Richard Dawkins believes in intelligent design?

by slimboyfat 78 Replies latest jw friends

  • unshackled
    unshackled
    What we cannot do, what makes absolutely no sense at all is to posit an entity of maximum complexity that just happens to have always existed. That is just a theological placeholder - a god of the gap - that will have to retreat sooner or later. It doesn't answer the dilemma of how complexity arose it just makes the problem even bigger and leads to infinite regress.

    What a horrible deceitful man Stein is!

  • PSacramento
    PSacramento
    What we cannot do, what makes absolutely no sense at all is to posit an entity of maximum complexity that just happens to have always existed. That is just a theological placeholder - a god of the gap - that will have to retreat sooner or later. It doesn't answer the dilemma of how complexity arose it just makes the problem even bigger and leads to infinite regress.

    I forget, what is Richards opinion on HOW complexity came to exist?

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt
    I forget, what is Richards opinion on HOW complexity came to exist?

    I'm guessing his answer would be along the same lines as the answer to the question of HOW God came to exist.

  • cofty
    cofty

    I forget, what is Richards opinion on HOW complexity came to exist?

    I don't know and if I did I wouldn't be very interested. He is a biologist - abiogenesis is a question for molecular chemists or some other specialist field of research.

    People of faith might think it impressive when a christian dentist comments on biology or geology - nobody else does.

  • PSacramento
    PSacramento
    I'm guessing his answer would be along the same lines as the answer to the question of HOW God came to exist.

    Fair enough.

    I don't recall ever reading that he had an opinion on that, that is why I asked, I thought maybe he had one now.

    Does Richard support the muiltple universe thoery? I thought I read he did...

    By support I mean that he believes it is one of many possible theories.

  • unshackled
    unshackled
    Does Richard support the muiltple universe thoery? I thought I read he did...

    Dawkins spent a few pages discussing multiverse theories in The God Delusion. Although he doesn't specifically say he supports it, he wrote they are "intriguing" and "tantalizing". This quote shows he at least favors it over the possibility of a god. I'd interpret it as support "one of many possible theories".

  • PSacramento
    PSacramento

    Yeah, that's what I remember reading.

    Damn...it;'s been awhile since I read that book.

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat

    For all his huff and puff Dawkins DID admit that life on earth might have been designed by vastly superior aliens. He also added that those aliens may have evolved in some Darwinian sense. But what if not? He didn't rule out some other means of existence. He unwittingly admitted the possibility of a God, and it is fair to point that out.

    It seems as possible that something always existed as it does that there was a time when there was nothing. The very fact of existence is the most astounding thing of all either way.

  • leavingwt
    leavingwt
    He unwittingly admitted the possibility of a God, and it is fair to point that out.

    I don't follow you. He has not been shy or dishonest about admitting that 'God' is possible.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability

  • slimboyfat
    slimboyfat
    I don't follow you. He has not been shy or dishonest about admitting that 'God' is possible.

    I understand his point that atheism is not an absolute position and there are necessarily varying degrees. But he here specifically allows for the possibility that life on earth was designed by godlike aliens, what others might terms God. I think he admitted rather more than in retrospect he would have wished.

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