Richard Dawkins believes in intelligent design?

by slimboyfat 78 Replies latest jw friends

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  slimboyfat

  There is no cause and effect as we no it before the big bang. Time is just a dimension of the universe. For all we know, there was no time before it... And there are times that cause and effect don't apply in the same order... With effect coming before cause (at least in a laboratory)... And I forgot where I was going with this idea, but its a cool idea nonetheless.

  How is it that you are ready to accept the idea that there can be a a beginning without a cause but not that there can be a cause/being without a beginning?
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  slimboyfat

  Perhaps its a willingness to live with unknowns rather than adopt answers with insufficient evidence is the biggest change in my "worldview" in recent years. (sorry for using the word worldview)

  I agree, but the more I think about it the more I come to the view that the enlightenment project to banish magic from the world once and for all is doomed to failure. In most respects of course it has been an unqualified success in that people increasingly fail to invoke supernatural explanations for the weather, illness, crop failure or success, disasters, triumphs and tragedies. But what it has not done, what it appears it can never do, is account for why there is something rather than nothing. That is pure magic and existence haunts every attempt to finally lay wonder to rest.
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  cofty

  No I don't think for a moment that it has anything to do with "magic". We no more understand the limits of theoretical physics than Newton could explain the plane of planetary revolution. He explained so much but credited that bit to god. Keep your nerve, a naturalistc explanation exists we just haven't found it yet.

  If "god" did turn out to exist then "existing" is clearly all he does.

  "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothese-la" - Pierre-Simon Laplace
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  wobble

  Exactly Cofty, and despite believers getting terribly exercised and upset because we will not buy in to their fictions that they have built up, upon nothing, about this "being" who merely exists, the point is for us, even if he/she/it does exist, it makes no difference to us at all !

  It is as if he/she/it did not exist.

  Trying to find holes in the arguments presented by Richard Dawkins, or anybody else, does nothing to further the possibility, or even the argument, that a god exists.
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  slimboyfat

  But as TheClarinetist pointed out the best naturalisitc explanations we have invoke a point in the past where naturalistic explanations break down. Naturalism thus ultimately undermines itself so that it can never provide the full account of existence. Or to look at it another way, God is only magic until he is incorporated into the explanation, then he becomes a "natural" way of looking at things. Conversely if there is no God then in a sense that might be the most magical explanation of all.

  If "god" did turn out to exist then "existing" is clearly all he does.

  There was a thread on here a few years ago about whether a less than good God is worth bothering about. It's not so easy.

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/136447/1/Would-a-less-than-good-god-s-be-worthy-of-interest
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  Earnest

  Most of my thoughts on the matter have already been covered far more eloquently than I could do, just to add that SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) is closing down due to lack of funding.

  The report concludes :

  This isn’t the end. There will be no end to the search, however it’s done, until a result is achieved. In the meantime, a not-entirely-unexpected mediocrity and smallness of vision will presumably be the norm.
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  slimboyfat

  Good to see you around Earnest, it looks like our old French friend is gone for good. I shared the video on this thread because I met up with an elder the other day and he was excited about this video he said where Dawkins admits the possibility of intelligent design. So I had to check it out for myself. At first I thought it would be one of those videos where Dawkins' voice is spliced to say something stupid, but no these appear to be Dawkins' own words.
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  Earnest

  He has gone but left a rich seam from which we can continue to mine. I miss him.

  For some more philosophical thought on the matter, may I share the

  .
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  Pika_Chu

  Okay, so Dawkins thinks aliens making us is JUST as likely, and if not, MORE likely than God making us. Well all I have to say to that is "DUH!" If God doesn't exist, he doesn't do much creating, then, does he? What is so complicated about this?