Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Hallelujah! 2nd vol Dawkins’ autobiography

Denyse O'Leary
August 31, 2015
Atheism, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, News
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File:A small cup of coffee.JPG As usual, we close off our religion coverage for the week with inspirational messages from the new atheists. As many new atheists appear to have gone to relationship counselling (possibly why they are no longer threatening to sue each other or creating scenes in elevators for a global public?),  we are once again proud to serve our house product (; ) Richard Dawkins.

We understand that the lost messiah portrait of Dawkins has been found:

Meanwhile, the second Volume of his autobiography is virtually in hand, https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/635868366679359493

And the hagiography continues apace, as here from the Guardian:

Where once the humanists and philosophers were cocks of the cultural walk, now Dawkins can claim without argument that there are “deep philosophical questions that only science can answer”. There are no mysteries, just as-yet-unsolved scientific problems: “Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information.” The culture wars are over; science has won and Dawkins is confident that he has played a non-trivial role in that victory. Surveying the enormous change in the public prestige of science since CP Snow’s The Two Cultures (1959), he takes satisfaction that his books have been “among those that changed the cultural landscape”. Snow complained that, for some unfathomable reason, scientists were not counted as “intellectuals”. That has all changed. In 2013, readers of Prospect magazine voted Dawkins the world’s “top thinker”.

The enemies Dawkins has made are, in the main, the enemies he anticipated. As an atheist, he is a vigorous critic of the creationists, their religious fellow-travellers, the postmodernists, relativists and assorted “enemies of reason”. And as a participant in the scientific cage-fighting that is modern evolutionary theory, Dawkins has one of the sharpest tongues in modern culture. Take this assessment of religious people, for example: “faith seems … to qualify as a kind of mental illness” and “what has ‘theology’ ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody?”. Or this criticism of a book by his scientific opponent, Harvard’s EO Wilson: “an act of wanton arrogance” and, with a nod to Dorothy Parker, “this is not a book to be tossed lightly aside. It should be thrown with great force.” As has been said of the traditional English gentleman, Dawkins has never been unintentionally rude; and his snarling is unremitting. Writing in the Observer some years ago, Robin McKie described him as “the Dirty Harry of science”, and a Spectator review defined what it means to be “Dawkinised”: “Not just to be dressed down or duffed up, it is to be squelched, pulverised, annihilated, rendered into suitably primordial paste.” More

Okay, so he’s still the big Darwin hero. Oh, by the way:

1. Sorry, Darwin, it’s not your evolution any more. Innumerable other changes, big and small, are burying Dawkins’s “pop science as real science” under a load of evidence before our eyes.

2. Reviewer Chapin has got the sequence of events exactly backwards: Abuse and misuse has made even the term creationists nearly meaningless unless it means “people who see through the BS” on all kinds of topics. And they are hardly terrified by apparatchiks fronting wornout Dawkins-style claims. That’s on its way to becoming a trend.

One rather feels sorry for people who cannot allow themselves to wonder what is changing, the way one feels sorry for people who espouse “modern psychology,” oblivious to the fact that only one-third of published papers have turned up replicable results.

3. As an elder statesman,Dawkins has hardly been a force for good. See his approach to that much-misunderstood and persecuted group, people who suffer from Down syndrome:

Richard Dawkins on Down syndrome: Immoral that such a person should live

Priceless: A mother’s plea to son with Down syndrome to be tolerant of Dawkins

and

Why should Richard Dawkins even live?

And he’s no good on other issues around vulnerable children.

But the new atheists need a hero and we must honourably grant them their choice. As before: Overall, holy kaziddle.

Usual science coverage begins shortly.

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Comments
BA77, Richie's brain only gives the appearance of having been intelligently designed for apprehending things that only give the appearance of having been intelligently designed. With his sense of the numinous, you would have thought Richie would have been tailor-made (by chance, of course) for ground-breaking research into QM.Axel
September 2, 2015
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That book is just for old people. We are already living in the post atheist era. Where people grow up in an environment where objectivity is competed against subjectivity, to the complete destruction of subjectivity. These old atheists just assume as a matter of course a whole shitload of ethics that they grew up with, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever in their materialistic view of things. The new people, both atheistic and religious, don't understand anymore how subjectivity works on a more fundamental personal level. They got nothing. That's the result of the old atheists doing their work. My sense of it is, depression and anxiety are up amongst college students, and likely they will turn religious, to some extent, but just not understand anymore how religion works. Religion will seem to go up, but really will be in a sorry state. Many people are also now becoming more nationalistic. It doesn't mean national feeling is on a high now, it means national feeling is on a low, and the need is felt to reinforce the feeling because it is so low. The same thing will happen with religion.mohammadnursyamsu
September 1, 2015
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This is a very beautiful testimony that really will make you say Hallelujah! Ex Suicide Bomber Testimony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLByt-XxKyYbornagain77
August 31, 2015
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as to this claim:
“deep philosophical questions that only science can answer”
Then why is Dawkins a reductive materialist since 'science' has refuted his philosophy of reductive materialism as a coherent explanation for reality?
Stephen Hawking: "Philosophy Is Dead" - Michael Egnor - August 3, 2015 Excerpt: The metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas is far and away the most successful framework on which to understand modern science, especially quantum mechanics. Heisenberg knew this (Link on site). Aristotle 2,300 years ago described the basics of collapse of the quantum waveform (reduction of potency to act),,, Real scientists have a meaningful understanding of natural philosophy as it relates to their work. No atheist scientist in the public spotlight today would pass a freshman philosophy class. Think Dawkins. Think Krauss. Think Myers. Think Moran. Think Novella. Think Coyne. Think Hawking. Our 21st-century scientific priesthood -- mostly atheists and materialists to the extent that their metaphysics is coherent enough to be described -- is dominated by half-educated technicians with publicists.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/08/stephen_hawking_3098261.html “I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.” Werner Heisenberg "[while a number of philosophical ideas] may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics, ...materialism is not." Eugene Wigner Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism - video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL1mr9ZTZb3TViAqtowpvZy5PZpn-MoSK_&v=4C5pq7W5yRM Why Quantum Theory Does Not Support Materialism - By Bruce L Gordon: Excerpt: Because quantum theory is thought to provide the bedrock for our scientific understanding of physical reality, it is to this theory that the materialist inevitably appeals in support of his worldview. But having fled to science in search of a safe haven for his doctrines, the materialist instead finds that quantum theory in fact dissolves and defeats his materialist understanding of the world.,, The underlying problem is this: there are correlations in nature that require a causal explanation but for which no physical explanation is in principle possible. Furthermore, the nonlocalizability of field quanta entails that these entities, whatever they are, fail the criterion of material individuality. So, paradoxically and ironically, the most fundamental constituents and relations of the material world cannot, in principle, be understood in terms of material substances. Since there must be some explanation for these things, the correct explanation will have to be one which is non-physical - and this is plainly incompatible with any and all varieties of materialism. http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952939
As to:
“Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information.”
Although I disagree with the "life is just,,," preface whenever I see it, perhaps Dawkins and his enthusiastic cheerleader(s) can list one example of unguided material processes creating non-trivial information?
The Origin of Information: How to Solve It - Perry Marshall Where did the information in DNA come from? This is one of the most important and valuable questions in the history of science. Cosmic Fingerprints has issued a challenge to the scientific community: “Show an example of Information that doesn’t come from a mind. All you need is one.” “Information” is defined as digital communication between an encoder and a decoder, using agreed upon symbols. To date, no one has shown an example of a naturally occurring encoding / decoding system, i.e. one that has demonstrably come into existence without a designer. A private equity investment group is offering a technology prize for this discovery. We will financially reward and publicize the first person who can solve this;,,, To solve this problem is far more than an object of abstract religious or philosophical discussion. It would demonstrate a mechanism for producing coding systems, thus opening up new channels of scientific discovery. Such a find would have sweeping implications for Artificial Intelligence research. http://cosmicfingerprints.com/solve/
Moreover, 'scientifically' finding out that biological life is information theoretic in its foundational basis does provide an answer to an important 'philosophical question'.
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
So why is Dawkins not a Christian now that science has answered that very important philosophical question? As to his claim that Theists are,,
"enemies of reason”
Should not the philosophy one champions allow for the possibility of reason in the first place before that person can possibly say who the enemies of reason are and who is not?
Sam Harris's Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It - Martin Cothran - November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state -- including their position on this issue -- is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn't logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html (1) rationality implies a thinker in control of thoughts. (2) under materialism a thinker is an effect caused by processes in the brain. (3) in order for materialism to ground rationality a thinker (an effect) must control processes in the brain (a cause). (1)&(2) (4) no effect can control its cause. Therefore materialism cannot ground rationality. per Box UD Why No One (Can) Believe Atheism/Naturalism to be True (Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism) - video Excerpt: "Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life." Richard Dawkins - quoted from "The God Delusion" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4QFsKevTXs
Indeed, since atheistic materialism denies the reality of reason would that not make atheistic materialists the true 'enemies of reason'?bornagain77
August 31, 2015
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