
Faith and Belief: Richard Dawkins evolves his arguments - fnid
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-richard-dawkins11-2009oct11,0,4602534.story
======
billybob
I heard an interview where Dawkins said something like "if there is a God, He
must have evolved." Maybe he was joking, but it didn't sound like it.

Evolution is a biological process. It would have no bearing on a being who
created space and time.

Biologists should not presume to trump philosophy and theology, any more than
preachers should dictate which biological theories are acceptable.

~~~
unalone
It's a mistake to lump philosophy with theology. Philosophy requires no
"givens", which is to say it is a valid field without requiring you to make
any assumptions to partake in it. Theology, meanwhile, requires you first to
assume the existence of God, and I'm one of the many many people who think
that's a ridiculous beginning to a field of study. It's like if Nietzsche
began his books by telling you his concepts and thoughts were only worth
consuming if you first assume that we're living on a gigantic turtle.
Preposterous.

I like religion-as-sociology, however, and there's where the "evolution of
God" concept is most fascinating. If you haven't read Douglas Adams's speech
"Is There An Artificial God?", it's worth the read.

 _Evolution is a biological process. It would have no bearing on a being who
created space and time._

And bullets bounce off of Superman because he's from Krypton.

~~~
amichail
What exactly are the accomplishments of philosophy, aside from logic which is
better studied by mathematicians and computer scientists?

~~~
fnid
I would say _Questions_ are the greatest accomplishments of philosophy. There
are many questions out there, the meaning of life, where we came from, what
happens when we die. These are philosophical questions in origin.

Philosophy is the birth of inquiry. Science is the attempt to find the
rational answer.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
And when we show there is no rational answer that is discoverable ...

~~~
unalone
I know, right? Like when we know there was no rational answer for the weather
so we said gods did it. Silly scientists not realizing we haven't learned
anything in the last five thousand years. They refuse to admit that it's
impossible to find new answers to questions.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I was thinking more about application of Godels Incompleteness Theorem or the
Church-Turing Hypothesis or even to take a more basic consideration
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

Based on the standard scientific and logical axioms the cause of the
progression of weather is quite discoverable except that the chaotic nature
makes it practically (at present at least) unpredictable.

Perhaps you believe the world is entirely Newtonian??

I await your answer with baited breath.

------
chrischen
> There is no master plan.

As much as I am an atheist, I still think no one can ever make that claim. He
should have said, there is no evidence yet of a master plan, or there probably
is no master plan. This same thing would apply to the existence of God.
Unfortunately this logical fallacy (of prematurely concluding the nonexistence
of something that theoretically can't be proved to not exist) beholds too many
atheists.

~~~
moss
Nothing we believe about the outside world is unassailably justified by logic
alone. Even the surest statements (that the sun will come up tomorrow, for
example) are based on a fallible interpretation of the evidence available at
the time. That's no reason to stop making statements--it turns out a
preponderance of evidence is enough, generally. It just means some of your
beliefs sometimes turn out to be wrong.

~~~
chrischen
What about statements like 1*1 = 1. I can be sure about that, but unsure about
something like the existence of God.

~~~
moss
I meant to be excluding things like that when I said "about the outside
world". But regardless of how you think of statements like that, there are all
sorts of others: * The sun will come up tomorrow. * Nobody is plotting to have
me killed. * The lamp next to my couch is on. * Accelerating beyond light
speed is impossible. * People other than me exist. that can't be proven
logically, but that it's still perfectly reasonable to be sure of. In
practice, logical proof isn't a workable standard to look for in your beliefs.

~~~
chrischen
The sun will come up tomorrow. We are 99.99% certain of that, so therefore
it's safe to assume it's correct. And it's statistically unlikely for the sun
to not come up.

But when making the claim that God does not exist, that claim itself is 100%
certain to be uncertain.

So it's safe to assume he does not exist if no evidence has shown he does
exist, but we still must acknowledge the possibility of his existence just as
you must still acknowledge the possibility, however minute, that the sun will
_not_ come up tomorrow.

------
catzaa
Can we keep these types of article of HN?

Other sites (such as reddit) became pretty useless with people submitting
these (and other) articles and turning the whole site into an unpleasant
experience.

Why not follow the same rules that we do when at work? Don't discuss politics
or religion.

------
scapegraced
This was a really interesting insight to Dawkins' character. Thanks for
sharing.

------
pbhjpbhj
Ha, he's going to have to rewrite that opening para for his kids book if he
wants to base it on evidence. The evidence no more shows that Earth moves than
it shows that it is static, unless you assume that humans and simplicity in
our mathematical system is special.

------
known
All most all religions are based on <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
fulfilling_prophecy>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
For example, as I suspect any answer will be centred on criticism of a Judaeo-
Christian world view (just a hunch) could you also give an example from
another religion. I can't think of any of the top of my head. It's a good
thing to base share price manipulation on though.

