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.
Why does it need to be *extra-Biblical*? The Bible contains a historical record of much of what occurred in the Middle East over the last several thousand years. Why should it be discredited because just because those documents are all contained in one book for convenience? If you're going to cast doubt on them, then why do you accept as valid other historical documents from those eras? If the documents that compose Scripture are unreliable, how can you be sure that ANY documents from that era are reliable, and not just made up fables? Yet we teach kids history in schools as if it's fact based on those other documents.
Why?
It is not necessary to demonstrate that all creationists believe that ALL Scripture is literally true. It is enough to demonstrate that many do. The term "Creationist" itself implies that the person believes that Genesis is literally true. The term "Christian" would be the alternative description of someone who believes that Genesis is allegory, with the general meaning that "God did it", allowing science to fill in details such as evolution.
I once was a Christian. In fact at one time I studied in college with the intent of becoming a missionary. But some in these threads convinced me that I had to believe the Bible, as is, literally, or it is all fiction (or at least not true about a literal God or Saviour). Since Genesis cannot be possibly be true, then I had to reject my faith.
It sucks to know that when I'm dead, I'm dead. It would have been a more pleasant life if I could have kept my faith, and my understanding that the Bible wasn't a science textbook so I could ignore literal interpretations. This is why literal interpretations and attacks on science are dangerous to Christianity. It chases people away from the faith, hardly a Christlike thing for people to do.
My first reaction to this statement was to think: “Ah, this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black!” But it’s really not that simple, LiberalGunNut.
The problem that I have with the neo-Darwinist position is it reduces evolution to a premise that cannot be demonstrated: i.e., a common ancestor that no one has ever seen whose origin is never explained. It assumes the world of nature is thoroughgoingly materialistic and naturalistic, that everything that exists and the universe itself ultimately reduces to the material and nothing more. In short, for the typical Darwinist today, the scientific method of observation, falsification, and replicable experiments is the “touchstone of truth” for evaluating the reality of everything that exists; that to which the method cannot be applied — and there are domains of reality that are simply not susceptible to direct observation, that cannot be “objectified” into directly testable data — is assumed to be an illusion, false.
But to me, there is no way the empirical, “naturalistic” approach of Sir Francis Bacon, who arguably is the father of the modern scientific method, can suffice for all questions that man has about the universe and his place in it.
And I think Lord Bacon would agree with this assessment. I offer as evidence the following prayer, attributed to his authorship,* which if he actually did write it would demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that Bacon was more than just one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, that he was, in fact, an extraordinarily multi-faceted thinker of soaring genius and profound spirituality:
Jesus Mihi OmniaSir Francis Bacon was evidently no materialist reductionist, as your typical neo-Darwinist is these days. It seems pretty plain to me that he did not reduce the world to the capacity of his own mind, that he realized human intellect is not “the measure of all things.”
Oh Thou everywhere and good of all, whatsoever I do remember, I beseech Thee, that I am but dust, but as a vapour sprung from earth, which even Thy smallest breath can scatter. Thou hast given me a soul and laws to govern it; let that fraternal rule which Thou didst first appoint to sway man order me; make me careful to point at Thy glory in all my wayes, and where I cannot rightly know Thee, that not only my understanding but my ignorance may honor Thee — I cast myself as an honourer of Thee at Thy feet, and because I cannot be defended by Thee unless I believe after Thy laws, keep me, O my soul’s Sovereign, in the obedience of Thy Will, and that I wound not conscience with vice and hiding of Thy gifts and graces bestowed upon me, for this, I know, will destroy me within, and make Thy illuminating Spirit leave me. I am afraid I have already infinitely swerved from the revelations of that Divine Guide which Thou hast commanded to direct me to the truth, and for this I am a sad prostrate and penitent at the foot of Thy throne. I appeal only to the abundance of Thy remissions O God, my God. For outward things I thank Thee, and such as I have I give unto others, in the name of the Trinity, freely and faithfully…. In what Thou hast given me I am content — I beg no more than Thou hast given, and that to continue me uncontemnedly and unpittiedly honest. Take me from myself and fill me but with Thee. Sum up Thy blessings in these two, that I may be rightly good and wise, and these, for Thy eternal truth’s sake, grant and make grateful.
*James Phinney Baxter, (1831–1921), scholar and man of letters, attributed this prayer to Sir Francis Bacon on the basis of exhaustive comparative textual analysis. Baxter also accepted the increasingly well-documented theory that Bacon was (among other things) a Rosicrucian adept (and a Freemason to boot), and thus had acquired habits of secrecy, of concealment regarding what he was thinking and what he was up to.
One of Baxter’s major contributions to the literature of the world was an important learned study of the Bacon–Shakespeare controversy. This was published in 1915 under the title of “The Greatest of Literary Problems” and continues to elicit much discussion among scholars today. (Baxter was a major proponent of the theory that Bacon was the true author of Shakespeare’s works. On the basis of the exhaustive evidence he presents, I personally think he may be right.)
heres some extra biblical evidence, that the eyewitnesses testimonies collected in the bible, shouldn't be discardered arbitrarily and are accurately recorded history.
http://www.leaderu.com/theology/burialcave.html
the manuscript is entitled
Gli Scavi del Dominus Flevit, (1958)
I posted this on another thread recently in response to a similar statement:
You are right, science is limited to that which can be observed.On the other hand, we have magic, superstition, wishful thinking, divine revelation, what the stars foretell and what the neighbors think, public opinion, Ouija boards, tarot cards, witch doctors, the unguessable verdict of history, and a host of other un-natural phenomena.
Thanks, I'll stick with science. It doesn't seem that inferior a method for judging reality when one considers the alternatives.
*grumble*
You wrote, "we have magic, superstition, wishful thinking, divine revelation, what the stars foretell and what the neighbors think, public opinion, Ouija boards, tarot cards, witch doctors, the unguessable verdict of history, and a host of other un-natural phenomena."
Do you think the man who wrote the lines in italics above was given over to magic, superstition, wishful thinking, etc.?
If you think so, then you destroy the authority of the scientific method itself.
Too many of you "Evo" guys are just "Johnny one-notes." FWIW.
Thanks for writing, coyoteman. Good to see you!
Good to hear. Who knows what we might yet discover. Causality can be a singular event, a continuous event, a continual event, or a constant event. Sometimes these are coeval; sometimes they are sequential, sometimes they are independent (separate), but cooperative.
There's more reality and to reality that can be observed and measured by science. By limiting yourself to only one segment of the world around you, you're getting a distorted picture of reality. The conclusions drawn from such a distortion may fit well enough within that framework, but it doesn't mean that they're right or accurate or ture.
A lot of things that would be considered *magic* by less developed cultures are simply what we know as technology, things like flashlights, televisions, telephone,... So if those cultures had the mindset of what is called science today, that of ignoring *magic* and *superstition* then they would not investigate such things only to find out that there was no magic to them in the first place.
Scientists can't claim to even begin to know everything about this world, and things that they have labeled as *superstition* and *magic* could very well be a part of the natural world, but nobody is going to find out because sciencists have so restricted themselves that they won't even consider investigationg it. It's like putting blinders on a horse; they'll only see what's in front of them so that they're not scared when they're surprised by the rest of the world around them.
It sucks even worse....
Luke 12:4-5
4. "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more.
5. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
Warning! The above may be mere allegory...
UHhhh... we ain't got no lives and just sit at these terminals all day long, yakking about stuff?
Yup...
It's called: Muddying the waters.
heheh....true enough.
Betty, I don't remember disagreeing with anything else you have said, but I think the theory that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's works simply won't fly. Also, I don't find that prayer you cite to be in Bacon's usual style; it lacks his usual rhythms and his rhetorical manipulation of the members within his lengthy periods.
Of course, he might have used a different style for prayer, but it just doesn't sound anything like him to me. On Bacon's style there's an excellent book by Brian Vickers.
The Bible is a collection of many books, written by many authors, over a few millennia. I have never had any doubt that some of it is genuine history, some of it recorded only 70 years or so after the fact. It would be as if today we wrote down the story if the crash of the Hindenberg, with no pictures, no movies, nothing prior written down, but merely from stories our parents generation told us who witnessed it personally. The story would be fairly accurate, but not perfect, just as the Gospels have slight differences between them.
But what human witnessed the events in Genesis? Obviously, none. Who wrote Genesis? No one has any idea. At best case, one could make the claim that it was inspired by direct revelation from God. All kinds of people have made claims of divine revelation over the centuries. Some might be believable, some are not. The creation account in Genesis, given the massive amount of physical history evident in the earth itself, is not believable.
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