“Not only has Dawkins ruined science. He’s ruined atheism too.”

Last week I skewered Richard Dawkins for saying life was a “happy chemical accident” on National Public Radio.

Richard Dawkins

A reader of my blog (a smart, well educated guy) rushed to Dawkins’ defense.

I demanded he explain how

“happy chemical accident” qualifies as science.

My reader retorts:

“Oh, I forgot NPR interviews are venues for rigid, technical discourse! How silly of me!”

I reply: “When the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science from Oxford University appears on National Public Radio, don’t you think we should expect answers that do in fact further the public understanding of science?

“Or… should we settle for glib dismissive attempts to dodge the question?

“YOU seem to be a reasonably intelligent and educated guy. So why are you of all people attempting to defend him or deflect blame when Dawkins puts his foot in his mouth?

“Surely you’re more than a mere minion of Richard Dawkins. Why not just be honest and hold the guy responsible for saying something so dodgy and unscientific?”

The fact that people like you rush to Dawkins’ defense – when you should be calling him out on his dishonesty – is a smoking gun.

Why can’t atheists hold Dawkins’ feet to the fire for being the anti-scientific crank that he is?

Not only has Dawkins ruined science, he’s ruined atheism too.

20 years ago, an atheist was an intellectual with whom one could have a reasonable dialogue.

Today, most people experience atheists as bellicose angry males who commonly suffer from depression, who post anonymous tirades all over the internet so they can share their misery with everyone else.

We have the New Atheists to thank for this. And their four horsemen. Dawkins – Dennett – Harris – Hitchens.

Wanna have an intelligent discussion about atheism? Read Voltaire, Nietzche or Bertrand Russell.

Agree or disagree, they will force you to think.

Wanna have a pointless shouting match with a bunch of mannerless name-callers who make up just-so stories about warm ponds and lucky lightning strikes and think they’re doing science? Sit down with guys who read Krauss, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris. Walk into a roomful of Dawkins fans. 

They will force you to emote.

So, dear atheist, why are you sitting here defending any of these proselytizers?

Why do you allow Dawkins to abuse his position and not even do his job as a scientist?

Atheists, I respect your right and desire to be atheists.

But I do not respect you when you defend anti-intellectual, anti-scientific dogmas that have no explanatory power, no service to humanity.

And I do not respect you when you defend a bully who relegates incredibly valuable scientific questions to mere accident.

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656 Responses

  1. O.R. Pagan says:

    You have managed to express the feeling of most of my atheist/science enthusiasts friends. I am an “hopeful agnostic” and an unapologetic science lover by vocation and formal training and I stopped liking Dawkins as soon as he started talking out of his (rather limited) immediate area of expertise. Thanks for the post, and by the way, read the book. Makes a lot of sense, and re-reading it to understand it better.

    • Rob says:

      Wow, Mr. Pagan, that was a decent reply, and one I that I quite unexpected… congrats for thinking and NOT being like most of Dawkins’ fanboys. LOL

      • Thanks, Perry for your hard work and thanks to everyone for your comments. I am a 65-year-old widowed cancer survivor and the mother of sons. My career as an academic clinical Hematologist /Oncologist was cut short by the impact of my late husband’s illness followed by my diagnosis of breast cancer. I am a Christian and I believe in the critical importance of compassion and kindness.

        During my cancer treatment, I trained to teach Compassion Cultivation Training Meditation. Among my practicum class held in 2019, one gentleman was an avid fan of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker. He is also a devout atheist. I had begged him to join my class as CCT is taught as a secular/ personal development course. I knew that my friend would call me out if I ever mentioned God or spirit. I wish to follow the ethical code of any activity I am engaged in and wish to teach CCT in a way that is acceptable to people of no faith and all faiths. He is a devoted reductionist and claims to be very committed to gender minority rights.

        I am very grateful to this person for giving me 16 hours of his time to take this course as this helped me become certified to teach. That said I am not a fan of Richard Dawkins and his book ” The Selfish Gene. I cannot keep up with all the books that I wish to read. Anyway, this man’s reaction triggered me to really try to learn. in December 2019, my older son was trying to persuade me to focus on healing myself, enjoying time with my family and puppy and trying to make new friends. Tough losses had convinced me that our world needs more compassion and I was putting effort into studying all I could on Compassion Cultivation. My atheist friend forced me to study harder than I had in years.

        I discovered the work of George Monbiot and then Jeremy Lent and Programs in Earth Literacy. I also discovered the work of Dr. Riane Eisler. Her work on partnership versus domination resonated with me. For me now Dr. Richard Dawkins is a classic Dominator and this is for me why I find him challenging to listen to. Some of you may be willing to listen to or read the work of Dr. Eisler, the founder of The Center of Partnership studies.

        Thorugh Jeremy and Programs in Earth Literacies, I have heard of the incredible work of Lynn Margulis. I have also found the work of Dr. Richard Waston. Jeremy and Richard are not Christian. However, they are very altruistic and work with other scientists including Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi to transform Neo-Darwinism. Some of you may be interested in the Deep Transformation Network founded by Jeremy and others.

        To be fair to Richard Dawkins I feel he does try to argue for more altruistic behaviours despite our selfish genes. So for me, he is far less of a threat than extreme right-wing pundits who argue against any possibility of a Common Good.

        • Frances,

          Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I too like Jeremy Lent.

          Strange as it may sound, more civilized dialogue with people like Richard Dawkins is taking place now, than is available from many parts of the far left. Dawkins seems downright reasonable compared to many of the cancel culture crusaders. But then again Dawkins has himself grown much more reasonable in recent years, as evidenced by his recent debate with my good friend and colleague Denis Noble. A blog post about that debate will be coming soon.

        • Frances, also make sure you watch “Symbiotic Earth” a biography of Lynn Margulis https://amzn.to/3RL9VZm

        • Bryan Thomas says:

          Dr. Scully, I am sorry for your loss and the suffering you have experienced and I hope you find healing, peace and blessings in the years to come.
          However, I was stunned that after writing so much about compassion you closed with an odd attack on “extreme right-wing pundits who argue against any possibility of a Common Good”. Maybe I live under a rock, but I can’t imagine who you are referring to and I’ve never heard of anyone on either side of our nasty little political canyon say anything of the sort. If you can spare the time, please give me some references so I can get up to speed with who and what you’re talking about.

    • Varun Kurup says:

      i am an agnoist too i do feel that science and religion both has its fallacies.Science is like give us a miracle and we will prove rest and this basic nature of materialising everything .Religion tries to put in its own dogmatic explanations where science fails to explain

    • Rojo Herrera says:

      I’m a Christian who’s read Voltaire/Nietzche and Dawkins/Hitchens. The first two made me think hard; the second two not so much. My experience with atheists has been interesting. They are quick to raise their voices and repeat their talking points rather than engage in a discussion using rules of logic and reason. Intellectual cowardice personified…

      • And when they come here most want to be anonymous.

        • Peter Knapp says:

          Your generalizations cut into your credibility. They show your biases and are not appreciated by a good percentage of your public. They also help to reduce the even acceptance of any subsequent thing you say.

      • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

        I am an atheist (who was raised as a catholic). My experience with believers has been interesting… So, do you want to tell me that belief is based on logic and reason? You must be kidding.

        • Richard Kay says:

          Not all knowledge is science. Science deals with observations which are inherently repeatable. History, philosophy, legal process, our observations of those around us and maths all lead to knowledge of different kinds. Belief may engage reason and logic, but may reasonably engage all of these other areas of knowledge also.

          • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

            All knowledge is science. The science of history, the science of justice, etc… Philosophy is the science of science, a kind of summary of sciences. The task of science is to gather knowledge, all kinds of knowledge.

            • Tony Hill says:

              No scientist would agree with that wildly loose definition of the field. The term becomes meaningless if “all knowledge is science”. If that were the case, there’d be no utility nor meaning to the term ‘science’…we’d just say ‘knowledge’. Sorry, but no, not at all.

              • Laszlo Meszaros says:

                It is still a valid summary on science, even if no “professionals” would agree with it. Especially, when you place it in the right context, namely “knowledge vs. belief”.
                If you lay back and start digesting this knowledge = science or science = knowledge idea, you will start liking it.

            • Damon Lay says:

              “All knowledge is science” is not correct. That statement amounts to a tautology – if it’s true, it’s scientific, therefore only science can determine truth.

              Science is a process, a discipline practiced by humans. History weighs evidence and draws conclusions not amenable to experimentation nor reducible to fundamental natural/material forces.

              The study of history is not science.

              Philosophy is not science for the same reasons.

              • Laszlo Meszaros says:

                I did not say history is science, I said the science of history is science. Philosophy IS science. (Of course, I am talking about an ideal situation.) Everything that based on solid data/observation/experiment is science.

                • James MacDermott says:

                  There is no scientific explanation for the random creation of life that does not require an element of belief. The question is why!

                  • Laszlo Meszaros says:

                    Not yet, but it is coming… (If you are aware of current developments in the field of Origin of Life, you would also see it.) But what is even more important: it is provable that the probability of the emergence of life via random events is NOT zero. (And this is the real point here.)

                    • Seumas Maclaren (UK) says:

                      Lazlo, you stated something as an assertion rather in the same way that some assert spiritual truth. “..it is provable that the probability of the emergence of life via random events is NOT zero. ” That is an assertion (for which you offer no evidence, and which assumes that there is a mathematical probability that is meaningful for such an even as the random formation of a life form. (in fact there is not) If we examine the potential for an event as ‘apparently simple’ as the hypothetical formation of a simple protein molecule (for example, to make it feasible, the formation of a decryption system for the sequence of the DNA/RNA database required to generate it), we find orders of magnitude of probability heavily against that kind of an event: In a hypothetical universe filled with experimental systems designed to try to encourage protein synthesis, we would still have not enough time since the supposed big bang to enable JUST ONE protein molecule to successfully form. I can dig figures out for you, if you would like to discuss further.

                  • Peter Grafström says:

                    Because it is a difficult problem and we dont have all necessary insights to reduce uncertainty to zero. The difference compared with creationism is scientists learn in the process and are humble enough to alter their beliefs.
                    Ultimately they might end up finding some aspect of nature which resembles a creative entity at work. But it isnt likely to be one where the religious themes would fare well, other than in a politely interpreted symbolical manner.

                  • Paul Cotton says:

                    A better question is how?

                • Tood Gnarly says:

                  So mathematics is not science (prove the quadratic formula with data/observation/experiment). Logic is not science either. Yet science depends on logic and mathematics.

                • Michael Haas says:

                  How about this?: Science is the study of something by use of empirical methods that overcome our natural human inclination to want to deceive ourselves.

                • Christopher Neubert says:

                  History is NOT repeatable, and therefore not subject to the scientific method. However, one can make observations and have some degree of knowledge. For example, “was there a person named Socrates living in Greece and did he take hemlock?”

                  While one can’t go back in time to videotape Socrates taking hemlock, one can collect evidence to show that there is documentation to support that conclusion. There may be additional evidence out there that will sway that conclusion, but there is the evidence, one way or another.

            • Koop,

              I have approved this one comment BUT ALL FURTHER COMMENTS ARE DELETED until you use your FULL FIRST AND LAST REAL NAME.

            • Don Fronterhouse says:

              I disagree that all knowledge is science. There is a great chasm between that which can easily be inferred as true by cause and effect and that which requires massive amounts of assumption and conjecture. The former represents true science. The latter is much like the ranting of a conspiracy theory. True science contains facts.

        • dr banda says:

          Yes
          Deal with observable history with key eyewitnesses eg
          King Jesus death and resurrection April 17 AD 30 Jerusalem, Israel
          This is about historical evidence logic in action
          This is real faith
          Have you examined the historical evidences?
          I have
          King Jesus is alive today
          Talk to him
          He is the creator judge and saviour
          Shalom

        • Carey Vinzant says:

          Laszlo, I think that belief can at least be grounded in reason. Induction is a valid mode of reasoning, and I do not see how it is essentially different from the ways that Aquinas or Polanyi talk about faith. This is a much longer discussion, but I did think your question deserved at least a cursory response.

          • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

            Yes, but still… At the end, you must make a distinction between the two. Meanwhile, there is another important point to make (which can actually be clearly seem from this current argument): belief is static, but (gaining) knowledge is dynamic.

        • Leon says:

          “belief” in general has no logical constraints.

          the obvious example is atheism, which includes the belief that nothing (no space, no time, no energy) became something for no particular reason and went on to become flint, ferns, fish and philosophers.

          the term “catholic” means “universal,” or in other words the organisation has no time for beliefs which differ from its official dogma. when Constantine started his State religion, he founded it on Mithriasm and threw in everything else he could reach (including what would have become the Roman Orthodox organisation, had he left it alone), and worship of Vesta. it was ratified a couple of Emperors later. it is not based upon belief, it is based upon compliance.

          unlike all forms of idolatry, belief in the Lamb of God (not a 2nd-rate clone or a mockery) is indeed based upon logic, reason, accurately fulfilled prophecies, and the largest historic footprint of any individual (as recorded by a variety of sources).

          • Paul Cotton says:

            Wasn’t the whole thing based on Mithraism which predated Christianity by some 600 years? The stories are all pretty much the same and were shortchanged down in flames by the Romans. There is not a lot of logic in that.

            • Jacob Debaker says:
              • Paul Cotton says:

                You are entitled to your opinion.

              • Peter Knapp says:

                Jacob, I read the cold case stuff you quoted. It was non-specific, non-annotated, indirect and non-consequential. The writer says that a bunch of other random writings means the stories of Jesus were true. Lots has been written about the Hulk. Is he true? Lots has been written about Zeus. Lots about Ronald McDonald. Please, when the author clearly has an agenda, you must try to see past that to the clarity (or lack thereof) of his arguments. Don’t just follow along because they let you agree with yourself.

            • Don Fronterhouse says:

              Catholicism may be compared to many other religions which predated it. That is why it is called Catholic, or universal. True Christianity, as found in the Bible has no similarity to those other “Pagan” religions.

        • John Harris says:

          I believe Jesus was raised from the dead. I personally find the biblical account coupled with the unlikely formation of the church most convincing.

          • Martin Gately says:

            And don’t forget the credulity stretching Matthew 27:51-53. We got us some dead saints coming back to life too! This is where the Bible “Jumps the Shark” like Season 4 of a bad sitcom.

        • John Harris says:

          Are you suggesting it’s illogical or unreasonable to believe in a creator?

          • Martin Gately says:

            I’m literally always suggesting that, John. It is, admittedly, a matter of personal perspective. If you are a preacher’s kid and an ordained minister living in the Southern US, then it probably seems highly logical and highly reasonable. But there are world views outside your narrow experience. Heck, I’ll bet you’ve experienced a larger number of miracles in your church than the number of live atheists you’ve personally conversed with.

          • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

            You apparently believe that to believe is logical. Well… Do you have any idea what “logical” means?

            • Seumas MacLaren says:

              Laszlo, You asked John Harris if he had any idea of what logical means. This demonstrates your ridicule of those among us, with a strong science education, degrees and PhD’s who have believed the words of Christ (or are theists of some other faith) partly out of logic and reason (which is a perfectly good means of approaching faith in the ‘God who is there’ as Francis Shaeffer calls God the eternal One, the Father of us all). We indeed see no logical conflicts between believing there is a creator, and being good scientists.
              I urge you today – Only a fool states that there is no logic in faith in a Creator God. Please, please look at Lee Strobell’s book or his other work. I read Josh McDowell’s book after I found Jesus Christ (He found me first, and loved me). This man Strobel was a cynical journalist who was willing to look honestly at this and expected to disprove all evidence of Christ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Strobel
              You will, if you approach it with a calm mind, willing to read and weight the evidence, be able to find something there which will help you. The Case for Christ is a powerful piece of writing. It won’t convince you on its own. That is up to your attitude.
              Hoping for you, and praying that you will be able to read this.

              • Neil Godfrey says:

                I read the case for christ and found it deeply cynical and dishonest, it is full of tautology, straw man arguments and untruths, he uses personal incredulity in an attempt to win over the reader, if he truly felt in his heart he had found the truth then why use these techniques ( something I could put to all the creationists and apologetics I have read) which I honestly feel is very sad and a little sinister, science after all does not comment on the supernatural.

                • Seumas MacLaren says:

                  “science after all does not comment on the supernatural.”
                  Classical science may have no way of addressing it. True.
                  Faith in someone bigger than you.. ? How about thinking that through? Remember that there is no root of evidence for human origin. The picture just gets more and more complex. Ask (read about) the scientists who are helping excavate the remains and artifacts in the Star Caves. They are saying that none of what they have found fits the supposed origin of man.

                  • Peter Grafström says:

                    What was it about the artifacts and remnants that lends itself to draw such conclusions?

                    • Peter Grafström says:

                      Walter Baran
                      The universe seems like a marwellous feat of engineering, not like the outcome of magic. It is extremely lawbound. On the same time there seems to exist an invisible background. For example Robert Becker who was a physicist studied how lost limbs on animals grew back intact. And he felt that there is something we cant see. I think there is very good reason to look at it in that manner. But it doesnt mean it is less lawbound. We just havent developed science far enough yet. I dont doubt that humanity will find out eventually.
                      I wont bore you with my own theories but there is no place for magic other than science. On the other hand the God who’s presence some of us may sense may exist in the form of an enveloping mind which we all are a part of. No magic just a necessary feature for us to exist as stable entities. Could this enveloping mind be rightly called a creator? Why not.

                  • Peter Knapp says:

                    Seumas, Science wonders at the beginnings of life and of man. Religion has it all nicely settled. Science gathers more evidence. Religion needs none of that. The universe is strange and wondrous and it brings with it many questions. The hubris of the “enlightened” is that they have all the ANSWERS. Science, resides quietly in its investigation and patiently awaits the actual answers.

                  • David Miller says:

                    “Hammer of The Witches” by Kramer will explain a lot to you.
                    A-thiests and super-thiests are being confused here. You seem to be calling super-thiests athiests. Most “athiests” now are heretics. A heretic believes more in God than an average religious person but hates God. Beyonce is heretic and satanist, more of a believer in God and anti God, the Devil, than most good Catholics are believers in God. You are calling these people A-thiests when they are super religious Thiests. They are super religious Satanic worshippers…very very Godly and religious ( negatively).

              • Laszlo Meszaros says:

                You’re referring to “attitude”… Well, you are right; it is a matter of attitude: the believer believes, while the non-believer wants to know.

        • John Ellingson says:

          Please add “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” by Josh McDowell and “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel to your reading list. Both set out to debunk Christianity, and both, employing reason and logic, were surprised at their conclusions. Hope you enjoy the books

          • Seumas MacLaren says:

            John, That was a good reply. Confirmed atheists who attack theism our of a sense of ‘duty’ (we might suppose – although duty to what or whom is mystifying, as for them there can be no source of truth), of whom some are my friends are sadly self interested people, who refuse the fact that they know and have refused that there is a Creator. This is very clear to me, after 35 years of trying to follow Jesus Christ. Many say they cannot see God in the natural world, but God himself disagrees; they can and they have refused Him. Pray for our atheist friends who, in my experience, are often aggressive, cynical, and judgemental condescension experts. They may laugh now, but Jesus told us that they will “weep and howl” for the terrible mistake they are currently making due to their delusion that man’s thinking is sufficient on all things, and no God exists either now, or the future for them to stand before Him. (Romans chapter 1).

            • Peter Knapp says:

              Seumas, “No source of truth”. Are you missing something? Are you aware of even the argument? Science is the investigation of reality and our BEST source of truth. Your bible is a highly suspect holder of truth and since most people don’t believe in it, it is somewhat arrogant of you to assume you’ve somehow fallen on the only truth out there of several dozens of competing ideologies.

            • Jim Tegerdine says:

              I have seen (and read) several books that have approached the subject of some level of correlation between science and spirituality/religion. The genesis of this paradigm shift began with the discovery of quantum physics. Physicists have probed into the realm of sub-atomic particles, and in most (if not all) cases are able to (mathematically) “see” what is happening, but have NO idea as to “how” or “why”. Often, the best description they can come up with refers to some sort of consciousness or intelligence…. So, it seems to me that science is at least offering the possibility of the existence of God (or “higher power”, or “universal mind”, or “intelligent design”, or whatever you want to call it). On the other hand, athiests are bent on the simple idea that “there is no God”. Period. Hmmmmm.

              • Laszlo Meszaros says:

                Real scientists try explain the workings of the universe without god. Of course, there are researchers (not scientists) who try to mix science and religion.

              • Brian Pearce says:

                Jim, It is exactly that, that has the scientific atheists going insane. It is when their god, science began to allow for the possibility of God, The Creator, The Great Spirit whatever you like to call him/her/it. Someone above their pay grade is allowing for the existence of God. It blows away their argument and everything they wish the rest of the world to believe along with them. Some of the same inroads have been considered in DNA. That it is too complex to be an accident and is more like a written code. And it begged the question of, “Who wrote it”. It is interesting when the challenge me with the “prove it” argument. The fact is, I can no more scientifically prove it anymore than they can disprove it using their same science. Because the only fact is, that 99% of science is theory, and theory is not fact. It is just a very educated guess. And all of them only open even more questions. What they have failed to learn from science is its one solid truth, never to say “never”. Failing to believe in the possibility of God because they can’t see, touch, or explain him is no different then the early church burning men of science at the stake as heretics. It is the same logic that would have had us believe there were no atoms. They were once beyond the realm of possibility as well. Now the science that they have wielded like a club is beginning to desert them and allow for the possibility of an intelligence behind the wonder that is all around us. And it terrifies them.

        • Darrell Walker says:

          Well, for some, sure. A large part of faith can be attributed to hard, personal experiences. If there is a manifestation in the physical realm, it is no longer a feeling.

        • Dave Pierce says:

          No, it is BACKED UP by reason and logic.

        • Todd Gnarly says:

          You were probably exposed to a dumbed-down “Old Man Sitting on the Clouds” version of Christianity that you were not allowed to question. NO wonder you’re an atheist.

        • Darrell Coats says:

          This is not the author’s point at all. Please reread his article. The author is neither religious nor arguing for the rational basis of faith.

        • Chad Barner says:

          No, logic and reason is underpined by belief. Humans have evolved to create science and scientific advancement is always based upon a measure of faith in something. Darwin even had faith that his theory would one day have fossil evidence to support it. Sorry,humans have belief in everything and in every concept.

          • Peter Grafström says:

            Belief which is discarded after failed empirical tests followed by a different belief than the original one and on and on until a subsequent empirical test succeeds and thereby qualifies the belief to be augmented to proved theory ie science. You tried to muddle the issue. The scientific mind isn’t rigidly tied to any belief.

            • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

              This kind of belief I’d rather call conviction. It always starts with some kind of rational assumption (even, if it turn our wrong later).

        • TKD says:

          You are right, you couldn’t say that belief is based on logic and reason because it is the other way around. You have to reason spiritual things through your heart not your mind.

        • Lorry Olson says:

          Stuff wears out, spirit inspires. One most Powerful, Wise, Spirit must have inspired everything. Creation and Sustenance.

        • Peter A. Papoutsis says:

          I am a believer and an attorney by training. I do not and never have checked my brain or logic at the door because of my belief in God. In fact. I use it and it has deepened my faith even more.

        • Richard Oboczky says:

          You mean a person who promotes the “Multiverse” which is not testable, not provable and unknowable is based on reason and scientific inquiry? Hardly.

    • Tufail Dhana says:

      Well any accident, happy or unhappy, may not be explained as an event of science. I can,t undersyand accidents in science. Appearance of life on Earth was a nappy chemical accident may not be more than a unscientific opinion of a common mind.We can,t accept it scientific if some one says that Evolution is a series of accidents.Evolution should be understood as a process under effects of Universal forces. That is ihe scientific way to understand the appearance of life.Atheism is a reaction against religious explanation of the God. We have to respect religions, including Atheism. Richard Dawkins is unscientific in things.What is Selfish gene, I cannot understand. A gene is only gene.with biological function. Genes cannot be divided into self and loyal category.

      • Laszlo Meszaros says:

        Accident = random event. Most likely random events opened up some road to life. How? This is a valid question. However, the point is that is theoretically possible. What is wrong with this “accident” idea (as long as we do not have a better one)?

        • Clint Anderson says:

          Intentional design I think is a better explanation. Pizza only makes sense if we understand that it is designed to be food. I don’t need to understand all the components in order to consume it but I must trust that it’s food. Clearly, we see design in life, like pizza, there is a designer. Trusting my vision of design is belief.

          • Peter Grafström says:

            Competition deselects bad design

            • Paul Cotton says:

              Can an omnipotent entity produce bad design?

              • Peter Grafström says:

                Competition eliminates the need for anything omnipotent. Besides, if you are familiar with game theory it has been proven in that connection that a player with complete knowledge sometimes is at a disadvantage against a randomly acting opponent.
                Ie a superbeing sometimes looses.
                Omnipotence is in my view an unsuitable concept when we’re dealing with a superior being. Such a being may be superior with respect to us but not omnipotent since that would result in logical paradoxes, like the one I mentioned. I mean if he sometimes looses, how can he then be omnipotent?
                One possible way to mend it would be to redefine the concept of omnipotence, to imply some limiting conditions, eg omnipotence within the confinement of some set of natural laws. If, like some believe, the universe is a computer simulation, a superbeing in charge of the program, might be capable of working magic. Metaanalysis would be difficult but not unthinkable.
                Sofar magic usually turns out to be fraudulent, so in our case the superbeing is quite disciplined.

                • Paul Cotton says:

                  If this being is infallible, then it must also be omnipotent. Your bible tends to point in the direction of omniscience and omnipresent too. If that is true then I agree with Professor Dawkins when he describes the god of the old testament …-“[God is] a vindictive bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser , a misogynistic, homophobic racist, an infanticidal, genocidal, phillicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” … If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.”

                • “Competition eliminates the need for anything omnipotent.”

                  I’m not sure what that means. Are you saying that natural selection explains everything in biology and evolution?

                  • Peter Grafström says:

                    Competition is one of the essential ingredients in the assumed evolutionary process. All the beauty and performance we may encounter is an outcome of competition in previous generations.
                    You can watch the struggle playing out in realtime everywhere.
                    Parry, the wider context (with specific details)has been debated in many other comments in this thread. If you wish to bring up some of that be my guest.

                    • You didn’t answer my question. Please answer my question.

                    • Peter Grafström says:

                      A scientific interchange demands of those involved that they are updated about the previous phases of the discussion. Some of the issues raised earlier makes your question too simple since the concept of evolution attains a different meaning when there is a backaction from the future. While speculative it does make sense as a mechanism by which the universe is maintained in a stable existence despite the presence of many underlying chaotic processes.
                      Such a model also seems to connect better to the idea of a higher being. As if the universe is a feedback stabilized entity with some likeness to a mind. To enlarge the speculation a bit one might seek to interpret the basic constituents of matter as phases in a temporal sequence, the simplest combinations like the hydrogen atom, could be like pieces of individual threads while more complex elements could be related to multithreaded phenomena. Since such an image makes it look like the brain is much more complicated than nonliving matter, life may be more fundamental to understand the universe than assumed in the standard model. In connection with said feedback I mentioned the dichotomy between closed loop and open loop configuration of the universe.
                      The open loop is probably beyond our direct access and all we may study is the result of the closed loop. All of atomic physics may be an outcome of a closed loop over all of time. Life itself may be an exclusively higher order closed loop phenomenon.
                      But even in the conventional model with a simple universal concept of time there is nothing definite to prevent evolution to operate as in the standard model. (In that limited context my answer would be yes, definitely possible although presently the probabilities are not yet known) Mechanisms by which complex molecules could arise with sufficient probablity were suggested. However when a higher being is sought for, it seems to me the more radical ideas about the nature of time have to be considered. An entity which is somehow beyond our temporal limitations.
                      One of the attractions of generalizing the time concept in physics is that energy and mass may be seen as compressed time. The current theories use those concepts as fundamental.
                      If this is no longer the case, the physics of electromagnetism may turn out to have wider application. Since electromagnetism is about entities travelling at the exact speed of light and on the same time, ordinary mechanical movements at finite times may be resolved in terms of pairs of so called nulvectors, there is a chance that all things mechanical may be covered within the electromagnetic framework.
                      Engineering wouldnt immediately be much affected but in terms of fundamental theory it may provide a more satisfying model.

                    • “the concept of evolution attains a different meaning when there is a backaction from the future.”

                      Explain “backaction from the future.”

                    • Peter Grafström says:

                      Backaction from the future is not contradicting presently established science, it is just not investigated fully. Some scientist have used the logically concommitant converging waves as opposed to the more common expanding waves, to represent such backaction and I dont know how far they got. Feynman and Wheeler had a go at it but only briefly. Since present physics doesnt include space time inversions, converging waves dont emerge in such a fundamental way as would be the case if the full invariance group would be taken into consideration. The reason for this omission is that 19th century physicists believed such things should be handled with the so called Genral theory of relativity.(GRT) And that they wanted the simplest possible mending of the laws of classical physics. But then came quantum mechanics and the mending didnt look so good anymore. The mathematician behind the major portion of GRT, Levi Civita, considered it to be inconsistent in a serious manner but later the whole issue became political. That wasnt Einstens fault, he detested it, but from the point of view of physics there is no satisfactory theory available except quantum field theory. So its full invariance group ought to play a role and that’s my point of departure anyway.
                      It could be the case that so called dark matter has something to do with such converging waves or in other words dark matter could be ordinary matter with the opposite time direction. In that case all light would converge on its sources and there would never be any reflections, at least not emanating locally. So it would be absolutely dark. Even when stars exploded or collided. However planetary orbits would mostly be the same only traversed in the opposite order. So gravity ought to be nearly the same. One other and highly speculative notion I have had in the back of my mind since the 80s goes like this: In quantum mechanics there is a context in which multiple potential outcomes weigh in together and strengthen (or sometimes weaken) each other and make some particular outcome more likely.
                      This is normally not used to suggest that a collection of potential future events could weigh in together in some like manner, but I had this intuition that it might. Say some potential descendants from a currently existing ethnic group would have two distinctly different potential futures. One in which they thrived, another in which they were wiped out. Then the one in which they fared well would exert a greater pull on the present, while the other would have the opposite effect. It would act like a selection mechanism in the mind of the creator if you like to put it that way.

                      This was an example of how I intuitively speculated back in the 80s.

                      But the former comment was more technical and there I viewed the Universe as a feedback system, as in a conscious mind where matter was interpreted as elements of a temporal process. Say electrons are a synchronisation phase of something we cannot take apart and look at. As if we travel along a wave with a fixed phase position with respect to the wave. One could draw a parallell with the clock regulating a program thread and the fixed phase of every instruction the thread regulates.

                      In Quantum electrodynamics the strength of the electromagnetic force is understood to be ~1/137 while the so called strong force is roughly unity. If this is interpreted as having to do with the workings of threaded programs it might reveal something about the electromagnetic interactions use of threads.
                      The number of stable elements are believed to have an absolute upper limit of below that 137.
                      If the simplest system hydrogen is part of a cycle in a single thread, then what are all the heavier elements? Maybe multiple thread combinations. As if the universal mind used rather less than 137 persistent threads. The number of shortlived threads could be immense since the number of nucleons may be something like 10^80
                      I know you didnt ask for all these details but this is the way my mind is made up. Sorry 🙂

                    • So… you see no reason to believe in God because competition can explain everything instead. And competition, in turn, comes from backaction from the future. Which you are saying has not been disproven, so possibly may be true. Do I have that right?

                    • Seumas MacLaren says:

                      Re. “competition deselects bad design”. I am not persuaded that you can even attempt demonstrate that with credible scientific work, and I am not aware of anything that would allow that hypothesis to stand, otherwise. As you say, “… in the assumed evolutionary process”. The word ‘assumed’ is the fulcrum on which the complete evolutionist belief balances. The balance is tipping, and there is no science to demonstrate evolution without there being a designer. Would you agree Peter?

                    • Peter Grafström says:

                      Seumas
                      You can find suggestions for a tentative creator mechanism in my previous comments. Though the hard core – meaning simplistic – reductionistic evolution model is still perfectly viable, since not refuted.
                      To answer more directly, of course competition deselects bad design. Bad design kills or weakens the individual.
                      The proper question is instead: why is their ever good design? That is the side of evolution which I myself have sometimes brought up against it, since it is hard to know for sure that random mutations – although filtered in the way Perry mentioned in some earlier comment – wouldnt diverge into nothing useful at all. But just because it is difficult to estimate the probabilities(for useful mutations), it isnt proven impossible. Its just part of the homework for those in the spirit.

                    • Peter Grafström says:

                      Perry said “..Do I have that right?”
                      Perry, there is no definite right or wrong since this is brainstorming on my part. I didnt have a finished line of thought when I began writing the comment(s). But still , my short answer would be No you didnt get it right Perry, but I dont blame you since I offered a menu of alternatives, some of which implicitly , like you say, indicate no need for any external action apart from the reductionistic (mostly local) disturbances. But other alternatives which could be said to provide a substitute for the God-like entity. I have hesitated to answer since I am not sure I should have an opinion about whether or not to use that label. Your reaction in itself is a way of saying you dont connect spontaneously with such ideas and if so I respect that.
                      In the 80s when I began speculating, I put up a clip of Goethe and Schiller to remind myself of the Faustian legends Goethe put together but also what I saw as Schillers belief in the human spirit.
                      So its double-edged. Eating the forbidden fruit and be thrown out of the Garden of Eden – which was what happened to me for real. It struck me only recently that I seemed to have anticipated trouble for seeking deep truths back then. What I state about Goethe and Schiller above is more like an afterthought. Maybe I subconsciously had those associations in the back of mind. Or maybe it was backaction from the future 🙂

                    • I’m not sure what you mean about Goethe and Schiller.

                    • Peter Grafström says:

                      Like I mentioned Goethe brought together the Faustian legends and said himself that it was about his on life. Faust made a pact with the devil promising him his soul in return for knowledge. I interpret Gothes account to mean that his own search for scientific understanding would be somehow forbidden fruit. I cant explain it to any depth, its just a feeling I have that knowledge is double edged. It changes the world. Sometimes pulls the rug under our feet. Take Artificial Intelligence, that surely will change the world. And bioscience with the potential to create most any form of artificial life. And cybernetics and other hightech additions to biology with the alterations of humans into hybrids of unpredictable shapes and properties.
                      Schiller as I interpret him believed in the human spirit as a manifestation of God. I’m not sure this is the right way to put it and there are other philosophers who held similar views. I think the Renaissance was partly about that.
                      Thus if you believe our lifes belongs to a divine plan or mission our search for knowledge is part of that.

                  • Peter A. Papoutsis says:

                    Btw love your book Evolution 2.0. When both camps don’t like you that means you hit on the truth. Axios!

          • Peter Knapp says:

            Pizza didn’t form before pepperoni. Pizza wasn’t there before mozzarella. You had to have the basic components first. Nobody ever said a weasel was the first form of life. Creationists fight this nonexistent argument all the time. Science is humble enough to admit it doesn’t have all the answers. Humble is good. Try it on for size.

        • Seumas MacLaren says:

          Laszlo, We do “…have a better one” but you refuse the evidence for the Creator God who is there. Have you read “Evidence which demands a verdict” yet?

    • Bill Cravens says:

      Gentlemen… the current assault on Mr. Dawkins illustrates the aftershock effects of the Intelligent Design movement on Atheism. Dawkins seems unreasonable to you because he is defending Classical Materialism, which is what he has spent his life supporting. You are like Luther, staging a revolution against his Atheist Catholicism. Each side has a piece of the Original Doctrine, and seizes it for themselves. Dawkins will deem you “heretics” and, in a sense, he is correct. You are “solving” the problems of Evolution by allowing what can only be described as a secularized nan’s version of ‘mysticism’ into your thinking. I am a Christian but, frankly, I have more appreciation for Dawkins than that. At least the man valiantly flies the reductionist flag and sticks to his guns to the bitter end.

      • Peter Grafström says:

        I dont think it needs to be a bitter end (for D). As deeper understanding emerges he surely will concider it scientifically. He is commonsensical and reductionism is a good place to start. Physics has evolved with reductionism as the norm but nonlocal phenomena have eventually been accepted as a more refined truth despite sometimes being characterized as spooky action at a distance. And it is all a matter of what may be empirically proven. To the extent that intelligent design is involved it isnt going to be foreign to scientific analysis, just an extension of it. The anger shown by creationists shows that they are hoping something inaccessible to science will be the final truth.
        Leibniz God seems to me the rational choice if one needs a God. His ‘the best of all possible worlds’ (as distinct from all thinkable worlds) summarizes what I would name an optimizing principle. Which contrasts with the concept of omnipotence.

        • SCOTT HARWELL says:

          “Science” will never be able to explain where or how the initial matter and energy came from. The beginning of the universe cannot be tested, observed or repeated. Moreover, the 1st law of thermodynamics is a fundamental law of the universe that matter and energy cannot be “created.” To quote Julie Andrews in Sound of Music, nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could. Even Hawking starts with “something.” There will always be something outside the circle that cannot be proved. See Godel’s theorem.

          • Peter Grafström says:

            The beginning may be related to the initial phase of running a computer program if God is a mathematical phenomenon. And we are the manifestations of a later phase in this program.
            Anything which beares a logical structure of that nature would see the initial phase as asymptotically some kind of singular event.
            In that analogy the natural laws would not be complete initially. Even time would take some time to start ticking.
            Physics may be the study of the characteristics of the passage of that internal time. And solid matter may be the way phaselocking appears to us since we would be phase-locked together with matter.
            If the universe has such characteristics but was never created by anything external to it it must have been some kind of chaotic phenomenon.
            The ‘phenomenon’ Nothing exists only in one singular form. The anti of nothing called ‘Something’ however exists in infinitely many forms. This makes it 100% certain, statistically, that something would beat nothing.

          • Seumas MacLaren says:

            Agreed.

        • Dave DeRosa says:

          Peter, thanks for the nice in depth-science. It was science that said to me ( about back action from the future) that time goes equally well backwards and forward. I was having many precognitive dreams (detailed dreams of future events) and I took the science bi-directionality to heart and tried for a postcognitive dream. I knew if it were to happen I’d have to distinguish it from memory. Well it did happen very clearly. I had two strong post cognitive dreams. My precognition is really a bi directional timeline jumping I found. I must conclude that we in our uncharted psychic interiors have access to the total time line at all times. My answer to the question: Can we go back and prevent our parents from having us? ….is YES, but we didn’t and probably will not. My friends recognize that in business I predict a competitors bid amount more than chance. The back travel ( by dream) surprised me. I went back before my birth and met my grandfather and hugged him. After my birth that grandfather had tremendous interest in me. Focusing on TRUTH and removing ourselves from the equation is our only work. Truth comes from above, then we scientists do stack up blocks to the ceiling where we meet it, recognize it, and show how it does integrate with our accepted known set. I think all discoveries might be plucked from or met in the future like this. The great scientists seem to recognize a “down giving” needed to meet their upbuilding. Your upbuilding is fine Peter. I’d think there are many down offered gifts waiting to jump that odd gap into your hands. Deposit your question in the back of your mind and wait 1-6 weeks or so for delivery of your answer. Listening for truth is everything because we only deal with approximations.
          Descartes, missed the concept of downgiving that I believe Edison and Steinmetz understood. If Descartes had understood this he might have recognized that the answer to “where/what is self” was given to him, but he did not recognize it. His ” I think therfor I am” is a cop-out and admission that he did not see the answer given to him. You are hearing this from me first I believe. This is my discovery: Descarte’s answer to the search for self was down given to him as Cartesian coordinates but he did not recognize that. We optimize closeness, like cannon ball stacking, in the cubic grid. We live in Descartes cubic grid where our 6 faces allow us 6 more close associations, possibly the 6 soul mates we are said to have…then our less close associations are a larger number but all the intensity and number of associations spring from the geometry of our cubic home. We are crystalline cubic based on simple attraction between elements. Descartes was given this answer. I was given this answer. The geometry and social studies support it. There are scientists trying to back out our mobility factor to find our “shape” and they are closing in on the crystalline cubic grid. Welcome home. This is the home of the self that Descartes pursued, our self. We are somewhat found in a beautiful place that maximizes closeness, reflectivity, and communication, a city of rows,columns and skyscrapers, a three dimensional crystal. Am I the first to recognize that Descartes did not see his own answer ? This is clearly the home of self, like puppies clumping in weightlessness we cling to eachother. Like the steel frame of a building, tapping in one place easily trans mitts through all the frame. A crystal rings easily and gives us all the communication ( vibratory transmission ability) and closeness that we want. Dave

          • Peter Grafström says:

            About your mentioning of feedback from the future.
            I dont want to cover any of your intuitions or claims. Since I have discussed that topic I wish to clarify what I meant. It was more like the feedback from virtual futures and more like virtual quantum states weighed together, pulling the present towards their futures.
            That description is provisory but it is to me more probable than the actual reading of one specific future that you imply. However I believe the brain is an interface to a much bigger invisible background world which includes more structure belonging to the feedback loop. It would clutter our perception and undermine the beauty of nature if we would have to see the machinery. Due to the existence of logaritmic space-time as a result of the invariance group of electromagnetism, it may be the case that the innermost parts of our material makeup contains the whole of reality at least like a countable number of horizons leading to it. One horizon per electron.
            But if you believe in your intuitions I’m fine with that.
            My personal experience is that ideas related to the present topic that appear attractive seldom originate from consciously maipulating math. And the possibility that it derives from a background world isnt foreign to me.
            There are claims that many people have had a recurrent dream theme about a monolith. I dont know what to make of that. It makes me think of supercomputers…

      • Peter Knapp says:

        The above article attacks Dawkins for an off the cuff remark, hardly a hard assertion or even a direct statement. He simply meant that nature took care of the initial conditions necessary for the building blocks to form. But this article can’t see past a quote and tries to belie everything the man stands for and says to call him into disrepute. Whatever. The article was entirely unconvincing.

    • Grumpy Egonostic says:

      Science has no idea how time and space originated.

  2. Eric says:

    Your description of the modern new atheist is exactly that of one of my most anti-religious aquantainces. Lol

  3. Felix Norcoc says:

    Thanks Perry
    Same opinion.
    Please listen to Jay Lakhani against Richard Dawkins on youtube.
    Jay is marvellous and very convincing in his 500videos.he is coming from quantum physics and leads Hindu Academy.
    Look for him, you will not regret it.

    Greetings
    Felix

    • Rob says:

      I think it would be useful for many of us to have a Hindu debate a Christian on worldviews. This would be a really unusual debate and could be really educational.

      • Paul Cotton says:

        Wouldn’t this be like two children comparing their invisible friends?

        • Mike Conway says:

          And comments like that are why people don’t take modern atheism seriously.

          • Paul Cotton says:

            Who doesn’t take Atheism seriously? Surely the whole point is that fewer and fewer people are taking religion seriously? Those of you who have abandoned reason in favour of belief cannot imagine that there is another point of view that may well be valid. My comment, though perhaps flippant, makes a valid point in a world where religious groups have always persecuted each other. There does not seem to be much change there, except that the new fundamental and sanctimonious Christians are even more sure that they are right.

            • SJTooke says:

              Your comment re two children and their invisible friends is dead on. Mr. Cotton is a standard issue Republican. When in doubt, demonize…or just ignore rational thought. Faith is generally belief without reason; and attacking Dawkins is again GOP SOP….don’t over here…they are wrong. Got no facts, but, but …they are wrong.

              • Paul Cotton says:

                I have never been accused of being a Republican before. Frankly, if I was easily offended, I would find that offensive. I am not sure I understand the rest of what you are saying.

            • Rob says:

              Um according to the madly religious group, the world bank, religiousity is actually increasing Paul. Sticking with facts in a discussion is generally easier

            • Leon says:

              PaulC, the most warlike world-view is atheism. A distant 2nd is the political ideology named islam (“submit”). 3rd is *everything* else combined.

              in terms of outright death tallies, islam definitely leads the pack, including 400,000,000 hindu within India alone. the most vicious atheist/”communist” dictatorships are very much amateurs in that field.

              • Paul Cotton says:

                Leon it is only in very recent times that Christianity has allowed any semblance of freedom of thought. Laws on blasphemy were very late in being repealed and millions through the world were subjugated by the church. Atheism was a backlash against it but never has there been a war carried out in the name of atheists.

              • Peter Grafström says:

                The pentecostals are trying to reign in populations into their violent worldview. E.g. In Latin America and Africa. They are a tool for NWO and the point with the rupture is that through a kind of psychological shock-action the whole world is to change from the traditional nationstates to a global mix under the angloamerican oligarchy. And what about the inevitable apocalyptic war that the jews are expected to fight and thereafter convert to Christians? That is what Christian zionists are supposed to believe. They are backing all the terrible wars the angloempire is causing.
                Jewish historians like Robert Cohen and Paul Goldstein wrote in 1978 that zionism, the B’nai B’rit and Evangelical Revival were created by British freemasons in the 1840s for the purpose of gaining control over the US. Another jewish author Anton Chaitkin wrote around 1997 about the militia-movement as well as part of the regular military in the US being under British influence via the pentecostals. What kind of Christian religion are we really referring to in the current debate?
                For example Francis Bacon and other agents for the elites were tasked to rewrite the bible for political purposes. (The King James Bible was the result ). Virtually all forms of radicalism, including communism and fascism, were created by the British or under their protection for the NWO project.

              • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

                Where do you get this number from?

            • Thomas A. De Simone says:

              I do not take default stupid atheism seriously. Not at all. The default stupid atheists answer to the question of creation is “It just happened, that’s all!!” Happy accident. I ceased to be an atheist when I began to think and observe.

              • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

                Observe what? Probably the opposite must have happened: you ceased to be atheist, when you gave up thinking…

                • Paul Cotton says:

                  I agree with Laszio, and to call atheist stupid shows a clear ignorance of atheism and those that choose not to subscribe to things supernatural. A failure to comprehend the vastness of the universe and the concept of time led our ancestors to invent gods as a means of describing what they could see. It would appear that some have not evolved beyond that stage.

                  • Peter Grafström says:

                    Scientists have been naughty, eaten of the forbidden fruit. People have been struggling with the concommitant question: does this mean science implies a pact with evil?
                    If there is a higher entity, science with its implication of evolving understanding, would seem to get a successively clearer understanding of the higher entity. Otherwise it would seem to mean that there is no form of logic by which to analyze the higher entity.
                    It looks like religion implies a ruler who wants to remain unknown so his worldly prophets will be rendered indispensible. Science however allows for a potential approach to the higher entity, so science appears more egalitarian but also more unpredictable.

            • Seumas MacLaren says:

              Whoever told you that religion was any use, or a good thing? If you hate religion, I am right with you. RELIGION causes confusion, wars, falsehoods to be taught as fact, and death and destruction follow to boot. Agreed on that one.

              Jesus Christ, however also hated religion as by itself (observance of practices and customs) it is DEAD as the do-do. Remember: Anyone calling themselves Christian, and not acting like Jesus would, is a hypocrite and you should ignore them. Except that often, these people know they are far from perfect, and will readily admit their error, when you point it out to them. THAT is the mark of a follower of Christ, and I would suggest they are indeed authentic, as their brokenness, and dependence on Christ demonstrates they are not messing around, but struggling with the difficulties of a genuine life that is in broad agreement with the one called Jesus. They have responded to the call of the Master, as I did, 34 years ago, and, though the going be sometimes rough, they know Him and that He is a real, and present person in their lives.

        • John Harris says:

          How about a public forum where Francis Collins explains the human genome to Richard Dawkins. That would be fun.

          • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

            It would be quite dull. At least, judging from Collins’ book… (I only read one book from him and don’t know if he has more than one.)

          • Seumas MacLaren says:

            That would be good; so very good John! (The Collins/Dawkins forum). The problem is that old Dickie Dawkins ears are full of atheist hardened wax. God will have to melt it away, if he is ever to be to able to look at the world and his own sin and admit the truth of Creation, and how the world has been designed with complex abilities to change, adapt and present new (related) species within the animal and plant kingdoms. Dawkins needs to the truth to dawn in his heart, that he is a sinner. That is his only hope, as God has allowed him to blind his own reason and intelligence to a level of denial of fact which is quite breathtaking, and painful to observe.

      • Mark says:

        Listen to Ravi Zacharias, he was reared a Hindu and debates/speaks all over the world.

      • Seumas MacLaren says:

        Hi Rob, Give us a few reasons why that type of debate would be useful? 🙂 Not sure I follow.

  4. john scott f. says:

    caught the panel discussion on God, Science and the Universe from U.of T. Would really like to know what you thought about it so, what do you think about it??

    • Been too busy to write a blog post about it. Briefly:

      -Krauss was a typical new atheist Jerk and did not deserve the honor of being there
      -Meyer did a pretty respectable job considering his head was in a vice
      -Lamoreaux gave a very interesting presentation, especially re: Darwin’s views.

      The Christian guys should have never let Krauss get away with saying that machine learning programs that beat the Go player were examples of non-design. Hello????

      Many people may not have noticed that by showing the Bilateral creature from 585MYA he undercut the whole thesis of Meyer’s book “Darwin’s Doubt.”

      • Rob says:

        Hey there Perry, what do you mean by the last line?

        • I mean – Can we drop inflammatory rhetoric and exercise Christian charity here?

          • Paul Cotton says:

            So it’s ok to refer to someone as a “New atheist jerk” is it? Christian charity? Ha.

            • That is the plain and simple truth. Jesus called pharisees whitewashed tombs full of dead man’s bones and Krauss is a Jerk. Watch his recent debate with Stephen Meyer and Denis Lamoreaux. I make no apologies for stating the obvious.

              • Paul Cotton says:

                Truth? When your only truth comes from a collection of middle eastern mythology, you are in a bad way. This is one reason why the likes of Trump is gathering supporters like fleas on a mangy dog.

                • Clearly you are not engaging with me on any sort of factual level, as I deal with truth in a way completely different than what you accuse me of. The others here can read my blog and judge for themselves.

                  • Martin Gately says:

                    Not just a jerk a ‘typical new atheist jerk.’ Perry, it’s a Bronze Age book of fables…stop basing your life around it. Seriously, for five minutes think about the likelihood that a group of wandering Bronze Age shepherds (and I mean that affectionately) were in direct and regular contact with the creator of the universe? And better yet, that the creator’s main preoccupations were things like cutting off a baby boy’s foreskin and whether or not you should eat shellfish. Fer Pete’s sake, it is not impossible even for YOU to break the conditioning. You were waiting for someone to blow a hole in your religion but you don’t seem to be able to see that the whole thing is made of Swiss Cheese. Your God is showing up in prayer services to improve people’s hearing…where was he on the day of the Aberfan disaster (google it) when countless children died in the worst peace tragedy in the history of my country – truly heartbreaking stuff – I would literally saw off my arm to go back in time and save those kids. I can come to your church and shake hands with people who had their hearing restored…BUT I cannot shake hands with the lost children of Aberfan. They are all dead. Your beneficent God was a no-show.

                    • Martin,

                      Acts 12:6 Now when Herod was about to bring him out, on that very night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries before the door were guarding the prison. 7 And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands. 8 And the angel said to him, “Dress yourself and put on your sandals.” And he did so. And he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.”

                      Matthew 14:8 Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.” 9 And the king was sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he commanded it to be given. 10 He sent and had John beheaded in the prison, 11 and his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother. 12 And his disciples came and took the body and buried it, and they went and told Jesus.

                      According to your reasoning, John the Baptist was beheaded – so therefore Peter was never let out of prison by an angel. Because, according to atheist logic, if God heals SOME people, God is obligated to heal ALL people. God didn’t heal everyone, therefore God didn’t heal anyone.

                      This is a non-sequitur.

                      If you wish to raise the question of why some people are healed and not others, I will be happy to discuss this with you. But first I need you to acknowledge the verifiable truth that some people have been in fact healed.

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Hi Perry,
                      C’mon, Perry. Attributing to me things I plainly never said and calling them a non-sequitur is poor arguing. I am highlighting your claim that people have had their hearing restored – note I haven’t questioned the claim, I don’t need to in order to prove my point – as compared to a terrible, terrible tragedy (the Aberfan disaster – which, wild guess, in your busy life you have not had time to google) in which a large number of innocent children lost their lives. I do draw a distinction between people being healed and saved. Since you don’t understand the argument I’ll briefly explain it, theists are very comfortable with special pleading – you accept it all the time – so I thought I’d try it. The Aberfan disaster is such a uniquely tragic event – affecting very young Christians in such a way that the community involved is still scarred by tragedy – that a benevolent God would have, if not prevented completely, found a way to mitigate it. Unfortunately, the disaster plays out in the worst way possible timed so that the maximum the number of children are killed. It is impossible to discern the hand of a beneficent and loving God in how this ‘scenario’ (and I have wrestled with my conscience as to whether or not to use it as an example when debating with you since I was concerned it might trivialize the deaths involved) plays out. If it is possible to see God’s loving hand then feel free to put me right…or you could just attack the argument by saying it’s special pleading, if you want to aim for maximum irony.

                      Elsewhere, you indicate a belief in modern witchcraft…this is not entirely surprising. I mean this kindly, just as people have an Intelligence Quotient, there is an unlinked quotient for being credulous. Some people, in the right situation, will believe literally anything…buy a bridge…invest in a wooden car. Name it, and somebody will believe it. Example: There was an enormous growth in mediumship following WW1 because people wanted to contact dead relatives…the people providing that service were opportunistic charlatans – yet a lot of people, a huge number, did believe it. The moment for it was right. Corollary of that, assuming such abilities existed – witchcraft, mediumship, precognition…anybody who had such powers would be running this planet. Yet, where are the people who claim such powers in the grand scheme of things? Making people’s ears bleed in remote African villages? Yeah, because that’s where I’d be…

                    • I am not minimizing or dismissing the suffering in the Aberfan tragedy. I am sorry for what these people went through.

                      You’re saying that if God did heal or could heal anyone, God would never let Aberfan happen. Aberfan, or… fill in the blank. Any tragedy you might name.

                      Saturday my friend’s sister got killed in a car accident. She left behind three young children.

                      I think it’s pretty clear that not everybody lives to 90 years old and dies peacefully in their sleep.

                      Atheists extrapolate this to: “Therefore God doesn’t exist.”

                      More generalized:

                      1. God is an all-knowing all-powerful all-loving being.

                      2. Such a being would never allow tragedies to occur.

                      3. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

                      Your problem is in #2. Both people and nature have freedoms of various kinds. Freedom exists, therefore tragedies are not only possible but inevitable. Unfortunately we have to live with them.

                      I do not allow this to prevent me from experiencing the miraculous, though, or deprive me of my appreciation and gratitude for the good things I do have.

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Hi Perry, I am sorry to hear that tragedy has struck close to you…
                      In this instance, I am not entirely sure what freedoms (either in general, or specifically) you are referring to. Children are not free to choose what days they attend school. The children of Aberfan had to go to school that Friday. A mountainous coal spoil heap has no choice in when it collapses…it is constrained by immutable laws of physics/gravity etc. If God had chosen to, he could held the spoil heap together for an additional 24 hours and the school would’ve been empty…it would’ve been empty for the half term holiday for the whole of the next week. So what I’m saying is, practically anyone who sees a child stumble will try to catch them to minimize the injuries they’d get when hitting the ground. You don’t have to be the greatest parent in the world to do this…it’s a reflex. Save the kid! Grab ’em! Why is this instinct so widespread in the human population but absent in God? In fact, doesn’t he behave almost exactly as if he isn’t there?
                      And just to recap, don’t forget that there is no such thing as atheist logic there is just actual logic. Relying on the supernatural for explanations is not a part of logic. I mean, I don’t know if you have employees, but if someone said to you, “I’ve had a pretty big problem with Google ad-words today and I’ve tried everything in the book…the only thing I can think of is that the problem is a supernatural one.” Well, I honestly wonder how sympathetic you would be.
                      You have correctly observed that not everyone lives until 90 and dies in bed. But, saying that tragedies are inevitable, but they don’t prevent you personally from experiencing the miraculous or from appreciating the good things you have…is not an argument for the existence of God, nor any kind of logical counter-argument. You do see that don’t you?
                      I think what we are starting to get to, in essence, is that there would be seem to be a moral argument for not worshiping God, even if he does exist. If you are worshiping an all-powerful being who doesn’t have the reflex to save children, then what exactly are you worshiping? Might as well be Kali or Cthulhu.

                    • Martin,

                      Atheist logic proposes that if God does not swoop down like Superman to rescue people from disasters and each other and themselves, then He does not exist.

                      Tell me this:

                      Which evils should God swoop down to prevent… and which ones should He not?

                      Should God prevent a woman from having an abortion?

                      Should God prevent you from cheating on your taxes?

                      Should God prevent you from cheating on your wife?

                      Should God prevent prodigal sons from running away from home?

                      Should God warn everyone before there is an earthquake?

                      Should God strike people dead whenever they do {whatever despicable thing}?

                      Is God not permitted to give people complete freedom to act out whatever is in their hearts… then reward and punish with absolute and unrelenting justice LATER?

                      And if not… by what logic or authority would you make such an assertion, Martin?

                      There is no conflict between natural and supernatural explanations, any more than there is a conflict between natural and supernatural healing.

                      This conflict only exists in the mind of the atheist.

                      Most my stories at http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles happened in the context of prayer or something similar. The two deaf people that I had DIRECT PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH, who got their hearing back after 30+ years, weren’t brushing their teeth, they weren’t driving to work, they weren’t sawing logs, they weren’t heating stuff up in their microwave, they weren’t practicing guitar.

                      They were at a healing service.

                      None of this takes anything away from what modern naturalistic medicine can do.

                      Neither works 100% of the time.

                      The main difference is, you only get one. I get both.

                      In regards to Google Adwords and similar things, same principle applies. I have had supernatural experiences that helped me tremendously in business. The following incident is described in the last chapter of my book “80/20 Sales & Marketing” which has sold 50,000 copies. I have told this story at seminars, webinars, emails, to tens of thousands of people. The events of this story directly resulted in millions of dollars of revenue in my business which otherwise would not have happened. It’s in some sense traceable to hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly billions from my clients. It played a role in the success of FanDuel, which recently merged with DraftKings and is valued in the $1 billion vicinity. It had a major major role in InfusionSoft which is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars:

                      https://www.perrymarshall.com/34766/the-story-behind-the-story/

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Hi Perry, and Merry Christmas. Firstly, a word on ‘atheist logic’ – despite all of the evidence appearing in comic-books, movies and on TV, I still do not believe in Superman. The reason for this is not that I am an atheist or that I use anti-superman logic. It is because I have a rational real world framework of thought that allows me to differentiate between fantasy and reality, the real and unreal, if you will. What you happen to believe, what you were brought up to believe, and what makes sense to you are not the same as logic. Repeat: there is only one kind of logic, and belief in the supernatural does not form a part of it. Your conclusions are often spurious and your comparisons are ill thought out. I am not being paid to teach you how to think properly, but if I were you’d be seeing me after class…I wonder how long the people of Metropolis would carry on believing in Superman if he never showed up. And if he only showed up to deal with hearing impairment, I doubt if he’d retain the name Superman for long. They’d call him something else. Likewise, it seems to me you are worshipping some demiurge god of minor healing miracles.
                      Moving on, how might the Aberfan Disaster be reported on the news in a world in which God exists…indulge me:
                      “Dateline Aberfan 21 October 1966 – today children were prevented from attending school by mysterious glowing white figures who appeared to them and told them to stay home for their own safety. Fifteen minutes later the coal spoil heap overlooking the village school collapsed and destroyed all the school buildings. Mr. and Mrs. Ivor Jones who live next to the school were forced out of the kitchen and into their backyard by a strange energy just as their house was engulfed by the fast flowing debris. “It was great miracle,” said Mr. Jones. Local rescue authorities reported that no lives were lost.”
                      Incidentally, if this report dated from 2000 years ago, it might be included in the New Testament and doubtless you would believe it without question. Yes, it is the sort of thing I would expect to be happening if God were real, based on the moral responsibilities of an omnipotent being worthy of worship because of his goodness. You ask me a host of questions about what God should do in any given situation in terms of intervening. Some of these things God has provided clear guidance on – do not commit adultery, render unto Caesar (Actually, your whole country is founded on ignoring that one! You should have paid tax on tea, right?). You seem to now be mistaking magical Christian thinking for logic in your argument…Again, what free choice were the innocent children of Aberfan exercising when they went to school that day? What absolute and unrelenting justice could God possibly want to mete out on them as the penalty for exercising that choice…? You tell me. You’ve been pressing people to answer questions in the last 24 hours…can you answer that? I doubt it.
                      The deficit in your clarity of thought increases…is God not permitted to allow people freedom and then to reward or punish? Fine, in which case why do we bother with courts and a legal system to punish criminals…? Better yet, why is it a crime to kill people if you are likely to be sending them express delivery to eternal life in the hereafter? What authority do I have to question these arrangements – God giving freedom and then judging with eternal damnation/eternal life…well, one pretty big one. I never signed up and agreed to take part in this test. Neither did you. At the most basic level then, I have been born into something I want no part of. Where’s the escape clause for conscientious objectors to this nonsense? By which I mean, even if it is real it is morally repugnant and I want no part of it.
                      Meanwhile, you’ve found a way to serve both God and mammon (to be honest I haven’t had time to read your supernatural business story, but I will) – there are people (including Christians) starving to death in this world, but God is helping you with your business endeavors. Are you entirely serious?
                      Finally, some of this must be sinking in. This is a dangerous time for you. It is entirely possible that you will very shortly realize that there is no basis to at all for what you are saying, and that it literally is nonsense. It may come to you suddenly in the night. I certainly hope so because this is getting silly, there are no supernatural problems with Google Adwords.

                    • Jack R. says:

                      Actually the National Coal Board was at fault. As for this being scientific evidence for the non existence of God exactly where is the science in the claim. The hypothesis would be ‘There is too much suffering for there to be a God.’ So exactly how is that supported? How is the scientific method employed to prove the hypothesis.

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Hi Jack R (although I thought Perry didn’t allow anonymity here…) Yours is rather a glib interjection but I’ll go with it. Yes, of course, the National Coal Board were at fault. They piled up the coal. The issue is not whose fault it was but who could’ve prevented it. Christians believe in an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God. If he isn’t going to intervene to save an entire school full of innocent children, when can you trust him to intervene? From Perry’s examples it is over minor hearing loss – that rates an intervention. Not the mass death of children. Don’t forget: God designed the universe…he’s responsible for physics, gravity, the laws of fluid dynamics…and if he’d held the spoil heaps together for another few hours there might have been no loss of life…But we know for sure he didn’t do that. Finally, you seem to be confusing me with a scientist. Something I have never claimed to be. If you want a label try ‘rationalist philosopher.’ So you tell me, does the level of suffering in the world seem about right to you? There is too much of it for my tastes.

                    • Martin,

                      Please define for us exactly when and how God is obligated to intervene in the affairs of men, and when exactly is He to leave his hands off the steering wheel.

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Perry, if God is real, his moral obligation to intervene is in direct relationship to the power he wields. Otherwise, you are worshiping a God who doesn’t have to do good or be good, but expects that of you. Think about that for a moment. I don’t think it is for me to define what God should or shouldn’t be doing. I think it is for you to explain to me why God shows up at your church curing hearing loss and yet leaves so much else undone. If I were a member of your church, I would genuinely be asking…why here when others are in so much greater need…?

                      Finally, I see no admonishment of Jack R’s attempted anonymity. Isn’t it supposed to be the typical new atheist jerks who come expecting anonymity?

                    • I don’t think it is for me to define what God should or shouldn’t be doing.

                      You just did.

                      And Martin, that’s the problem.

                      You don’t seem to realize everybody else notices this just as well as you do.

                      This very question is found all over the Bible, Martin.

                      YES MARTIN I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND THAT EVEN THOUGH I HAVE PERSONALLY SEEN TWO PEOPLE GET THEIR HEARING BACK AFTER 30+ YEARS OF DEAFNESS (in a healing service each time) THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE WHO DIED.

                      This is so obvious that it astounds me how self-congratulatory atheists are whenever they point this out. It’s like the atheists don’t realize – yes I live on the same planet they do. Yes, I am fully aware that other deaf people are still deaf.

                      But it doesn’t change the fact that I witnessed two people go into a healing service with deaf ears and come out hearing. After 30 years. That is a fact.

                      (A fact which you now know, and are morally accountable for. More documentation at http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles)

                      So… Why does John the Baptist get beheaded when Peter gets let out of jail by an angel?

                      Well the first thing this should tell you is a line from the movie “Rudy”:

                      I’ve learned two things in my life: There is a God, and I am not him.

                      Martin, when you say what you think God should do or would not do, you are practicing theology.

                      You have zero business practicing theology if you’re going to, at the same time, claim that theology does not exist because God does not exist.

                      You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

                      Which is to say, it is incoherent to say “If God existed, God would do X, God didn’t do X, therefore God doesn’t exist.” Read that sentence very very carefully and you will see that it makes no logical sense. Because you could never be sure you know what God would do unless God existed in the first place.

                      So the real question is: Is it within God’s rights to let John get beheaded by Herod – and for Peter to get released from prison? Or not?

                      And if not, then by what authority do you make that claim?

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Hi Perry,
                      Are you feeling okay? So having pressed me to define what God should or shouldn’t be doing (your exact words below), that barrage of nonsense was the point you were planning to make?

                      “Martin,
                      Please define for us exactly when and how God is obligated to intervene in the affairs of men, and when exactly is He to leave his hands off the steering wheel.”
                      Look, you’re the one was has written the book. You are the one who quite comfortable reinterpreting the Bible. You tell me how God doesn’t have a moral obligation to interfere in the affairs of men (for the better) whilst expecting us to do good and be good. If you can’t answer that question then close up your store.
                      So point by dreary point:
                      1) There may well be a phenomenon of spontaneous healing in large crowds led by a charismatic leader. I’ve told you before that I’ve witnessed similar healings at events run by atheist entertainer Derren Brown. It might be a phenomenon worth investigating. Do you think God is manifesting at atheist events too? But then there is also the phenomenon of statues of Ganesh drinking milk in Hindu temples. Proof positive that Ganesh is a real entity surely.
                      2) Well, if you’ve noticed that God isn’t doing too much around here what is your answer – why is that? Why are you worshipping an amoral God? As I’ve said before might as well be Kali, Cthulhu, Moloch…
                      3) Capital letters – https://pjmedia.com/blog/tips-for-not-appearing-crazy-on-the-internet/
                      Here’s quite a useful link. Start here.
                      4) Self congratulatory? Er, what? I mean, literally, what are you talking about? I’m not claiming to point out something you haven’t noticed. I just want your answer.
                      5) “You have zero business practicing theology/theology does not/exist because God doesn’t exist” – This argument is sooo bad it’s like I’ve been punched in the head. The study of leprechauns or the Loch Ness Monster exist as a human activity irrespective of whether or not the subject exists. So, I might have a view on what the monster might eat or do, in theory, separate from the actual existence of the monster. Certainly during the four years I studied religion in an academic environment nothing even vaguely resembling that was ever said to me. And not without good reason. It would’ve been laughed out of class.
                      6) “Having my cake and eating it” – and so forth. No. This is a straw man argument or at least at attempt to misrepresent my Aberfan points. It would only be illogical if attributes of beneficence and omnipotence were not part of your description of God. You need to be careful now because your argument is loaded towards proving the existence of an amoral or evil God. Even as you have it, you admit your God is capricious – saving Peter but not John.
                      7) By what authority do I make my points – I only need to be an independent thinking being to make points about anything. I’m using the same authority you are when you interpret the Bible in a non-creationist way. And what I’ve noticed about my Christian friends is that they interpret everything as a blessing from God – Broken boiler? The repair guy was the “hands and feet of Jesus” (actual quote) School scholarship – a blessing from the Lord. Vet’s bill for the dog not too heavy – yet another blessing. As Christians, they have ‘noticed’ that everything in their lives flows from the Lord. Since God is doing all these apparently trivial things I am at liberty to query trivial and non-trivial things he is not doing – and judge him and his likely existence accordingly.

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      You must be very busy again, Perry.

                    • Indeed I am.

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Well, it’s good to be busy. But don’t forget to set aside at least a little time for skewering atheists! Have a good Easter.

                    • John Harris says:

                      So if we’re hearing you correctly. It’s not likely that God exists, and therefore he can’t exist, because he doesn’t act within your concept of how God should act… based on your belief that he doesn’t exist. Stellar argument. Do you read books?

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Hi John Harris,
                      Well it’s great to make your acquaintance via your mealy-mouthed, yet rather feeble, ad hominem attack. They do say that ploughboys shouldn’t draw on shootists, but since you feel you are ready to take me on, let’s do this. It is always a pleasure to run into someone online who is oblivious to the importance of the Dunning-Kruger Effect in their life. Well, you’ve got me convinced I’m wrong. There must, indeed, be a God. But I think that the God that exists must certainly be the God of Irony. For surely, in a universe in which one of the laziest, ill-thought out and self-satisfied comments I’ve ever seen on the internet accuses my arguments of being insufficiently ‘stellar’ then I can only conclude that an intelligent supernatural force is out there generating irony to this level of miraculous perfection.
                      In case you really think I ain’t ever had much time for book learnin’ – I’ll give you a book recommendation. Try Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation – a useful primer for Christian apologists. And if you get stuck understanding the big words, I’m here to help.

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Hi John,
                      Well it’s great to make your acquaintance via your mealy-mouthed, yet rather feeble, ad hominem attack. They do say that ploughboys shouldn’t draw on shootists, but since you feel you are ready to take me on, let’s do this. It is always a pleasure to run into someone online who is oblivious to the importance of the Dunning-Kruger Effect in their life. Well, you’ve got me convinced I’m wrong. There must, indeed, be a God. But I think that the God that exists must certainly be the God of Irony. For surely, in a universe in which one of the laziest, ill-thought out and self-satisfied comments I’ve ever seen on the internet accuses my arguments of being insufficiently ‘stellar’ then I can only conclude that an intelligent supernatural force is out there generating irony to this level of miraculous perfection.
                      In case you really think I ain’t ever had much time for book learnin’ – I’ll give you a book recommendation. Try Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation – a useful primer for Christian apologists. And if you get stuck understanding the big words, I’m here to help

                    • Martin Gately says:

                      Well John Harris didn’t come playing around here again. I feel like the atheist sheriff of these here parts. I wonder if I converted him to atheism with my book recommendation LOL?

                  • Paul Cotton says:

                    To refer to someone as a jerk and in the same post calling for Christian charity cannot be described as factual. It is like much of what is posted here simple opinion. Personal attacks, like yours on Professor Dawkins, do very little to encourage proper discussion.

                    • Floyd Cooper says:

                      Martin Gately,
                      I understand your argument. I would have you try to see that the differing worldviews lead to the situation where you do not understand why bad things happen that an omnipotent could have prevented. Let me explain. The Bible says that man was created into a world without death or suffering. He chose to sin, and the results are that death and sin entered into the world. Were God morally obligated (your argument) to intervene, than He would logically need to do so in every situation. That would make the consequences of the original sin (and all subsequent sin) moot. Death is the punishment for sin. While that idea is central to our religion, not many have thought through the reality of it. I have seen many men die, it is never pretty. The magnificence of God is not in the fact that men die, we did that. It is in the fact that he sacrificed personally so that death would not mean separation from Him. To an atheist, death is seen as the final act of a person’s existence. To a Christian, death is the beginning of life with Him.

                    • I do not agree that the Bible teaches there was no death or suffering. This is based on a misinterpretation of Romans 1 which does not hold up if you examine it. See http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/who-is-adam/

                  • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

                    Dear Perry, you say you’re dealing with the truth… Isn’t this statement a bit “overambitious”?

                • bruce says:

                  so pre 1930 or so you would have believed in a pre existent eternal universe and those middle eastern mythologists would have been a couple thousand years ahead of you in knowing that the universe had a beginning. but you think they should drop their wisdom for the atheist myths that have a half life measured in decades?

    • bill Walker says:

      I label myself as an atheist, & have done so for over 70 years, while still in the Navy. But – I actually worship Nature as my own god. It is awesome. But there’s no Heaven, Hell or Satan, except as they exist right here & now.

    • tom alex says:

      perry marshall. god can heal all the people. he has the power to do so. no one has to suffer. No has to sacrifice his life, none of that. that’s the whole point. why do people who have done nothing to nobody have to suffer. And y do we talk about how god is the most merciful while this happens.

  5. Scott says:

    All you’ve succeeded in doing was to put down young people that aren’t in the same mental place as you. Which may not have the same education or opportunites you did. I’m sure you had all your life views and insecurties worked out in your early twenties.

  6. Paul says:

    Wow, your tirade against Mr. Dawkins and his defender contains so many logical argument flaws (ad hominem, straw man, no true Scotsman, to name a few) that you sound exactly like the “New Atheists” that you purport to describe.

    Dawkins has done more for science, our understanding of evolution and teaching people about it than you would hope to do in three lifetimes. Atheists, like Dawkins and, frankly, the rest of us, are tired and frustrated with people who have stopped being able to listen to reason. Theists have adopted the position of “if it doesn’t fit into my preconceived notion, I’m going to ignore it.” Dawkins saying that life was a “happy chemical accident” is akin to a Christian explaining that “Christ died for our sins.” Both are overly simplified explanations that those who know nothing about the subject matter can understand and relate to. We don’t know what specific atomic interactions happened at the moment life first came to be. Did the right pieces just happen to come together? Were there many different chemical variations that failed to become “life” before and after the first carbon-based single cells? Yes. We have discovered Silicon-based life in volcanos. The right pieces eventually came together in the right environment and here we are. “God did it, ” is not a scientific option to explain that.

    • I see, so the other side does something that offends you so… Dawkins gets to do it too. Do I understand you correctly?

      So can you tell me again how “happy chemical accident” qualifies as science?

      Can you show us where in your comment we can find a scientifically verifiable fact?

      • Robert Jennings says:

        Dawkins ‘happy chemical accident’ is a metaphor for ‘was a random event’. It is as much a metaphor as was Einstein’s statement “God does not play dice with the Universe”. The latter is a scientific assertion based on a particular Deterministic view of the Universe – and a rejection of the obvious conclusions of Quantum mechanics.
        It is amusing that in the first chapter of ‘’The God Delusion” Dawkins asserts that he is not going to confine himself to attacking the metaphorical god – Guy with a long beard sitting on a cloud – and then proceeds to do only that. Also, for a guy who does not like metaphor it is amusing that his most famous book – The Selfish Gene – employs a metaphor to make his point!
        ‘’The God Delusion” goes downhill after the first Chapter. In particular, when it comes to his analysis of the reasons why people believe in God/Religion, which is based on a wholly rationalist approach. Dawkins should have read, or should read, ‘A History of God’, by Karen Anderson which is the best informed book I have read on this real social phenomenon. Ms Anderson, a former Roman Catholic Nun is a true scholar and is not promoting any agenda.

        • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

          Excellent book, which “gently” suggests that God is made by man.

        • SCOTT HARWELL says:

          Random event is a euphemistic term for chance. Chance is nothing and cannot creare anything. Faith in chance is not scientific but it is the only other game in town for atheists.

          • Paul Cotton says:

            For days now, I have been clearing piles of leaves from the car parking space at the front of my house. I think we can agree that the way that leaves fall from trees is a random process. The winds are such that quite often the leaves are piled up in the same place, which does make it easier to clear up. Am I to ascribe this to your incredible busy creator who has taken time out from creating sickness and misery around the world, simply to make my life a little easier? You creationists do talk a lot of rubbish, but then you base your arguments on what you have been told by other creationists who simply interpret one very confused and dangerously ridiculous book.

          • Peter Knapp says:

            The definition of a Straw man argument. Thank you for being so concise, Scott Harwell.

        • Robert Stoney says:

          *Karen Armstrong
          Great book!

      • Robert DuChaine says:

        Dawkins did not describe “happy chemical accident” as science. He has clearly indicated in every place I have seen that it was speculation that could be rationally justified …much more rationally than could a god.

      • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

        Dear Perry, I did explain this “accident” theory to you many times (see above), but you are just not listening. I have also mentioned to you that this “accident” theory might be replaced by a “necessity” theory, which you also no not want to hear. Then, there is only one thing you would need to understand: leave this whole issue to science.

    • Ex-Pastor Dan says:

      Right on Paul!

    • Lexy says:

      Exactly, I’m not wasting my breath nor limited time on this Earth trying to reason with the unreasonable.

    • Rob says:

      Paul, care to share a link confirming your silicon-based-life claim?

    • Daniel says:

      “Theists have adopted the position of “if it doesn’t fit into my preconceived notion, I’m going to ignore it.” Wow. Me thinks you need a long gaze into the mirror.

      • Siggy says:

        While we all can benefit from a regular long hard look at ourselves, most atheists have arrived at their current worldview after having cast aside the preconceived notions that we were burdened with as children. Whereas the notion of unquestioning faith and rejection of conflicting worldviews is central dogma to Christianity.

    • Dan says:

      Well your right about one thing “you don’t know”
      As far as a worldview it would be nessecary to a least have an idea for origens other then “Oops!” then we can begin to discuss beyond that.

      • Peter Knapp says:

        No Dan, NO. An atheist knows what we know and nothing more. YOU are the one who doesn’t know how life began but still have the answer! Complex molecules DO form of their own volition. This does NOT need examples as it is widely known and understood. But I will mention amino acids and bucky balls to name two so you can look them up. No one said Oops except you.

    • Biz says:

      THANK YOU.

    • Jason Echevarria says:

      Citation for silicon based life found on earth? Only a theory, last I understood and couldn’t find anything online.

      And if it’s just a matter of “the right chemical combination”, why can’t we reproduce life from lifelessness? When that day happens, I’ll accept the atheist Genesis story as being “more” valid than the biblical one.
      Otherwise, they are both just theories that do not have direct observation by anyone.

      • Marilyn says:

        Before the big bang there was nothing , meaning no forms,, So everything came out of that formlessness. The essence of everything & everyone is formless, eternal, always was , always will be. As Man evolved he began to think & differentiate, (tree of the “knowledge” of good & evil—> the human ego) He became obsessed by his mind & loss touch with his spirituality. Now he doesn’t know who he is, so the mind created self creates a mind-created God, in his own image. But that’s not God & that’s not spirituality. The believer & the non-believer are always at odds when actually they are in the same boat because neither “knows” the presence of God. If God is always present & you don’t know it then it’s you who’s absent. Absent because you’re in your head. You’re in your head & there’s no such thing as a spiritual thought. An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in the “belief” in God. So that means there is no such thing as an atheist. To deny God is to deny your own existence. To deny your own existence is to deny your own presence. Which cannot be denied but just overlooked. The Bible & Jesus is actually talking about meditation—“Be still & know that I am God”. “Heaven is within you”.

    • Jim Wright says:

      It’s good to read someone with the sense to recognize the fallacy of those who are so blinded by their religious beliefs that they are unable or unwilling to accept realty.
      I cannot blame atheist for becoming more militant against religion. With all the harm caused by fundamentalist of various religious persuasions it’s about time they stopped ‘treading lightly’.

      • J.B. says:

        I hate to do this but: you continue to speak in myths and must be one of those “lack of the same educational opportunities” people that some around here talked about.

        Religious fundamentalists haven’t killed all that many people unless you’re counting Islam, maybe Hinduism at some time.

        Atheists, on the other hand, practically murdered a combined sum just last century that rivals much of human history in terms of total deaths through homicides–and largely innocents to boot.

        Traditional religions are largely about virtues, honor, social well-being, etc. Atheism was about efficiency and historical materialism (largely gotten form Marxism).

        Now you might be charitable to say that these were, in fact, fundamentalists of a different sort–but no question about it, they were atheists first and foremost. Most atheists remain identified with the same strains and origins of those murderous diktats’ and movements’ intellectual strain.

        So no: it is not about time that atheists get militant. It’s about time they shut-up and stop getting millions of people killed decade after decade, efficiently attempting to bring utopias upon the planet when their science is exhausted through extrapolation to domains which it hasn’t even gained any insight.

        • AMEN.

          • Peter Knapp says:

            That was a pathetic reply, Perry. His argument was specious and vacuous. He quoted no numbers which you consistently insist upon from your atheist detractors and he quoted no actual conflicts. So Mao Se Tung (see, I’m helping him out here) killed a lot and so did Stalin. I could go ON and ON about religious based deaths that continue today. And even many ostensibly secular wars were fought with each side claiming their god as their backer. Try harder to be less biased. Your true colours are showing.

        • Paul Cotton says:

          I think that you are conveniently forgetting the activities of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Witch trials of the 17th century and so many more incidents of religious bigotry that resulted in torture and death for many people. Hitler was a Catholic too, and the ruling classes that took us into the first and second world wars were mostly believers. Did the churches oppose any wars? I suspect not.
          Islam preaches peace and yet nearly every conflict in the world today involves Muslims.

          • Peter says:

            Paul, I think it is you that who is conveniently forgetting the activities of the crusades:

            People often shout “Crusades” purely as a means to attack the Church but have they really sat down and had a look at them?

            http://i.imgur.com/AO5vNYl.jpg

            http://i.imgur.com/bJbVpHz.jpg

            As for the history of warfare itself, let’s take a look at it.

            http://i.imgur.com/XN5qZIy.jpg

            Never has humanity suffered more than under the brutal regimes of Stalin, Mau or Pol Pot. These oppressive dictators lived under the conditions of “no God” and “survival of the fittest”. How many millions upon millions of people were butchered or left to starve or left to freeze to death?

            I do accept the madness of the witch trials at a time of mass hysteria in Europe. There is no excuse for it and i’m not going to make one however if you want to use these examples simply to attach the Church then feel free to do so. However if you want to use these examples to pretend “religion = bad” and “no religion = good” then i’m afraid you are very badly mistaken.

            Did the Church oppose any wars? I almost certainly believe they did but I think it is recognised that there are ‘just wars’ insofar if you have to defend yourself then so be it.

            As for Hitler being Catholic – that is a desperate attempt to link religion and war because regardless of what Hitler was baptised into at one point, he certainly under no circumstances used his belief in God as a reason to do what he did. Stalin was a Christian too at one point – and then he read Darwin’s evolution book and he rejected God. The Church in Russia was oppressed not long after that.

            Islam preaches peace? Where did you hear that? Yes there are peaceful aspects to Islam and many peaceful Muslims but it is far from a religion that promotes peace. The Quran actually commands you to kill which is why many actually do it. This is no coincidence.

            And before you jump in “there are bad things in the Old Testament too” – yes there are, but these are descriptive of events and Christians are not commanded to kill others but Muslims most certainly are. Do some research on it. Muhammad was a brutal warrior and Islam is political.

            As for “nearly every conflict in the world involves Muslims” simply playing devils advocate here – what would ordinary muslims in Iraq or Syria say about America or Britain?

            How many years have we gone without USA or Britain being involved in some war somewhere? WMD’s – are you kidding? Wars built on a lie so the general public are fooled. And be under no illusion, USA created ISIS either directly or indirectly.

            What about Osama bin Laden? Why was he “captured, killed and body destroyed” instead of being publicly put on trial? My guess is that he knew too much and the Whitehouse knew that too.

            Let’s be honest about history instead of just cherry picking the bits we want to attach Church/religion, ok?

            • Paul Cotton says:

              Ok – let’s focus a moment on contemporary issues regarding the church. The world is overpopulated and millions are hungry, yet the biggest and richest organised religion opposes contraception and abortion, thereby exacerbating, if not creating the problem in the first place. You are right that religion cannot be held responsible for all troubles but it is time that they took some responsibility for what goes on in the real world. There is only the one after all as far as we know.

          • bruce says:

            hitler was a catholic? who was working out the prophesies of Darwin who stated that the higher evolved one day would wipe out the lower forms of humans.
            Islam preaches peace? try reading the koran

        • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

          Dear J.B., where did you learn history from? Did you hear about Giordano Bruno? Did you hear about the European “dark ages”or the religious wars in Europe and the Middle East, or the acts of the missionaries in South America?

        • Paul Cotton says:

          Again the fallacy that wars of a not religious basis are perpetrated by atheists. The first world war was fought largely by frightened men, sent there to defend what? Most wars are about making money for the rich and the churches never stand out against them. I notice that you ignore the atrocities perpetrated by Christian groups throughout history. Tell me of any conflict fought in the name of Atheism.

          • bruce says:

            WWII was based in the teachings of darwinian evolution. the whole master race thing remember that. You could argue that evolution had nothing to do with it, but you would be arguing with Darwin who saw extermination of the inferior races as the reasonable outcome of his beliefs.

            • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

              I hope you’re just joking…

            • Paul Cotton says:

              What a ridiculous assertion. You are saying that racism did not exist before Darwin? Racism is a product of fear and ignorance, generated in divided societies by charismatic leaders. Organised religions are very good at promoting hatred and fear and thus creating divisions within populations.
              Maybe this does lead to some form of natural selection but to claim that Hitler was using The Origin of Species as a guide book is a little silly to say the least.

    • nuf sed says:

      Neither is speculation no matter how grasping of molecular straws.
      “God did it,” works fine for me when it comes to first matter and the creation of life with two sexes yet.
      No matter what your religion, or mine, or none, there must always be a place in reasonable men’s minds for a first cause that is far beyond man’s puny intellect.

    • Louis Wong says:

      Dear Paul,

      Even as a Christian i must agree with your opening statement. This post sounds like an upset (possibly unjustified) response to Dawkins and friend as well as quite hypocritical. [Calling the person “intelligent” and then proceeding to treat the person with contempt perhaps goes to show the inability to communicate and reason properly].

      Martin Luther has be recalled somewhat to say ” If I were a Jew, I would suffer the rack ten times before I would go over to the pope.” In specific reference to his observations to the how Christianity is portrayed by his followers. For this i must apologise.

      However you seem to enjoy exploring the ideas of logic (and fallacies) and so i implore you not to commit the fallacy fallacy. Namely i reject your notion that saying “God did it” is not a scientific option. If i can use scientific to be based of logic principles let me propose this: Perhaps you are familiar with the fine-tuning argument, that many forces and scientific constants are so precise, that the spectrum of probability of life occurring by “chance” is “infinitesimally” small and basically inconceivable. Dawkins argues that we are a “happy chemical accident”. In the face of those two facts, it would seem only one view is seem logical. If it is virtually impossible for “life to exist” under the narrow bands that we experience, if there is nothing external to our system, then it would be logical to concede that the only observable universe is one where life exists to observe the universe.

      Here, i am saying i will concede to Dawkins argument of a ‘happy chemical accident’ here, but i argue all more strongly against only concluding this. Let us suppose we played poker, and for 10 games straight i pulled out pocket aces. At this point you are pulling me up for cheating. In this case i make this argument: Look, i know that the odds of me having pocket aces 10 times in a row is really small, but not zero. The fact that i’ve gotten 10 in a row is just a happy accident. I’m sure you would still pull me up for cheating, [that i had externally influenced the system i.e. shuffling] Here in this case, the argument is different but i believe somewhat valid. Even if the only observable universe is a universe where life exists to observe it, declaring the infinitesimally small chance irrelevant is a far cry when a more evident just still presumptuous case exists.

      In the case of the poker game, it is still a presumption that i cheated, circumstantially anyways, but the default is towards cheating [that i had externally influenced the system].

      In the case of fine-tuning of the universe, with the infinitesimally small chance for life, it would seem you have defaulted to chance (“you said the right pieces fell in place so we are here”). Rather to an external influence on the system.

      Some scientist have seen this problem and are theorizing about multi-verse theory. Some theists have ascribed this “external influence” as a deity of some sort. (It doesn;t have to be, it could be anything). But here to my point, it is in light of fine-tuning perhaps more logical (and hence scientific) to ascribe out existence not out of pure chance against the overwhelming odds (Cuz they are huge, just look a couple of them up), but rather to an external source. Many scientist accepting this turned to multi-verse theory. We simply put a mind behind that universe creating power. Saying “God did it” may as well be a better scientific explanation than “accepting [the really small] chance”.

      • Marilyn says:

        God did it yes , but God is a word (language created by humans) that describes that higher power that is in control (cause we’re not) . The word refers to that formless energy that is the essence of every form not just humans. If forms of matter never always existed then it came out of something, & that something had to be formless! Nobody & nothing can be separate from it. So that separation is an illusion. It’s an illusion of mind because the mind doesn’t know it’s source. Human thought evolved , as told in the parable when they ate from the tree of the “knowledge” of good & evil. That refers to when man began to differentiate between good & bad ( concepts of the mind) . It gained momentum & took him over totally. As he got taken over by his mind he at the same time loss his connection with life itself(God). So now he fears , he thinks he’s going to die. He creates a God in his head , Religion. But that doesn’t work because that’s not God. A perfect God cannot create imperfection, or else he wouldn’t be perfect. So if he lost God in thought then to find God he has to get out of there, & get back to the spiritual self. Jesus was talking about meditation so to speak, becoming centered in the present, where life is & not in the interpretation of it. When you wake up to that realization then God is waking up through you. It’s called awakening so what are you waking up from? You’re waking up from the dream of form.

        • Peter Knapp says:

          Remember Christians. If you state that “God” is everywhere and everything then you are denying 1: the bible and 2: that there is anyway to differentiate between REALITY and your god. In which case, it makes far more sense to dispense with the All knowing, All seeing GOD figure and just realize that God is nature and nature is reality.

      • Paul Cotton says:

        Why are soap bubbles always spherical? 🙂

        • Peter Smith says:

          Bubbles are round — spherical — because there is an attractive force called surface tension that pulls molecules of water into the tightest possible groupings. And the tightest possible grouping that any collection of particles can achieve is to pack together into a sphere.

    • S.MacLaren says:

      Why do you feel that “The right pieces eventually came together in the right environment and here we are. ” is a scientific statement (necessarily dependant upon experiment and ordered recording of results and conclusions)?

      • Peter Knapp says:

        Because either way, through your god or nature’s proclivity for balance and order, it’s just true. It did because we are. Tadah!

  7. ken says:

    While not scientifally signifigant, “I don’t know” is an honest answer. If we believe that it took an outside energy source to spark some chemicals to life, but cannot say exactly what that energy was, it is perfectly honest to say that. If you’re struck by lightening, isn’t that an unlucky accident? so, why isn’t a lightening strike that possibly created life a “lucky accident”. Sure, it doesn’t explain much… but it hardly can be called a lie.

  8. Mike says:

    If he were giving a lecture to scientists, I could understand wanting to hold his feet to the fire. But on a radio broadcast, I doubt he had the time to go into all the details, and I doubt most of the audience really cared. If you want details, they’re readily available in many places.

    Plus, Neil Tyson explains why scientists do and say things that sound more like rhetoric than science when given a public platform…and that is to generate interest in science without boring people to death so they will become interested and either donate money or want to become scientists themselves.

    I agree with Paul here, and would like to add that we have given theists way too much leeway without confronting them, and now they are making more and more school districts either teach fantasy as science, or put a disclaimer on real proven science as if it were just an opinion. Theists are gaining a stronghold in our education system which, if not stopped, could very well lead to the same thing that happened to Islam in the year 1100.

    I can only post part of what I’d like to get across because this website is very poorly constructed and is causing issues with my phone. May want to pass that along to the webmaster, they can improve the website functionality and could also likely boost the number of followers on here by removing things such as the full screen pop up when first coming to the site, making it appear as though there is no way through to the content without clicking the link.

    • Rob says:

      Mike, you sound paranoid. Where are all these school districts that teach fantasy?

      I have PhD in physics and consider your (presumed) views to be fantasy, and nothing more than a secular creation myth. Maybe we should teach both sides and that would have made young atheists like me actually interested in science.

      • Mike says:
      • Mike says:

        When creationism can produce hard facts and evidence, then we can consider that a “side” to the debate. For now, there is zero evidence. All they’re doing is taking things that naturally occurred and attributing them to things in the bible. For example, a prominent member of the creationism museum thinks the grand canyon was created by the great flood in the bible.

        • Melinda Freer says:

          You are correct. As a Chrisian I realize that our faith cannot be explained by science. However our faith cannot be disproven by science either. One out of four people have had a spiritual encounter including myself. I almost drowned as a child and had an out of body experience. Unfortunately without taking a leap of faith, you will never have an experience with God and everything written by those who have, will be mocked.

          • Peter Knapp says:

            WHY, Melinda? WHY should he have a leap of faith??? Why shouldn’t he say “Well, that was different!” and wonder at what happened. Instead of coming to the rather wild CONCLUSION that the Christian god had something to do with making you feel as though you were outside your own body. (BTW, I have had an out of body experience as well but other than being pretty cool, I have not the hubris to tell you why or how it happened, or attribute it to some magical being.

        • Luke Cage says:

          Mike, your fears are well founded. Schools ARE teaching fantasy as science, except that the fantasy is your religion of evolution. How is creationists offering up the Grand Canyon as evidence of the Flood any different than evos holding up a single bone, fantasizing ancestry and calling it evidence?? Your brainwashing is showing. the truth is creationists and evos have the same evidence, we just interpret it differently. As for the Grand Canyon, we can clearly see folding of layers without fracturing in the GC, indicating that they were laid down while still wet, supporting the biblical view. That IS evidence, regardless if you choose to ignore it because it shatters your world view.

          • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

            Biblical view? That’s funny.

          • Peter Knapp says:

            Luke, you have to come to the table armed with better than that. You have clearly never believed in anything but what you do now, never given any other views any credibility and have been very deeply ensconced into your biblical teachings since you were small. Too bad, as it has lead you to a place of limited understanding. You’re using your side’s propaganda to convince the other side when that propaganda was used against your using your own sense.

      • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

        Teaching means to inform, to pass out knowledge. There is no knowledge in beliefs. Thus, you cannot teach creationism, you can only “mention” it. (I suggest that this sums up this entire argument.)

    • Jon says:

      What “happened” to Islam in 1100? If you’ve not read or are unfamiliar with The History of Al-Tabari (d. 923) or Al-Sirah Al-Nabawiyyah (The Life of the Prophet Muhammed) by Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), do reply.

  9. Fred Baker says:

    As a believing Christian, I disagree with the article’s characterization of today’s atheists as “bellicose angry males who commonly suffer from depression, who post anonymous tirades all over the internet so they can share their misery with everyone else”. In actuality, I know two women in their thirties who are respectful and articulate, intelligent atheists.

    There’s a message here. It’s about with whom you decide to engage! So, instead of railing against someone you see as a fool, or attacking them generally or personally, instead engage NPR and the media and find respectful, articulate, intelligent opponents to debate.

    Do not look for someone to get a leg up on, but respectful individuals you can shake hands with, and mean it, afterwards, and love in the spirit of Christ.

    If you choose a bad opponent, one that just pushes your buttons rather than making you think, you only have yourself to blame.

    But theatrics on one side don’t deserve them on the other.

    Respectfully, theatrics also include trick headlines just designed to grab attention. And attacking the opposition personally.

    Consider that I wouldn’t have even known of his NPR appearance without this post. I went to NPR’s site to listen. This post only drew attention to him.

    Again, I’d like to see someone approach all this differently. With choosing a good opponent. Arguing with respect and intellect, not attacking generally or personally, and not by throwing out random facts, but by making structured quick arguments. Is that too much to ask?

    As a Christian who believes in full blown evolution, most probably preceded by the Big Bang, I can understand the arguments of both sides.

    I’ll be glad to explain in structured quick argument why I am a Christian, why I reject completely strict interpretation, why I fully embrace evolution, how Jesus did not endorse Genesis, why the Old Testament is old news and relatively unimportant, and how I found God through science and mathematics. But those are not the topic here. I’ll stick to the topic.

    Please do not let this important debate devolve into partisan name calling and button pushing. If its done right, and you start from a position near an atheist, and logically, respectfully debate in quick structured arguments, you can not only win, but convert. I’m a perfect example, and am now a long time follower of Christ.

    I think I’ve laid out the groundwork of how to engage constructively, but its starts with your choices, and respect is at its heart.

    Thanks for the consideration of my views. May you have a joyous and Happy Easter.

    • I am calling on atheists to employ more self respect than they express by defending Dawkins and the foolish statements he makes.

      YES there are intelligent friendly atheists out there. You will not for the most part find them on the “friendly atheist” website – just read the comments.

      Thanks for your positive contribution to this conversation.

      • Martin says:

        It seems pretty clear to me, and I would think clear to anyone else looking with a dispassionate and considered eye, that the reason Prof Richard Dawkins seems to be constantly and quite abusively attacked by the religious elements, the Pseudoscientists and the snake oil sellers, and the reason so much effort is being exerted to misrepresent and discredit him, is simply because the basic truth he talks, hurts these interested parties immensely. And this reaction is just a repeat of the historical reactions of the past when truth tries to replace superstition. Religion (and thats all religion by the way) has always hated and persecuted anything that shows it up for the stupidity that it is, Galileo Galilei, persecuted and silenced by the catholic church, Copernicus faced no persecution when he was alive but only because he died shortly after publishing his book, which was then banned, by the church. Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician in the 16th century who discovered pulmonary circulation, called a heretic, fled the Spanish Inquisition only to be arrested and burned alive by the Protestant Inquisition in Switzerland, Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariy Rz, also known as Rhazes, regarded in Europe as one of the 15 great sources of knowledge when rediscovered, persecuted by the Islamic religion for his open-mindedness and belief that religious fanaticism breeds war and hatred. The list is long, and shameful for religion, but it also hurst the snake oil sellers and the Pseudoscientists, because its all just a racket, its all just about fleecing the sheep. In years to come, the religious systems, snake oil pedlars and Pseudoscientists of these days will also only ever be remembered for their stupidity and ignorance, and downright dishonesty, whilst the above mentioned people and the thousands of other courageous bringers or reason wisdom and truth, are now and will always be thankfully remembered for that courage, long after this nonsense is forgotten, so will the great Charles Darwin and so will Prof Richard Dawkins.

        • “Basic truth” of…. the “happy chemical accident”?

          Thank you for your rant about organized religion. I’ve got one myself at http://www.coffeehousetheology.com. But nowhere do I find in your writing a defensible scientific statement.

          Even as Dawkins fleeces his own sheep – and you defend him.

          • Peter Knapp says:

            Keep harping on your “happy chemical accident” point, Perry. It shows you can’t listen or evolve. LOL! It has been explained adequately by several posters. It doesn’t surprise me you are unable to assimilate new knowledge.

      • FredD says:

        Proclaiming the origin of life “a lucky accident” is the foundational atheist/materialist faith claim… a different species, but of the same genus as “God did it”. Both are philosophical not scientific statements. Carl Sagan made the exact same origins assertion (speculation) in his 1980s PBS show “Cosmos”. My fave part of that show was when Sagan explained (I call the “pop” version) of Evolution in 90 seconds or so, without any explanation or even speculation of how the mechanics of such evolution occurred. Circle back to faith… the starting point of all. Oh the “rusty” irony is indeed rich!

  10. Laszlo G Meszaros says:

    Dawkins is wrong; it was not an accident, it was a necessity. Just thing of the “Infinite Monkey Theorem”.

  11. Laszlo G Meszaros says:

    Let me try one more time. Dawkins simly used bad wording, but what he was going to say is hard science. What he meant is that random events can generate patterns. So, complexity can emerge from chaos.

    • Complexity obviously emerges from chaos. Fractals, sand dunes, snowflakes, etc.

      There’s no empirical evidence that life comes from non life, or that information comes from anything other than intelligence. I have a $3 million prize for anyone who figures out how to get information from intelligence. Details at http://www.naturalcode.org.

      • Iain Leonard says:

        Hi there, got dragged in here from a sponsored link, then made the mistake of having a smoke, now I’ve read all of the comments. Although I’m pretty sure the three million dollars isn’t under an immediate threat, on this one point, it did make me think of the ” Miller-Urey” experiment, and some of the related thinking and research done around it, which focused on abiogenesis. I’m expecting you are indeed familiar with it, so I did what I could to find a fairly concise link just in case.
        http://science.jrank.org/pages/1387/Chemical-Evolution.html

        • My page at http://www.naturalcode.org addresses the Miller-Urey experiment.

          • Iain Leonard says:

            Ah, ok, thanks…..Interestingly laid out and important question, I can see why the discussion here has been a bit spicy at times. At least on a random drop in my brain did actually think of something relevant 🙂 Quite a few people seem to be specialised in different aspects of what you are proposing, and are arguing the question is covered by something we already know. But the very premise of the question automatically moves past what is already known.

    • BAK says:

      Patterns are not equal to information, random events do not generate encyclopedias, and life contains encyclopedic levels of complex information.

      • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

        You’re wrong. Please take a look at, for instance, the “Infinite Monkey Theorem”.

        • Laszlo,

          I suggest you yourself take a closer look at the Infinite Monkey Theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem – It’s true given infinite numbers, but there are no infinite numbers in the universe and in practical application it’s a total fallacy.

          “However, for physically meaningful numbers of monkeys typing for physically meaningful lengths of time the results are reversed. If there were as many monkeys as there are atoms in the observable universe typing extremely fast for trillions of times the life of the universe, the probability of the monkeys replicating even a single page of Shakespeare is unfathomably minute.”

          • Peter Knapp says:

            “There are no infinite numbers in the universe” Perry?? What??? Since the universe is apparently infinite, I think we can say with accurate certitude that MOST numbers will be infinite. Or is your universe smaller than mine?

            • Peter Grafström says:

              Current wisdom in scientific circles allows for the universe to have a finite number of quantum particles. One example of such estimates suggests in rough numbers massive particles to number 10^80 and photons 10^120. They in turn are estimated to have a finite number of states in phasespace and configuration space. The finiteness is a consequence of the assumed finite size of the universe and the finite magnitude of natural constants.

          • Peter Grafström says:

            Evolution is a nonlinear phenomenon due to selection. Therefore the probabilities you cite are not applicable. It isnt a random sequence of blind chance events. Selection cuts deep. Life is highly nonlinear.
            Your brains response is highly nonlinear. Actually it is only recently that empirical research has been able to make use of that to prove that human brains do sense nonthermal electromagnetic fields. But since this sense has not undergone any selection the sense has not been turned into a reliable conscious sense. Therefore while the brain objectively registers emf, the individual fails to correctly deduce when the field is on. This has previously led scientists to claim the research,( using linear methods), doesnt prove anything.
            Nonlinear phenomena are not yet well understood what regards collecting statistical data.
            This isnt directly related to evolution but illustrates the scientific difficulties with current knowledge.
            Evolution is even more complicated since there are manifest irreversible effects. The concept of nonlinearity is my provisional label of something even further removed from most of the more easily tractable phenomena commonly analysed by science.
            In conclusion the analogy with monkeys typing shakespears collective works is not applicable.

            • something has to exist first before it can get selected.

              The “infinite monkey theorem” is one of the biggest urban legends in science and a quick Google search will confirm that it is false.

  12. Laszlo G Meszaros says:

    I looked at the prize page. How information is defined there is wrong. Define information the way, which utilizes the meaning of the verb “to inform”. Once you do that, you might find all kinds of examples. Of course, then you will argue that teaching only applies to human.
    This whole argument is senseless, since believing in some supernatural is always more convenient, than to think and learn…

    • I suggest you take a course in engineering information theory. Hubert Yockey’s book would be a good start.

      • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

        Dear Perry, it was a cheap reply; what I am talking about is kinda philosophy. That book is oversimplifying the whole issue (too pragmatic and technical). If you do not see the connection between information and emergence, it’s not my fault.

        • Laszlo,

          A philosophical definition of information doesn’t contribute anything to the question, because in absence of any intelligent / sentient creatures, the definition you provided is meaningless. How can you inform a rock or a polypeptide chain?

          As for emergence, if you can demonstrate an emergent process that produces coded information, my private investment group wants to buy the patent.

          • Arthur Noll says:

            A rock or polypeptide chain is an entity, (has boundaries) and it has information in its physical qualities. An entity has a certain mass, dimensions, forces binding it together, and forces of attraction and repulsion to other entities. It can be informed, with other entities moving close to it, changing it by breakage or adding to it, or changing its movement. Those things in turn mean this newly in-formed entity I put the hyphen in to hilight that the word informed, has the word “formed” in it) can go on to give different information to other entities.

            To have additions happen- two entities becoming one entity- requires specific energy information with the two combining entities. If they have too much energy, they are likely to break each other rather than combine, if too little energy, they will not come together with enough force to overcome boundary forces and become one entity. This holds at different scales and with different fundamental forces. With large entities like planets and stars, orbits will exist at the right energy level, or masses may merge into one with the right combination of energy. Too much energy and orbits will not form, and with too much energy two masses will break each other apart. With too little, they will not come together. Similar things happen with electromagnetic and nuclear forces.
            Replication can happen with forces of attraction forming an entity that is then split apart by another entity, making it possible for the two pieces to form up again. On very simple levels, this is meaningless as far as the existence of life- you have energy levels that have simple atoms becoming molecules, then these are torn apart and reformed again. Still, on a fundamental level, this is replication of molecules. And if you have energy conditions where more complex molecules build up and then get destroyed, (fluctuating energy conditions of a rotating planet, tides with a moon, would help this happen) you could get a molecule that short circuits getting torn down so much, but splits in half and then reforms two of itself. All of this with attraction, repulsion, and the right energy levels. From there, we can notice that anything added to this that makes the replication happen more reliably, will endure, because replication means a form endures. And things added that make a form endure better between replications, that will also replicate, also makes the whole thing endure better. And with that, you have selection of additions- and subtractions- that work better or worse to keep a form enduring in different environments. Energy level, atoms and molecules with the right amount of attraction and repulsion for each other, gives increasing complexity, replication, and selection for endurance.

            I see myself as a complex entity with boundaries, a fluctuating energy level, and various degrees of attraction to some things and repulsion to other things around me. I don’t see anyone whose behavior isn’t composed of the same things. Others may be attracted or repulsed to various degrees, by the observations here. They may be open or closed in their boundaries, with regards to them, as with other things. And they may be selected as enduring forms with their set of attractions and repulsions, or not.
            Can I give you a way to replicate this? I think it could require a star and planet of similar composition to this one, the right distance away.

            Science, I think, is based on a postulate about reality- that matter energy is real and what we detect of it, and its motions, with our senses of matter-energy, is statistically predictable. Scientists don’t (or shouldn’t do it and call it science) speculate about things beyond physical evidence of our senses, because that is limited only by the amount of time we have to spend on it, and it can be very contradictory. It isn’t seen as a good way to make decisions. But being based on a postulate about reality, it isn’t about absolute proof of anything. You can have other postulates about reality- and that doesn’t give proof, either. People often show signs of being highly attracted to postulates that are different from science. Again, from the point of view of science, -or my view of science- that will be an attraction that either endures or it doesn’t.
            I have one more observation to throw into this- I think scientists have made a serious mistake of confusing correlation with causation about a fundamental matter. There has been an assumption that we can find whatever we need, with regard to using up resources of all kinds. But this is counting on imaginary things being found. It is betting lives on a speculation about the future, assuming things exist to be found. This is really not much different from the postulate of religious people that mystical beings exist and can bail us out of trouble. I think this very unscientific assumption could have horrific consequences- that it already is, actually. And another curious observation about all this, is that the person who had a major religion built around him, reportedly said something to the effect of fools build towers without first counting the costs of finishing. Humanity has built a huge number of things, grown a huge population, without honestly counting the costs of keeping it going. Accounting with imaginary things… Foolish, I think.

          • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

            I prefer to look at information with a much broader meaning than Shannon’s. How to do it (in details) is the million dollar question in information science. But, if we really want to connect information to, for instance, physics, then we should be able to do it. Its connection to entropy is a good start.

    • BAK says:

      Would you include any non-material entity in your word “supernatural?” The thought process you used to conceive your post – i.e., your mind – is a non-material entity.

  13. Dennis says:

    Hi Perry.

    Enjoyed your book. I’m grateful for the work and time you put into it.

    You’ve got a lot on your plate now and I imagine you regularly feel incredibly exasperated, infuriatated even. Remember, knowledge puffs people up. Maintain a spirit of humility. When responding to someone, you only need respond with the truth. Remember Proverbs 26:4…& 5 🙂

    All the best.

  14. David says:

    Of course his statement wasn’t science. He was on a radio program and used a metaphor. What’s wrong with that? How does that make him “angry”?

  15. Ryszard Kaczmarczyk says:

    “Science will forever be catching up with relative reality, and in further reducing fractions”. Quotes, from a happy and accidental, temporarily condensed quantum cloud of free-willed humility.

  16. Jim Crocain says:

    there is a difference between anti-theism and atheism

  17. Agreed; many of my fellow atheists are boorish and spiteful. They are less philosophical disputants than rather embarassing studies in developmental psychology.

    You take exception to Dawkins saying that life is a happy chemical accident and call it dodgy and unscientific. The only scientific part of it is the word “chemical,” which I suppose would have universal agreement. To call it “happy” is philosophical, since science as science makes no such judgments. To call it an accident, by which I assume he means it was not planned by an already-living intelligence, is certainly something that science can’t prove, but then, even if such an intelligence were real and its existence believed, neither could science, as science, affirm.

    And as an atheist, Dawkins could hardly say anything else. What would we think of an atheist who said “I hold that there is no God, though I do affirm that there must be some sort of Supreme Mind who engineered life”?

    Really, it almost sounds as though you take exception to the fact that an atheist is, well, an atheist.

    As to taking him to task for not making fully-fleshed-out and precise statements, how is his comment any more to be criticized on that score than “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). That is hardly as precise as the Nicene Creed, but it doesn’t follow that it is “dodgy” and “untheological.”

    • “Accident” is a wholly anti-scientific explanation for the structure in biology. It presumes there are no further laws or principles to be discovered and encourages people to indulge in lazy thinking.

      • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

        Dear Perry, this is an “ex cathedra” statement; just replace the word with random, then it is “scientific”. On the other hand, as I pointed out above, although Dawkins’ statement is a bit sloppy, even misleading, but with good intentions. So, please, be forgiving.

        • Random is not scientific either. It is impossible to prove that any sequence of data is random (Chaitin 1991) and the job of a scientist is to find non-random patterns. The random mutation aspect of Darwinian theory is anti-scientific.

          • Sil says:

            So are the patterns snowflakes form
            random or non-random.How would you know?

          • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

            “Random” is a well-defined scientific term. What Chaitin says is the same thing I was saying a couple of days ago: even if you do something randomly, tossing coins, for instance, you still have patterns. This is exactly the point. Another point: the beauty of the Darwinian theory is that even random mutations can lead to evolution, if you do not forget about the other side of the story: SELECTION.
            Start tossing coins. The result, for instance: HTHHTTHHHTT… Let’s say you are only “interested” in the sequence “HHTT”, then you will find it. (Longer the sequence, more chance you have to find it. Longer the sequence, more and more you will find.) Then, let’s say that this subsequence has some wonderful property, it binds molecule A… Let me stop here, you get my point.

            • That is incorrect. When you toss coins randomly you do not get a pattern. The longer the pattern you wish to repeat the more rare it is. Chaitin does not say the same thing you said. Read his paper.

              No one has ever proven that a positive evolutionary mutation was produced by a random DNA mutation event.

              If you disagree, show me. You’ll have to start by finding a formula for proving randomness which does not exist.

              • Richard Morgan says:

                “A series of numbers is random if the smallest algorithm capable of specifying it to a computer has about the same number of bits of information as the series itself.”

                “Numbers having a non-random frequency distribution are exceptional. Of all the possible n-digit binary numbers there is only one, for example, that consists entirely of 0’s and only one that is all 1’s. All the rest are less orderly, and the great majority must, by any reasonable standard, be called random.”
                (Chaitin, 1975)

                • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

                  It is almost correct. However, you might be better off with Kolmogorov’s definition on complexity and randomness. On the other hand, we have some definitions of randomness, which are based on statistics. Anyway, whichever way you define randomness, you will find (sub)patterns within any random series, if the series is long enough. (So, Perry is mistaken.) – Would be nice to be able to attach a figure.

              • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

                You did not read my comment carefully. A pattern is within the sequence, which you might call a subsequence.
                Although there is no evidence for “positive evolutionary mutataion”, but:
                1. it is a simple and elegant theory and
                2. you keep forgetting about the selection part.
                What makes a mutation “positive” is its future.

                • It is a simple and elegant theory that disobeys the laws of information entropy. Therefore it is wrong.

                  • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

                    That is what I am telling you: you just do not want to consider the selection part. The core idea is selection, not mutation. We know that mutations occur at a given rate, they can be advantageous or disadvantageous. (See the selection part?)

                    • Selection can only select something that exists. It’s only the elimination process.

                      “Natural Selection” all by itself is a non-explanation.

                      Thus the generation of novelty is the real issue and the nature of the mutations is the central questions.

                      To just revert back to “selection selection” as some sort of answer is like if someone asked by Starbucks is so successful, if we said “competition and bankruptcy.” It gives no credit to the extreme level of planning, strategy and execution and the myriad of choices that go into the building of a great business. Same with any technology or anything else. The exact nature of biological mutations is of paramount importance and Dawkins and friends completely sweep this under the rug.

                      This is why epigenetics, horizontal gene transfer, transposition and many other systems are such hot areas of biology research.

                      And since we know from information theory that random copying errors cannot be the source of evolutionary novelty, these mechanisms are the cutting edge of evolution research.

                  • Arthur Noll says:

                    I am not experienced with information entropy, but as an offshoot of general entropy, I think that it has to be looked at with some wariness, because I think the evidence is clear to me, that a common interpretation of Boltzmann’s equation for entropy, is flawed. That equation is that entropy is equal to a constant times the natural log of ways of being. I see no problem with this equation-*for the conditions it was derived*. Those conditions were considering a gas at a relatively constant energy level. In such conditions, two different gases released into each other, will of course have many more ways of being with regard to position, as they mix. From this, a general statement has been made, that disorder-relatively more ways of being- tends to increase. But the general condition is not of gases at a constant energy level. The general condition is the second law, of energy dispersing from relatively high energy conditions, to lower energy surroundings. And if you think of those mixed gases losing energy to space over time without more constantly fed in, they would condense into liquids, probably separate with this, and then solidify. Merely becoming liquid is a reduction in the ways of being, with regard to positioning- the atoms or molecules of gas might have been in a lot more places, but now they are condensed down. And in the two gases separating, you have a further reduction of the ways of being. You have increasing order with these things. And what brought about these things, was that with the dispersion of energy, the attraction forces between the atoms were greater than the forces of kinetic energy tearing them apart when they were gaseous.
                    Now, on earth, we have a constant pulsing of energy from the sun, and many elements and combinations, are able to be gas, liquid, and solid in this energy range. And when you look at atoms and molecules combining at the right energy range, you are looking at an increase in order. Two entities, each with their own set of ways of being, become one entity with one set of ways of being. Because “ways of being” can be looked at with many more measurements than positioning. Mass, dimensions, elemental composition, as well as snapshot measures of velocity, acceleration, spin, etc, whatever measurement you want to consider, can be considered for relative amounts in alignment, and give a way of being for a system. We do this as a common sense way of grading lumber, grading all kinds of things. We think of a pile of boards all the same size, piled with parallel orientation, with the same grading of knots, surface finish, to have a high degree of order, because all these measures are in alignment. There are fewer ways of being. So if one combines an entity with its set of measurements, its set of ways of being, with another, you have turned two sets of ways of being, into one, and dramatically increased the order. And conversely, if you rip them apart, you have equally increased the disorder.
                    Life is a dance of order and disorder, looking at this- but overall, the increasing complexity of going from something starting as more simple than a virus, up to single cells and then multicelled life, is an increase in order. And this is something you that fits perfectly with looking at how atoms and molecules are attracted and repulsed by each other, and how they generally come together at lower energy levels, and get ripped apart at higher ones.
                    We put large amounts of energy into ecosystems, and not surprisingly, we rip them apart, simplify them. If you want more order, it forms when energy dissipates. The energy of weapons used in wars, or the energy of a volcanic eruption, can create moonscapes, but when the energy dissipates, life moves back in and grows.
                    So, considering all of this, I think that to say that life is not following laws of entropy, is wrong- I’d say that common ideas about entropy, order and disorder, are flawed. Boltzmann’s equation should be seen as limited to the kind of conditions it was derived from, and not as a general equation.

                    • Life defies entropy. And not because there is some inherent problem with the concept of entropy, but because life is willful and has the ability to purposefully adapt. Your skin healing after you cut your arm is negative entropy.

                      You may or may not be right about Bolzmann equations but I don’t believe that changes this discussion one way or the other.

                      There is no reductionistic explanation for how this happens or why it is possible. We know your body is programmed to repair itself but we don’t know where codes come from besides designers and we don’t know where the original genetic code came from. Just feeding energy into a system will not cause it to repair itself.

                      Randomness can only destroy genomes and this is why the random mutation theory of evolution violates information theory. There is a very deep mystery at the heart of this and only by acknowledging the failures of neo-Darwinism can we get past its limitations and really understand what’s going on.

              • Laszlo G. Meszaros says:

                Somehow I did miss this post from you. If you are really interested, I can send the “math” we have just developed to show you that randomness indeed “creates” patterns. In addition, more you try, more chance you have to get patterns.

                • You’re welcome to post whatever you want right here.

                  • Laszlo G. Meszaros says:

                    It is impossible; a couple of pages long derivation. (I will likely publish it within few months.) The point is that you can show: 1. random runs have patterns, 2. longer the run, higher the probability to have patterns and 3. longer the run, the probability to have NO patterns approaches zero.

                    • Sure. If you have a random string long enough, you can get a word or two in the English or any other language. No problem.

                      But you will never get so much as one complete Shakespeare poem. Not even once. Even if you have a trillion universes full of random letter generators. And likewise, you will never get anything like evolution from cells to anything else by random chance mutations. Communication theory and practice (as well as up to date molecular biology… as well as truthful practice of statistics and probability) exhaustively bear this out.

          • Richard Morgan says:

            So what is a “non-random pattern”? If randomness is impossible to prove, that implies that any sequence whatsoever must be assumed to be non-random. How would randomness be impossible to prove, but non-randomness provable and therefore scientific?
            (Unless, of course, the expression “non-random patterns” is an involuntary pleonasm.)

            • You can prove that the sequence 111111111111000000000000 is non-random to whatever number of decimal places. You can prove gravity. You can prove any pattern in science – OK, not formally prove, but infer with definite statistical significance. That is the very definition of science. The reverse is not true.

              • Peter Knapp says:

                “Just feeding energy into a system will not cause it to repair itself.” True, but you have to remember, evolution did not start out with humans or human skin. We have to go back to very basic models of life or complexity. And as to your quote, the basic model would be “Just feeding energy into a system WILL cause it to organize.” And organized systems DO heal themselves. Our skin is eons down the evolutionary spiral from that concept. Get it now?

              • Laszlo G. Meszaros says:

                Dear Perry, please listen… The main point is that by random “tossing” anything can be “created”, and more you toss, less chance you have NOT creating something. (As I have told you: the math is done.)

            • John Stevens says:

              Let me see if I can translate:

              “Random” implies that there is no cause . . . that things “just happen spontaneously.”

              However, cause and effect are one of the dogmas of the natural science. Things do not occur without a cause, and one cannot be natural scientist without believing in this (as well as a number of other dogmatic statements, but that is a different conversation).

              That is, in fact, the work of studying the natural: to attempt to find and understand the patterns of cause and effect that occur in nature.

              So “random” either has no ontological status, or one of the fundamental dogmas of science is wrong and some things just happen spontaneously, with no cause whatsoever.

      • Alan W says:

        In fact, it is perhaps the most common strategy throughout the Sciences to find and study “Accidents”, which is simply viewing Reality from the perspective of processes and probabilities with the assumption that there is no complex entity manipulating outcomes that can skew your results. Thus, “Happy chemical accident” gives a good description of how life arises from the simpler structures of info in the reality around us… unless you are advocating that Science include studying the behavior of a ghostly complex entity, that we have no good indication exists, let alone know how it behaves. If there are further laws or principles to be discovered, it’s on you to find and explain them.

        • ““Happy chemical accident” gives a good description of how life arises from the simpler structures of info in the reality around us”

          Empirical evidence please?

          • Alan Watts says:

            In this case, there is no need for Empirical Evidence, because the definition of “Accident” is inclusive. The way the chemicals came together will have always been a process, whether from a complex entity that “thinks” and copies its ideas by gluing together chemicals (the gods/God/Aliens/Whatever) or the simplistic entity of nature which “thinks” by doing and filtering “ideas” by their success of maintaining/defending/replicating themselves. Summarizing the behavior of any process is essentially looking at the probable “Accidents” which occur by no one’s manipulation, representing true top-level behavior of reality. Anything that is knowable is connected and within the scope of “Process” and “Accidents”, and anything outside Processes and Accidents are effectively disconnected, and thus useless, meaningless, unexplainable, and magical. Dawkins use of the phrase “Happy Chemical Accident” is a necessary explanation if you ignore these magical possibilities, which is the most sensible, most mainstream-science worthy view. However, it goes a step further with its obvious slant of simplicity, that there is no gods/God/Aliens interfering with the beginnings of life, because for him (and me) the simplest explanation as nature (without a complex entity) is already extremely compelling alone. So this tone and slant that a God is not center stage but extraneous and unnecessary must be what your real qualm is, not the content which technically could allow for a complex entity to exist. So again, its unfair for you to slam Dawkins for this and say he ruined Science and Atheism, when this is the most natural extension of the tools of Science. It’s not his duty or any of the Sciences to find and explain phenomena thru the magical, that’s on you.

            Honestly, I’ve been where you are at, and it is an uphill battle. If you consider proving the opposite of what you advocate, you might be surprised.

            • Accident is not process. And nobody has ever shown that accidents create life or information. If you disagree, come forward with your evidence. I’ve got a $3 million prize – http://www.naturalcode.org and my investors would love to fund the patent.

              • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

                Nobody says that accident is a process, accident is an event. See what I was replying to you regarding “selection”, then you will understand where information comes in. (And this is why I was telling you that Chaitin’s definition of information is NOT “broad” enough. A suggestion: simply, try to treat information as entropy decrease in the system; system being biological entity + environment. Then we are getting somewhere.)

                • What if Isaac Newton when seeing the apple fall from the tree had said “Oh that was just a happy accident”?

                  He wouldn’t have discovered gravity.

                  • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

                    1. Your Newton comment is not an adequate reply. 2. You do not really understand the significance of selection as far as gaining information is concerned. 3. The “hot issues” you were mentioning just add to the variety of biological mechanism of genetic changes. So, comment is irrelevant. 4. You say: “we know from information theory that random copying errors cannot be the source of evolutionary novelty…”. Well, information theory would not want to and does not say anything like this. You are plain wrong.

                  • Paul Cotton says:

                    Feeble argument at best.

              • Alan Watts says:

                Process is a change from one configuration to another. Accident is a change from one configuration to another which assumes no manipulator and thus takes the stance that it is the highest level of knowledge. If you are not looking at an accident, then you are not looking at actual information, but rather what an entity intents for you to see, a distortion. Thus, Information is the highest level Process and must include any entity’s behavior and be above it, and thus must be a series of Accidents for it to be Information. This would include whatever process Life had originally formed together through from chemicals.

                • ” Thus, Information is the highest level Process and must include any entity’s behavior and be above it, and thus must be a series of Accidents for it to be Information. This would include whatever process Life had originally formed together through from chemicals.”

                  Empirical evidence please. Show me one instance in which this actually works.

              • Neil Caithness says:

                But elsewhere you say $5 million. Is it binding?

  18. Terry says:

    Well atheism really isn’t a choice. Atheism is a neutral stance on the existence of an intelligent deity in religion. We simply have yet to be convinced that any God of any religion exists or is responsible for creation of life or the universe. Most atheists concede the possibility of a God but know that the gods that humanity has come up with so far aren’t convincing enough to be plausible.

    • Mike Futo says:

      There are probably many kinds of atheists. Some who are emphatic in their beliefs that no God exists and some who are functional agnostics. Atheism is not a problem if they can keep an open mind to the possibility of a Creator and not dismiss it as impossible.

      Christianity specifically requires God to adopt a person or accept the request for relationship. If God has not opened the eyes of someone then they may believe but don’t have assurance of their relational status with God. The feed back mechanism of a relationship with God requires some faith as well.

      All I’m trying to say is that we have here another case of circumstantial evidence for the existence of an intelligent Creator but………. really any evidence no matter how explicite even face to face communication can not prove anything. God is a relational being and thus unpredictable. We can only know as much about another being as that other being will reveal. Genetics reveals general revelation about God as an engineer. That’s about the extent of our ability to discern God from science.

      • Laszlo G Meszaros says:

        What you present here is a nicely worded “opinion”, which has nothing to do with a scientific argument. So, what is your point? “That’s about the extent of our ability to discern God from science.” What does this mean? As far as “discerning” means, science is a system of knowledge, religion is a system of beliefs (by definition). You do not know God, you believe him/her. (It is tempting to hypothesize that we have two races withing humans: the ones who want to know, and the other ones who want to believe.

        • Amy says:

          While I have not read all the articles, that is not my understanding of what is being communicated on this page. He is discussing the importance of scientific approaches to knowing even though he acknowledges that most people already have some biases and beliefs. You could say that belief is another kind of knowing, but when discussing science it helps to acknowledge the distinction between opinions (beliefs or interpretation of information) and facts that can be shown using evidence based methods of experimentation. In the English language the word “know” is used to describe what one does with facts and information as well as being acquainted with others. The word “know” can be used in more than one way with different meaning. To be honest I am not sure what you are asking, but hopefully this clarifies some of what is being said. This information is definitely not about race, it is about ideas and how they are discussed.

        • Dave DeRosa says:

          Hi Laslo (and others), you say science is system of knowledge and religion a system of beliefs? ….well no, at least not my religion, nor my science ether. Science definitely is not a system of knowledge but a system that every single day tells us we were wrong the previous day. It’s more a fever to get to the next day where we will still be wrong and still not have knowledge. That’s like the definition of insanity, where we do something over and over in spite of getting wrong results.
          Science is the use of existing lies untruths and approximations to form more of the same with the BELIEF this is the best way of progress. Science cannot embrace truth maybe as it is. When you said science is a system of knowledge didn’t you assume knowledge was truth? But poor backward science cannot measure a one foot ruler. Science is not knowledge, it’s expedient lying! Science itself tells us we can’t measure a ruler and it even gives us more reasons every day as to why we can’t. Didn’t we just discover space time warping due to gravity waves coming in from a distant planetary collision? Truth is what we want, right? and not knowledge? Science seems to show us that we need to transcend science or we will never find truth. How long is a one foot ruler? You must jump off science and go somewhere different or no answer will be found…or worse we will become lost in a tangled web and die from not finding nourishment.
          Religion ( not the many inverse fake and sex and secrecy religions) brings us at its good moment an entity named TRUTH. His ridiculous ( from the point of science) ideas were always given in parable-poetry-art-metaphore. To express love, don’t we invariably dump the current system of scientific logic speech and turn to poetry? We do that because it’s like wearing an insulating glove so we can hold a snowflake of truth. We can’t hold truth directly ( with science). We need an impedance transformer or insulator or adapter of some kind because we are not of a type to be able to measure a ruler by the approximations and accepted lie methods that are the idols we comfort ourselves with. We cannot talk about love, nor measure a ruler, nor find any truth because our system does not support it. How do we then adopt a system that does handle truth without bringing our old system of approximations and expedient lies with us.
          In the religious cacophony ( or in the human mind) are two clear, large, and simple elements . One is named Truth and one is named Lie. These are the two elements similarly to electricity and magnetism being of two elements (plus-minus, north-south). Study truth and lie and the answers beyond science will come. Didn’t Einstein have to reject a lie of science as to the length of a ruler and to demand more adherence to truth? Knowledge is the body of dead idolatry ( vacationing in laziness) where one rests on their laurels and feigns an authoritative position so as to sell their yesterday’s news. People in the churches and people in science are lazy and will force their yesterdays news on you. They don’t want to re-tool. They are heavily invested. They need to produce more old product from their production line to amortize the cost of building the old production line.
          So progress wants new truth and the systems that exist want to destroy any new truth. Those seeking progress may be looking to establish their system, to be the new king of the dirt pile, so they can indulge in their authoritative self aggrandizement and demand tribute just like the old king or church or university. The education system ( is that what we defend as science?) is known to be very idolatrous, conservative, slow moving, backwards. People are the problem. People in churches and schools and science. People are lazy and want to be king. People are drawn to bad things if they don’t work very hard at seeking what is good and what is truth. The bad side argues for relativism and wishes that we do not address the bad and is ok with science, but truth and lie are real. Your bridge stands based on your addressing the truths of the weather, or falls if you accept any self serving money saving lies about those possible wind loads. Truth and lie are the line we divide over, just like God and Devil but lets not think in terms of God and Devil because we loose some of the audience when we get religious. TRUTH is everything but the liars will always take the positions to disseminate lie. Lie, ( the lie or liars or those said to be born in the lie) know truth ( or positivity or God etc) better than the supposed God knowing. Yes Satanists know God the father better. Satanists practice Heresy. Heresy is the deep acceptance of the existence of God and then a deep desire to destroy God and an extra belief of oppositism or in the anti-god. The anti religious are by far much stronger believers in deity. Hollywood meticulously follows the details of God to construct exact oppositism. They prove God better than believers do. But for we science people who really are confused by religion, we just need to be honest. Every new day we throw out the since-found-not-truthful science of yesterday and declare some new truth. Every day we say science was broken. Science brings more questions than it answers. So what transcends science or where might more lasting answers be found? I don’t know, do you? But it is truth we desire. We wish our bridges to stand more than a day. Truth is the pursuit. Beware it’s wide wide human horde of inverters and the laziness of approximation. Digital is 100% approximation. Is there any wonder that on every level digital lies. Photos are now all considered lie. Email is cheap lies. Identity is lie. Any digital transmission must be considered lie or from a lier/lying hacker. The math says that digital is correct only in infinity. The mathematical heart of digital and all its manifestations are lie. Maybe we should be cranking up those difference amps again to try to find the exact truth of the voltage level instead of accepting the lying expedient of a digital approximation.

          • Peter Grafström says:

            Lazlo and you are both right. Reductionism has served us well. It has provided us with immense opportunities to develop our wisdom in matters material. But if I am right, creation, the ordering process that I name the universe, the world soul, has to protect itself against us digging too deep, too early, before we have matured to be able to handle the truth. I have begun to think of the ordering process as something akin to a team of engineers with a specification sheet laid out in front of them. One of the items on the list being that reality must be made to fulfill reductionism to an extent, so we would be content and not look further.
            Another matter of importance for the higher reality would be to protect it against every kind of realtime communication, since such similarities (between us lower timebound creatures and the higher level) could imply vulnerability from material interactions. Assuming realtime communication implies material connection.
            Without realtime connections the creating ordering process would have to seek out timeless communication. What kind of timeless entities are there within a logical framework of some kind?

            Perhaps poets or people like you , Dave might associate to that. My associations go to forming invariants similar to those in mathematics but I havent spent much time on that other than to just briefly having felt the inspiration. In such cases I have felt the sensation that this might have a bearing on other areas than physics.
            In another comment you brought up feedback from the future. If I comment on that it will be on some other occasion.

            • Dave DeRosa says:

              Thanks very kindly for your reply and wonderful thoughts. The Urantia Book and you seem to be talking similarly regarding the necessary isolation/insulation. It says ( or I’ve understood) that to have perfection and imperfection in the same universe that vast distance and time are needed, and that’s what is there.
              Your mention of a timeless entity within a logical framework , makes me laugh at myself a bit. I am that, as well as many. I am a most logical step by step lover of scientific method, but then a time jumping dream happens. Many have dejavu experiences where they might forget or remember that the event was previously experienced in dream. If I write down the dream of 7 consecutive events first, and then it happens, and then I go back and read what I wrote. To me, It is proven that the insulation/isolation was momentarily bridged just slightly, by some small static discharge or overvoltage of mind or space. Maybe half the population will tell you of time jumping experiences ( use 151 proof rum). Talk of such things are said not to sit well in logical frameworks and even have started heresy trials, but I believe we all might use our time jumping every day. You say then, why aren’t I rich from the stock market? I say I am successful partly because of extra predictive ability in my work definitely….and all others have degrees of predictive ability who are competing with you in the stock market. I really work to be able to design the safest most perfectly logical industrial designs. My reductionism I think may mostly lie in that I feel cheated out of having a second degree in mechanical engineering that I could have had if they told me that my resistor-capacitor networks were also automobile suspensions. I guess I should have picked physics! My other side is musical improvisation, (jazz)….But a timeless entity(poet/jazz guy) and a logical framework represented by ( police) do operate within each other’s sphere, and no they cannot understand each other ( not each other’s driving concepts at the same time) And expanding this idea of 2 independent seemingly incompatible positions working as one to oh lets say..umm 32 or so, stacked up in a multilevel organization of thinkers, then the distance we/it/they can punch through the isolation/insulation could imply vulnerability in the absence of safeguards (yes I agree). Thank God for unknown safeguards and I hope we have a big one to counter the decline in insect populations.
              Thanks so much for allowing my going away from topic. And I am going away to practice (jazz cornet/trumpet) all structure, scales, the most logical framework over and over, because the framework births the timelessness. Structure creates freedom, and I desire freedom, with witch I might be a menace in a higher musical environment, if they don’t have safeguards against me.

          • Laszlo Meszaros says:

            What I have said: a non believer wants to know (while the believer believes). So, I did not talk about systems, but we can do that, if you want. The system of knowledge in not static, while the system of beliefs is. This means that knowledge is changing, progressing, developing. No question that politics, religion and even economical interest frequently interfere with science, but you cannot blame science for this. Instead, you might want to blame the society that allows such interference.

      • Joe from Ravenna says:

        “Christianity specifically requires God to adopt a person or accept the request for relationship.”
        Where is your scriptural reference?

    • Peter Knapp says:

      Terry, I like the thick glasses school nerd who brings in his “universe” for the teacher to coo over. He gets a B+ and goes on to some more important matters in his later years, never once remembering his early attempts at baryonic matter organization.

  19. Peter Dressler says:

    the public market-place has chosen Mr. Dawkins as a spokes-person. and when u reach his status, i can imagine one wants to simply pontificate at times. it’s a privilege of the elite. so yes he’s vulnerable to criticism. but so be it. i don’t expect perfection from public figures, and neither should anyone else. the market-place chose him, and it can UN-choose him. celebrities come and go.

    • Amy says:

      “the marketplace chose him” seems like an oversimplified expression of how these dynamics really work… When one interviews an expert in a field, it is not expecting perfection to expect some information related to that expertise instead of a dodgy answer that your middle schooler could come up with.

  20. Mike Futo says:

    Ok now I read your article on the Incompleteness theorem. You summarized it beautifully. So much for my making a unique point. Thanks for these interesting articles………….

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