Posted on 12/18/2006 8:12:55 AM PST by SJackson
Reviewers have not been kind to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, professor of something called "the public understanding of science" at Oxford. Critics have found it to be the atheist's mirror image of Ann Coulter's Godless: The Church of Liberalism - long on in-your-face rhetoric and offensively dismissive of all those holding an opposing view.
Princeton University philosopher Thomas Nagel found Dawkins's "attempts at philosophy, along with a later chapter on religion and ethics, particularly weak." Prof. Terry Eagleton began his London Review of Books critique: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the British Book of Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology."
Dawkins's "central argument" is that because every complex system must be created by an even more complex system, an intelligent designer would have had to be created by an even greater super-intellect.
New York Times reviewer Jim Holt described this argument as the equivalent of the child's question, "Mommy, who created God?"
Nagel provides the grounds for rejecting this supposed proof. People do not mean by God "a complex physical inhabitant of the natural world" but rather a Being outside the physical world - the "purpose or intention of a mind without a body, capable nevertheless of creating and forming the entire physical world."
He points out further that the same kind of problem Dawkins poses to the theory of design plagues evolutionary theory, of which Dawkins is the preeminent contemporary popularizer. Evolution depends on the existence of pre-existing genetic material - DNA - of incredible complexity, the existence of which cannot be explained by evolutionary theory.
So who created DNA? Dawkins's response to this problem, writes Nagel, is "pure hand-waving" - speculation about billions of alternative universes and the like.
As a charter member of the Church of Darwin, Dawkins not only subscribes to evolutionary theory as the explanation for the morphology of living creatures, but to the sociobiologists' claim that evolution explains all human behavior. For sociobiologists, human development, like that of all other species, is the result of a ruthless struggle for existence. Genes seek to reproduce themselves and compete with one another in this regard. In the words of the best-known sociobiologist, Harvard's E.O. Wilson, "An organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA."
THAT PICTURE of human existence, argues the late Australian philosopher of science David Stove in Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution, constitutes a massive slander against the human race, as well as a distortion of reality.
The Darwinian account, for instance, flounders on widespread altruistic impulses that have always characterized humans in all places and times. Nor can it explain why some men act as heroes even though by doing so they risk their own lives and therefore their capacity to reproduce, or why societies should idealize altruism and heroism. How, from an evolutionary perspective, could such traits have developed or survived?
The traditional Darwinian answer is that altruism is but an illusion, or a veneer of civilization imposed upon our real natures. That answer fails to explain how that veneer could have come about in the first place. How could the first appeal to higher moral values have ever found an author or an audience? David Stove offers perhaps the most compelling reason for rejecting the views of those who deny the very existence of human altruism: "I am not a lunatic."
IN 1964, biologist W.D. Hamilton first expounded a theory explaining how much of what appears to us as altruism is merely genes' clever way of assuring the propagation of their type via relatives sharing that gene pool. The preeminent defender of Darwin - Dawkins - popularized this theory in The Selfish Gene.
Among the predictions Hamilton made is: "We expect to find that no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single person, but that everyone will sacrifice it for more than two brothers [or offspring], or four half-brothers, or eight first cousins," because those choices result in a greater dissemination of a particular gene pool.
To which Stove responds: "Was an expectation more obviously false than this one ever held (let alone published) by any human being?" Throughout history, men have sacrificed themselves for those bearing no relationship to them, just as others have refused to do so for more than two brothers. Here is a supposedly scientific theory bearing no relationship to any empirical reality ever observed. Stove offers further commonsense objections: Parents act more altruistically toward their offspring than siblings toward one another, even though in each pair there is an overlap of half the genetic material. If Hamilton's theory were true, we should expect to find incest widespread. In fact, it is taboo. Finally, the theory is predicated on the dubious proposition that animals, or their genes, can tell a sibling from a cousin, and a cousin from other members of the same species.
SOCIOBIOLOGY, Stove demonstrates, is a religion and genes are its gods. In traditional religion, humans exist for the greater glory of God; in sociobiology, humans and all other living things exist for the benefit of their genes. "We are... robot-vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes," writes Dawkins. Like God, Dawkins's genes are purposeful agents, far smarter than man.
He describes how a certain cuckoo parasitically lays its eggs in the nest of the reed warbler, where the cuckoo young get more food by virtue of their wider mouths and brighter crests, as a process in which the cuckoo genes have tricked the reed warbler. Thus, for Dawkins, genes are capable of conceiving a strategy no man could have thought of and of putting into motion the complicated engineering necessary to execute that strategy.
Writing in 1979, Prof. R.D. Alexander made the bald assertion: "We are programmed to use all our effort, and in fact to use our lives, in production." And yet it is obvious that most of what we do has nothing to do with reproduction, and never more so than at the present, when large parts of the civilized world are becoming rapidly depopulated. Confronted with these obvious facts about human nature and behavior, sociobiologists respond by ascribing them to "errors of heredity."
As Stove tartly observes: "Because their theory of man is badly wrong, they say that man is badly wrong; that he incorporates many and grievous biological errors." But the one thing a scientific theory may never do, Stove observes, is "reprehend the facts."
It may observe them, or predict new facts to be discovered, but not criticize those before it. The only question that remains is: How could so many intelligent men say so many patently silly things? For Dawkins, the answer would no doubt be one of those evolutionary "misfires," such as that to which he attributes religious belief.
Oh my science!
Obviously. But you've submitted that particular quote from that particular scientist "says it best", so I considered it in that context.
Obviously. But you've submitted that particular quote from that particular scientist "says it best", so I considered it in that context.
"Have the flies changed to birds?"
The theory of evolution does not state that flies changed into birds. A certain amount of logic is needed to understand science.
No one has ever seen an atom or molecule. Do you believe they don't exist?
Then what HAVE the flies changed into?
I don't think so Liberal. The point here is to discuss the article or in this case to give Mr Dawkins a little comeuppance.
I am SEPERATING evolution and abiogenesis. This all started when a previous poster combined the two.
I understand that, you accept the first replicator as axiomatic. It's a faith thing.
Let me say once more EVOLUTION DOES NOT DEPEND ON ABIOGENESIS. That is my point.
Evolution depends on replicators. No heritability, no mutations, no evolution. Period. So to say that abiogenesis is the source of the first replicator and then say that evolution does not depend on abiogenesis is kind of silly.
Life IS MADE UP OF NON-LIVING ELEMENTS. Do you not agree that we are made of Carbon and a few other assorted elements?
Certainly.
Do you not agree that carbon is non living matter?
Carbon is an element so yeah, I'd say that's a nobrainer. Are we going anywhere here? :-}
But hey, I haven't heard a totally convincing theory of the origin of life.
There is no "theory" on the OOL which is why you haven't heard one. Speculation abounds but like I said "abiogenesis" is unfalsifiable. But feel free, tell me how one would falsify that "theory".
I am open to the fact that a supernatural being created the first cell. (I doubt that it would be the same as the one depicted in the Hebrew bible).
That's fine, it's a free country.
But once life got here, the overwhelming mountain of evidence points to the Theory of Evolution.
Evolution happens, intelligent design as a mechanism to change allele frequency also happens. Such is life on the third rock.
Do you believe in the Judaeo Christian creation story as depicted in The Bible?
I believe exactly what Genesis 1:1 says.
Do you believe that earth is 6'000 years old?
No.
I'd love to pick that apart as you all are vainly attempting to pick apart evolution.
Pick away!
Well, either they haven't or you're talking about legislating which gods we should and shouldn't be talking about. Or maybe you're just trying to bait me into saying something intemperate. Lots of unknowns right now. Of course with some indeterminate number of anti-christs among us, there seem to be no end of possibilities.
Oh, I get your misunderstanding. Max Planck, being foremost in quantum physics, was saying that out of frustration with the scientific community which held to the classical model. He was saying in the quote that scientific progress was not made by individual scientists, but intergenerationally.
Look, read the thread, I already explained the observed evolution in fruit flies. Do you want me to type it all over again?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
Don't bother posting the documented speciation events. Aside from attacking the category of species, and whether or not there really was a speciation, creationists will not be happy until a significant percentage of macro-evolution is repeated in the lab. They don't want to see DNA changes, they want to see a bacteria change to a lizard.
I get that. What I don't get is the assertion that this particular quote, made out of frustration and taken out of context, should be taken as the best possible reference to assess scientific theory in general.
For the record, I don't belive that atheists and/or near atehists are "dim witted" as a group, though there are always some in any group that have their moments.
Jeez Betty, what were you smoking when you made this comment? Discussions about science on FR lead to countless unexplained bannings and deletions as well as a notable high profile sneaky homepage removal from the member who handled the evolution ping list. It's to the point where Freep conservatives who want to discuss science from a pro-scientific stance have to either dance on their tiptoes with a sword at their neck or go to Darwin Central to carry on a conversation and find old friends.
Your assesment of what we should and should not be discussing.
(Evolution depends on replicators. No heritability, no mutations, no evolution. Period. So to say that abiogenesis is the source of the first replicator and then say that evolution does not depend on abiogenesis is kind of silly.)
Ok, read this carefully. It doesn't matter how the first "replicator" appeared. Why is that so hard to grasp? The evidence says OJ killed Nicole, how OJ came into existence has no bearing on that theory!
If the first living cell came from outer space, show me how that tears down the Theory of Evolution.
If the first living cell was poofed into existence by Odin, show me how that tears down the Theory of Evolution.
"Evolution happens, intelligent design as a mechanism to change allele frequency also happens. Such is life on the third rock."
SHow me evidence that an intelligent designer is the mechanism for a change in allele frequency. (and not evidence from the bible please).
But I am glad you acknowledge evolution!
"I believe exactly what Genesis 1:1 says."
Show me how the Genesis creation account is more plausible than the Mayan creation story. Here it is so you don't have to look it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_creation_accounts
Or the Ugandan creation story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_legend_of_Kintu
Or the Japanese creation story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izanagi
ping...
If I do this will you promise to to be kind to creationists of all stripes as penance for being ignorant of the science?
Sure humans do. People eat at McDonalds and KFC all the time.
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