Is Richard Dawkins leading people away from The Blind Watchmaker …

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 21, 2014

Culture, Darwinism, News}

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… to Jesus?

The Holy Smoke blogger discusses two publicized cases:

… He explained that he was, and is, a huge admirer of Dawkins the biologist. (I’m with him there: I read The Blind Watchmaker when it first came out and was blown away.) “But then I read The God Delusion and it was… total crap. So bad that I started questioning my own atheism. Then he started tweeting.”

Like a loony on top of the bus, no?

“Exactly!”

Funnily enough, this is the second time in a week that I’ve heard of Richard Dawkins leading someone to Christ. Let me refer you to an article in The Catholic Herald by Francis Phillips:

But it takes three to make a trend. Anyone?

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

Comments

StephenB @ 8
I believe in the God of Genesis who creates the universe and its inhabitants with intent and purpose; sustains and watches over them with care; and intervenes at various times and places when it pleases Him.
That's the only God I know. The God of Genesis through Revelation. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." John 1:1-5Dionisio_{April 22, 2014
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wallstreeter43 @ 7
...every time he is making a presentation an honest atheist is coming to God.
That doesn't seem like the guy's original intention, does it? ;-)Dionisio_{April 22, 2014
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Mung @ 1
Ricard Dawkins, instrument of God, ambassador for Christ. Does have a nice ring to it :)
Interesting suggestions... hmm... Is it possible that the universe we were in has quietly turned into another universe, part of the infinite multiverse, where some personalities have changed drastically? Thus the spiritual leader of the world atheism has turned into a devoted servant of God? Would that fall into the 'miracle' category? Nope, it's simply a natural part of the multiverse. We just don't understand evolution ;-)Dionisio_{April 22, 2014
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Querius @ 6
The “after billions of years” has a similar ring to me now as “once upon a time.”
:)Dionisio_{April 22, 2014
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jw777 @ 2 Thank you for your message. God bless you.Dionisio_{April 22, 2014
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This thread has so many funny follow-up comments, I've been laughing for several minutes after reading your comments. Thank you all for this healthy sense of humor you have brought up to this discussion. May God bless you all honest science lovers. P.S. did you read the news report in The Independent this morning about the MIT researchers tinkering with DNA that has cured some diseases? I did not notice any reference to Darwinism in that report. Apparently those researchers don't need Darwinian ideas in order to get their work done, do they? Or is it that I missed that part of the report? Or maybe they didn't read the memo from Reverend Dawkins?Dionisio_{April 22, 2014
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gpuccio @ 10
I have always thought that Dawkins is our best ally. Long live old dear neo darwinism, so honest in its wrong beliefs that it is really easy to prove them false!
That's really funny! Thanks. :)Dionisio_{April 22, 2014
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This hadn't really occured to me, but I guess in fact it was Dawkins who made me realize that evolution was nonsense. Before I started reading his books, I just assumed there must be knowledge about the mechanisms at work that I was simply uniformed of. Then I read Dawkins, and thought, what?? Sloppy copying errors which occasionally add up to something in just the right sequences of mistakes? This is what they are banking on? Ten minutes of pondering that and I knew full well this wasn't the true story. I began eagerly quizzing any biologists I could find, in hopes that they could tell me that what Dawkins has in mind is nothing like what biologists believe. And yet they kept saying, no no, that's pretty much correct. I had to laugh. After an extended quest for knowledge, I now know that there isn't an evolutionary biologist alive who I would be intimated to question the validity of their evolutionist faith. No biologist could ever outwit me in a debate, just for the simple fact that they are playing with such a ludicrously bad hand to begin with. All one has to do is call their bluff every time, and they flouder like a marionette underwater. I used to think they just had knowledge I didn't. Thank you so much for pointing out that I was wrong, Richard.phoodoo_{April 22, 2014
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What jw777 stated was terrific and should be repeated: "I was just pointing out that a reasonable person cannot believe in abiogenesis and macroevolution in any scientific way. They are merely faith articles for people with a previous philosophical commitment that requires their truth." I have never read any of Richard Dawkins's books, mostly because I never saw the point in doing so. For people who claim that god(s) are irrelevant and religion is a poison, they seem to have adopted evolution as their creation myth and they refer to Darwin's work with the same reverance a Christian refers to the words of Jesus in the New Testament.Barb_{April 22, 2014
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I have always thought that Dawkins is our best ally. Long live old dear neo darwinism, so honest in its wrong beliefs that it is really easy to prove them false!gpuccio_{April 22, 2014
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I was an undergraduate chemical engineering student when I read The Blind Watchmaker around 1995-96. At that age, though I cannot say that I was an atheist, I was pretty much "secular" (for lack of better term). So I very much liked the book, and actually made a presentation of that book in one of the lectures (especially, monkeys typing randomly example)... Years later, I am on the opposite side of views advocated in The Blind Watchmaker. I cannot exactly say that solely that book is responsible from the paradigm shift in my views from naturalism to theism, but at least it helped me (or initiated) question many Darwinian explanations, which, maybe otherwise, I would have taken for granted.. So thanks to Dawkins :)CuriousCat_{April 22, 2014
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Mung @3
StephenB, why is your God, the God of a priori intent any different from the God of the Deist?
I guess I don't understand the question. I believe in the God of Genesis who creates the universe and its inhabitants with intent and purpose; sustains and watches over them with care; and intervenes at various times and places when it pleases Him. What does any of that have to do with deism?StephenB_{April 21, 2014
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I absolutely love Dawkins. I know that every time he is making a presentation an honest atheist is coming to God. I hope he keeps lecturing worldwide for a long time.wallstreeter43_{April 21, 2014
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Thanks for the fascinating account, jw777! The "after billions of years" has a similar ring to me now as "once upon a time."
Chronos was the Greek god of Time, a winged serpent. He and his consort, the serpentine Ananke (Inevitability), circled the primal world egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky. The daughters of Ananke are the three fates. -- compiled from several sources
So you can see that the ancient Greeks anticipated the modern proposition that time and inevitability are the prime cause for existence and the origin of life! And the Three Fates anticipated B.F. Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity." You can now see how Dawkins and company are relentlessly being drawn into the coils of Greek mythology! They want to be Olympian, so to Olympus they must bow. Incidentally, it seems that Greek mythology is simply a personification of philosophical arguments, and might have originally been a clever mnemonic device. -QQuerius_{April 21, 2014
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For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." 1 Corinthians 1:19 It doesn't surprise me that Dawkins, in his irrational and illogical hatred for Christianity, has helped turn people towards it. :-DBlue_Savannah_{April 21, 2014
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Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead - April 20, 2014 - Pastor Vern Streeter http://www.harvestchurch.tv/sermons/elephant-in-the-room/#682 Final sermon in the "Elephant In The Room' series from Harvest Churchbornagain77_{April 21, 2014
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I've never quite understood why God cannot be "the blind watchmaker." Is it because God is the God of the Deists? He had to know what his a priori intent was and set up a mechanistic universe to bring it about, just like clockwork? StephenB, why is your God, the God of a priori intent any different from the God of the Deist? Is God the Watchmaker (blind or not) or is the watchmaker analogy completely misguided?Mung_{April 21, 2014
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I was only 5 when the Blind Watchmaker came out. I read it when I was about 10. I was wholly unaware of openly anti-evolutionary scientific thinking prior to reading his work. I remember thinking, "why does evolution, naturalism and atheism need apologetics?" He opened my eyes, because before coming across Dawkins I believed anything Darwinian was incontestable fact. I was a fastidious index of paleontology at the time. As a result of Dawkins' references to William Paley, I became educated on the truth that very smart people had some insurmountable difficulties with evolutionary theory, timetables, mechanisms and the like. Dawkins himself in trying to overcome Mt. Improbable and the imaginative undirected formation of the eye painted a clearer picture of just how disconnected from reality people are who tend to have anti-Christian worldviews. How could this fact not draw me closer to the object of Dawkins' and his likeminded ilk's ire? Just that alone made the previously silly unimaginable following of Jesus all the more intriguing. Years later, in a collegiate communications course I chose to do an informative speech on the gaps, glaring faults and falsified predictions within Darwinian evolutionary theory. At this time, my aim and even my beliefs were not Pro-ID or Evangelical at all. I hadn't read Michael Behe's work. I didn't know who Stephen Meyer was. I was just pointing out that a reasonable person cannot believe in abiogenesis and macroevolution in any scientific way. They are merely faith articles for people with a previous philosophical commitment that requires their truth. My professor had cut me off at exactly the 8 minute mark. Later in the same semester a disillusioned engineering student decided to make his persuasive speech on how anyone who opposes Darwinian evolutionary theory is a religious idiot (I was in a state of shock as I had never made any reference to God, faith, religion, revelation, creationism, etc.). The professor allowed him to speak for 27 minutes without interruption. At the end of the speech, everyone in the class turned around to me to see what questions I would have for him. I said, "this whole talk's premise is antiquated and irrelevant, so it doesn't even rise to the level of something I can ask a question about." The student's girlfriend chimed in to defend his honor, saying, "we even asked our priest, and he said that it was okay to believe this." The speaker then made some reference to Dawkins. That moment marked a categorical logical enmity between me and Dawkins and basically anyone who ever agrees with anything he ever stands for. Much later I would find that that speech was more or less a pirated parroting of various TalkOrigins articles. I have many, many other reasons for my Christian faith, most importantly a personal religious experience. But if I had nothing else, just the fact that Richard Dawkins thinks Christians are fools and the story of the risen Christ "is parochial" makes it a foregone conclusion that some strain of Christian Orthodoxy is the true religion.jw777_{April 21, 2014
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Ricard Dawkins, instrument of God, ambassador for Christ. Does have a nice ring to it :)Mung_{April 21, 2014
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