My Youtube exchange with Richard Dawkins on Al-Jazeera is finally up on the web. You can watch my segment here and the subsequent Dawkins segment here. This is the famous "debate that never was." And that's the real pity. Dawkins insisted on appearing separately from me and being interviewed after me. This way he ensured that I could not rebut anything he said on the show. Fortunately I have an AOL blog where I can carry on the conversation.
Dawkins made some good points, noting for instance that evolution does not rely on mere "chance," but he also made some obvious blunders. When a caller pointed out that World War II was motivated in substantial part by a "survival of the fittest" ideology, Dawkins pretended to be completely baffled. He proclaimed the caller's reference "absolute nonsense." Yet Richard Weikart's book From Darwin to Hitler provides extensive documentation that the Nazis repeatedly invoked Darwinian evolution and that Nazi doctrine used "survival of the fittest" as a virtual recruiting phrase. So Dawkins is either historically ignorant or wilfully obtuse.
Here I want to address Dawkins's response to my argument that the effect that is the universe requires a causal explanation. It seems unreasonable in the extreme to say that even though nature had a beginning, somehow nature is the cause of itself. So God is the name we give to the supernatural being that is the cause of nature as a whole. Dawkins argued: "This leaves open the question of where did the creator come from?" Since the creator is this "great big complicated thing," what good does it do to invoke one complex thing to explain another? "If you postulate a designer you haven't explained anything." Basically what Dawkins is saying is that there is no point in using complex explanation A to account for complex phenomenon B if you cannot account for A.
This is a fallacy. We can see this by applying the logic to evolution itself. The logic of evolution is a "great big complicated thing" with all its elements of replication, natural selection, mutations, genetic drift, and so on. Yet it is invoked to explain another complicated thing: the exquisite fit between living creatures and their surroundings. How reasonable would it be to argue: "We are invoking one complicated thing, namely evolution, to explain another, namely living things. Yet this leaves open the question of where evolution came from. We have no idea how and why evolution originally started. Since we cannot account for evolution, our explanation is useless. Simply to postulate evolution is to explain nothing." This is precisely Dawkins's argument regarding God, and here we can see how it boomerangs on evolution!
But consider the argument itself more closely. Is it really true that Complex Explanation A for Complex Phenomenon B only works if we can give a full account of A? Actually it is not true. Gravity may account for why objects fall at a certain pace, but this does not require that we give an account for where gravity comes from or why it exists in the first place. If we find various signs of intelligent life on another planet we can conclude that there are aliens on that planet without having any idea of who created them or where they came from. In summary, the best explanation for something does not require that we also provide an explanation for the explanation.
The problem I think for Dawkins is that his trademark snorts and sneers only work against televangelists who do not do much more than hurl Bible verses at their opponents. When he is confronted with history, philosophy, and logic, Dawkins seems to have very little to say. And perhaps this explains his peculiar insistence that I be given no chance whatever to respond to his statements on the Riz Khan show.
Reader Comments ( Page 2 of 83)
16. Hitler uses Darwin as a justification for his evil and the Christians use it to write off Darwin.
So does that mean since Hitler also used Christianity as a justification for his evil that we can write Christianity off too?
Ryan Anderson at 2:48PM on Jul 24th 2008
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Totally fucking valid reasoning there, Ryan.
Godless Heathen Brian at 3:02PM on Jul 24th 2008
17.
Hitler used whatever was handy - He spoke of a superior race, which had blonde hair and blue eyes - and he wasn't one of them. And he connected his "version" of evolution into religion -
In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following: (a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered; (b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap. The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged.
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 11
It doesn't dawn on this depraved bourgeois world that this is positively a sin against all reason; that it is criminal lunacy to keep on drilling a born half-ape until people think they have made a lawyer out of him, while millions of members of the highest culture-race must remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions.
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf Vol. 2 Chapter 2
ex-christian at 3:08PM on Jul 24th 2008
18. Rev will never understand the difference between accepting Evolution as one's natural history and accepting "Darwinism" as one's ideology.
Mokele Mbembe at 3:09PM on Jul 24th 2008
19. ....and thus, neither will dd (coincidentally)
America's Most Gangsta at 3:18PM on Jul 24th 2008
20. Rev:
1) Hitler was USING his skewed interpretation of Darwin (not evolution) in a social (not scientific) construct. Evolutionary theory recognizes that "survival of the fittest" is a brief description of what happens in Nature, not what happens when a sociopolitical group chooses to eradicate another group of people. There is nothing "natural" about what Hitler promulgated and it has absolutely no relationship to acceptance of the evidence that supports our understanding of evolution.
2. Neither evolutionary theory nor "Darwinism" supports or even discusses "morality". Morality is a philosophical (for you, religious) concept. In particular, your insistance on treating them as part and parcel of the controversies around the LEGALITY of abortion in the United States illustrates that you either do not understand any of the former and that you canot understand that our Constitution presently prevents fundamentalist Christians from imposing their definitions of "sin" on people who do not except them as "God given".
3. Your suggestion that atheism (which certainly does not equate with acceptance of the evidence supportin evolution) and "Darwinism" (which does not equate with atheism) are responsible for "countless" deaths and slaughter since their inception conveniently overlooks both the "uncountable" deaths and evil that have resulted from religion in general (and Christianity in particular, see pst 8 and 9) and the fact that man's ability to inflict massive destruction on his fellow man has increased geometrically in the past century. People like Hitler and Stalin did not need to resort to witch trials or inquisitions, let alone individual burnings to destroy there victims.
4. Your last staement reveals that you really are not concerned directly with any of todays "subject". You believe that anyone who does not accept your version of the Bible as you understand it and who particularly refuses to recognize the wisdom and "rightness" of YOUR admonitions regarding eternal damnation should be punished. You are entitled to this opinion, of course, because our Constitution protects your right to do so in the same way it protects the rest of us from your ability to impose your beliefs on evryone else.
Harvey at 3:34PM on Jul 24th 2008
21. But consider the argument itself more closely. Is it really true that Complex Explanation A for Complex Phenomenon B only works if we can give a full account of A? Actually it is not true. Gravity may account for why objects fall at a certain pace, but this does not require that we give an account for where gravity comes from or why it exists in the first place. If we find various signs of intelligent life on another planet we can conclude that there are aliens on that planet without having any idea of who created them or where they came from. In summary, the best explanation for something does not require that we also provide an explanation for the explanation.
Where does gravity come from? Mass. It's proportional to mass. We couldn't fling little robots at 30,000 miles an hour, and make it collide with another thing travelling at 30,000 miles an hour a million miles away without knowing that.
Why is gravity what it is? While we don't know that yet, I'm guessing sooner or later, we'll figure that out.
Saying "god did it, stop asking stupid questions" isn't an answer.
ex-christian at 3:34PM on Jul 24th 2008
22. AOLGFYMBP
Mokele Mbembe at 3:35PM on Jul 24th 2008
23. Mokele: ...MBP?
Ryan Anderson at 3:43PM on Jul 24th 2008
24. "We are invoking one complicated thing, namely evolution, to explain another, namely living things. Yet this leaves open the question of where evolution came from. We have no idea how and why evolution originally started. Since we cannot account for evolution, our explanation is useless. Simply to postulate evolution is to explain nothing."
Evolution is a process - not a being. To posit evolution as an explanation of the diversity (and hence complexity) of life that exists currently, particularly in light of the the simplicity of the organisms that first inhabited the Earth, does not add another entity to the system. To even posit an evolution-like process acting upon the simple organic chemicals (present at the formation of the Earth) leading to the self-replicating stuctures that were the first Earthly life-forms, still does not "invoke" a being to "cause" it all. The explanation does not introduce new things into the system (or expand the system to include new things), so the explanation stands or falls on its own merits.
"Gravity may account for why objects fall at a certain pace, but this does not require that we give an account for where gravity comes from or why it exists in the first place."
Better call Einstein quick - I hear he's wasting lots of time trying to explain gravity! I mean, if we don't stop him, he'll fly off into space!
[for the sarcasm impaired: while gravity exists whether we explain it or not, gravity is not considered a final explanation in modern physics - hence the search for the Higgs boson, for instance]
"If we find various signs of intelligent life on another planet we can conclude that there are aliens on that planet without having any idea of who created them or where they came from. In summary, the best explanation for something does not require that we also provide an explanation for the explanation."
No, that's not the summary. Restating your example without altering the logic: "If we find (observation A), we can conclude (observation A) without knowing (cause of observation A)". All you said was "Facts are facts", which has nothing to do with the validity of explaining them in the context of other facts.
Besides which, you're not using the aliens in your example to explain something else, particularly when you have yet to actually observe the aliens.
Toad at 3:45PM on Jul 24th 2008
25. Ryan,
GFYMBP
I'm not comfortable saying it in English, so I'll put it in Chinese...
Cha lu ma eh pua phuki!
Mokele Mbembe at 3:46PM on Jul 24th 2008
26. "the the simplicity" - that'll learn me to proofread!
Toad at 3:47PM on Jul 24th 2008
27. We have no idea how and why evolution originally started. Since we cannot account for evolution, our explanation is useless.
xx
by 'we', do you mean people born before 1900?
Modern science and you should get to be better friends.
You don't have to know how a cd player works, but informed and educated people do.
So it might be best that you don't go saying nobody knows how they work, or it might work because there's a band of tiny micromusician homonculi living in the thickness of the cd.
In order for you to be as in the dark as that statement I quoted from you says you are, you'd have to work at it. The information you say nobody knows is at your fingertips these days.
Here's a thought on evolution. It is just one hypothetical scenario, but it is consistent with how species can differentiate. It's called 'genetic drift'.
If we continue to pass religious traditions on by family and deeply faithful people tend to marry among themselves, there is a possibility that this group could isolate with resepect to reproduction as well and even become hostile.
They are more comfortable among people who share the same dogma and they marry there and shun the others - just a hypothetical scenario.
Over many many generations, many more than have happened to humans yet, this might very well produce two separate breeding populations which do not intermingle and eventually cannot intermingle because of the kind of drift that dna copy choice creates in the quadrillions of chemical reactions undergone in creating billions of individuals.
Any quantitative discussion of human social behavior, like the reich with respect to evolution as survival of the fittest needs eons of input, not a couple of millenia.
Clif Kuplen at 4:09PM on Jul 24th 2008
28. Hey, if you're as booooored with DD's crush on Dawkins as I've become, the Ada Calhoun blog is heating up nicely. McCain apparently doesn't believe in Gay Marriage. Who knew?
Godless Heathen Brian at 4:41PM on Jul 24th 2008
29. Crap. I meant he doesn't believe in gay adoption.
Wel, it's both, I'm sure...
Anyhow, janosophie and preteristvision are there defending the hypocrist viewpoint. They're likening having gay sex to having sex with animals and corpses. It's good stuff.
Godless Heathen Brian at 4:45PM on Jul 24th 2008
30. GHB,
"DD's crush on Dawkins" is like the little boy who pulls on the little girl's pigtails.
Mokele Mbembe at 5:07PM on Jul 24th 2008