What’s Your Favorite Dawkins Quote?
| September 9, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution |
Quotes like “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist” and “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose” are right up there, but my all-time favorite is “Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.†(All these quotes are from The Blind Watchmaker.)
It’s comforting that evolutionary theory is in the capable hands of rigorous empirical scientists like Dawkins.
46 Responses to What’s Your Favorite Dawkins Quote?
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Oh dear. Bill, you’ve upset the peanut gallery AGAIN.
http://www.pandasthumb.org/arc......html#more
If I didn’t know better I’d think you enjoy yanking their chains.
it’s amazing how insane those commenting at panda’s thumb sound. the part left out of the quote doesn’t in any way change the meaning of the quote. they’re over there attacking anyone who doesn’t buy into darwinism as a fool, yet they don’t realize that they’re claims of distorting quotes isn’t distorting at all.
dawkins clearly said- even if there was no evidence to support it (tho there is, ACCORDING to dawkins) it would be better to support that idea than any other. even leaving out dawkins “there is, of course” doesn’t change any of the meaning of what he says. the argument remains the same- dawkins said even IF there wasn’t evidence to support darwinism (which clearly shows he supports the idea that there IS evidence to support it) it would be better to teach it than any other theory.
reading thru some of the posts over at PT, it seems to be a site full of hatred and darwinian zealotry. i see many comments where people continually claim that ID theorists are all right-wing bible thumping fools or that they’re actually creationists. i’m sure the readers here will easily so how ironic it is that they’re claiming bill was dishonest with his quote, yet they blatantly lie and call ID theorists creationists and attack anyone who doesn’t buy their theory as anti-science, religious whackos, etc. when we all know that isn’t the case.
they also complain that bill says that dawkins is a villian. and that turns into the argument that bill isn’t a real scientist and shouldn’t be attacking dawkins. funny tho- dawkins is a villian to ANY reasonable person. the guy says that religion is the worst evil in the world and that religious belief is the worst disease in history. only a fool would deny the man who says that IS NOT a villian. those arrogant, bigoted comments alone from dawkins make him a villian in the general sense of the word. i’m sure the PT site comments would call me a villian if i said “all darwinism is evil and it’s the worst disease to ever affect the planet…those who support it are ignorant fools and most likely downright evil” they would rightly call me a villian, yet if dawkins says the same thing of religious people, there’s a double standard!
it’s amazing the amount of ignorance out there. i’ve been studying the subject of evolution, ID theory, creationism, etc. lately and i’ve noticed that the sensible ones seem to be the anti-darwinists. i don’t see ID’ers saying that darwinists aren’t really scientists and are all hacks, yet that’s exactly what i see of darwinists speaking of ID’ers on nearly every site! doesn’t say that a lot about which group has more credibility, and maybe even more sense? whether one wants to admit it or not, when you have to attack those who disagree with you as christian nuts, anti-science fools, not really scientists, etc. you know you and you’re ideology are both in trouble.
Question: If Dawkins has no problem saying that living things “appear designed”, shouldn’t he, as a scientist, be prepared to give a rigorous definition of what design is. He seems to claim simultaneously that there is no valid way of making claims such as irreducible complexity/specificied complexity, yet feels very free to use the term design as he pleases. Why shouldn’t the burden of definition fall on him?
[...] [...]
The burden of definition does fall on him and the fact that living organisms of all sizes are remarkably engineered makes the burden of proof fall on the un intelligent evolutionary side of the table. I almost never refer to things looking designed, but refer to them looking incredibly well engineered.
Dan
Desperate Housewives is back! Right now! On ABC!
Dickie Dawkins is a desperate housewife, by the way.
[...] Bill Dembski asks his readers for their favorite Richard Dawkins quote. Mine is this one: “Even if there were no actual evidence in favor of the Darwinian theory, we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories.†(from The Blind Watchmaker) [...]
The quote from Richard I prefer is:
“ If the natural selection supplies information to the genic pool, what sort of information is? It is information about surviving†.
From R.Dawkins, The Devil’s Chaplain, chapter 2.
There you can see directly from Richard all the impossibility of Darwinism (between “surviving†and “transforming†there is a terrific abyss).
“It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.316”
That’s amusing.
One might add: It is almost as if the typology and anti-sequential ordering typical to Nature was designed to communicate, “Darwinism can only be clung to if you have the urge to merge like Darwinists do.”
Or it is almost as if there is a biotic message designed to communicate, “There is one common designer of fundamental types, yet see how I make things hard for those who want to argue for sequence and common descent.”
It is little wonder that Darwinists rely on their Mommy Nature and the womb of Naturalism in the face of numerous “gaps,” separation, convergence, teological emergence combined with mountains of anti-sequential empirical evidence in need of some form of merging. Yet crawling into the womb of Naturalism seems to be little more than a shift into a philosophical debate about what is “natural” and so on which avoids dealing with empirical evidence of the natural typology of Nature. I doubt that they are being purposefully dishonest in all the shifting and merging, as their own psychological dynamics seem tightly bound to such shifting. Mommy Nature probably scientifically selected such shifting for them by her au naturale natural selections, naturally enough. Apparently that is just the science of things if one murmurs the term science enough.
This fellow Carl Zimmer has a funny passage where he seems to be going back to the womb and merging with fishs. We probably had gill slits in the womb of Mommy Nature, don’t you know. I’d like to write about this fellow, perhaps some other time.
Dawkin’s quote above, “These are sky-god religions.”
This won’t suit his Cosmic Oedipus complex, I suspect, oh no, no indeed!
So of course:
“They are, literally, patriarchal  God is the Omnipotent Father  hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates.”
Yes all theistic husbands and fathers through the ages have loathed women but Dawkin’s knows the feminine just as Mommy Nature selected for him. He’s quite a fortunate fellow in that way because Lady Luck gave him a chance Or did she? Sometimes to have a chance you have to take a chance. Some fellows are not used to doing that.
“The sky-god is a jealous god, of course.”
Why are they always such crybabies about things? I think one psychologist described a dynamic typical to effeminates this way, “Tends to cry about nothing…”
I should go no farther as psychoanalysis is all ad hominem, like satire. I don’t feel bad about that because he lit the rhetorical fire and besides, what is left to deal with if you take the sapience out of the Homo sapiens? Those left will have diminishing intelligence and a lack of purpose by design. Then all that will be left is a bunch of little fellows with brain events which are fodder for some type of analysis based on the nurture and nature of Mother Nature herself. They shouldn’t mind analysis, as they’ve lost their mind of the synaptic gaps in her.
If mankind is nothing more than a physical organism then Darwinism is its excrement.
So psychoanalysis seems apposite, as “Psychoanalysis is an occupation in whose very name “psyche” and “anus” are united.”
(Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus’s Criticism of
Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry, By Thomas Szasz)
I have a question, and I’m sorry thats it’s a little off topic.
What are the rules for this site? What is allowed and what is not? I
ask this because my earlier post was deleted (as well as my old acocunt)
when I tried to explain why some people view the Dawkins quote as an
out-of-context quote, and I specifically tried not to use any ad-homs,
foul language, or accuse Dembski (or anyone else) of purposely
misquoting Dawkins. Yet it was deleted. So I am curious if there is a
somewhere that has a set of rules or guidelines for posting on this
site so that I can view it and hopefully not make the same mistake
(whatever that mistake was) in the future and have my posts and account
deleted. Thanks in advance for any answers.
[Go here: http://www.uncommondescent.com.....archives/9 --WmAD]
Here’s another Dawkins tidbit that demonstrates the outright disdain he has for anything having to do with religion.
“In any case, the belief that religion and science occupy separate magisteria is dishonest. It founders on the undeniable fact that religions still make claims about the world that on analysis turn out to be scientific claims. Moreover, religious apologists try to have it both ways. When talking to intellectuals, they carefully keep off science’s turf, safe inside the separate and invulnerable religious magisterium. But when talking to a nonintellectual mass audience, they make wanton use of miracle stories-which are blatant intrusions into scientific territory.
The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children. Every one of these miracles amounts to a violation of the normal running of the natural world. Theologians should make a choice. You can claim your own magisterium, separate from science’s but still deserving of respect. But in that case, you must renounce miracles. Or you can keep your Lourdes and your miracles and enjoy their huge recruiting potential among the uneducated. But then you must kiss goodbye to separate magisteria and your high-minded aspiration to converge with science.†(“Snake Oil and Holy Waterâ€Â, Forbes ASAP, Oct. 4, 1999, pp235-38).”
“It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believeâ€Â.-The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.316
This may be my new favorite. “almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism”
That’s what we call common sense and intuition.
my very bad
“It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believeâ€Â.-The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.316
This may be my new favorite. “find it hard to believeâ€Â
That’s what we call common sense and intuition.
It shows us that it’s still possible, though, if we try very hard, to stand on our head.
dawkins:
“The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children”
let’s change that quote a bit, without really changing the meaning–
dawkins:
“newton, kepler, mendel, pascal, faraday, Copernicus, and scores of other famous scientists are unsophisticates and children, because they believed in the virgin birth, resurrection, and raising of the dead by Christ.”
i have to say it again, does dawkins think before he speaks EVER? does he realize the amount of arrogance in this statement? does he realize that such a statement makes him sound like a child and an “unsophisticate”??
jboze3131 I can’t do better than that. The resurrection of Christ has so much evidence it is wholely inappropriate for Dawkins to so sweepingly disregard it. It is singly the most confrontational opposition to his theories because it proves a personal God who has a purpose and has intervened. I say this as one who is not finding God’s decision to create [at least in the way he has done so] easy to accept, but truth is crucial however harsh it may seem, and Dawkins has bottled out and decided not to go there.
See the recent article Was Richard Dawkins really stumped by a question about genetic information?: [CMI's] Frog to a Prince DVD shows the Apostle of Atheism unable to provide an example of information increase in the genome. See timeline, raw footage, and answer to critics.