Arguing the Absurd

Over on the Mighty One Cosmos, they have been having a pretty intense debate on ID and God versus brain-dead-darwin-explains-everything.

In the course of that I posted that Richard Dawkins is an idiot preaching a reductionist darwinian "gospel". I fail to see how meaninglessness is good news, but whatever.

Ray Ingles said that I should be specific about what I object to in Dawkins' writings or words.

So, I quote from Dawkins in his own words from his own website -- nothing out of context unless he took it out of context himself --

"Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that many people don't know it."

Aside from the assertion about not needing God, and by implication, having an explanation for everything, the second statement indicates that Dawkins is at best a second-rate thinker. Nothing is taught in our government schools except darwinism. How is it that people don't know it?

"It's been suggested that if the supernaturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science."

In the face of such a devastating argument what is a “supernaturalist” to say. Kind of like quoting the great physicist Mark Twain to support your position. It’s rather juvenile and indicative of the shallow thinking of materialistic atheists. Aside from the fact that no one who really knows God gives a rip about the lottery, I would guess that if a person did win who claimed to get the numbers from God, Dawkins would say he was delusional. As far as Nobel prizes, since the physical cosmos is a closed system, what “unknown” forces would those be? Oh, wait, like "gravity waves" maybe? Again, if a “supernaturalist” did discover some truth, where would he or she get it published?

Supernatural is, by definition, above nature. We think nature is a valid subject of study, and we respect those who chose to devote themselves to it. The natural world is derived (as Gagdad Bob said on OC) from the Real. The only reason we can understand it is because humans alone on this planet have a mind in touch with the Creator. We can recognize the patterns that exist in nature. We call them laws.

"Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading."

Dawkin’s scientism misrepresents religion. Religion per se does not purport to explain what goes on in the natural world except as it is a metaphor for something God does in the human heart. Science is limited exclusively to the natural world by definition. It deals with God's creation in a reductionist, sometime useful way, but not with God. And, contrary to Dawkins worthless, groundless assertion elsewhere, the existence of God is not a scientific question. I don't need to present an argument to the contrary since any gratuitous assertion can be gratuitously refuted.

"What are all of us but self-reproducing robots? We have been put together by our genes and what we do is roam the world looking for a way to sustain ourselves and ultimately produce another robot child."

But Dawkins, et al, are not reductionists? "We are put together by our genes." Right. That is a very cheap, disingenuous out. Oh, sure, if pressed they would explain that they really meant something else, but they will never specify what that is. In effect, the reductionist removes God and replaces Him with genes. But, of course, the genes do not have a will so it is misleading to say “put together by”. They are really trying to get around the awful chasm of chance and the obvious non-directional nature of randomness.

Dawkins calls us robots. We are all animals -- to put it another way (“we are apes,” he says in another quote) -- living meaningless, pointless lives whose sole purpose is to spread our individual DNA. All the "higher" (I put it in quotes in deference to the reductionists) elements of human life can be explained as enhancements to survival and reproduction.

Then I say, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." I suppose the argument is that spreading DNA would be a "meaning", but we all know in a few million years, more or less, the sun is going to flare up and wipe out all higher life and eventually earth will be nothing but a charred ball. Even if we evolved to escape that, there is the inevitable heat death of the whole cosmos. In the end Dawkins' life has counted for nothing, but he will be long dead and senseless, so he doesn't care. In fact, at his age, I would suggest he has nothing further to contribute in terms of DNA so ...

According to Dawkins, God is completely unnecessary as an explanation. Obviously, then, Dawkins can explain in detail, not only the origins of life, but the origins of the universe, the origins of consciousness and the "software" that runs the brain, and everything else.

Pardon me, but where I come from we have a word for that: bullshit.

To the extent that Dawkins is an expert in his field -- zoology, I respect his insights. Beyond that, it's just idle ramblings. The truth is that science gets itself a lot of good press as it claims to discover the secrets of existence. Science has documented many of patterns and mechanisms in nature. For most of the twentieth century men thought they could create artificial life. They have not. There have certainly been advances in the understanding of genetics and DNA and the techniques for manipulating existing genetic material and there may be more. That is not the same as creating life. They split the atom but they can't control fusion. Drugs have adverse reactions. Artificial Intelligence is still a long way off. Subatomic physics and astrophysics becomes increasingly bizarre -- one might even say meaningless. Climate change is now a joke. Science knows how to market and promote in order to keep the grant money rolling in, but actually producing anything of value is different. Almost every new, highly-touted technology either fails to pan out or creates more problems than it solves. I don't hear "better living through chemistry" much any more. I will go so far as to predict that in ten years (2018), we will have discovered that gene-splicing was probably a bad idea and that cloned humans cannot survive.

There are a number of quotes that denigrate and misrepresent religion and people like me. We are ignorant, uneducated, uncritical in our thinking, etc. A couple of years ago, Dawkins did an interview with salon in which he says that there is evidence suggesting the more intelligent someone is, the more likely they are to be atheist.

Doesn't sound like Gagdad Bob or any of the regular coons on One Cosmos.

For that matter, I am perhaps more intelligent than the average person. I solve difficult, high-level problems for a living. I am also smart enough to know that even Dawkins has to make a living. He does so by popularizing some scientific and more pseudo-scientific theories, and the more controversy and interest he can stir up, the more money he makes. It appears to me that it is Dawkins' own intellect that is fairly narrow. He may be a glib, clever and entertaining writer but that is not the same as having a great mind. Much of his work is simply pandering to the atheist audience in England and Europe -- so much more advanced than Americans. Only about 50% of Americans are really very intelligent, according to Dawkins.