It is
telling that Dawkins starts off this chapter with the assumption that God came
from somewhere. It is certainly true
that we think along the lines of linear time, and it is impossible for us to
think of how God could be, apart from time.
In spite of what we might initially think, is not that hard a concept to
grasp – a character in a novel cannot
possibly conceive of how the author existed prior to the very first page, but
we (being authors ourselves) see it as obvious.
If you wish, consider yourself a living character, the result of God's
multidimensional speaking. Such
thinking is helpful only from the viewpoint that it brings us to face our own
limitations. We, being created, cannot fully
understand God, our creator. Dawkins is
really saying God doesn't exist because we cannot comprehend Him. I keep seeing this as a running theme
throughout this book - Dawkins perceives himself to be the authority, and God needs
to just show up personally and prove His existence to him (Dawkins), or he
won't believe - and by his logic, you
shouldn’t either. Personally, I find it sad that Dawkins is
determined to live and die apart from God.
I am hopeful that people would carefully consider where they stand on
that matter, rather than merely take up the thinking of any one particular
human being.
For his
part, Dawkins almost worships Darwin. I
think that's ironic, because I rather think that if Richard had met Darwin in
the flesh I would fully expect Richard to have snubbed the younger man for lack
of education.
Now if
you choose to believe that nothing was doing nothing and then for no reason
whatsoever nothing exploded, creating everything, and little bits of matter
magically assembled themselves into self-replicating bits that turned into
dinosaurs....well then, I don't think that 'natural selection' would seem so
ridiculous. For myself, I see 'natural
selection' as 'unnatural conclusion'. It
simply doesn't make any sense (to me at least) to believe that a microbe gave
birth to a plankton, and then a plankton gave birth to a fish, etc. A microbe can certainly adapt and become a
better microbe (just as a dog can be bred to be bigger or faster), but it can
never become more than a microbe. Same
with a fish. You can breed bigger,
faster fish, or fish with bigger mouths, but they will never get small legs and
then slightly larger legs, and then lungs.
Types cannot change types, and species cannot change species. Inserting several hundred million years
between species on a long evolutionary scale only makes sense if you suspend
the principle of entropy, magically erase the innumerable variations between
steps and also ensure that each step gets to keep the exceedingly vast majority
of its result w/o moving to the next step (for it is self-evident that not all
fish grew legs, and not all lizards became monkeys, and not all monkeys became
men). If natural selection really
worked, there would be almost no lesser beings, because the ones that 'win'
would keep on winning - overcoming the ones that 'lose'. Or else there would be innumerable 'almost
winners' of every type and permutation living around us. But where the people group with better
eyesight? Where are the fossils of the
three-legged men, or the eight-legged dogs?
Surely 'natural selection' would have had to try those permutations
too. Forgive my sarcasm, but hey, we
could all use eyes in the back of our heads - where is the people group with
half an eye in the back of their heads, on their way to take over the world in
just another thirty or forty million years?
Dawkins then
makes the ridiculous claim that it is a virtue in religion for to be us
satisfied with the status quo, and lazy in thought about how to advance. Here he again shows a tremendous ignorance of
Scripture and of history. The whole
point of knowing Christ is to discover God in a deeper and more significant
way. Indeed the more you do, the richer,
more fuller and more satisfying your life becomes. The beauty of the Christian life is that we
know we are saved for a purpose (to know and enjoy God) – a purpose that must include continued learning and
continued growth because the purpose itself is continued depth of relationship.
Speaking
of not being lazy in thought, you should know that Western Europe's first
schools were not started by well educated atheists. Rather, they were started by Benedictine
monks desiring to teach young men how to read and write. They began centers of learning nearby their
monasteries for this purpose. In 1079,
Pope Gregory the 7th issued a decree requiring the creation of cathedral
schools for educating the clergy. It was
this development the led directly to the establishment of the University of
Bologna in 1084, Oxford (1170) and the University of Paris in 1200. So from a western mindset at least, know that
it was Christiandom that sought higher learning, not secularists.
Dawkins
errs to declare that the gaps in the fossil record do not deserve greater
scrutiny. It is not that creationists
'love gaps' (and so want to stare so long at them that we come to the wrong
conclusions), but that the gaps represent real problems for the evolutionary
'slow climb'. As I've already stated,
if there really was a slow climb, we would see all kinds of
almost-made-it-but-not-quite creatures in the fossilized record, and we would
also see many different and competing permutations on the present world. We do not see them, but instead see creatures
that represent distinct species.
Evolutionists claim these are 'links'.
I think that is a great and erroneous leap of faith (faith in yourself
and human thought instead of in God).
Creationists see in the fossil record exactly what we see today in the
real world, a great number of distinct, created species.
On the
matter of irreducible complexity, Richard writes to discredit Michael Behe, declaring
that he is simply not using his imagination.
According to Dawkins, if he was using his imagination he could find a
way of discrediting creationism and he would conclude evolution. OK, then why doesn't Dawkins use his
imagination to discredit evolution?
After all, if the shoe fits....but clearly he has chosen to believe in
evolution (putting his faith in himself) and he doesn't like that others have
chosen to believe in God (putting their faith in Him). I thank God that He has not only made it
clear that He is creator, but also revealed to us that this very conflict (of
choice between God and other) is the foundation of the fall of mankind – which in turn is the reason we are by nature so blind to
Him and His work.
Dawkins
misapplies Augustine just as he misapplies nature around him. It is not that creationists want to stay
ignorant (as I've already said), but that Christians are more concerned with
what ultimately matters more than on zeroing in on minutiae that has no
practical application. Dawkins and
Darwinians are the ones telling us to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and
as much of our precious limited time as possible (and we only have 24hours a
day and about 30000 days each) on the endless search to find what can never be
found (a creator apart from God). That
is what Augustine was saying in the quote Richard uses, BTW.
Toward
the end of this chapter Richard starts to show his true colours a bit more
clearly in his treatment of anthropic principle. LIsten to what he says, "We can deal with the unique origin of life
by postulating a very large number of planetary opportunities. Once that initial stroke of luck has been
granted - and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us - natural
selection takes over; and natural selection is empathically not a matter of
luck."
Is that atheist
logic? I do not want to be overtly sarcastic, but
what hear Dawkins really saying is, "We
can counter the theist view of God's creation by using our imaginations to
conceive of a uncountable quantity, within which we only have to have luck just
one time. Once we have that luck (and
our imaginations can give the luck to us because the math is so far out of
normal experience), we can depend on abandoning the principle of entropy,
ignoring the fossil records and pretending - none of which is more luck! Thus, we win and there is clearly no
God."
Lest you
think I am making Dawkins appear more foolish than he actually is, try reading
his own words as he explains the why God is a bad idea compared to the alternative
atheist idea that our universe is actually the product of an evolutionary cycle
in a multiverse consisting of zillions of universes;
“The key
difference between the genuinely extravagant God hypothesis and the apparently
extravagant multiverse hypothesis is one of statistical improbability. The multiverse, for all it is extravagant, is
simple. God, or any intelligent,
decision-taking, calculating agent, would have to be highly improbable in the
very same statistical sense as the entities he is supposed to explain. The multiverse may seem extravagant in sheer
number of universes. But if each one of
those universes is simple in its fundamental laws, we are still not postulating
anything highly improbable. The very
opposite has to be said of any kind of intelligence.”
The
problem with his logic (from my perspective) is the sheer number. Not of the universes, but of the assumptions
he makes:
1)
An
assumption that there are other universes at all (something we cannot prove or
disprove)
2)
An
assumption that there are a huge number of them (something we cannot prove or
disprove)
3)
An
assumption that they are all ‘simple’ (something we cannot prove or disprove)
4)
An
assumption that human statistics can even be applied as relevant to other
universes (something we cannot prove or
disprove)
5)
An
assumption that one of these universes spontaneously gives rise to life by
itself.
6)
An
assumption that the life that spontaneously rose manages to evolve to our present
state.
That
seems to me, living in what Dawkins would call the exceptional universe, to be
a rather large amount of exceptional circumstances, all lining up in a rather
exceptional way. Yet in Dawkin’s math, the abovementioned series of assumptions makes more
sense than the theists’ list:
1)
God
is.
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