Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 4)

To all those who hung in there for this entire series (part one, part two, part three), thanks! It's been a fun ride, and I am glad to be finally taking a look at Dawkins' unfounded conclusion to his unsound premises. So, without further ado.

Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

As I said in the first post in this short series (and as Bill Craig points out in On Guard), even if all of the premises were sound this conclusion simply does not follow. We have seen how none of them are sound, but for the heck of it I'll address this unfounded conclusion as well.

It has been rightly observed and communicated by many an apologist over the centuries that in order to know there is no God one would need to have comprehensive knowledge of the entire universe, both the visible and invisible realms, and also be able to soundly refute thousands of years of spiritual experience, not to mention the myriad of near death experiences of  people who would bet their lives (pun definitely intended) that what they experienced was more real than this physical life. This is clearly impossible. As impossible as swallowing the ocean. 

Now, Dawkins thinks he's clever and has, no doubt after decades of being told the above, reworded the statement to leave an air of uncertainty. He has changed it from "there is no God," which is the only truthful way for an atheist to phrase is, to "God almost certainly does not exist." This slight change, in all honesty, doesn't really do much to lessen requisites which must be present for him to be able to make such a statement authoritatively. 

To illustrate my point, let's say I took one of those handheld metal detectors to the beach, put on my crazy person visor and Bermuda shorts, and braved that scandalous lust-factory in search of buried treasure (for the record, I love the beach and I don't think it's a sin to go there). If I wanted to be able to authoritatively state that there is almost certainly no metal under the sand at that beach I would still need to have covered a good 95% or more of that beach with my metal detector. Sure, it's not 100%, but it's close enough,

Dawkins thinks that his wording exempts him from needing to qualify as an omniscient being in order to justifiably make his statement, but in reality he would still need to be nigh-omniscient before anyone should take this conclusion seriously. But then he would be something so close to God that he may as well be God, and then he would have to either be a theist, which he is clearly intellectually and emotionally opposed to, or deny his own existence, and that would be even more ridiculous than ignoring a universe full of evidence of a divine designer.

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 3)

In this, my third post in this series (start here), I'll address Dawkins' last three premises in his argument against God, and then in the fourth and final post I'll sink my teeth into his conclusion that "God almost certainly does not exist."

Let's jump right in.

4) The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

Now, Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and deserves some respect for his years of study and decades of experience, so I won't speak as forcefully against this premise as I do the more philosophical examples. I will, however, offer two quick points which illustrate that at the very least Darwinian evolution is NOT the most powerful explanation for anything, and at best, it is pseudo-science which belongs in the history books rather than the science books.

The first is that Darwin himself predicted the fossil record would be overflowing with transitional species by now, and yet science has yet to offer a single unchallenged "missing link" between any species and another. If Darwinian evolution were true then the fossil record would be absolutely teeming with these transitional species. In fact, there should be far, far more of these than of the fully-formed species we find in all corners of the record. So, even if there were a handful of fossils which science categorized as transitional species, which there is not, it would still be inadequate evidence for a system of speciation which requires hundreds or thousands of in-between stages for each fully-formed species.

Secondly, Darwin stated: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." The field of biochemistry alone has demonstrated this very thing. In fact, there is no organism that could have been formed in this way because every organism contains organs, processes, and other aspects which are irreducibly complex - meaning that they absolutely cannot lose a single feature of their construction without being rendered useless, which would have caused them to be rejected by natural selection. A few examples of irreducible complexity in nature are the human eye, the blood clotting factor, and cilia. For more on this get your hands on Michael Behe's fantastic book, Darwin's Black Box. 

5) We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.

Let's see if I understand what he is saying here. It seems like Dawkins is trying to tell us that there are no antiquated, unfounded, unscientific, wildly speculative, marginally theoretical explanations for physics. I guess I disagree here as well, since physicists such as Stephen Hawking seem to be absolutely overflowing with these sorts of ideas. 

6) We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

This is nothing more than the blind faith of a committed atheist. This kind of thinking is ironically (and hypocritically) identical to the "God-of-the-gaps" fallacy atheists are so quick to accuse proponents of intelligent design of committing. See, physicists have yet to come up with any explanation at all for the physical world (i.e., the time-space-matter continuum), so otherwise intelligent atheists like Dawkins commit the "no-God-of-the-gaps" fallacy by inserting a yet unknown naturalistic explanation into gaps like this. The really sad part is, unlike theists of old who had no explanation for natural phenomena like lightning and such, who then attributed these phenomena to God, these atheists are so intellectually and/or emotionally committed to atheism that they purposefully exclude what seems to be the most logical explanations for things like a highly-ordered, extremely fine-tuned, indescribably massive, energy-laden, life supporting universe, the irreducible complexity of every living organism, the existence of an undeniable moral code, and plenty of others. 

These guys can maintain hope that someday they will find all the naturalistic explanations they've been dreaming of, but if they are smart and sincerely desire truth above all else, perhaps some of them will finally see the insurmountable heap of evidence for design as... well, evidence for design!

Next time: Does God almost certainly not exist?

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 2)

As I promised in my last post, today I will be offering some responses to the the first three premises of Richard Dawkins' syllogism which he has said encapsulates his primary argument against God from his book, The God Delusion. We'll just tackle the first three in this post.

The very first thing, which needs to be addressed right away is that, as William Lane Craig points out in his book On Guard, even if every one of his premises is sound his conclusion simply does not follow. This is just a textbook example of a biologist playing a philosopher (and not the only example!). Dawkins is clearly not qualified to form a coherent, logical argument against God, and he proves that with this abysmally unsound syllogism.

That said, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and still look at each of his premises to see if maybe he had a good idea but just didn't know how to form it into a logical argument.

1) One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

In other words, "because we know there is no designer we just can't figure out why everything we see exhibits so many signs of having been designed."

Because Dawkins has an a priori commitment to naturalism - he has ruled out a designer before ever looking at the evidence - he simply cannot understand why the universe and everything in it boast so many features which seem to evidence design.

2) The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.

Again, to paraphrase for those who aren't fluent in atheist-speak: "Because everything looks so designed, the temptation to believe that what looks like design is actually design is unavoidable." Or, "Just because it looks like and swims like and quacks like and has the same DNA as a duck, isn't proof enough that it's a duck."

Dawkins' prior assumption that there is no creator comes out more with each of his premises, betraying the fact that he has an agenda which is far more important to him than actually following evidence where it leads. 

3) The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.

Out of all of his premises, which are all pretty ridiculous, this one will probably be the most misunderstood, and therefore may be prematurely accepted. It may seem like a good argument at first to dismiss the designer argument because it seemingly only pushes the question one step back. After all, when atheist thinkers like Francis Crick suggest that we were seeded here on earth by aliens, we rightly ask the inevitable question, "well where did those aliens come from?"

Isn't this the same thing? It actually isn't. See, in our argument against the alien-seeding theory we are justified in asking that question because, well, aliens aren't eternal, uncreated beings. Crick, Dawkins, and other atheists who resort to this alien-of-the-gaps theory will submit that those aliens had to have evolved somewhere, somehow. This really does push the question back.

Conversely, Dawkins' argument here falls flat because God is described in the holy Bible as an eternal, uncreated, infinitely powerful and intelligent, immaterial Spirit. He needs no explanation because He is a necessary Being - meaning that exists by a necessity of His own nature.

And there's another, more practical and philosophically oriented argument against premise number 3: You don't need to be able to explain the explanation if its is truly the best and most likely explanation. Think about it, when we look at Stonehenge we don't need an explanation of its designers, or to even know if they were human, alien, superhuman, or divine. The best explanation for Stonehenge is that intelligent being(s) designed it. In the same way, we don't need an explanation for a designer of the universe and of life in order to recognize that one must exist. A designer is the best and most likely explanation. Period.

In the following entry we'll look at premises 4-6, and save the conclusion for its own post. See you next time!

Lessons in Bad Philosophy: Dawkins Edition (part 1)

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. 

1 Peter 3:15

Based upon the Lord's instructions here, as transmitted through His servant, Peter, every Christian should be prepared to give a reasoned defense of the Faith. Now, there's no way that every believer can know how to adequately answer every argument against God, there are several arguments that every believer should prepare to answer. This is one of those arguments.

Richard Dawkins, who is probably the most high profile of the vociferously rabid, God-hating "New Atheists" of our day, summarized his central argument against God (from his best-selling The God Delusion) in the following syllogism:

1) One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

2) The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.
3) The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.

4) The most ingenious and powerful explanation is Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

5) We don't have an equivalent explanation for physics.

6) We should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.

Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

Well, it's obvious the man is no philosopher since the conclusion wouldn't follow from the premises even if all six of them were sound. But we should still all be able to refute the faulty premises here and of course the "conclusion."

If you don't think you could interact with this argument in a meaningful way, take this as a challenge from God. This is the loudest and most unrelenting spokesperson for the anti-God movement presenting his central, and therefore seemingly most compelling argument against God as creator. If there's one intellectually-oriented atheist argument we should be prepared to answer with confidence it is this one. 

In my next post on this topic I will offer some arguments against a few of these premises and in subsequent entries I'll take on the final three premises and I'll finish in my last entry in the series by refuting the conclusion. Keep your eyes peeled for that!

Blut und Boden, Blood and Soil

The Nazi's had a saying, blut und boden, which means "blood and soil." This idiom represents the theory that the person you are is solely the result of your genetic heredity (blood) and your environment (soil).

Though Nazi Germany has fallen, and violently so, this belief is still on the intellectual scene. For instance, the infamous evolutionary biologist and best-selling author representing the "New Atheism," Richard Dawkins, has said that we are just dancing to our DNA (a reference to the 'blood' in 'blood and soil'). This idea that a man is nothing more than the chance product of his DNA and his environmental, social, and familial influence is a necessary facet of naturalistic Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian evolution.

Think about it...

If there is no God, no purposeful Creator, and the universe is simply a vast collection of intrinsically valueless and purposeless matter and energy hurtling through time and space with no particular direction or goal, then how can we be anything more than the outcome of blut und boden?



But...

If there is a God, and if we were created purposefully, and if there are external and internal forces other than genetics and environment shaping who we are, then we're so much more than the sum of our genes and our experiences; we are dancing to more than the music of our DNA. We are dancing to the music of the Singer who created the universe with a sentence... "let there be."

Now, in an ironic twist, whether or not the principle represented by blut und boden has any merit, the phrase is true in a theological sense. It goes like this:

In forming Adam from the earth, God stooped low and "got His hands dirty," so to speak, and created man in His own image. So man is the product of soil, if nothing else.

Then man, in seeking to serve himself and fulfill his own selfish desires, created god in his own image, thus "stooping low" and "getting his hands dirty" in a different sense...

So, in seeking to re-create man in His own image God stooped low again, this time getting His hands bloody, and that at the hands of man whom He sought to save. So, man again stooped low and this time getting his hands bloody as he murdered the very God who gave him life and who was at that very moment dying in order to give him eternal life.

Every man is the product of blut und boden.

We know that we were formed from the soil, but in light of the above, how are we the product of blood?

Either you are guilty of the blood of Christ, or you are declared innocent, not guilty, through the blood of Christ. Either way your state in relation to the blood governs your decisions, thus forming who you are.

Guilty of the blood or innocent through the blood; which are you?

The Fanatical Self-Destruction of Atheism

I am nearing the end of a marvelous volume by G. K. Chesterton entitled, Orthodoxy. At the end of chapter 8, The Romance of Orthodoxy, I came across the following observation about atheism which I probably read five or six times before I moved on. It is a wonderfully accurate portrayal of modern atheism, even more so than it was of atheism in Chesterton's day.

[speaking of the militant atheist]
"He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even the primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all."

I will follow up that quote with this excerpt from Where All Roads Lead, by Chesterton as well.

"If there were not God, there would be no atheists."

The utter futility of atheism...

I believe I have recently stumbled upon the truth about why such rabid God-haters as Richard Dawkins and Christipher Hitchins expend such copious amounts of time end energy trying to get you and I to stop believing in God. Note that they don't seem to be so much concerned with simply defending their scientifically unprovable stance that there is no God, as they are with vehemently slandering the God they claim does not exist.

So, here is why I believe these men are found spending and being spent in the pursuit of convincing people that there is no God:

"Misery loves company."

Let me unpack that statement a little.

Track with me. If there is no God, no moral Lawgiver, no Originator of meaning and purpose; if Darwinian evolution, neo-Darwinian evolution, punctuated equilibrium, or whatever they come up with next, is true... then we, this planet, this universe, are little more than a cosmic accident, the product of a miraculous belch in which nothing somehow became gasses and then relieved itself. I move to rename it the Big Fart.

So, following logically, if we are the accidental outcome of evolution then our existence is intrinsically meaningless. There is no purpose. Sure, you can accumulate wealth and power but when you die it either goes with you into the ground (if you are a grumpy accident), or it goes to your children (if you are a sentimental accident), or... it goes to charity (if you are an altruistic accident). But even if you pass it on at some point it also passes on, as do all of those you passed it to.

Or, you could live a life of sacrifice in which you choose the betterment of others over your own pleasure, but all of those for whom you spend your time, energy and resources trying to help will also eventually die and then what have you done? You have worked against natural selection!

This can go on for eons and then what?

Heat Death

The universe attains equilibrium and becomes a really, really big ghost town, where nothing can or will ever live again.

This is depressing stuff. Seems like it would tend to make those who believe it miserable. And, as we know, misery loves company.

See, it doesn't make sense to rail against a being who does not exist. What if I started an anti-Shiva website, where I made it my singular aim to defame, insult, curse and otherwise bully Shiva the Destroyer (a Hindu god who, together with Brahma and Vishnu, make up the Hindu version of the Trinity), a being I know to be fictitious? If I know that said being is not real I will give an apologetic for what I believe and against this other entity, as Christians do, but there would be no animosity (and there isn't). I may even speak out against the founder of Shiva worship, laying out evidence that this person is not credible, but I would have no personal emotional response to the deity.

So my question for the New Atheists is this:

Why all the hatred? Why the obvious personal vendetta against a God you claim does not exist? If you say, "Because religion has caused so much death and destruction! That's why!" then you will probably want to tune in for an upcoming entry where I will display and discuss the numbers of people killed in the name of religion compared and contrasted with the numbers of those killed as a result of secular humanism and the atheistic worldview.