Interview with an ex-Athiest

[chris epic]

I would have just posted the link but there was a bunch of anti-abortion propaganda that I didn't think relevant to this short essay.

Aside from the "logical supposition is the same as faith" argument which I find a rather silly , and broad religious generalizations, I think it’s worth reading.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Interview with an ex-atheist

Anthony Flew was once a militant atheist, but is now a deist. Read about his impressions on the God debate in this interview.

QUOTE:



I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion.

*snip*

I have shortened this quote to be in line with Rule 4: You will not post "copyright-protected1" material in its entirety...

[Hokulele]

There was a thread on this right after it came out.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=97795

I am pretty sure this was the same article.

[Ron_Tomkins]

All I can respond to that man is:



"The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion."


What evidence?

[Rasmus]

Turtles all the way down.

[Macoy]

Some atheists are just not aware of exactly what it is that they do not believe in. They call 'sanity!' too early.

[Olowkow]

There is another thread on this:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=97795

It is kind of sad, but I think he has just forgotten the rationale that he once had for his beliefs. I agree, "what proof?" I still say, "so what?" Let the poor guy believe what he must. I don't quite agree with Richard Carrier's "intervention", though I do respect him.
If for instance, Robert Price, The Bible Geek, or Reggie Finley or Matt Dillahunty, all of whom I greatly admire, went this route, I would just say to myself that I wish them well...they had their greatness once. And then "I disagree".

(I forgot Dawkins, Hitchins, and Harris above)

[Macoy]

There is another thread on this:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=97795

It is kind of sad, but I think he has just forgotten the rationale that he once had for his beliefs. I agree, "what proof?" I still say, "so what?" Let the poor guy believe what he must. I don't quite agree with Richard Carrier's "intervention", though I do respect him.
If for instance, Robert Price, The Bible Geek, or Reggie Finley or Matt Dillahunty, all of whom I greatly admire, went this route, I would just say to myself that I wish them well...they had their greatness once. And then "I disagree".

(I forgot Dawkins, Hitchins, and Harris above)

It would seem that occasionally the young might successfully bully the older.

At the moment, my considered response would be:

"Wot you looking at?"*

*© scientologist simpson

[Beerina]

I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code.

"And therefore I believe a magical spirit magically generated the genetic code." :boggled: :rolleyes:


The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion.

While Dawkins' words are his own, I would have attributed it to "statistical inevitability".

Does that sound a little less like a magical being is needed?

[Wowbagger]

The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. Okay, so if you want to entertain ontological philosophies, that is your business, and I will not argue with you, as long as you continue to agree that they are only ontological. However...

The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. ...if that is your "best confirmation", you are going to need a new one. Richard Dawkins has stated he does NOT support the idea that life came about through lucky chance.

I do not have my copy of The God Delusion on me, at the moment. I will look into whether or not he actually used those words "lucky chance", and under what context, when I get home. But, in the meantime I will supply you with some phrases, from other sources, that seem to contradict the claim that this was his "best argument":
In his essay, "Light Will be Thrown", Dawkins states: Core Darwinism, I shall suggest, is the minimal theory that evolution is guided in adaptively nonrandom directions by the nonrandom survival of small random hereditary changes.

(Snip)

Mutations are, of course, caused by physical events, for instance, cosmic ray bombardment. When we call them random, we mean only that they are random with respect to adaptive improvement. Notice the utter lack of "random chance" in there.
In the preface of The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins writes: It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe. Take, for instance, the issue of 'chance', often dramatized as blind chance. The great majority of people that attack Darwinism leap with almost unseemly eagerness to the mistaken idea that there is nothing other than random chance in it... if you think that Darwinism is tantamount to chance, you'll obviously find it easy to refute Darwinism! One of my tasks will be to destroy this eagerly believed myth that Darwinism is a theory of 'chance'.


From The Edge, 2005: http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_6.html#dawkins :

I believe that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all 'design' anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection. It follows that design comes late in the universe, after a period of Darwinian evolution. Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.

I am sure there are other examples. But, that might suffice for now.

[Dogdoctor]

It's no big deal. It's not like this doesn't happen all the time. Even more so look at William Murray born an atheist and became a Christian. I know other atheists who became Christians. What's the big deal?

[Rasmus]

...if that is your "best confirmation", you are going to need a new one. Richard Dawkins has stated he does NOT support the idea that life came about through lucky chance.

He does.

I am just re-reading the god delusion and he certainly allows for the possibility that life came about by chance.

The first life, that is, the first, single self-replicating molecule. This may have happened by chance, by sheer dumb luck (though one would wonder who's luck it should have been, in that case.) But that one molecule, emerged possibly on just one of a billion billion planets (even though he thinks that number will be higher) would have had quite a good chance to have emerged at all, since a billion billion planets come up with quit ea lot of molecules over time.

And that one molecule would then instantly have been subject to evolution and natural selection rather than chance. After that first molecule, "chance" was no longer the driving force behind what has resulted in the biosphere we see today.

[WooWooVooDoo]

First Post so 'Hello' to you all.

I find this thread interesting mainly because it's the issue I struggle with the most as a skeptic & atheist.

Do I believe that life was created by the Christian version of 'God'? Nope. Never have.

Do I know how life was caused? Nope.

Evidence of evolution is plain to see.....evidence for how life itself was created is not so abundant.

A very religious friend of mine asked "what are the chances of life being created from nothing?"

My only reply was "100%.....just don't ask me how".

Does anyone have any evidence that shows life started from a primordial mix of basic chemical building blocks?

(If you've already covered this topic to death previously - feel free to point me at the appropriate thread.)

[skeptical]

This whole thing is rather silly. The problem with positing a deity "behind" the Universe is the same as it has always been: God needs more of an explanation than the Universe it is posited to explain. If the Universe requires a creator then so does the creator, and the creator's creator and so on. The question "who made God" is still more than a sufficient refutation to this nonsense.

That doesn't mean there is no God, but it does mean that this line of argument can in no way establish it to be reasonable to believe in one. Anthony Flew clearly knows or should know this, its pretty sad that he has slumped to such atrocious arguments. If "lucky chance" is a bad argument for life, it is an infinitely worse argument for God.

[skeptical]

A very religious friend of mine asked "what are the chances of life being created from nothing?"

My only reply was "100%.....just don't ask me how".

Ask your friend "what are the chances of God being created from nothing", since that is far more implausible.


Does anyone have any evidence that shows life started from a primordial mix of basic chemical building blocks?

(If you've already covered this topic to death previously - feel free to point me at the appropriate thread.)

Start here with post #866: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=95977

You can google "abiogenesis" for a lot more information. The bottom line is that the line of evidence is incomplete, but there is some evidence accompanied by a strong inference that mechanistic explanations are available for everything we see in nature based on past experience.

[WooWooVooDoo]

Thanks Skeptical.

I'll read the previous posts & see what's around on Google regarding "abiogenesis".