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The
Atheist Devotional: Timeless Meditations for
the Godless by M. Moore
Copyright ã 2008 M. Previous: Reading Number 15: Another Yarn from Dawkins
-Reading Number Sixteen -
Richard Dawkins’ Fabulous One-Minute Course to Instant Intelligence, Sophistication, and Right Thinking!
Excerpted from: “The Atheist,” interview with Richard Dawkins at Salon.com*
As a fervent apostle of science, Dawkins is always giving interviews. Let’s look at one that he did for Salon magazine.
Salon: “[S]o many people resist believing in evolution. Where does the resistance come from?”
Dawkins: “...You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians.”
And of course for Dawkins, “sophisticated” and “educated” are defined, at least in part, as “believing in neo-Darwinian evolution.”
“It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion.”
Again, the definition of “primitive” and “retarded” is: “doesn’t accept evolution.” Dawkins is a man of science, so of course he is completely free from any prejudice or bias.
“...My American friends tell me that you [America] are slipping towards a theocratic Dark Age. Which is very disagreeable for the very large number of educated, intelligent and right-thinking people in America. Unfortunately, at present, it's slightly outnumbered by the ignorant, uneducated people who voted Bush in.”
If you happen to be one of those “ignorant, uneducated” people, don’t worry. There still hope for you. Just start believing in evolution right now, and Dawkins will instantly consider you “educated, intelligent, and right-thinking.” It’s that easy!
“...You can't statistically explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have been designed because you're still left to explain the designer, who must be, if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing.”
There are many ways of understanding the word “explain,” but for Dawkins only one is correct: the reductionist one. Everything has to be explainable by reducing it to simpler parts. And since that’s the only correct one for Dawkins, then naturally it should be the only correct one for all of us!
“...A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence. Religion is scarcely distinguishable from childhood delusions like the "imaginary friend" and the bogeyman under the bed. Unfortunately, the God delusion possesses adults, and not just a minority of unfortunates in an asylum.”
Of course, people have written numerous books on the evidence for why the Bible is true, etc. But their “evidence” must not really be evidence, if Dawkins says there’s “a total lack of evidence.” Maybe he belongs to some secret club that knows the real meaning of “evidence.” It saves you the trouble of looking at the other guy’s evidence if you know up front that it’s not really evidence.
“A delusion that encourages belief where there is no evidence is asking for trouble.” Disagreements among those who hold beliefs without evidence cannot be resolved rationally, so you have a tendency toward violence. “Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.”
...and atheists (like Dawkins)—no one has ever been killed in the name of an atheist ideology! ...Er, that is, if you don’t count those tens of millions of people killed by Stalin, Mao and company... Funny how Dawkins completely forgets about them.
“But you don't do that if you just know your holy book is the God-written truth and the other guy knows that his incompatible scripture is too.”
Of course, Dawkins knows that evolution is true and he knows that there is no God. But his zealotry is different. It’s harmless. Atheists never hurt anybody, don’t you know. Or...um...at least not atheists who are philosophers, historians, literary critics, and scientists...? That’s saying something...though I’m not sure what...
“...Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion.”
So if another guy attacks you, and you retaliate, that means you’re on that other guy’s side? Okay. Must be some esoteric kind of logic that only famous atheist zoologists like Dawkins can understand.
Salon: Is evolution random?
Dawkins: “This is a spectacular misunderstanding. If it was random, then of course it couldn't possibly have given rise to the fantastically complicated and elegant forms that we see.”
And we know by faith that evolution did create all the life forms we see. Therefore, it is not random.
“Natural selection is about as non-random a force as you could possibly imagine.”
Okay, all together now, let’s recite our creed: “Natural selection is not random.” And how does natural selection work? Take Darwin’s finches. If the food that’s readily available happens to be seeds, then the finches will (by microevolution) evolve thick beaks to crush seeds. If it happens to be insects living inside trees, the finches will evolve long, thin beaks for reaching into holes where the insects are. Natural selection depends on the environmental conditions—what food is available each year, etc. And environmental conditions can do anything. They can remain the same, they can change in one consistent direction for a while, or they can take a different direction or reverse themselves. So over the long haul, environmental conditions would seem to be...random. Ahem. Okay, let’s recite our creed once more: “Natural selection is not random.”
* “Excerpts” are paraphrased, except for “words in quotation marks and italics,” which are direct quotations from the excerpted work.
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