Anony Mous
“...whether his scientific research is valid or not does not matter to the fact that the Christian god as described in the Bible simply cannot logically exist”
Agreed. I don’t think I ever raised that up as point of contention. That is why I’m no longer a theist. But perusing through Dawkins’ web site shop, I have very little doubt that he endorsed the Scarlet A (for Atheist) and sanctions instructions on how to be an atheists. As an echo of what I compared to religious fervor for the cause, he has on his web site a “testimonial” corner, where letters from recent atheist converts are posted. And that’s OK. I don’t really care and don’t fault him for making money on the side. What I find hard to tolerate is the idea that because he’s prominent and writes well that he somehow has the keys for the populace to understand Natural Selection even when serious challenges arise from critics. I don’t think I’ve yet stated my personal challenges to his posits. What I have tried to do is to present the challenge that others (learned critics) have offered to balance the issue.
Anony Mous, here’s the catch. Dawkins has discussed at length the Anthropic Principle. This is the theory that says (at its most comprehensive level – the Strong Anthropic Principle) there must be a multi-verse (an infinite number of universes) that give rise to every possibility or combinations of matter that would yield the particular universe we’re in. Fine. Forget that such a thing is extremely unlikely to be verified. Forget that there’s contention among theorists whether such a principle applies everywhere. As you said, Dawkins is not a physicist. Nevertheless, he will chastise one, namely Paul Davies, for suggesting that since the laws of nature break down at the quantum level, a scientist must accept (believe) without any additional support that the laws are what they seem to be. That is agnosticism in a pure sense: not being able to make any conclusions or finalities where why and how something happens cannot yet be known. When it comes to Cosmology and Physics, I defer to Davies over Dawkins any day. If some other Cosmologist reasons better than Davies, then that will be the new bar to measure up to.
“Dawkins on the other hand is not a physicist so he has to accept (believe) that the laws of physics as he knows them are correct and he can reasonably assume that in his realm, the laws of physics as we know them hold true.”
Personally, I give Dawkins a little more credit. I believe that he is intelligent enough to understand the fundamental laws of physics the way a high School or college professor would. I don’t believe that he can write down equations to show how time varies depending on the relative speed of objects or that he can jot down and explain the formula for the Standard Model. But, please understand that I don’t believe such things are necessary in order to make a cogent argument about related sciences. What I have found instead is that some of the conclusions Dawkins makes are not sustainable for various reasons.
For example, memes. He defines memes as “units of cultural inheritance”. The problem is that he doesn’t factually define what incorporates a unit. Memology is controversial among other scientists, namely because a meme can be subjective, difficult to unitize and therefore hard to measure and study. While it appears to me to be a brilliant alternative for a replicating system, I can see the difficulty some individuals have determining what a meme constitutes. Could culture as a whole be considered a meme or could a component of culture, like the banality of the “wave” at baseball games or the more insidious racial bigotry, be a meme? This is the problem other scientists face studying memes. In addition, memes don’t map to genes. However, according to Dawkins, the replication process is either tied to or co-evolving with Natural Selection. How? Well, that’s not clearly demonstrated because of the difficulties associated in tracking and measuring memes and because we have no genetic markers as reference and I haven’t seen Dawkins advance a method via which that could be accomplished
So while some of what Dawkins proposes is titillating and thought provoking, it hardly amounts to gospel. You say about science: “…results are there and if you want, you can replicate them and test them.” Precisely. That is what is unfortunate about some of Dawkins proposals. How do you replicate and verify a meme? Remember, his invention of the meme was to explain how traits that cannot be attributed to genetic inheritance manage to persist throughout generations. Religion, he says, fits into that category. So, while he makes an interesting attempt at explaining it, the reason for religion for me remains illogical and inexplicable.
