by Perry 365 Replies latest watchtower scandals
They had the trailer on TV, there was a short shot of the Dawkins looking rather confused. Hilarious!
That asshat holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science. His militant atheist agenda and general asshattery tends to turn a whole bunch of people off to the beauty of science that a more reasonable engagement would not. Good luck reaching out to improve public understanding when you've called the great majority of the public deluded fools. Jackass.
Burn
Basically, he said that Intellignet Design could be legitimately (in his opinion of course) discussed as a viable explanation for the complexity of life under the following scenario: And, that is if it is presented in the context of aliens coming to our planet and engineering our current life forms and seeding our planet. And he continues, if the aliens themselves were the result of darwinism processes who were seeded from other aliens who themselves were products of evolution, who themselves were seeded by aliens .... and so on, etc., etc., etc.
The error being imputed on Dawkins here is in the "etc., etc., etc.", which incorrectly implies that Dawkins submits that there may be an unending trail of prior aliens. This is not Dawkins' position. His position is that in such a scenario, eventually there would be the original aliens that arose completely be evolution unaided by any external intelligent designer.
Perry,
Oh Hillary..... say something intelligent for a change.
You mean somthing like you stated in your opening post. Even without viewing the film, or reading Dawkins rebutall it was obvious what was happening, as my post notes. And YOU suggest that I am unintelligent.
....................................... on another note, I read Dawkins' retraction of his statements as being a "science fiction" scenario. All I can say is that it doesn't fit with the documented video of his response. I'm sure that it won't be long for the clip to make its way to you tube. Then, the world can see his "science fiction" response. His explanation is unconvincing to me. I think that he's just playing nicey nice to his skeptic buddies that constantly debunk alien conspiricists.
I suppose that this is the closest we can ever expect to get to a retraction from a person whose intellectual dishonesty is by now legendary. HS
Jeffro, This is where Dawkins seems to fall apart. I mean why would we need a digression of cause and effect aliens at all if that alien digression would terminate in a "First Cause"? Dawkins truly looked shocked when he was asked how life began.... he admitted that he had no idea. The audience was laughing uncontrollably at times at Dawkins "answers" in the movie.
Perry
Jeffro, This is where Dawkins seems to fall apart. I mean why would we need a digression of cause and effect aliens at all if that alien digression would terminate in a "First Cause"? Dawkins truly looked shocked when he was asked how life began.... he admitted that he had no idea. The audience was laughing uncontrollably at times at Dawkins "answers" in the movie.
Not 100% sure here, but the fact that you've capitalised "First Cause" suggests you've spectacularly missed the point. And Dawkin's point is that it would not terminate in a "First Cause" at all, but that it could terminate in an evolutionary first cause.
And it's still a little amusing that people imagine that giving god the dignity of a CAPITAL LETTER makes him feel that little bit better about himself. Was there a memo from god at some point: "Hey chaps... In future I'd like any reference to not only my name, but also my title, position, and any verbs associated with me, capitalised. It just looks nicer. And I'll zap you into oblivion if you don't. Thanks guys."?
But Jeffro, Dawkins said nothing about a "First Cause", of any kind. And yes the first cause being absolutely unique, qualifies it for caps in my opinion. Dawkins invented a "just so" story of aliens to try and explain the scientifically observed virtually infinite complexity of life. He brought in aliens to support Intelligent Design! Atheists are supposed to be against I.D!! Surely he wouldn't introduce intelligent aliens only to have them terminate in an unintelligent first cause, would he? That defeats the purpose of the alien appeal in the first place. Does that sound like "science" to you?
More creationist misrepresentation. For those too lazy to read Dawkins' own comments on the affair, here are the Cliff notes:
Another example. Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.
This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.
Well, you will have guessed how Mathis/Stein handled this. I won't get the exact words right (we were forbidden to bring in recording devices on pain of a $250,000 fine, chillingly announced by some unnamed Gauleiter before the film began), but Stein said something like this. "What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN." "Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE." I can't remember whether this was the moment in the film where we were regaled with another Lord Privy Seal cut to an old science fiction movie with some kind of android figure – that may have been used in the service of trying to ridicule Francis Crick (again, dutiful titters from the partisan audience).
The above is consistent with what Dawkins has written in numerous books over the years. His main point is that even if life on earth were seeded from space, one would still be forced to explain the seeders, so that you still have to deal with the original problem of complexity. The God hypothesis certainly does not deal with this question, since it postulates an infinitely complex being at the very beginning. Evolution is the only explanation that actually deals with the problem of complexity.
SNG
But Jeffro, Dawkins said nothing about a "First Cause", of any kind. And yes the first cause being absolutely unique, qualifies it for caps in my opinion. Dawkins invented a "just so" story of aliens to try and explain the scientifically observed virtually infinite complexity of life. He brought in aliens to support Intelligent Design! Atheists are supposed to be against I.D!! Surely he wouldn't introduce intelligent aliens only to have them terminate in an unintelligent first cause, would he? That defeats the purpose of the alien appeal in the first place. Does that sound like "science" to you?
You are putting words in Dawkins' mouth. He did not say that aliens did start life on Earth. He said there was a mere possibility that it might be the case, but (and this is the actual important part of his point that you have relegated to second place) it would terminate in an unintelligent first cause. By the way, it's also amusing to hear what atheists are "supposed" to be against, particularly in view of what members of [insert religion here] are 'supposed to be against' but do anyway.
Jeffro, Do you find it intellectually repressive that science would allow legitimate discussion considering the origin of life by seeded flying spaghetti monsters and not allow it to be discussed as initiated by God?
Seattle, Dawkins' sanitized "just so" explanation of his comments in the comfort of his ivory tower, are unacceptable to me in explaining his answers while under pressure and on camera, and on record.
