intelligent Design? The only people in the film who seem to present those theories as a possible explaination are presented as members of the established scientific community that trying to quash any discussion of ID. No one in the film who is presented as a proponent of ID suggests any possible identity for the designer other than God.
[Crush T Velour] Actually, it is worse than that. Evolutionary Biology states that ALL life on Earth evolved from a single ancestor. This is argued for very compelling reasons. Yet, even though Earth is self-evidently hospitable to Life, and even though trillions of wet, protein-filled bags of lifeforms offer more environments for unique Life to originally occur, it has only happened once in 3.5 billion years (roughly one quarter the age of the Universe). Moving Life's origin to another planet does not solve the problem of its incidence here.
[joseph20] According to today’s best estimates, the universe is about 13.73 billion years old and the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old. You don’t think an extra 9.19 billion years, in which life could have developed elsewhere in the universe, is significant?
Joseph20,
Earth is self-evidently hospitable to Life. There are long-thriving life-cycles from the stratosphere to miles below the ground to within volcanos at the bottom of the ocean forever beyond the reach of sunlight and filling all the space between. And, consequently, for the last 3.5 billion years Earth has been covered by mobile and immobile bags of water-filled protein materials (ie. life-forms and their cells) in billions of combinations and environments.
I'm curious what conditions you imagine elsewhere that were more likely to have achieved results that have not been duplicated on Earth for 4.5 billion years. We've been conducting a rigorous 3.5 billion year experiment here, failing to duplicate something that began thriving on this planet as soon as it could survive here at all and failing to originate Life from unliving elements by chance or deliberately.
Once in 3.5 billion years under incredibly ideal circumstances. If I were to come up with a fasifiable definition of a miracle, that would be a good one.
Why does Richard Dawkins apparently acknowledge that life could have been designed, just not designed by God? It seems to me that whether something is designed is a scientific question and whether the designer is God is a theological question.
But you're still certain that only the detractors of ID think the designer can only be God?
One other thing....
Since life on Earth is based on the element carbon and carbon is thought to only be naturally formed within stars, the hypothetically “seeded” life form could only have originally occured after star supernova’ed and reformed into a star system with a hospitable planet. Then it had to travel to Earth. That surely cuts a nasty chunk out of the remaining 9.5 billion years.
Not at all, I only observed that it is the detractors of ID who seem obsessed with whether or not the designer is God. a question which is theological in nature not scientific.
I suggest you try advancing the theory of life having been brought here from offworld on a crevo thread and see how it works out.
Dawkins is not an atheist; he is agnostic. He needs our prayers.
Have you seen the film?
Have I mischaracterized the content?
Answer the question, then I’ll answer you.
Excellent post.
Will it change your answer?
No. But do you have an aversion to answering simple yes/no questions? If your answer is "Yes" to the preceding, then I understand. If your answer is "No" to the preceding question, then you are either easily confused or you are disingenuous.
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