“I am attacking Gods, all gods, anything and everything supernatural..”
I may have to take some time out from diving into the fascinating archives of the Royal Society [free until December - Ed] to read this, Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion, and it couldn’t have appeared at a bettter time. Joan Bakewell applauds loudly in her review in the Guardian, “Primed by anger, redeemed by humour, it will, I trust, offend many”, where you can read an extract from the first chapter. Dawkins was also interviewed on Newsnight last night, hopefully they’ll put it online, and there are more extracts there too. And he makes a prescient point in the first chapter that is worth highlighting.As I attempted to point out at the time, Pope Benedict’s speech at his old University at a Meeting with The Representatives of Science was intended to be an “attempt to equate, or entwine, religion and science..”
That attempt is also highlighted by Breda O’Brien in today’s Irish Times, although she is in favour of such a move[subs req]
It seems to have been overlooked in most of the commentary that he was speaking in a university about the role of universities, and challenging the idea that only research based on observable, empirical, measurable evidence can be considered reasonable or scientific. When he taught at Regensburg decades ago, the university was proud of its two faculties of theology and it was accepted even by unbelievers that it is reasonable to explore the question of God.[added emphasis]
Richard Dawkins anticipated the argument put forward by Benedict – from the extract from the first chapter of his book
In greater numbers since his death, religious apologists understandably try to claim Einstein as one of their own. Some of his religious contemporaries saw him very differently. In 1940 Einstein wrote a famous paper justifying his statement “I do not believe in a personal God”. This and similar statements provoked a storm of letters from the religiously orthodox, many of them alluding to Einstein’s Jewish origins. The extracts that follow are taken from Max Jammer’s book Einstein and Religion (which is also my main source of quotations from Einstein himself on religious matters). The Roman Catholic Bishop of Kansas City said: “It is sad to see a man, who comes from the race of the Old Testament and its teaching, deny the great tradition of that race.” Other Catholic clergymen chimed in: “There is no other God but a personal God … Einstein does not know what he is talking about. He is all wrong. Some men think that because they have achieved a high degree of learning in some field, they are qualified to express opinions in all.” The notion that religion is a proper field, in which one might claim expertise, is one that should not go unquestioned. That clergyman presumably would not have deferred to the expertise of a claimed “fairyologist” on the exact shape and colour of fairy wings. Both he and the bishop thought that Einstein, being theologically untrained, had misunderstood the nature of God. On the contrary, Einstein understood very well exactly what he was denying.[added emphasis]
Dawkins is keen to get the terminology clear before any debate
Let’s remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a nonsupernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist’s metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.[added emphasis]
An aside, the 2006 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge winners have been announced, a competition run by the American National Science Foundation and Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
As the introduction to the challenge on the National Science Foundation’s website states
Some of science�s most powerful statements are not made in words. From the diagrams of DaVinci to Hooke�s microscopic bestiary, the beaks of Darwin�s finches, Rosalind Franklin�s x-rays or the latest photographic marvels retrieved from the remotest galactic outback, visualization of research has a long and literally illustrious history. To illustrate is, etymologically and actually, to enlighten.
That would be Leonardo’s Laboratory of the Mind and Robert Hooke’s Micrographia – further details of that in the Royal Society archives
ANYway.. The winners of the 2006 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge include this wondrous image from an non-interactive animation, Body Code
And this image, from the Photopgraphy section, an Egyptian child mummy
And, to end, a final reminder of Dawkins’, self-declared, ambitious intention, summed up neatly in this quote from Newsnight
“I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking Gods, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented.”
James Orr
Morowitz’s exact views (in a court transcript) can be found in the link below – in summary creationism has no foundation in science, evolution has, although the precise method is not known.
This seems to conflict somewhat with what you wrote.
http://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/new_site/pf_trans/mva_tt_p_morowitz.html
Just got it today. The ahem provincial among us will be delighted to hear that the “Northern Ireland ‘troubles’” are cited on page 1 of the preface as an example of a religious conflict, an analysis which annoys the tits off me, but is how the world at large views it I suppose.
He mentions other bad things that supposedly wouldn’t exist without religion such as the Palestinian/Israeli conflict – tough to argue with that one, like a few million Europeans would spontaneously decamp to an utterly crap stretch of the Middle East conspicuously devoid of feckin’ oil if God hadn’t given them the freehold.
If intelligent design could be proved then what would be the point of having faith?
Try the late Sir Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe or even Stephen Hawking’s friend Roger Penrose – all are compelled by the scale of the mathematical improbability.
Rapunzel: “The other thing recently which troubled me greatly was an advert in a local paper from one of the health and social service strust looking for protestant foster parents for two small children both I thinik under 10 years of age. Knowing that foster parenrs are in such short reply here and believing that where children in need their ability to receive resources to meet that need shouldn’t be defined by their religion”.
This is a problem with the fostering/adoption policies in NI. Due to our religious sensitivities over here, when a child is up for fostering/adoption the religion of the child is asked. No matter how strong the belief of the parent, that is the one thing that is zealously adhered to when looking for fosterers/adopters.
To put it bluntly, you have near-zero chance of adopting/fostering a child in NI if you are not religious.
What an interesting and enlightening discussion. Thanks for starting it Pete. As a believing Catholic I have great time for Dawkins. By urging people to reject religion he is also pushing them to think about it. I do believe most of those who do, will not, in the end, share his conclusions.
Philip McNeill on Oct 03, 2006 @ 10:39 PM argued that Darwinism and the existence (an existence which by the very definition of the word faith cannot depend on fact) of God can be mutually inclusive as a man defined day to us is set in stone (24 hours) whereas to God it is a meaningless term.
Greenflag on Oct 04, 2006 @ 12:10 AM then makes the point. I am assuming, about John C. Mather and George F. Smoot of USA both winning the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation”
Damn that RETURN key on the keyboard lol
All the 2006 Nobel Prize winners did were to take us back to a singularity but the questions still remains the same. What came first the singularity or its catalyst? If the latter then …
Well said — Pete. James Orr I still think you are not getting it and I doubt the subject of your degree was biology or any of the natural sciences. I haven’t seen anyone arguing anywhere that life emerged spontaneously. My own study of the issue is not as up to date as I would like it again as I undrsyand it is is not the case of no life then followed by life– what we are talking about are gradual and slow changes eventually resulting in simple life forms from precursors which themselves would not meet all of the characteristics of life. For example viruses do not meet the typical characteristics of life yet carry genetic material in a protein coat– there are even simpler entities than viruses such as the prior protein thought to be responsible for BSE. The point is not that we are talking about a jump froma chemical soup to an entity with the characteristics of life but a slow and gradual process itselk resulting in entities that are not living themselves and then eventually onto entities that are.
Ta rapunsel
)
James
“Try the late Sir Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe or even Stephen Hawking’s friend Roger Penrose – all are compelled by the scale of the mathematical improbability.”
Well.. Sir Fred and his colleague, Wickramasinghe, were orginally advocates of a steady-state universe of infinite age – ie no big bang – that was when the big bang hypothesis was only an hypothesis – not sure where Penrose stood on that one.
However, they were also advocates, within that steady-state universe model, of the possibility of Earth being seeded with life via, for example, comets, meteors, meteorites and/or other mechanisms such as dust clouds containing relatively complex hydrocarbon molecules, hence they would have looked enthusiastically at Morowitz’s calculation – those seeding options, however unlikely, have not to my knowledge been completely ruled out.
Importantly, they did not leap to embrace a supernatural being as their Intelligent Designer.
But interestingly, in a universe of infinite age as envisaged by Hoyle, all statistical probabilities, however unlikely, would occur.. at some point.
I wonder will our more militant Muslim brothers contact this pygmy to show him the error of his ways. Let us live in hope.
James Orr,
“he concluded that the odds of a single bacterium re-assembling by chance are one in 10 to the 100 billionth power.”
If those are the odds of a single bacterium assembling “by chance”, what are the odds of an all powerfull, all knowing being assembling by chance?
Also you fail to grasp the concept that Natural Selection has nothing to do with chance, it rewards beneficial mutations and severely punishes unbeneficial mutations. It has absolutely nothing to do with chance.
Somebody also said that you can’t prove the existence of God… actually he could show up tonight on the six o’clock news and blow every athiest argument out of the water.
For those of you that ask for a “proof” that a god doesn’t exist, come back to me when you have a proof that you don’t have an intangible invisible unsmelling silent tasteless monkey living on your head.
I have bought this book. A quick flick through does not impress. However, he seems to have addressed, however unevenly, many aspects of the God question.
In flicking through the posts on this thread, we all, like Dawkins, seem so sure of ourselves. I wonder is this pandemic self faith justified.
I have also been watching some of David Icke’s videos, which rranges from the ever reliable Knights Templar to green lizards ruling the universe and David and his type being the only sort able to crack all the big questions. Is Dawkins a similar nut and proof that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
He odes seem to pontificate far and wide and with more certainty than any modern Pope.
TheGeorge, I don’t buy the “atheists are just as zealous and self assured as theists” statement. I am open to proof of a god, I just very very much doubt it will come. I don’t see why anyone should believe in something which has zero proof. I especially don’t see why one mans zero proof belief, e.g. a christian god, is more correct than another mans e.g. Zeus and his buddies.
Somebody comes up with a theory “There exists God”, I say until I see one tiny shred of evidence I reject that theory, and furthermore if you believe it 100% in the same absence of any evidence whatsoever, I say you are at best delusional (hence the title of the book btw), and at worst wilfully ignorant.
The burden of proof is on the claimant of existence, it’s not up to me to prove non-existence, in fact it’s impossible.
I reserve the right to scoff at the ignorant, who believe fairy tails like this are true. Nobodys delusional unsubstantiated fantasies have an inherent right to be treated with respect.
p.s.
delusion –noun
Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact: a paranoid delusion.
James Orr wrote: “Try the late Sir Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe or even Stephen Hawking’s friend Roger Penrose – all are compelled by the scale of the mathematical improbability.”
What was the basis of their arguments? Did they do calculations – if so, what were their assumptions, or did they just appeal to the argument from incredulity fallacy?
Stephen Weinberg is much more compeling in this respect than Dawkins. Has Dawkins actually done any real science on anything or is his bag solely memes and slagging off religion?
I think Dawkins makes a good case.
I think Dawkins makes a good case.
As did Kerry Packer. He suffered a near-fatal heart attack in 1990 that left him clinically dead for six minutes. He later commented: “The good news is there is no devil. The bad news is there is no heaven.”
“The laws of probability just don’t allow this to happen.”
Unfortunately, what was described in the quote is not evolution, but spontaneous generation of an organism that already exists – a proper calculation would deal with the most primitive ancestors.
I’m curious what your degree was in.
“Try the late Sir Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe or even Stephen Hawking’s friend Roger Penrose – all are compelled by the scale of the mathematical improbability.”
Roger Penrose is referred to here
like so: “Steven Pinker: In The Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose expresses some skepticism that evolution could have constructed the human mind — and is admirably clear that this aside comes more from a personal intuition than from an argument he’d be prepared to defend.”
I admit that I started the book in question but didn’t finish it. (It dealt with material I was familiar with but at such a glacially slow pace that I stopped out of sheer boredom before I got to Penroses’ argument about Artificial Intelligence.) However, if this quote is an accurate summary of Penroses’ position on evolution, then there is no point to debate as Penrose hasn’t provided an argument.
Hoyle and Wickramasingh argued for a steady state universe, which is not accepted.
Unfortunately, you seem to have accepted the arguments based merely on authority of some scientists – scientists would like to hear the argument rather than an appeal to authority.
A recently released paper from Antoine Suarez for consideration.
“Classical Demons and Quantum Angels: On ‘t Hooft’s deterministic Quantum Mechanics.”
Dealing with Quantum physics, causality, free will and the big man in the …..
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0705/0705.3974v1.pdf
Since this blog seems to be resurrected (excuse the pun) every week or so i’d like to submit the following for further analysis / research.
Bell’s theorem was developed and published in the 1960′s by Irish physicist John Stewart Bell. Most people agree that it is a strong proof that reality is non local.
That is, that our reality, although viewed and lived and made sense of in a local cause and effect way, does not actually derive from a local cause and effect phenomena. The reality is that it works due to a non material non local interaction between us, and something that is not of this material universe.
Any atheistic theory, in fact any theory, to be taken seriously, must move away from the local cause and effect proposition and account for this non material, non local underpinning of our reality. Such a theory which does not move away from this view is scientifically untenable IMHO.
There are different proofs to Bells Theorem, some of these with discussions and histories follow.
http://www.drchinese.com/David/Bell_Theorem_Easy_Math.htm
http://quantumtantra.com/bell2.html
http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/BellsTheorem/BellsTheorem.html
http://xoomer.alice.it/baldazzi69/papers/mermin_moon.pdf
The discovery of the dual nature (or behaviour) of first light, and then all matter as behaving as both the non material statistically and at other times materially deterministic raises the question as how reality can be so easily changed from one behaviour to the other. The discovery through the ‘observer effect’ that this change of how reality behaves is directly related to the knowledge of an intelligent observer strongly suggests that such things as intelligence and observation are not byproducts of a physical universe but written into the underlying fabric of our reality as evidenced by scientific experiment.
Any atheistic theory, in fact any theory, to be taken seriously, must move away from the idea that our reality is a fixed material phenomena and that mind, intelligence and observation are not written into the very workings of the laws of physics from the beginning, but only a subsequent accidental by-product of an independant physical universe. Any theory which does not move away from this view is scientifically untenable IMHO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave–particle_duality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenberg_uncertainty_principle
http://www.vision.net.au/~apaterson/science/observer_effect.htm
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/quantum_astronomy_041111.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect
http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_condensate
There are many takes on what this might all suggest.
Below are some efforts in trying to reconcile these scientific discoveries with how we see the universe.
http://www.bottomlayer.com/
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/quantum.enigma.html
http://www.thymos.com/science/qc.html
http://www.vision.net.au/~apaterson/science/observer_effect.htm
http://www.mindreality.com/observer-creates-reality-simply-by-observing
http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/Worldview.html
With this quote in mind – from the above link
“The implications of the ‘Observer Effect’ are profound because, if true, it means that before anything can manifest in the physical universe it must first be observed. Presumably observation cannot occur without the pre-existence of some sort of consciousness to do the observing. The Observer Effect clearly implies that the physical Universe is the direct result of ‘consciousness’.”
Some other links to
Counter-arguments to the ‘spiritual interpretation’
And for those interested
Importance of Bell’s Theorem
Edit link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_inequality#Implications_of_violation_of_Bell.27s_inequality
And a quote from Heinz Pagels
Pete,
your first link was borrowed from myself,
your second link, under the counter arguements heading simply suggests that the theory that comes out of Bells Theorem is unfalsifiable, something i mentioned on the other blog,
your third link (for me at least) didn’t work
and the quote from your fourth link basically says certain thinking is rubbish (no rational arguement) and that if you examine Bells closely you will find a ‘sleight of hand’ (again no arguement).
Could you please explain where this ‘close examining finds a sleight of hand’. ????
btw, Hagels criticising of telepathy and communication faster than light i have no disagreement (or agreement) with. But i think a reading of the proof of Bells Theorem does suggest a non physical interconnectedness. This part i do disagree with.
But there is no counter proposal or scientific refutation in his quote for any of his objections.
abucs
the borrowed link was acknowledged
The second link also points out that the ‘theory’ you mention has been around, in various forms, for some time. Bell’s work has, in effect, been co-opted into it.
Try copying and pasting the [new] third link
The quote, from Heinz Pagels, also contains the line
“Individuals who make such claims have substituted a wish-fulfilling fantasy for understanding.”
and
“Just as we think we have captured a really weird beast–like acausal influences–it slips out of our grasp. The slippery property of quantum reality is again manifested.”
See the links in the counter-arguments link above
I agree with abucs who, referring to Newton, said “He didn’t know what the rules were but he believed there were rules and went looking for them.”
We can observe a natural order to the universe, solar system, eco system, biological sytem etc Natural order is observed at every known level. However it is in stark contrast to theory based on chaos.
How the natural order that we observe came to be is asking the same fundamental question as asking how man came to be. The scientific world often adopts a patronising and offensive “all-knowing†tone and, to some degree, so does the religious world. However I feel both are asking the same questions and are searching for the same things, and they are “understanding†of “the truthâ€.
Surrounded by the magnificence of the visible natural order, it seems perfectly logical to entertain the idea that the universe as we know it, may have been created by a higher non-carbon based life form. Or are we to assume that we are at the top of the evolutionary tree? I don’t think so.
Jason: Science may be asking question but dawkins and the other parrots are not.
Hello Pete,
i still didn’t get the link to work, perhaps it might be a temporary feature of my geographic location.
Look i don’t doubt that your world view makes sense to you. And i don’t doubt that it is something you have thought and reasoned thoroughly about.
But i would just suggest Pagel’s comment of a ‘wish fulfilling fantasy’ and blogs equating religion to believing in fairy’s (the latest guardian article you posted) is not really an arguement.
It does no intelligent debate any real service IMHO.
OK, have to go, best wishes.
Jason
‘How the natural order that we observe came to be is asking the same fundamental question as asking how man came to be……. Surrounded by the magnificence of the visible natural order, it seems perfectly logical to entertain the idea that the universe as we know it, may have been created by a higher non-carbon based life form’.
Completely agree. Amen.