Being a well-within-the-box-atheist-group-thinker Richard Dawkins cannot expand his mind outwards to that which a finite universe implies.
He continues to looking for God in all the wrong places (and in all the wrong ways).
This became apparent again in a statement with which I agree as he had a discussion with Ben Stein in Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed (see here, here).
Ben Stein: What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in Darwinian evolution?
Richard Dawkins: It could come about in the following way: It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved by probably some kind of Darwinian means to a very, very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded on to, perhaps this planet. Now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that, if you look at the details of bio-chemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer.
Ben Stein (narrating): Wait a second! Richard Dawkins thought that Intelligent Design might be a legitimate pursuit?
Richard Dawkins: And that designer could very well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence itself would have to had have come about by some explicable or ultimately explicable process. It couldn’t have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That’s the point.
Indeed, Richard Dawkins is quite right. If the designer is a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe it would have to have come about by some explicable or ultimately explicable, Darwinian, process.
Let us consider two issues:
1) He supposes the possibility of finding such evidence by studying “the details of bio-chemistry, molecular biology.”
He has conducted such studies, he was viewed the evidence but he then denies the evidence, urges others to do likewise and concocts tall tales in order to explain away the evidence. This was likewise done by Francis Crick who is an atheist alien intelligent design proponent.
Richard Dawkins wrote, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose” (The Blind Watchmaker, p. 1).
Francis Crick wrote, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved” (What Mad Pursuit, p. 138).
They must keep it in mind because their particular atheistic worldview adherence will not allow them to think otherwise. Although, they both allow for intelligent design via aliens so, I just do not get it—I suppose that design is too close that God for atheist comfort.
2) He, rightly, states that aliens could not have just jumped into existence spontaneously.
Yet, his own view of life’s origin is what? That is just jumped into existence spontaneously. He actually fills the gaps in our knowledge with the luck-of-the-gaps:
It is as though, in our theory of how we came to exist, we are allowed to postulate a certain ration of luck (The Blind Watchmaker, p. 145).
Explain[ing] how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises…makes heavier demands on luck(The God Delusion, p. 121).
Is it any wonder that he concludes,
We don’t actually need a plausible theory of the origin of life (The Greatest Show on Earth, p. 421—considered here and here).
In any regard, he is quite right in noting the infinite regress, the answer that does not answer the question but merely pushes the question further back in time. Yet, his mind is locked within the box of the universe and he is thus looking to life in the universe to explain life in the universe since it could be that life begat life and was begotten by life, etc.
By restricting his thought to that which is within the box he is exercising adherence to absolute materialism as was done by Carl Sagan, “the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be,” by Dan Barker, “There are no gods…There is only our natural world,” by Daniel Dennett, “We atheists don’t believe that there is any God,” Dawkins, “God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place,” and on it goes.
Yet, it is perfectly cogent to conclude that there is something outside of, beyond, the universe which created it and fine tuned it for life. I will not reiterate the argument here since it is laid out and juxtaposed with others in my essay On the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorns, et al.
The only retort left to personages such as Richard Dawkins is to ask “Who designed the designer?”
As Dawkins explains it (in The Blind Watchmaker), “To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.”
As seconded by Christopher Hitchens (in God Is Not Great), “who designed the designer or created the creator? Religion and theology have consistently failed to overcome this objection.”
As Daniel Dennett (in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea) put it in referencing Richard Dawkins; he declares that it is an “unrebuttable refutation, as devastating today as when Philo used it to trounce Cleanthes in Hume’s Dialogues two centuries earlier.”
And as of course, Richard Dawkins (in The God Delusion) quotes Daniel Dennett who is quoting Richard Dawkins and proclaims that Daniel Dennett is correct in approving of Richard Dawkins!
I have dealt with this issue in the Spaghetti/Unicorns essay and will do so again in an upcoming essay on atheist circular logic.
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