Comments on: The Selfish Gene; The Blind Watchmaker

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 09:28:36 +0000

Thanks for your comments Greg, and I’ll be sure to take a look at your link when I’ve a bit of time: Something that is sadly lacking in my life right now as the dearth of posts demonstrates. This response is a bit hurried too.

I think what you’re primarily referring to what’s the generally given argument known as ‘The God of gaps’ (Wikipedia definition here). Just because we don’t specifically know, or cannot currently prove, the exact steps that were moved through, somehow the overall theory of evolution is undermined.

With regards the first replicator, Dawkins was (if I recall correctly; I don’t have the book to hand) only offering a view; Postulating, not stating, as an exercise. It’s fair to say that there are a lot of opinions as to what happened, but nothing has so far been widely accepted, hindered not least by the lack of a fossil record or (so far) evidence of a specific process. I’m aware too that it’s an area of active research.

The main argument that you imply that atheist views - specifically of scientists such as Dawkins - are no different from theistic faith in their (you imply) unshakeable nature - is in my view incorrect. Whilst scientific discourse is protracted, time consuming and no doubt fallible as any human endeavour, I’d argue it is open to new views and approaches backed by evidence, with solid facts and observations. There was no claim his version of the formation of life was absolutely true, just that it was one explanation for how things started.

I addressed some of these points in a longer article last month following the Liddle programme. See ‘A response to The Trouble with Atheism’, which includes a few links to some other more lucid discourses you might find of interest (from both sides of the argument).

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:53:39 +0000

I had until now viewed evolution as a given, but not really understood the mechanics of how it occurred.

You believed something was a “given” without understanding how it happened. That seems very much like “faith” to me.

I can’t emphasise enough how much I was thoroughly taken aback by the fundamental simplicity of the processes Dawkins described, and that once the replicators appeared the only vital ingredient that led to complex life was simply lots and lots of time.

So how did the first cell appear then with this replication ability? How did the replicator “evolve” from the non-living chemical soup. Dawkins doesn’t explain this, “simply” or otherwise. He has “faith” that it did.

See http://russp.org/Dawkins.htm

By: leyton.org » A response to “The trouble with Atheism”

leyton.org » A response to “The trouble with Atheism” — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 12:57:36 +0000

[...] Darwin could be replaced with something. Well, of course. Look at Newtonian physics. It was superseded by relativity, after Einstein came along. Science theory is not set in stone, and yes, it could and probably will be superseded by something that explains the process more accurately. But Liddle’s painfully built straw-man, was that Darwinism is held up as a holy-scripture for atheists, and to ‘disprove’ or ‘challenge’ it, was to undermine atheists central tenant. But Darwinism isn’t core to Atheism (in my view). It’s certainly important because, until Darwin came along, there was no adequate scientific explanation for how complex life appeared. Now there is, and it’s a remarkably simple explanation. Dig deep enough and you’ll find people who will say what you want, and sure the scientist he spoke too could have something interesting, but I’ll leave it to the peer-reviewed scientific process to help establish whether it’s valid. There are plenty of things we don’t understand, but that doesn’t catastrophically undermine the process and the theory. It struck me as the whole ‘god of gaps‘ argument reworked, along with a probable misunderstanding by Liddle about the unit of natural selection. Try reading the The Selfish Gene, and come back to me. [...]

By: leyton.org » The root of all evil (2)

leyton.org » The root of all evil (2) — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 11:28:35 +0000

[...] There has been other criticism, such as this piece from last Saturday’s Guardian, which attacks the supposed lack of rigour in Dawkins’ arguments. However, this looses sight of the fact that the two hours available to the subject is insufficient to do the subject justice, especially when compared to the hours of religious programming given over in the weekly television schedule. Dawkins made an admirable attempt to outline how evolution and science rely on understanding evidence and proving, or disproving, theories to explain the natural world about us, but having read some of his seminal books, it’s perhaps unsurprising the television version would be disappointingly brief. He was always bound to upset people of strong religious convictions, as anybody saying they were believing in a work of fiction and fabrication would. It really isn’t possible to mitigate the two. [...]

By: leyton.org » The root of all evil

leyton.org » The root of all evil — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 23:27:39 +0000

[...] I’ve just seen a tantalising trailer for Richard Dawkins’ documentary “The root of all evil”, which will be making an appearance next Monday. I’m a huge fan of Richard Dawkins books (more here), so I’m sure it’ll make for interesting viewing. [...]

By: leyton.org » One side can be wrong

leyton.org » One side can be wrong — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 18:00:41 +0000

[...] As you might expect, I’m thoroughly in agreement with Richard Dawkins (see my review of his books). The arguments given for “Intelligent Design” almost always fail to provide a scientifically founded alternative that is open to study, and invariably are self-referential, superstitious nonsense. [...]

By: leyton.org » Has Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the world?

leyton.org » Has Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the world? — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 17:01:38 +0000

[...] Francis Wheen’s book How Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the world was an enjoyable and interesting book, but marks the end - for now - of my extended reading of science/political/analytical books. For the last few months I’ve been devouring books by authors such as Richard Dawkins and Jung Chang, on Mao, and to be honest I need a break! [...]