Richard Dawkins is God’s gift to theists. You couldn’t ask for a better example of the utter buffoonery of atheism. I predict that he’ll play a big role in this blog.
Let’s start with the video that’s currently featured on the front page of his Web site (richarddawkins.net). There, in the Q&A segment of the video, you’ll find Dawkins at one point telling a questioner that she is a Christian simply because she was born into a Christian family and culture. Thus Dawkins affirms cultural determinism. And yet, later in the video he lambastes the practice of calling a child a “Christian child” or a “Muslim child”—because that child is not yet old enough to have decided for himself or herself what religion to be. Thus Dawkins denies cultural determinism. The guy is a hoot.
I’m also grateful to Dawkins for confessing in the video that atheism has no rational basis for morality (in his words atheist morality is “slightly irrational,” though he didn’t give the precise details of his formula for quantifying rationality...). Still, says Dawkins, theists offer no better basis for morality, theirs being nothing more than terror of God zapping them for not being good. It’s hard to imagine any intelligent adult having such a simple-minded concept of Christian morality. But somehow Dawkins manages it. I think it’s a gift.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Evolution and the Role of Intuition
Does the grand theory of evolution have holes in it? Sure it does—gaping holes. To see this, imagine an intelligent (but hitherto uninformed) person who has just been told by a friend about evolution for the first time.
“Well,” he might say to his friend, “your theory that all life evolved from a single cell is interesting. And you even have a mechanism by which it all supposedly occurred—namely, mutation and natural selection. Very good. But now, what makes you think that your mechanism actually works for producing the results you claim? Where is your evidence that 1) there is a workable, gradual, branching pathway of tiny, functional step-by-step mutations that could transform the first cell into all the life forms we know about, 2) the mutations necessary for such a branching pathway had a reasonable likelihood of all popping up in the space of time represented by the history of Earth, and 3) natural selection would indeed have selected the mutations necessary for such a branching pattern (not necessarily the one we see the results of, but at least one like it) to have occurred?”
These questions point out the holes in the theory. To be sure, evolutionists have made some attempts at answering them, but, at least in my observation, the evolutionist’s way of dealing with them is in large measure simply to assume that the mechanism is sufficient, because...well, the evidence for common descent is so compelling (to evolutionists) that we can just assume that there was a sufficiently capable mechanism, and so it must be the best one we can think of, namely mutation and natural selection.
But of course a theory with an unproven mechanism is a theory with holes. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a viable, working theory. But it does point out that the theory is partly based on assumptions that are themselves the results of intuition.
I don’t know what else to call it. According to Merriam-Webster, intuition is “quick and ready insight... the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” It’s making a judgment without having the complete array of evidence on which to base the judgment. Based on an intuition like, “Well, millions of years is a long time, so we can assume that the right mutations had a good chance of arising,” we make that assumption. And evolution involves several such intuitive assumptions.
But this also points out the hypocrisy of so many evolutionists. If a non-evolutionist says, “You know, this or that structure seems so complex—perhaps irreducibly so—that in my judgment it seems very unlikely that it could have evolved,” well, then that non-evolutionist is accused of engaging in the dreaded Argument From Personal Incredulity. But in fact he’s doing nothing more than the evolutionist does, namely using intuition to judge whether something for which we don’t have sufficient evidence one way or the other seems reasonable.
Why don’t evolutionists see their own hypocrisy? Maybe they’re just not good at recognizing and questioning their own assumptions. But whatever their mental blind spot, it has definitely led to some very gross hypocrisy.
“Well,” he might say to his friend, “your theory that all life evolved from a single cell is interesting. And you even have a mechanism by which it all supposedly occurred—namely, mutation and natural selection. Very good. But now, what makes you think that your mechanism actually works for producing the results you claim? Where is your evidence that 1) there is a workable, gradual, branching pathway of tiny, functional step-by-step mutations that could transform the first cell into all the life forms we know about, 2) the mutations necessary for such a branching pathway had a reasonable likelihood of all popping up in the space of time represented by the history of Earth, and 3) natural selection would indeed have selected the mutations necessary for such a branching pattern (not necessarily the one we see the results of, but at least one like it) to have occurred?”
These questions point out the holes in the theory. To be sure, evolutionists have made some attempts at answering them, but, at least in my observation, the evolutionist’s way of dealing with them is in large measure simply to assume that the mechanism is sufficient, because...well, the evidence for common descent is so compelling (to evolutionists) that we can just assume that there was a sufficiently capable mechanism, and so it must be the best one we can think of, namely mutation and natural selection.
But of course a theory with an unproven mechanism is a theory with holes. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a viable, working theory. But it does point out that the theory is partly based on assumptions that are themselves the results of intuition.
I don’t know what else to call it. According to Merriam-Webster, intuition is “quick and ready insight... the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” It’s making a judgment without having the complete array of evidence on which to base the judgment. Based on an intuition like, “Well, millions of years is a long time, so we can assume that the right mutations had a good chance of arising,” we make that assumption. And evolution involves several such intuitive assumptions.
But this also points out the hypocrisy of so many evolutionists. If a non-evolutionist says, “You know, this or that structure seems so complex—perhaps irreducibly so—that in my judgment it seems very unlikely that it could have evolved,” well, then that non-evolutionist is accused of engaging in the dreaded Argument From Personal Incredulity. But in fact he’s doing nothing more than the evolutionist does, namely using intuition to judge whether something for which we don’t have sufficient evidence one way or the other seems reasonable.
Why don’t evolutionists see their own hypocrisy? Maybe they’re just not good at recognizing and questioning their own assumptions. But whatever their mental blind spot, it has definitely led to some very gross hypocrisy.
The Adventure Begins
Welcome to The Recovering Rationalist. "And what is a recovering rationalist?" you might ask. "Well," I might answer, "a recovering rationalist is someone who has discovered that reason is a wonderful, God-given tool, but it's only one tool, and it's limited. A recovering rationalist is someone who has rationally realized that all the common answers given by rationalists--atheism, humanism, evolution, etc.--cannot rationally be justified."
So what do I have to offer instead of rationalism? Well, how about reasonableness? Reasonableness, we might say, is a way of looking at things that uses reason along with intuitions that cannot be logically formulated. It's a more true picture of how we decide things than rationalism, or the use of pure reason.
That's my stab at setting a premise for this blog. I don't have a clear plan for it, other than to post thoughts relating to Christian apologetics versus the humanist, materialist, "rationalist" worldview.
Let the random thoughts begin.
So what do I have to offer instead of rationalism? Well, how about reasonableness? Reasonableness, we might say, is a way of looking at things that uses reason along with intuitions that cannot be logically formulated. It's a more true picture of how we decide things than rationalism, or the use of pure reason.
That's my stab at setting a premise for this blog. I don't have a clear plan for it, other than to post thoughts relating to Christian apologetics versus the humanist, materialist, "rationalist" worldview.
Let the random thoughts begin.
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