Richard Dawkins drops the F-bomb
In one of my classes, we have been watching The Atheism Tapes, a BBC series where atheist Jonathan Miller interviews other prominent atheists on their disbelief and other related topics. Today, we watched his interview with Richard Dawkins.
I was surprised at who poorly Dawkins handled Miller's God's-advocate (as it were) questions. Miller was obviously not pushing the theist point of view, but he asked Dawkins questions from what he believed to be a theistic view point in order to elicit a pro-atheistic answer from the former professor at Oxford. When he was unable to explain his rationale for holding a certain position, Dawkins surprisingly to me fell back on what he so often attacks in others – faith.
Miller allowed Dawkins to explore his thoughts on Darwinism and natural selection and how that eliminates the need for God. Then Miller brought up what he said was a typical theistic response, what makes those transitionary stages beneficial? When the scales of a lizard were evolving into the feathers of a bird, what made those in-between stages worthwhile for natural selection to choose to favor?
First, Dawkins talked all around the question, explaining what it was not. He was not saying that natural selection had some long term plan in mind, even sharing some "joke" that he read from another atheist about natural selection placing useless DNA in the animals because "you might need it some day."
Apparently, Miller needed more of an answer to the question or felt perhaps Dawkins didn't understand what he was asking, so he reworded it and repeated it to him. Why would natural selection favor those intermediary species that were between a lizard and a bird? What possible benefit could there be for a half-wing or a half-feather? At this point, Dawkins uttered a surprising response, "I suppose I just have faith in it." He quickly went on to stay far away from the f-word as possible, except later on in the interview when he lampooned Christians for their discussion of faith in similar issues.
Dawkins tried to cover himself and natural selection by commenting, "It's your problem if you cannot understand the choices, not natural selection's." What an odd thing to say? I wonder how Richard Dawkins would respond if he and I were discussing and he brought up some common argument against design like say the upside down nature of the eye and I responded, "It's your problem if you cannot understand the choices, not God's." Do you think that would go over very well?
Theists are told that certain parts of creation are "bad" and therefore there cannot be a designer. Well, Richard Dawkins has "faith" (his word) that natural selection made the right choice and that even he does not understand how or why certain things happened the way they did, he trusts the blind, random process. Yet, theists are often criticized for attempting to argue that they have faith that God made the right choice even when we do not understand how or why certain things happened the way they did, we trust the omnipotent, personal God.
When evaluating my laptop, I understand that technological limitations prevent me from having one that will fit in my backpack, has the most memory, speed and hard drive space, a TV sized screen, all the programs I could want and all for a cheap price. Many of those choices cancel out other choices. We can all understand that, but somehow we feel we can accuse God of poor design because we think one facet of our bodies would be better another way, ignoring the possible effects on the rest of the body.
Apparently, according to Richard Dawkins, it is illogical for me to hold that an all-knowing, personal God would originally create our bodies as best as possible, even though some things might not make total sense to me now. However, it is totally logical for Dawkins to have faith that his "blind watchmaker" chose transitional forms that would seem to be at a disadvantage over their peers for some evolutionary reason. Excuse me, if I place my faith in someone who can actually see what they are doing.
Among thinking atheists, Dawkins and the four horsemen are a bit of a pariah – given more to (bitter) polemics than reason. Debunking their arguments is not that hard, but it is worth doing since many people are tricked by the guy who pounds the pulpit the loudest (on both sides).
That's why I prefer the 'thinking atheists' you hear at Common Sense Atheism. Instead of reading Dawkins, people should be reading Graham Oppy (search amazon for Arguing About Gods).
According to this transcript, it appears it wasn't Dawkins, it was Miller who told the "might need it later" joke and uttered the F-word.
Aaron, your whole post seems to be based on misremembering what you watched.
(Emphasis added.)
Not content with just a poorly punctuated transcript, I kept searching until I found video.
That transcript incorrectly attributes the italicized "Sydney Bremmer…" dialogue to Miller. Dawkins did indeed say those words. Fact checked.
Having now watched the interview myself, I don't see your characterization of Dawkins as "covering himself" for the "I suppose [natural selection] is a sort of matter of faith on my, on my part since the theory is so coherent and so powerful" in his demeanor at all. If anything, he seems surprisingly unguarded to me, when he should know how that could be quote mined from his experiences with dishonest creationists like Ben Stein or the purveyor of the dishonestly edited "11 second pause" video.