Dawkins bashing? (The atheist delusion)
'But who says that different, unsolved (possibly insoluble) problems invalidate a proposition?' - Well it seems to me the main thing Dawkins and co are saying here is that to push back the issue and say there is a designer, isn't an answer! It just replaces one question with another question. What he is saying is this is no argument for the existence of God. If anything the argument is simply the agnostic one that either you cannot know, or that you should go on with studies to investigate the matter further rather than framing a theology around a question. - Unless there is proof of the proposition, what reason would we have to believe it? - I'm not sure what the credentials of the person who wrote this site are? - Personally I like interesting debate - but I'm not sure it is really very productive for non-believers of various sorts or agnostics to sit around pontificating on matters such as the interpretation of Darwin. What is far more important it seems to me is whether you are an agnostic or atheist to discuss, what should our values be in the light of our views, and how will we personally live ethically and how will we seek to influence society for good? - Mike
Dawkins bashing?
by Muhamad Khalil 
, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, December 24, 2008, 00:53 (5811 days ago) @ postbox49
That line was a totally unfair "Dawkins bashing" line indeed. - How sad.
Dawkins bashing?
by David Turell , Wednesday, December 24, 2008, 02:18 (5811 days ago) @ Muhamad Khalil
That line was a totally unfair "Dawkins bashing" line indeed. > > How sad. - Here are ten reasons that are valid objections to Darwin's Theory: (Dawkins is beautifully answered by "The Dawkin's Delusion", by Alister McGrath and his wife, 2007) http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/JOURNEY/evolution.html
Dawkins bashing?
by George Jelliss 
, Crewe, Thursday, January 01, 2009, 16:41 (5803 days ago) @ David Turell
Some responses to the McGraths' ten points: - 1. "A filter (e.g. natural selection) which was formed by chance ..." - No evolutionist says natural selection was "formed by chance". It is the necessary outcome of circumstances. If variation occurs then it will be subject to natural selection. - 2. "Naturalism's god-of-chance is always called upon to do the job." - Does this mean that in McGrath's world view chance does not occur? Is everything preordained? - 3. "biological stability and conservation would imply that creation events had taken place since the original creation of the universe." - By creation events here I take it he means acts of God. But natural selection events leading to evolution of a new species could also be regarded as a form of creation. - 4. "Creation preceded Evolution anyway." - This is just semantics, word play. Evolution in its original sense can apply to the changes experienced by anything over time, whatever the mechanisms involved. - 5. "natural selection clearly cannot account for the arrival of the fittest." - Total piffle. Ernst Mayr's interpretation of Blyth's work is correct. This appears to be a old-style misunderstanding of what survival of the fittest means, namely survival of those best fitted to the environment at the time, not those "fittest" in some absolute sense. - 6. "Darwin admitted that based upon the data published in his Origin of Species, one could come to "directly opposite" conclusions." - Darwin was a modest and honest man. He was correct that the volume of data could not be presented within the confines of his little book. - 7. "Natural selection better describes biology's "ordinary rules of stability" than major evolutionary change." - This is just trying to use Gould's ideas as a lever against Darwin. But he was fully a supporter of Darwin's ideas and helped to advance them. - 8. "the Cambrian explosion established virtually all the major animal body forms" - This is an exaggeration, but the Cambrian explosion is perfectly in accord with Darwin's theory. Great variation was possible because there were no existing species to compete and to overcome. - 9. "Given that all of major groups of life appear suddenly in the fossil record and the "ordinary rules of stability" act in such a way as to inhibit major evolutionary change, it is rational to conclude that they were the result of progressive creation" - This is just god-of-the-gaps stuff. The idea that a creature rather like a whale developed and then God made it extinct just so he could then create one more like a whale is just absurd. - 10. "The ultimate origin of Nature itself cannot be natural. Either Nature or a Natural Law Giver has always existed. Nature has not always existed." - This is a rather naive argument. Augustine did much better. Time is part of nature. So nature has "always" existed, i.e. since the beginning of time. To talk of existence before time is self-contradictory nonsense.
Dawkins bashing?
by David Turell , Friday, January 02, 2009, 00:06 (5802 days ago) @ George Jelliss
edited by unknown, Friday, January 02, 2009, 01:00
No evolutionist says natural selection was "formed by chance". It is the necessary outcome of circumstances. If variation occurs then it will be subject to natural selection. Any absolutely true statement by George. But note the final sentence: "If variation appears then it will be subject to natural selection. The word 'if' tells us that 'mutation and natural selection' is a passive process. Variation has to appear for some reason, chance or otherwise, and then natural selection can actively act. - > 5. "natural selection clearly cannot account for the arrival of the fittest." >Total piffle. Ernst Mayr's interpretation of Blyth's work is correct. This appears to be a old-style misunderstanding of what survival of the fittest means, namely survival of those best fitted to the environment at the time, not those "fittest" in some absolute sense. - This is a total misinterpretation of #5. Clearly the meaning is that only after variation arrives can natural selection decide which are the fittest, as I discussed above. Reading the website I referenced in a previous entry makes that quite clear. > 7. "Natural selection better describes biology's "ordinary rules of stability" than major evolutionary change." >This is just trying to use Gould's ideas as a lever against Darwin. But he was fully a supporter of Darwin's ideas and helped to advance them. - There is much discussion among various writers on Darwinism that Gould did not completely support Darwin. After all he and Eldridge invented 'punctuated equilibrium' which had to due with stability (no change) for long periods. The Gould comment used to support #7 describes something Darwin didn't know. See #8 next. > 8. "the Cambrian explosion established virtually all the major animal body forms" > This is an exaggeration, but the Cambrian explosion is perfectly in accord with Darwin's theory. Great variation was possible because there were no existing species to compete and to overcome. #8 is not an exaggeration. It is a major problem for the Darwin theory. In a 5-10 million period, after a very long period of virtual stasis, 36 of the original ancestors of 36 currently existing animal phyla suddenly appeared. The 37th appeared later. Actually, about 60-100 new forms appeared, and were culled out by natural selection to leave 37 remaining till now. What preceded this period were Ediacarans, sponge like sheets, and then bilaterians, bags of cells in which the interior of the bag acted as a digestive system. These were bilaterally symmetrical. What appeared in the Cambrian had eyes, legs, digestive systems, excretory systems and primitive nervous systems,basically out of nowhere. This is what Gould alluded to in #7 - Finally, of course there was no competition. Nothing like this had ever existed before. What happened to the Darwin concept of tiny changes gradually leading to new forms?? The Cambrian explosion absolutely refutes it.