Re: [asa] The Criticism Begins

You know, on one hand I can see the reasoning of that "better standards"
line. On the other, I've grown weary of double standards - even well-meaning
ones. Perhaps I've seen one too many "Christian commentators" engage in what
amounts to ritual verbal self-flagellation before discussing these
controversial topics, and have had enough.

As for the "Weasel" program, keep in mind that while Dawkins may have
originated the program, it's been discussed and used as an example by others
- and there are more than a few people, even evolution-boosting atheists,
who (intentionally or not) misrepresent or misunderstand just what such a
program accomplishes or is meant to accomplish. What's more, Dawkins merely
admitting that the program has shortcomings doesn't go far enough in my view
- hence, even where he's concerned, the explanations and criticisms Lennox
offers are not only valid, but contribute something the program's originator
didn't appreciate. If this is a good example of a lack of honesty and rigor
from a Christian commentor, I'd say said commentors are in fine shape.

Either way, between Dawkins' treatment of Swinburne, Aquinas, and so many
other topics - coupled with his fairly recent declaration that he doesn't
desire to intellectually engage theists, but mock and shame them out of
their faith - I'm going to repeat that some perspective is called for.
Again, taking a person's words out of context shouldn't be done regardless
of who they are or what they're known for. But this seems less like a
"Christian journalist" problem than a "journalist, period" problem, and
what's unfortunate here is that the decision to quote Dawkins out of context
was particularly pointless - there is no shortage of straightforward,
in-context quotes that could have been selected to show the man behaving
like an ignoramus, if that's what was desired.

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 5:38 AM, Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:06 AM, Schwarzwald<schwarzwald@gmail.com> wrote:
> > While I am always in favor of honestly representing what a person has
> said -
> > regardless of their status or conduct - some perspective is called for.
> > Dawkins is more or less a cheerleader-clown for the modern atheist at
> this
> > point, with "modern" adding up to "obnoxious and aggressively
> > anti-theist/anti-religious". That a journalist may have taken some
> > apparently ignorant quotes from him out of context is a shame, largely
> > because it's not as if legitimate ones are in short supply from the man
> when
> > it comes to religious topics.
> >
> > Again, that's not to defend any misrepresentation of him. But frankly, in
> > perspective, I find it difficult to get too worked up about it - doubly
> so
> > since it's not like journalists in general are stellar when it comes to
> this
> > sort of thing, but ooooh, those CHRISTIAN journalists, why they're just
> > something else.
>
> That wasn't really what I said. I said that I expect Christian
> journalists to apply better standards or rigour and honesty than their
> colleagues.
>
> Dawkins might be pretty obnoxious (though not as obnoxious as, say
> P.Z. Myers), but in his own terms he is, I think, pretty honest; a
> standard I find sadly missing in some of his Christian critics.
>
> For example, many Christians have criticized his "Weasel" genetic
> algorithm simulation, accusing him of introducing teleology in terms
> of a target to aim at, thereby smuggling in the information at the
> start. The most recent is John Lennox in "God's undertaker". What
> none of these Christian commentators tell you is that on the very next
> page Dawkins makes precisely the same criticism of his own example,
> that it is "misleading in important ways", namely that in evolution
> there is no distant target to aim for. The point being that it wasn't
> to illustrate macroevolution - the point of the example was to show
> how something improbable could take place through small probable steps
> with the aid of natural selection.
>
> I've not seen a Christian commentator who has given Dawkins the credit
> for this honest admission of the shortcomings in his example.
>
> Iain
>

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Received on Fri Jul 10 06:07:17 2009