Re: [asa] Dawkins and PZ Myers and their 'attitude'

I think that the quote Jack gives below is precisely the point I was trying
to make, only it puts it more eloquently than I did.

It has struck me that even given the idea that we might have been created by
an alien life-form from another planet, Dawkins's assertion (which he made
on the radio interview given as a link on this list), that such a life-form
must have arisen by evolution is also a non-sequitur.

After all, what are the reasons we believe we evolved? It is because we
have a massive amount of evidence to suggest that this is so - increase in
complexity over time in the geological column, transitional forms
(increasing numbers being found despite Creationists' denials), and the
most overwhelming evidence from comparing genomes of different creatures.

Just suppose that we were created by aliens from another planet. We don't
have any knowledge of them at all at present. We don't know what their DNA
looks like, or even if DNA figures in that form of life. It's equally
possible to conceive that they were supernaturally created, or arose from
evolution, or arose as a result of some entirely different physical process
about which we know nothing. Therefore, to assert that such a postulated
alien life form designer must have evolved seems to me to be a false analogy
- we simply don't have any evidence to propose one theory of their origins
over another one.

Iain

On 4/8/07, Jack <drsyme@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
> According to Plantiga Dawkins reasoning is circular:
>
> "...suppose we concede, at least for purposes of argument, that God is
> complex. ..why does Dawkins think it follows that God would be improbable?
> Given *materialism *and the idea that the ultimate objects in our universe
> are the elementary particles of physics, perhaps a being that knew a great
> deal would be improbable... Of course we aren't *given *materialism.
> Dawkins is arguing that theism is improbable; it would be dialectically
> deficient *in excelsis *to argue this by appealing to materialism as a
> premise. *Of course *it is unlikely that there is such a person as God
> if materialism is true; in fact materialism logically entails that there is
> no such person as God; but it would be obviously question-begging to argue
> that theism is improbable because materialism is true."
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com>
> *To:* George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
> *Cc:* asa@calvin.edu
> *Sent:* Saturday, April 07, 2007 4:27 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [asa] Dawkins and PZ Myers and their 'attitude'
>
> George,
>
> Thanks for the link to your article - I'll look it up.
>
> But ...
>
> The fact remains that many people are reading TGD and using it against
> Christians. The fact that the book comes up as a topic of conversation
> surely leads to opportunities for evangelism - to talk about our faith, etc.
>
>
>
> BTW, has anyone pointed out that Dawkins' argument that "God" would have
> > to be complex in order to create a complex world is just Dembski's supposed
> > "conservation of information" notion in atheist garb?
> >
> >
> I hadn't thought of it that way, but it strikes me that Dawkins's argument
> is pretty silly. I think Dawkins's premise is that God must be more complex
> than us to have created us. I actually think it's a false premise to assume
> that you have to be more complex than what you create in the first place.
> We haven't done it yet, but I don't think it's inconceivable that given the
> rise in computer power, that one day someone will write an evolutionary
> simulation in a computer that will give rise to "virtual" entities inside
> the computer that are more complex than us. However, we as "programmers"
> are at a different level of reality than the entities that exist within the
> software simulation. I think Dawkins wants to reduce it all to one level.
> In the radio broadcast, he suggested that a Designer must be more complex
> than us, and so it must also have evolved, and as it's more complex, then it
> is even more unlikely than us. But his premise right at the start is that
> this material world in which things evolve is the only one there is. But he
> then wants to use this to "prove" the non-existence of God (or to be more
> precise, to demonstrate the near impossibility of God). But the thing he's
> trying to prove is the premise he's assumed in the first place.
>
> I think this argument is wrong for the same reason that the Design
> argument is wrong. When Paley stumbles upon the watch on the heath, the
> only reason he is justified in assuming it had a watchmaker is that he knows
> that watchmakers exist - there is independent empirical evidence of them -
> one has seen a man making a watch. But no-one has seen God zapping a
> flagellum into existence, so the analogy breaks down. The Design argument
> presumes the existence of God from the start. By the same token the Dawkins
> argument for the non-existence of God presumes the non-existence of God.
> Both sides are flawed in assuming what you're trying to prove in the first
> place. (I think there's some name for that logical fallacy, but the name
> escapes me for the moment).
>
> Iain
>
>

-- 
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