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.
We're in serious trouble. The worst I've seen in my 8 years here.
None more so than Darwinists.
And a more self-righteous and smugly self-superior gaggle of dorks has never been spawned.
Blam, I don't think it's that bad. I mean, I post actual news topics which I don't think should be anything but interesting, and find they attract a bunch of chauvanists, that just makes me post another one later. [Nice try, chauvanists] That's outside the GGG area of course.
I left a note on my profile regarding the latest template complaint -- a complaint that is really directed at FR and JimRob -- and have only had to deal with that complaint once since then. When I did, I got no response. And since I posted my angry diatribe, the one about a plague on both houses, I've barely noticed any trouble with the "what's this B.C.E.? What is C.E.?" spam.
Of course, I'm just one hell of an even-tempered guy who rarely loses it (he lied) and also my focus isn't what it used to be (and I have eyeball insurance, it's just a matter of procrastination and vanity). Plus I'm kinda lazy, and maybe not too bright. :')
Anyway, I don't regard every religious-oriented post as some kind of criticism of my own views (which are *not* religious, although they are spiritual, and would be widely regarded as fringe, kooky, nutbar, etc), and short of my becoming a mod (I think my cussin' incident eliminated that possibility), I don't think it's worth my time worrying about it.
and to all (from my links page, probably time to whittle it down some):
Civ: Why I Don't Participate in Cr/Evo Bloodbaths
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1627465/posts?page=51#51
GGG: Origins: Find all arguments on all sides specious, but this made me laugh really hard
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1579177/posts?page=82#82
Faith and Philosophy: Roman Catholic Irony by Arthur McGowan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1390602/posts?page=5#5
Help: Regarding "anti-Catholicism" on FreeRepublic (thanks Admin Moderator)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1311728/posts?page=24#24
irrelevant to the discussion:
FReepers: odds (cool gizmo on the profile page, check it out)
http://www.freerepublic.com/~odds/
"Young man, if I could remember the names of these particles, I would have been a botanist!"
Enrico Fermi
You're changing the parameters of your question. We started with the big three, and there's a reason why these three are in a category all their own, so, for the sake of discussion, let's keep it that way. It makes things all the more simple
Jews will have a lot of explaining to do if you're right too.
It is incorrect to say that Judaism necessarily infers a rejection of Jesus Christ. It is better to say that there exists a tradition within Judaism that does so.
Christ was Jewish. All the apostles were Jewish. Most of the people that constituted the masses who followed Christ were Jewish. The early Christians were in fact Jewish. Even today there are Jews who are Christian, and who still consider themselves to be of the Judaic faith.
Judaism does not reject Christ. It is what Christ called "the traditions of men" which is responsible for that.
No comment on my post to you?
'Twas more to it than that.
A couple of home pages were deleted--if my hazy memory serves me right, Jim Robinson did it himself.
There was a p*ssing match between Jim Rob and some of the evolutionists, because JR asserted that in many ways (particularly in the schools; or in the hands of folks such as Dawkins) evolution was being used as a trojan horse to undermine Christian faith and -- indirectly -- our nation's heritage and freedoms.
Many of the evos claimed that they were interested primarily as a scientific endeavor, and actually shared JR's politics on the whole. But they did not want to be party to making it easy for folks like John Kerry or Al Gore to take cheap intellectual shots at the conservative movement as a whole.
The participants on both sides ran the gamut (without naming names). There were trolls and baiters on both sides of the dispute, as well as noble and principled people who tried to keep things in evenhanded, respectful terms. But over time they came to be in the minority. In addition, many of the crevo threads turned into mudslinging contests
par excellence.
I liked to post occasional Calvin and Hobbes cartoons to relieve the tension...
Long-winded mode off.
Cheers!
Right on!
Cheers!
Full Disclosure:...and how's your Vette doing?
Scholasticism predated the Medieval period; and Scholasticism was very useful in preserving the classical writings which were of such importance in the Rensaissance.
Scholasticism isn't *bad* by the way; it acts as a preservative against people going off half-cocked into unsubstantiated fads. Think of the hidebound dorkwads at the FDA--and then consider the folks who would be selling "crystal healing" and the like but for the disapproval of the bureaucrats.
Cultural and sociological effects play a role in science just as "pure reason" does.
Cheers!
Wow. Strawman, ad hominem, *and* begging the question, all in one sentence!
Long live the crevo troll wars ;-)
Cheers!
I see, so the evolutionists instead come here to take cheap intellectual shots at the Christians. How exactly does that help the conservative movement...unless the intent is to purge the movement of Christians?
"Come on, Shilth, even you must admit that it was a bit much, selling plastic frankfurters to those poor backwards hot dog lovers."
"How were we to know that their inferior metabolisms were incapable of assimilating wholesome polystyrenes?"
Cheers!
Remarks like that lend credence to the assertions that evolutionists are primarily about bashing Christianity.
Being anti-science is not Christian, conservative, or Republican. (Or, it didn't used to be.)
Things falling is an observation of the pull of bodies towards each other. Bodies pulling towards each other is called gravity. (do you dispute any of these facts?)
Reminds me of a conversation my high-school teacher had with one of the stubborn teen-age girls about gravity.
"What *is* gravity? Well, what attracts you towards me?"
Her riposte: "Absolutely nothing!"
Cheers!
Cheers!
Pretty good rant.. I liked it..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.