The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
Chapter 4: Why There Almost Certainly Is No God
From the preface: "Maybe you think it is obvious that God must exist, for how else could the world have come into being? How else could there be life, in all its rich diversity, with every species looking uncannily as though it had been 'designed'? If your thoughts run along these lines, I hope you will gain enlightenment from Chapter 4 on 'Why there almost certainly is no God.' Far from pointing to a designer, the illusion of design in the living world is explained with far greater economy and with devastating elegance by Darwinian natural selection."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Work has been hectic this week, and now I'll be out of town all weekend. I suggest we postpone Chapter 5 for another week.
Ditto.
Just got back from Rome...I'm for that too (Just wanted to brag about coming home from Rome.)
Yikes. Clearly none of us has terribly pressing opinions about this chapter. I'll leave it up through Saturday and then go ahead and post Week 5 (my favorite by far).
Essentially, I found Chapter 4 to be merely an elaboration of the argument (against God's existence) from improbability. For all the goose-pimples Dawkins seems to give himself with the Ultimate 747 example, I just don't get it. I ask again, where does probability factor in in the first place? It is for this same reason that the Anthropic Principle (at least positing it in opposition to creationism) is lost on me.
I did enjoy the section on consciousness-raising, particularly doing or saying things not because they are all that important or impressive in and of themselves (herstory vs. history, for example), but simply because they may ultimately raise the consciousness of others toward a relevant issue. Dawkins won me over in this part, in fact; I felt as if we saw eye-to-eye just for a moment. Naturally, I disagreed on the hoped-for end result of the consciousness-raising power of natural selection, but I definitely found a deeper appreciation for him as an author after having taken in these passages.
Work has been terrible for the past couple of weeks, and I apologize for my absence. That said, I don't see why the rest of you aren't posting. Joe at least has a job, so he's excused. As far as I know, Chris and Scott spend their days hanging around the back of a theater smoking fags and cigarettes, respectively.
As for the probability issue, Joe, I think that Dawkins makes a good point that creationists hold science to a higher standard than they hold their own beliefs. That is, they point out that the chance of life originating on Earth is so small, but they ignore the fact that the existence of a deity is just as, if not more, improbable.
Dawkins in this chapter reiterates much of The Selfish Gene, which is a thrilling look at the innards of evolution, but a bit less thrilling when condensed and simplified for this book. Like Joe said earlier, re-dismantling the "half an eye" argument is mostly for people who aren't familiar with the concepts of evolution. I trust the same goes for the God of the Gaps theory.
(As an aside, I remember back in high school when Brett Whorley told his dad, who was the JROTC commander at FHS, that I was an evolutionist. He put his arms around me and boomed, "Son, if I take a grenade and throw it into a junkyard, what do you think are the odds that it'll blow up and create a Boeing 747?" It was obvious that he had just recently read that nonsensical argument from some pamphlet, and the disparity between his intelligence and mine, even as a 10th grader, depresses me to this day.)
The best part of this chapter is Dawkins' expansion of the concept of evolution outside of biology. The fact that it could apply to physics I found incredibly interesting.
On that note, Joe, I've never understood the foundation of your creationism. I know that you hold to a Young Earth theory, but as a fellow man of freakishly high intelligence, how do you square that with the overwhelming scientific evidence (e.g., dinosaur fossils, geological formations, plate tectonics, radioactive decay) in the other direction? It may be slightly off-topic, but I would like to hear any elaboration you wish to provide.
Slighty off-topic? Perhaps. But relevant, and easy to answer.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm looking at the scientific evidence, so there's that. The Bible says different, though, and I believe everything else in there (particularly the overwhelming emphasis--not just in the beginning--on a direct and purposeful creation), so there's that too.
I can't reconcile them yet, Zhubin. I don't know how. The more I learn, the closer I feel I get to the answer, but for now, that's where I am.
What is your opinion on the argument for an allegorical position on the Genesis story? One that includes the direct and purposeful creation without the literal forming-Adam-from-earth part?
Although I admit if you start mixing allegory, you run into tricky waters with the forbidden-fruit story, since if that's not taken literally then Jesus had nothing to die for. Perhaps Christopher could answer that point, since he adopts an allegorical position (I assume).
Post a Comment