Dawkins in Austin

_{William Dembski

March 26, 2008

Atheism, Darwinism}

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Last week was spring break at Southwestern Seminary where I teach. The seminary is located in Ft. Worth, about 200 miles north of Austin. As it is, in the middle of the break (last Wednesday), Richard Dawkins was going to be speaking in Austin. I therefore challenged my class to go listen to him and provide proof that they had actually been there (the preferred proof was to have him sign a copy of THE GOD DELUSION). The incentive to go was extra credit for the course. Six of my students went. I told them that they should greet Richard from me should they speak to him. One student got Dawkins’s signature, shook hands, and then greeted him from me. Another made the mistake of first greeting him from me and then trying to shake his hand — Dawkins refused. Below is a blog entry from one of my students about the event:

On Wednesday, a friend from Seminary and I drove down to University of Texas in Austin to see renowned atheist Richard Dawson speak. If you’re not familiar with Dawkins, he is a scientist who has now moved into the realm of theology, and has recently written a book called “The God Delusion” that has sold 1.5 million copies in the United States. While our original motivation was to get extra credit for Apologetics class, we were both interested to see what Dawkins would have to say.

Dawkins was speaking at 7PM, so we showed up at the auditorium at about 5:45PM, thinking: “How many people really want to see Richard Dawkins?” Boy, were we surprised! Several thousand people had already showed up at that time, and the line to the auditorium snaked on for miles. We estimated that over 3,000 people showed up … and the auditorium would only hold 1,200 people. At about 6:45, some university staff showed up to tell folks in line that if they did not already have a free ticket, then they would not be able to get in. So we went to the front of the line and bought some free tickets for the lecture from some members of the Longhorn Atheist club. We ran into several of our fellow class members, and they ended up paying to get into as well. So, ironically, the Christians had to pay to see the head atheist.

My synopsis of what Dawkins had to say follows the old joke about atheism:

Q: “What are the two central beliefs of an atheist?”
A: “1. There is no God; and, 2. I really hate God.”

As Dawkins is more renowned for being a scientist than a philosopher, I kept waiting for him to have something scientifically profound to say … and I kept waiting. I was stunned that there was exactly ZERO scientific content to what Dawkins had to say. Opening up, he stated that there are two ways atheists can deal with Christianity: be conciliatory or be ridiculing. And ridicule he did. Dawkins essentially went on a 45 minute rant about why he hates Christianity. I won’t go over every point Dawkins made (because there weren’t many anyway), but here’s a couple bigger ones:

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Comments

Dr. Dembski, I wonder what would have happened if you'd gone yourself and tried to shake his hand?mattghg_{March 27, 2008
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Berceuse Re:
when he [Professor of teh Public Understanding of Science, now about to be retired, Mr Clinton Richard Dawkins, PhD] was asked how evolution can account for human reason he replied “we’ll probably never know.”
Later last year, we had a thread here at UD that looked at that quite extensively. This -- explanatory collapse into self-refutation -- is what Mr Dawkins is covering up: _____________ [evolutionary] materialism [a worldview that often likes to wear the mantle of "science"] . . . argues that the cosmos is the product of chance interactions of matter and energy, within the constraint of the laws of nature. Therefore, all phenomena in the universe, without residue, are determined by the working of purposeless laws acting on material objects, under the direct or indirect control of chance. But human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this picture. Thus, what we subjectively experience as "thoughts" and "conclusions" can only be understood materialistically as unintended by-products of the natural forces which cause and control the electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains. (These forces are viewed as ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic inheritance and psycho-social conditioning, within the framework of human culture.) Therefore, if materialism is true, the "thoughts" we have and the "conclusions" we reach, without residue, are produced and controlled by forces that are irrelevant to purpose, truth, or validity. Of course, the conclusions of such arguments may still happen to be true, by lucky coincidence — but we have no rational grounds for relying on the “reasoning” that has led us to feel that we have “proved” them. And, if our materialist friends then say: “But, we can always apply scientific tests, through observation, experiment and measurement,” then we must note that to demonstrate that such tests provide empirical support to their theories requires the use of the very process of reasoning which they have discredited! Thus, evolutionary materialism reduces reason itself to the status of illusion. But, immediately, that includes “Materialism.” For instance, Marxists commonly deride opponents for their “bourgeois class conditioning” — but what of the effect of their own class origins? Freudians frequently dismiss qualms about their loosening of moral restraints by alluding to the impact of strict potty training on their “up-tight” critics — but doesn’t this cut both ways? And, should we not simply ask a Behaviourist whether s/he is simply another operantly conditioned rat trapped in the cosmic maze? In the end, materialism is based on self-defeating logic . . . . In Law, Government, and Public Policy, the same bitter seed has shot up the idea that "Right" and "Wrong" are simply arbitrary social conventions. This has often led to the adoption of hypocritical, inconsistent, futile and self-destructive public policies. "Truth is dead," so Education has become a power struggle; the victors have the right to propagandise the next generation as they please. Media power games simply extend this cynical manipulation from the school and the campus to the street, the office, the factory, the church and the home. Further, since family structures and rules of sexual morality are "simply accidents of history," one is free to force society to redefine family values and principles of sexual morality to suit one's preferences. Finally, life itself is meaningless and valueless, so the weak, sick, defenceless and undesirable — for whatever reason — can simply be slaughtered, whether in the womb, in the hospital, or in the death camp. In short, ideas sprout roots, shoot up into all aspects of life, and have consequences in the real world . . . _______________ GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{March 27, 2008
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I'm surprised that when he was asked how evolution can account for human reason he replied "we'll probably never know." Usually, it's more of the promissory materialism bent: "we don't know yet, but science is working on it"Berceuse_{March 27, 2008
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What? Dawkins made the crowd applaud himself twice? Is that true?Jehu_{March 26, 2008
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