Dick to the Dawk on Bill Maher
| April 14, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
I watched Dawkins on the Bill Maher show last night. Among other interesting things he said was when it comes to belief in gods if you were to rate his belief on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being most belief and 10 being least he puts himself at a 6. Then he compares belief in gods with belief in fairies and pink unicorns. So I guess he’s conflicted about those too. Bill Maher then ridiculed religion in predictable trite ways which caused Dawkins to reconsider the belief rating and up it to “6 point 9″. Hilarious. Richard Dawkins is really a centrist on religious beliefs. Who’da thunk?
Too bad Bill Maher didn’t ask Richard Dawkins to rate his belief in the existence of material intelligent agents who can alter the course of evolution by tinkering with the DNA of living organisms. Personally I put that “belief” at a 1 (no doubt) unless someone convinces me that Craig Venter doesn’t really exist.
Correction: The scale is 1 – 7. Dawkins isn’t a centrist. It seemed unreal. But who uses scales of 1 – 7? Is that a British oddity?
31 Responses to Dick to the Dawk on Bill Maher
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MB135:
1] Okay, you mean paradox, as opposed to contradiction. Fine.
On a few notes:
2] I am unconvinced that evolution and theism are truly contradictory.
The issue is not whether evolution [micro? macro?] and theism in whatever variety are incompatible.
YEC’s, for instance, gerally accept microevolution, and in many cases a surprising degree of macro — with the remarks that post flood evolution was very rapid per founder principle etc.
Many ID thinkers believe in common descent from a last common ancestor.
The crucial issue with theistic evolution, proper, as SB commonly highlights in an apt summary, is whether the design in nature can only be CONCEIVED, or whether it may be observed and tested empirically.
TE’s generally accept, in effect [if not in how they will state this] that design is in effect read-in relative to the theistic worldview, but is not evident in the phenomena of nature — which look like chance. Indeed, Fr Heller says pretty much that. [That is why TE's have so much trouble with the otherwise fairly simple idea of chance.]
Design thinkers hold that the design is plainly evident in the observed world, and that we may infer from contingency to chance or intelligence, and from organised complexity to agency not chance. Some design thinkers think that the cosmos exhibits that sort of design by an extracosmic agent who looks a lot like the God of the Bible.
Many also hold that since the observed cosmos was evidently designed to accommodate life, the best candidate for 5the author of life is the same theistic Designer.
But that is theology and phil, not science. The Science part is inteh working out of the three causal factors, and the characteristic signs of necessity [natural regularities with little contingency], chance [tends to simply reflect the bulk of the configs available], agency [functionally specified, organised complexity that would otherwise not be likely to show up].
3] I also do not see the relevance of dismissing transubstantiation as not being a core Christian belief
I have simply noted the fact that the doctrine in view is a late development, and for instance is nowhere to be found in the cluster of common core creeds of the major streams of the Faith, and is not an explicit core teaching by comparison with say that which we may find in Rom 1 – 3 or 1 Cor 15:1 – 11 or Heb 6:1 – 2 etc. Indeed, it is quite controversial across major streams of the Christian religion, with many hundreds of millions in strongest disagreement with it.
GEM of TKI