Richard Dawkins

[Zygote]

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Given that there is evidence for evolution, your example (while entertaining), is unnecessary.

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You're right. The observable evidence for evolution is too strong to deny. Anyone with a mild understanding of genetic mechanisms should realize this. How does one deny the fact we can watch and measure evolution before our eyes. Also, archeological anthropologists have uncovered a wealth of information that is consistent with the theory.

[chezlaw]

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“Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.”

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There's plenty of evidence but its a bit unusual for a 'scientific' theory not to be falsifiable. You can't do an experiment to see if the fittest don't survive when by definition the fittest are the ones that survive.

It's a bit like trying to disprove sod's law.

chez

[udontknowmickey]

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I think Dawkins was likely making an appeal to Occum's Razor. I take his quote to mean 'we should prefer Darwinism to rival theories because it makes less assumptions then any of those theories.'

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How does that mesh with his second quote?

“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose”

[benkahuna]

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There's plenty of evidence but its a bit unusual for a 'scientific' theory not to be falsifiable. You can't do an experiment to see if the fittest don't survive when by definition the fittest are the ones that survive.

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Firstly, that's natural selection.
Secondly, you're right that what you have stated is a tautology.
Natural selection is a little more complex than that and isn't stated in such a simplistic argumentative form.
From wiki:

Natural selection is a process by which biological populations are altered over time, as a result of the propagation of heritable traits that affect the capacity of individual organisms to survive and reproduce fertile offspring.

I actually just added the fertile offspring part, gotta love wiki...

[Ezcheeze]

I'm not exactly sure how to interpret the 2nd quote but here is my take on it:

1. In biology, complicated things are studied.

2. Many properties of biological organisms give the appreanace of having a pupose. This is because they usually do have a pupose: To allow the organism to survive and reporduce.

Assuming these statements are true I can see why Dawkins would make this statement:
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Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose

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[AleoMagus]

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I think we "get" the English language. It is absurd to say that one theory is more probable than another without evidence.

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This is incorrect, at least insfoar as by evidence, we are talking about empirical evidence. This was what Dawkins meant.

We can prefer a theory because of how it's assumptions mesh with the rest of our web of beliefs, and because of how plausible it's assumptions are given all of our other assumptions.

Among other reasons, which may be less important, such as aesthetics, or elegance.

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Secondly, if what he really meant is that atheistic Darwinism is more probable than other theories, he is also absurd.


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More probable given it's sophistication, explanatory power, and consistency with the scientific worldview, yes. Sorry, but Yes.

By the way, you do not need to attach the word 'atheistic' to the word darwinism. Although a great many evolutionary biologists are, in fact atheist, the theory is neither theistic or atheistic by itself.

This would be like talking about 'atheistic gravitation' all the time, or how about 'atheistic wave mechanics'

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It is more probable that the Universe was created from the fart of a monkey's ass than out of nothing. We have evidence that monkeys' asses exist, whereas to suggest that something can come from nothing as atheistic Darwinists try to suggest is absolutely crazy.

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Darwinists are not trying to suggest something came out of nothing at all. This is just the kind of quote that so many naysaysers make which makes me realize they know nothing at all about the theory of evolution.

The mechanisms of evolution require energy input into a system, something that our planet has had in large supply in the form of the sun for a long time.

I think the sun a more likely supplier of the requisite energy over millions of years than a fart from a monkeys ass. Further to this, we have evidence for the sun's existence which makes it an easy assumption.

Regards
Brad S

[NotReady]

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By the way, you do not need to attach the word 'atheistic' to the word darwinism.


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Maybe not to darwinism, but apparently you do to dawkinism. I haven't read him but if the below is accurate, well ....

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He has been called Darwin’s rottweiler, for he insists that neo-Darwinism inevitably leads to atheism — a conclusion that Darwin never came to himself.

As for religious faith, it is “blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence”. Belief in God, he says, is a “mind parasite”, infecting people like a physical virus. Mystery is reduced to “plain insanity or surrealist nonsense”. The religious view of the universe is “puny, pathetic and measly” in comparison with the way the universe actually is.

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[benkahuna]

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Many properties of biological organisms give the appreanace of having a pupose. This is because they usually do have a pupose: To allow the organism to survive and reporduce.

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He's alluding to intelligent design when he mentions the design part. It appears given how useful certain traits are to achieve a certain function that some entity designed the organism giving them the trait to achieve some purpose. I think we need to be very careful and specific with the language here. The parts of an organism do not have a purpose. Rather, they have parts that serve a purpose. If they had a purpose it suggests some intention in the design. There's no intention that is proven, it just sort of happened.

Here's a citation for a very good article about evolutionary process:


Jacob F. Related Articles, Links
Evolution and tinkering.
Science. 1977 Jun 10;196(4295):1161-6. No abstract available.
PMID: 860134 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[Cooker]

I like Dawkins, but I think his views are skewed in some places. I prefer Gould. Dawkins too often neglects physicists' contributions on the subject of evolution, while Gould appears to be more open to the modeling results in certain areas. The Bak-Sneppen model is a very cute picture of Gould's puncuated equilibrium, which seems to be the best large scale conjecture of evolutionary theory from what I have read.

[Peter666]

I concur. This fellow stated that one can be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist" because of Darwinism, which is absolutely not true. The chain of events in Darwinism had to start from somewhere, and Darwinism does not refute this. Dawkin's take on Darwinism is absurd.