Humanists Being Humanists....

American Humanist Association Board Statement Withdrawing Honor from Richard Dawkins

[Richard Dawkins's] latest statement implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient. ...Consequently, the AHA Board has concluded that Richard Dawkins is no longer deserving of being honored by the AHA, and has voted to withdraw, effective immediately, the 1996 Humanist of the Year award.

I'm sure he's devastated by the removal of something he probably forgot he received since it is worth exactly zero cups of coffee down at Starbucks. Frankly, it's somewhat ironic that you have the AHA "withdrawing honor", something which in the atheistic universe is just made up and has no basis in objective reality according to their own criteria.

Actually, I guess it makes perfect sense as to why criticizing something that was just made up and has no basis in objective reality would result in the removal of an award which is just made up and has no basis in objective reality after all...

Still, we live in a world where something can be memory-holed and treated like it never happened due to something you say 25 years after the fact. Isn't progress grand?

Kenny on Dawkins

Anthony Kenny on Richard Dawkins:

Richard Dawkins and I have been Oxford colleagues for most of our lives, and have been sparring with each other for many years. We agree with each other that most of what religious people believe is false, but unlike Richard I accept that religious beliefs may be quite reasonable, even if untrue. While I am not competent to challenge any of Richard's scientific statements, and while I regard his The Extended Phenotype as one of the last century's finest books of popular science, I believe that he greatly exaggerates the power of genetics to explain human life and thought. We first clashed in a seminar at Holywell Manor, chaired by Denis Noble, shortly after The Selfish Gene appeared. Richard thought that now the DNA code had been cracked, we would be able to understand the book of life. 'Do you think that a knowledge of the English alphabet is all you need to understand Shakespeare?', I asked him.

When I read The God Delusion I found I agreed with about 90 per cent of what it said, but that the area of disagreement meant that the two of us came to quite different positions about the rationality of religious belief. I will mention just one example. I am an agnostic about the existence of God, whereas Richard is an atheist and believes that he can prove that God certainly does not exist. A designer God, he maintains, cannot be used to explain the organized complexity we observe in living beings, because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. He calls this argument 'The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit', in tribute to Fred Hoyle, who once said that the probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. God, according to Dawkins, is the ultimate 747.

A traditional theist would say that Dawkins' argument misrepresented the notion of God in two ways. First of all, God is as much outside the series complexity/simplicity as he is outside the series mover/moved. He is not complex as a protein is; nor, for that matter, is he simple as an elementary particle is. He has neither the simplicity nor the complexity of material objects. Second, he is not one of a series of temporal contingents, each requiring explanation in terms of a previous state of the universe: unchanging and everlasting, he is outside the temporal series. What calls for explanation is the origin of organized complexity: but God had no origin, and is neither complex nor organized.

I made this point in a lecture to the Royal Institute of Philosophy in 2007. A few years later I was asked to take part in a debate, in Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre, between Richard and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The topic of the debate was 'the nature of human beings and their ultimate origin'. As an agnostic, I was supposed to be a neutral chair holding the balance between the Christian and an atheist. But as the debate proceeded I began to think that the kindly archbishop was letting Richard get away with some pretty feeble arguments, and so I began to intervene on the other side. When Richard again produced his Boeing 747 argument, I protested that he was confusing two kinds of complexity – complexity of structure and complexity of function. A cut-throat razor was a much simpler structure than an electric shaver, but unlike the shaver it could also function as a cut-throat as well as a razor. The archbishop, fingering his beard, said that he did not feel competent to adjudicate between us.

Richard and I have always got on amicably face to face, but have not been afraid to be rude to each other in absence or in print. At dinner, after the Sheldonian debate, I remarked to Richard that moving from The Extended Phenotype to The God Delusion was like moving from the Financial Times to The Sun. This did not go down well, and led to a frosty exchange of emails. Later, Richard took part in a debate in Sydney with Cardinal Pell. At some point in the debate, I am told, the cardinal referred to my critique of the argument for atheism: 'Ah, Kenny', Richard said. 'He is a qualified obscurantist.' Well, I do have a doctorate in theology, which I suppose from Richard's point of view is a professional qualification in obscurantism.

(Brief Encounters: Notes from a Philosopher's Diary, pp 183-185.)

Random safe-cracking

Dawkins posits thirty-nine rendezvous points for common ancestors (concestors) where the human line splits off from other major animal groups. Yet there is no evidence for these concestors. Not one has been found. Not one is alive, and not one fossil remnant exists of any of these supposed concestors. 

Chance is the rate-limiting step of evolution by natural selection. For example, consider a series of three doors in a hall, each door opening to the next, with a digital push-pad, combination lock next to each door. Once you have entered the proper code into the first lock,  natural selection can "fix" that code in place and hold the door open so a whole population can pass through and work on the second door. Clearly, the most time-consuming part here is the random sampling of combinations to find the correct code. Genetic mutations are like random sampling of combination codes.

All the evidence for evolution is for microevolution: rearrangement of what is already present in the genetic pool; no new complexity. Indeed, every example of evolution that Dawkins presents in The Greatest Show on Earth is evidence of microevolution: alteration without innovation. 

A group of Lego bricks can be rearranged, but can it create more Legos?…You might be able to make something "new" by removing Lego pieces (deleting/harming genetic materials–a frequent strategy in antibiotic resistance), but destroying does not help with the problem of creating. What if a friend gives you new Lego pieces. Well, this still does not solve the problem, because now we need to know where he got his pieces, and, in addition, studies show that natural selection tends to throw away duplicate pieces. 

In reality, we have oversimplified the whole situation for the purpose of clarity. Anyone playing with Legos knows that you can take the whole thing apart and put it back together however you wish. Biologically, though, there are rules about how the Lego pieces can be altered. For example, every single alteration or change has to result in a functional Lego model. Biologically speaking, functionless models are discarded. As you can imagine, this would severely limit the kinds of variation that could occur. There are many ways to arrange five Lego pieces, but only a handful of configurations make something useful. The useless ones are not preserved and cannot be used as intermediates on the way to building a useful model. This is sometimes known as the "sampling" problem. 

Even the first step of generating an innovative protein fold in an existing protein (something which must have been done at least 1,200 times in history) seems increasingly unlikely, if not impossible. 

Changing gene expression merely means changing the amounts of already existing proteins, but a new ability sounds like innovation. However, genetic analysis revealed that the bacteria already had the ability to eat citrate, but it was normally suppressed. So, in the end, "No new genetic information (novel gene function) evolved". Furthermore, many of the changes observed in Lenski's bacteria result from loss-of-function or decrease-in-function mutations, which is the exact opposite of complexity creation. And so, after 45,000 generations, still nothing new. R. Poythress, Richard Dawkins (P&R 2018), chap. 5. 

Dawkins debunked

http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/apologetics/richard-dawkins-debunked.shtml

Ransom Poythress on Richard Dawkins

https://www.amazon.com/Richard-Dawkins-Thinkers-Ransom-Poythress/dp/1629952214

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtCKrIHCma4

Is God a science-stopper?

I'd like to revisit Richard Dawkins's "science-stopper" objection. He alleges that if you say "God did it," then there's no point seeking a scientific explanation.

i) At best, that only applies to miracles. Take a miraculous healing. There's no causal explanation beyond divine agency.

But even in that regard, there may still be a teleological explanation. If God miraculously heals somebody, there's still the question of why he healed that person rather than someone else. Does the healing have a larger purpose in terms of future outcomes?

ii) In addition, we can generalize the principle. Take the Antikythera mechanism. To ascribe the device to intelligent agency hardly nullifies a scientific investigation into how it works and what it's for. To the contrary, it's only because the product was designed that we presume it has a purpose. It if was like random patterns in sand dunes, we wouldn't ascribe any particular significance to the artifact. 

Dawkins on simplicity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb4aanpsx6Q

Between 114-117 min, agnostic lapsed Catholic philosopher Kenny corrects Dawkins on simplicity.

Low audio but it has captions

Parenting tips from Richard Dawkins

"The universe doesn't owe us condolence or consolation; it doesn't owe us a nice warm feeling inside" 

"I was driving through the English countryside with my daughter Juliet, then aged six, and she pointed out some flowers by the wayside. I asked her what she thought wildflowers were for. She gave a rather thoughtful answer. 'Two things,' she said. 'To make the world pretty, and to help the bees make honey for us'. I was touched by this and sorry I had to tell her that it wasn't true…What are flowers and bees, wasps and figs, elephants and bristlecone pines–what are all living things really for?…The answer is DNA," Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable (W.W. Norton 1997), 256,268.

Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Dawkins, a prominent atheist, said that it was ‘pernicious’ to teach children about facts that were ‘statistically improbable’ such as a frog turning into a prince.

Speaking about his early childhood he said: “Is it a good thing to go along with the fantasies of childhood, magical as they are? Or should we be fostering a spirit of scepticism?’

“I think it's rather pernicious to inculcate into a child a view of the world which includes supernaturalism – we get enough of that anyway,’ the 73-year-old said. “Even fairy tales, the ones we all love, with wizards or princesses turning into frogs or whatever it was. There’s a very interesting reason why a prince could not turn into a frog – it's statistically too improbable.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10875912/Reading-fairy-stories-to-children-is-harmful-says-Richard-Dawkins.html

Disillusioned atheism

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/01/25/the-train-wreck-that-was-the-new-atheism/

No Buddhist science

One atheist objection to Christianity goes like this: there is no Muslim science, Hindu science, Buddhist science–there's just science. Science isn't sectarian. It's the same everywhere. The transcultural nature of science is due to the fact that science, unlike religion, is grounded in objective, detectable, verifiable reality. I believe Richard Dawkins has popularized this claim, although I don't have a quote at my fingertips.  

Up-to-a-point that's true, but deceptive. Scientific agreement depends on taking many metaphysical and epistemological positions for granted. Given the rules of the game, there's a lot more agreement than in religion. But when you shift from scientific practice to the philosophy of science, agreement disappears. 

Moreover, there are different kinds of science. Some are more abstract than others. When we get into theoretical physics and quantum mechanics, science and philosophy of science blend.  And that's not confined to philosophers of science. For some major scientists like Mach, Poincaré, Einstein, Bohr, Penrose, and Hawking, science and the philosophy of science are interwoven, and fundamental fault-lines surface. To take another example, consider Russell's famous thought-experiment:

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

And here's a formal argument for Last Thursdayism:

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-defense-of-five-minute-hypothesis.html

Pruss doesn't subscribe to Last Thursdayism, but his formulation quickly exposes the specious contrast between science and religion. You only need to peel back a few layers to show how theory-laden science really is. 

Apparent to whom?

1. Traditionally, young-earth creationists espouse apparent age, although nowadays I think "mature creation" is the preferred appellation, and Jonathan Sarfati, for one, repudiates the concept of apparent age. 

2. By definition, "apparent" is relative. Apparent to whom? Is there an appearance that's uniform to everyone? Consider some candidates:

i) God

ii) Angels

iii) Prescientific observers

iv) Scientific observers

From God's viewpoint, does the world appear to be older than it really is? Is that question even meaningful in relation to God? 

How old did the Grand Canyon appear to pre-Columbian Indians in the region? How does that appearance compare to a conventional geologist? 

3. Apropos (2), when we affirm or deny apparent age, who's the normative observer? Whose viewpoint sets the standard? 

If you think apparent age is true, in relation to whom is it true? If you think apparent age is false, in relation to whom is it false? Is it true or false depending on how it appears to a scientific observer? A prescientific observer? To the Creator? To the Archangel Michael?

4. The dispute over apparent age is not about present-day appearances but what lies behind appearances–the process that caused the present-day appearance. Not about what you see, not about the present, but about an inferred past. 

5. To a great extent, the appearance of nature is cyclical. That caught the attention of Ecclesiastes, three thousand years ago. 

But what's the apparent age of a cyclical process? There's a sense in which a circle is timeless, because periodicity is indefinitely repeatable. You walk into a room and glance at the second hand of the clock. It moves around the dial in a clockwise direction. If you went into the room a day before, a week before, a day later, a week later, you'd see the second hand doing the same thing. So when it did start moving? From the present, you can't reconstruct when the second hand began moving. It has no implied chronology. Maybe the clock began ticking yesterday, or last year, or ten years ago. Someone wound it up, but when? There's no clue.

That may be why there were medieval and ancient debates over the eternity of the world. Circular action is timeless in a way that linear action is not. Sheer repetition. 

6. Finally, it's striking how the extremes of naturalistic evolution and young-earth creationism can meet. Both sides draw a contrast between appearance and reality: 

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

Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p1. 

[Mature creation] a theory that God created many things in a mature form (fulfilling function at the moment of creation), thus appearing as if they had developed when they had not. 

Kurt Wise, Faith, Form and Time, p282.

Richard Dawkins comes to call

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQeK05CtqNk

Invisible friendship

Richard Dawkins‏Verified account 

@RichardDawkins

Theists: you get comfort in the imaginary embrace of an imaginary friend? Try real warm embrace of a real warm friend. That's real comfort.

It's funny how atheists make boneheaded comments in the same breath as they pride themselves on their intellectual superiority to Christians.

i) Is Dawkins so ignorant that he believes Christians regard God as a replacement for having human friends? Is he that out of touch? He erects a false dichotomy. God is not a substitute for human friends; conversely, human friends are not a substitute for God.

ii) What about friendless shut-ins and nursing home residents? They outlived their friends. God is all they have left. 

iii) Good friends are wonderful, but limited. They can offer sympathy and advice. 

But one reason believers pray to God is to help in situations beyond their control. Situations in which friends are impotent to solve the problem. Sometimes we need changed circumstances, and only God has the power to bring that about. 

Let me introduce you to my invisible friend

Richard Dawkins‏Verified account 

@RichardDawkins

Theists: you get comfort in the imaginary embrace of an imaginary friend? Try real warm embrace of a real warm friend. That's real comfort.

Unfortunately, there's an epidemic of men and women who embrace their invisible friend. I constantly see joggers and pedestrians with earbuds talking to their invisible friend. I see people on park benches using the keypad of their cellphone to type messengers to their invisible friend.

Sometimes, in blind faith or desperation, these people leave messages for their invisible friend, hoping their invisible friend will respond. They get very agitated when they leave multiple messages with no reply. They actually believe that their invisible friend occasionally responds, even though that's a classic example of sample selection bias. They only remember the hits and conveniently forget all the misses. So what they take to be replies are sheer coincidence.

What can we do to stamp out this pernicious and pervasive Bronze Age superstition? 

On Fairies and Gardeners

http://www.proginosko.com/2017/07/on-fairies-and-gardeners/

Dawkins, Fermat, and Jesus

Richard Dawkins‏Verified account @RichardDawkins  17h17 hours ago17 hours agoMore 

Missing verse. Jesus said, no three positive integers a, b, and c shall satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n. Now that would be impressive.

Apparently, Dawkins is alluding to Fermat's Last Theorem. Several issues:

i) It's prudent not to endeavor to be more clever than you are, because a failed attempt will make you look less clever than you aspire to be. 

ii) I'm no expert, but it's my impression that Dawkins bungled the formulation by omitting n>2. He should leave math to mathematicians and stick to evolutionary biology.

iii) What is the implicit argument in his tweet? I suppose it's something like this: Gospel writers can fabricate reported miracles, but a scientific or mathematic theory, theorem, conjecture, or discovery that's centuries ahead of its time can't be faked. It would be unmistakably anachronistic and undeniably impressive. Assuming that's in the ballpark of what he was gesturing at:

iv) Since modern mathematical and scientific notation didn't exist in the 1C, how could that be expressed in Aramaic or Koine Greek?

v) Since the formula would be unintelligible to Christian scribes (as well as readers), it would almost inevitably be miscopied. 

vi) Unbelievers don't think the Gospels reliably record the sayings of the historical Jesus. So even if the Gospels contained something like Fermat's Last Theorem, unbelievers could chalk that up to the narrator, or his hypothetical source, rather than Jesus. He just put that in the mouth of Jesus.

vii) Assuming (ex hypothesi) that Jesus said that, it might prove that he was a mathematical genius, but human genius is no proof of deity, and it's irrelevant to his mission as the Redeemer and eschatological judge.

viii) Is Fermat's Last Theorem especially impressive–or the solution! 

ix) Premature scientific and mathematical theories and discoveries would alter the future course of history by kickstarting math and science. It's like those scifi scenarios in which the time-traveler inadvertently changes the future because he carries his modern knowledge with him when he goes back in time, where he says or does something that seeds the past with future know-how or technology. Indeed, he becomes trapped in the past because the future from which he came no longer exists, so he's now unable to return to that point in the erstwhile timeline. 

Rongorongo

Rongorongo -Hieroglyphs written with shark teeth from Easter Island, remain indecipherable 

http://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/07/hieroglyphs-written-shark-teeth-easter-island-remain-undeciphered-2/

Unfortunately, there are faith heads who insist attributing these markings to intelligent agency. Classic hieroglyphics-of-the-gaps reasoning. Despite the proven track record of science to explain how things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose are, in fact, the product of non-purposive processes, faith heads, with their superstitious belief in skyhooks, refuse to wait for science to discover the natural cause of these random markings. Cryptography is a cop-out. A science stopper!

What's the point of the atonement?

In his debate with John Lennox, Christopher Hitchens said that for the first 98,000 years of human suffering, God watches this with perfect insouciance. Finally, God says we have to intervene now. We have to do something about this. What would be the best way to intervene to redeem this rather bleak picture? What about having someone tortured to death in an obscure part of the Middle East? That ought to cure it. 

Likewise, in his debate with John Lennox, Richard Dawkins said it's "petty and small-minded" to think the creator of the cosmos (if he existed) would come to this speck of dust to rid the world of sin. That fails to do justice to the grandeur of the universe. 

Several problems:

i) I wonder what Christian theologians, if any, Hitchens and Dawkins ever read. What's their source of information regarding the purpose of the atonement? Or is this just an applause line? 

ii) The purpose of the atonement is not to rid the world of sin or suffering. If you're going to cast the issue in terms of ridding the world of something, the purpose of the atonement is to rid the world of guilt, not sin or suffering. The point is not to eradicate sin or suffering. That's the purpose of Judgment Day. Rather, the point of the atonement is to satisfy divine justice so that God can justly forgive sinners. So, yes, you have sin and suffering both before and after the atonement. That's not a failure of the atonement. The atonement accomplished precisely what it was aiming at. In particular, to make atonement for the sins of the elect. 

God will indeed eradicate the world of sin and suffering. More precisely, God will glorify believers and separate them from the wicked. But that's a different action than the atonement. 

iii) I'd add that 1C Jerusalem was hardly an "obscure part of the Middle East". Again, maybe that's just another applause line, but it's rhetorical rather than factual. 

iv) Finally, Dawkins stresses how supposed incongruous it would be for God to come to our little planet to rid the universe of sin. But that's like saying it's "petty and small-minded" for physicians to go where there's an outbreak. Of all the awesome and scenic parts of the world to choose from, why would they go to some Third World hellhole? The answer, as Jesus said, is that physicians tend to the sick, not the heathy. You go where there's a need. 

Suppose we're the only intelligent creatures in the universe. Or suppose we're the only fallen creatures in the universe. Naturally, God would zero in on our planet. If sinners are earthlings, wouldn't we expect God to intervene on planet earth? 

For that matter, even if there were other fallen creatures in the universe whom God redeemed, why assume we'd know about it? Indeed, that would be distracting information. 

This speck of dust

I was listening to Richard Dawkins debate John Lennox. Dawkins said it's "petty and small-minded" to think the creator of the cosmos (if he existed) would come to this speck of dust to rid the world of sin. That fails to do justice to the grandeur of the universe. 

That's a revealing window into the mind of Dawkins. It reminds me of a distinction I've drawn between two kinds of painters: there are artists who like to paint people and artists who like to paint landscapes. Evidently, Dawkins is more interested in the spectacle of the natural world than human beings. 

Certainly humans are physically insignificant compared to the scale of the universe, or even mountains, canyons, and the like. It is, however, a false dichotomy for Dawkins to intuit that a God who's big enough to design the universe would take no interest in little creatures like humans. If anything, it's a mark of divine greatness to be mindful of each and every detail. Where everything happens for a reason. No plot holes. Is a God who only cares about the big picture, but can't be bothered with the details, really superior to a God who's cognizant of the fine details as well as the big picture? Isn't that a hallmark of quality craftsmanship? 

You also have creative writers who are fond of certain characters. They have favorite characters. 

I'm not suggesting that's directly analogous to God. I'm just saying there's nothing incongruous about the notion of a creator who takes a personal interest in the people (or characters) he makes. 

British scientists dislike Dawkins

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/richard-dawkins-atheism-criticism-atheist-study-rice-university-science-scientists-a7389396.html