I had originally posted this as a twelve page essay. I certainly hope that I was not unnecessarily verbose. I wrote twelve pages in order to cover my topic carefully, accurately and fairly. While adding some new information to the original essay I have decided to repost the essay in parts so as to make them bite sized.
Professor Richard Dawkins,
“we are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”
Genesis 1:27,
“God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him. He created them male and female.”
Professor Richard Dawkins has previously denied charges of being a fundamentalist. He wrote a response to such charges entitled: “How dare you call me a fundamentalist – The right to criticise ‘faith-heads’“
He differentiates himself from fundamentalists, Christians in this case, in the section entitled “You’re as much a fundamentalist as those you criticise”:
“No, please, do not mistake passion, which can change its mind, for fundamentalism, which never will. Passion for passion, an evangelical Christian and I may be evenly matched. But we are not equally fundamentalist. The true scientist, however passionately he may ‘believe’, in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will.”
Of course, as far as I can tell the first charge of fundamentalism leveled against Prof. Richard Dawkins was not by “faith-heads” but by agnostic, biologist, the late Stephen Jay Gould who in 1997 AD wrote, Darwinian Fundamentalism in which he stated:
“I am amused by an irony that has recently ensnared evolutionary theory. A movement of strict constructionism, a self-styled form of Darwinian fundamentalism, has risen to some prominence in a variety of fields, from the English biological heartland of John Maynard Smith to the uncompromising ideology (albeit in graceful prose) of his compatriot Richard Dawkins, to the equally narrow and more ponderous writing of the American philosopher Daniel Dennett (who entitled his latest book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea)_Niles Eldredge_speaks of this coordinated movement as Ultra-Darwinism_the modern ultras push their line with an almost theological fervor_the ultras are fundamentalists at heart, and_fundamentalists generally try to stigmatize their opponents by depicting them as apostates from the one true way_apocalyptic ultra-Darwinian_simplistic dogmatism epitomized by Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.”
The Guardian wrote the following in, “The Atheist Delusion“:
“Secularisation is in retreat, and the result is the appearance of an evangelical type of atheism not seen since Victorian times. As in the past, this is a type of atheism that mirrors the faith it rejects_Zealous atheism renews some of the worst features of Christianity and Islam. Just as much as these religions, it is a project of universal conversion. Evangelical atheists never doubt that human life can be transformed if everyone accepts their view of things, and they are certain that one way of living – their own, suitably embellished – is right for everybody. To be sure, atheism need not be a missionary creed of this kind. It is entirely reasonable to have no religious beliefs, and yet be friendly to religion. It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse that is peculiarly human. Yet that is what evangelical atheists do when they demonise religion_[Michel Onfray wrote] ‘Many militants of the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of clergy.’”
Let us consider whether evidence, even the evidence discovered in the unforeseeable future, would change Prof. Richard Dawkins’ mind or whether nothing will. Such a consideration is certainly highly speculative and so, of course, I have to rely on Prof. Richard Dawkins’ modus operandi, on his own words and his own descriptions of his beliefs. From what I have read and heard from Prof. Richard Dawkins, he holds to an absolutely materialistic worldview (I will qualify this statement later). He holds to a particular theory from which he will not waiver. Thus, he holds to a worldview according to which his theory is correct and everything must fall under its umbrella even things that are well outside of the theory’s intended scope. Therefore, the theory does not change in accordance to any evidence that conflicts with it rather, the evidence is massaged until it fits the theory.
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