11.28.09
Who is calling who an idiot
Dawkins: Evangelist an ‘idiot’ on evolution
Who is calling who an idiot?
I think that Dawkins here is retreating from his new strategy in his recent book of emphasizing the fact of evolution, without claiming that the mechanism is natural selection.
You can’t call anyone an idiot who rejects the Darwinian formulation
London, England (CNN) — A Christian evangelist branded an idiot by atheist biologist Richard Dawkins for trying to refute Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has brushed off the criticism.
Speaking to CNN on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s seminal work “On the Origin of Species,” Dawkins said the evidence to support the theory that life on earth came about through natural selection, and not design by God, was “now massively buttressed by molecular evidence.”
And referring to U.S.-based evangelist Ray Comfort, who argues that the universe and life is the result of an intelligent creator, Dawkins said: “There is no refutation of Darwinian evolution in existence. If a refutation ever were to come about, it would come from a scientist, and not an idiot.
John A. Davison said,
November 28, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Dawkins’ words, which you quote, brand Dawkins as the idiot. Thomas Henry Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog” but never a Darwinian himself, had this to say about atheism and religious fervor too -
“Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no God.”
Henrietta A. Huxley, Aphorisms And Reflections From The Works of T.H. Huxley, page 3.
Einstein offered a similar appraisal -
“Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics and it springs from the same source… They are creatures who can’t hear the music of the spheres.”
Alice Calaprice, The Quotable Einstein, page 204.
I managed to penetrate Dawkins’ atheist bastion in October, 2006 with the thread “God or Gods are dead but must have once existed.” That was a ruse of course because no one knows anything about God. The important point is that it was accepted.
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=341&start=275
where I evoked 12 pages of frantic opposition and more than 60,000 views (probably a forum record) before I was banished forever. This link cannot be found in GOOGLE but can in BING by using the same clue, ‘John A. Davison evolution’. I long suspected GOOGLE of being in the same tank with atheist Darwinism. I am now convinced. That is a major problem as ultra-liberal (atheist) agencies dominate and influence more and more of our intellectual life. That link cannot be read even in the Archives of richarddawkins.net. I believe the BING link is now the only means by which it can be perused by an interested outsider.
“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for believing it to be true.”
Bertrand Russell
“Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
George Orwell, 1984
reece sullivan said,
November 29, 2009 at 1:52 pm
nemo or others,
I have a simple question that I’ve been wondering about the last few days: is there any speculation on what the first cell consumed? Ate, in other words? It’s a fun thing to imagine the first cell forming, but it seems to come with these very natural questions, too. Another question would involve the fact that we take for granted that cells can replicate themselves, as though this weren’t even worth mentioning . . . but it seems to me that the highly unlikely scenario of life forming on earth in the first billion years coupled with the fact that that first cell actually survived long enough to replicate itself is quite a feat, indeed. Then, after picturing this, I arrive at the first question: what the hell did they live off of?
I ask it in earnest, knowing that someone else must’ve surely speculated on this.
Anyone have any answers?