Has Dawkins lost credibility?

[Dick Atkinson]

Not sure who you are arguing with, try the quote button next time


Sorry I had to leave your complete post as a whole because it is best described by the central phrase 'I am no expert'. I can't claim to be either, but I can follow a logical series of arguments and yours isn't. Try, as a starter, to choose a single point to debate, otherwise you lose the force of any argument in the noise level. And by the way we were discussing the credibility of Richard Dawkins not the human body.

I can't work that way - somebody challenges my points and I clarify. Articulett introduced the human body and its trillions of replicating cells all potentially contributing to evolution. In fact only four of my cells have done that - I have two sons and two daughters. That is an error of 12 orders of magnitude. That is absolutely RIGHT in the groove of the so called "information challenge".

That's a single point.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

And I'm widowed.

Oooof. I never knew this and would have taken a differnt tack in previous conversations if I had. And I definately will in the future (even though she has me on ignore).

Just a clarification:

There are people from all over the world on this forum.

There are also people in those disperate areas who don't live a normal 9-5 lifestyle.

for example.

 

[Acleron]

I was hoping you were going to clarify how you could say that evolution is not about progressive advancement. If life started out as something simpler than uni-cellular and progressed to self-aware organisms, in a mere span of ~10^9 years, then is that not "progressive advancement"? And if that is progressive advancement, why do you not attribute it to what we call "evolution"? I don't think it is typical that someone who takes stock in evolution, would emasculate it to the point it becomes merely about adaptation.

Perhaps we have different views on the meaning of 'progressive advancement'. To me the the phrase implies some external measuring stick that can be applied to a species. The most successful species in terms of their numbers are bacteria, ants are pretty good too. It is a misconception to believe that humans are the most advanced species, we may be more intelligent but we are not the fastest, numerous, largest etc. We are certainly not the pinnacle of evolution being merely a transient species like all the rest. The theory of evolution is not emasculated by throwing out a concept like progressive advancement, that is its glory, a simple mechanism that can produce the diversity we see today and in the past.

Of course, Darwin only addressed "origin of species" and that presumably begins with a huge myriad of DNA information to start with. He didn't theorize on what seeded the world with a beginning library of Terabytes of useful DNA. That question is merely out of scope, and from a scientific view, still is.
{snip}
When it comes to origins, we are all just guessing. It is out of scope for science to answer.

But it is not out of the scope of science. It is being investigated from the building blocks end e.g. the Miller Urey experiment, presence of adenine in galactic clouds etc, from the emergence of complexity, by the identification of the simplist replicating organism. This is a difficult area of science but that does not make it impossible.

That's really where my mind was when I made mention of randomness and how we attribute the appearance of all the things leading up to primordial life: matter, physical laws, even space-time itself. We have to invoke some kind of mental object that we call "randomness". We have something to talk about when we talk about rolling dice or the likelihood of a codon changing from an A to a G in a certain span of time. But we have no clue what mechanism lies at the basis of the timing of an emission of a subatomic particle. Surely there exists some cause of it. All we know is that it statistically produces a distribution or otherwise we could not assign a half-life value to it. It is not scientific, not in our current paradigm, to ask what kind of mechanism could give such perfect random timing. And why can we not detect the mechanism. So we ignore the hole in our knowledge and we pretend that it "just happens". BUT... it is on that huge vacancy in our understanding that the magic of where stuff comes from, stands.

But I don't have to know how an atom decides when to decay or how a nucleic acid base mutates to understand evolution, I just need to know it happens with a certain frequency under given conditions. Your points are interesting topics of research in themselves but irrelevant to our understanding of evolution.

 

[CFLarsen]

There are also people in those disperate areas who don't live a normal 9-5 lifestyle.

for example.

No, some live a 9-17 lifestyle.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

No, some live a 9-17 lifestyle.

Or a 23 to 7.

 

[sol invictus]

You didn't grasp the point about information. The thermodynamic definition you insist on is not relevant to genetics nor to information science.

<snip>

When Crick, Hoyle or Dawkins write about information, they are referring to something else, akin to language.

There's too much nonsense in this thread to make it worth participating, but I'll just point out that the above is completely wrong.

First of all, there's only one mathematical definition of information, and it's closely related to entropy in thermodynamics. Claude Shannon proved that in the 1940's, founding the discipline of information theory. I recommend reading his paper - it's absolutely beautiful.

Secondly, Dawkins knows that and it is what he means. A quick google search will verify that.

In general, I received these impressions from Lee Smolin's book (I think it was called The Trouble With Physics).

Since this is a forum for skeptics, you might try applying a little critical thinking. Are you aware of the fact that Smolin is a proponent of an alternative theory (one that is probably indistinguishable from string theory to the layperson), which suffers from all the same ills (being difficult to test, for example) only to a much greater degree, and is a direct competitor for resources and funding? I might add that (very much unlike string theory) it hasn't produced a single useful insight into math, particle physics, cosmology, or anything else.

Smolin is a scientific failure, so rather than do science he writes books to try to convince people he's a "seer" and deserves more funding.

 

[articulett]

Obviously. For all you know, I'm in Sri Lanka or Madagascar. If you go back and look at her posts over the last year, she has occasionally posted in the wee hours, USA Mountain Time which is her admitted location. I am very conscious of time zones and I notice things like that.

Pacific time. And I haven't posted in the wee hours lately because I get up early for teaching... though I do leave my computer on, and sometimes I'll post in the middle of the night. We returned to standard time on November 4-- a week later than they did in Europe.

 

[maxpower1227]

I'm just posting in here to say that even though I think(/fear) that Dawkins may be right about much (but certainly not all) of what he says, he is nevertheless an arrogant d****bag who I have no use for.

 

[Acleron]

I'm just posting in here to say that even though I think(/fear) that Dawkins may be right about much (but certainly not all) of what he says, he is nevertheless an arrogant d****bag who I have no use for.

Highly intelligent people often appear arrogant to those less enabled.

 

[maxpower1227]

Highly intelligent people often appear arrogant to those less enabled.

No, elitist, arrogant snobs do. I have no such problems with the likes of Einstein, Faraday, Edison, Planck, Hubble, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Newton, ... you get the idea.

Don't rush to an assumption on how "enabled" I am due to my opinion of Richard Dawkins.

 

[cyborg]

The only way people can formulate such opinions of Dawkins can be if they are actually unfamiliar with the man in toto.

 

[Roboramma]

No, elitist, arrogant snobs do. I have no such problems with the likes of Einstein, Faraday, Edison, Planck, Hubble, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Newton, ... you get the idea.

Have you read the writings of all of those people? From what I hear Newton was a bit of a "db".

Don't rush to an assumption on how "enabled" I am due to my opinion of Richard Dawkins.

Well, I don't, anyway. But I am surprised at it. I've seen Dawkins (or read him) a little more straightforward than I would have been, but I've never read anything that gives me an impression of arrogance. Do you have any examples?

 

[articulett]

I'm just posting in here to say that even though I think(/fear) that Dawkins may be right about much (but certainly not all) of what he says, he is nevertheless an arrogant d****bag who I have no use for.

I'd be much more interested in hearing Richard Dawkins opinions of people like you. I've never heard him speak like a Junior High School child regarding anyone's character. To me, those who call him arrogant, always sound so much more arrogant anything I've ever heard him say, and I am well acquainted with his works, speeches, etc. I suspect, that anything an atheist says is viewed with through some very biased lenses by the majority, while the opinion-spouter remains clueless to how very obnoxious and envious-of-Dawkins they sound.

 

[articulett]

To me, the arrogant dirtbags are the one's claiming, not only to know there is a god, but telling others they know what god wants! And all those folks claiming to somehow having tapped into "special truths" or "divine knowledge" via faith, feelings, or whatever. That is arrogant for those of us not trained in doublespeak.

 

[articulett]

No, elitist, arrogant snobs do. I have no such problems with the likes of Einstein, Faraday, Edison, Planck, Hubble, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Newton, ... you get the idea.

Don't rush to an assumption on how "enabled" I am due to my opinion of Richard Dawkins.

Ah... so don't judge you while you judge Dawkins, right?

Well, there aren't a plethora of quotes for those non-elist, non-arrogant, non-snob scientists available over the web, but there are quotes and video clips of Dawkins everywhere. Can you link us to a quote or clip where he sounds more arrogant than you did in your assessment of him?

 

[jjramsey]

With regards to his expertise in evolution, Dawkins hasn't lost credibility, but as Ed Brayton and Glenn Morton found out by getting access to the unedited tapes, Dawkins did screw up by providing a non-responsive answer, and he did show himself to be less than honest by not acknowledging this and instead claiming that it was the usual misleading editing from creationists. Or in Brayton's own words:

The simple fact is this...Dawkins got flustered because he realized they were creationists. He let it upset him, but he consented to go on with the interview, and they used the horrible answer that he gave. Yes, it makes him look bad, but that's his fault, not theirs. There is nothing dishonest about it other than the way he handled it. Rather than just admitting that he had a bad day and blew the answer, he protected his ego at the expense of his integrity. It should also be noted that he has since answered the question, and I think answered it quite well. I regard the question as an absurd one. But he should have pointed that out, and why, at the time and all of this could have been avoided. So that's it, the infamous Dawkins Incident. There is no truth to the rumor that the unedited video footage shows Stephen Jay Gould on the grassy knoll.

BTW, Brayton does the Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog.

 

[articulett]

The infamous pause has been used in multiple tapes from the dishonest creationist camp... he gave an excellent speech on this with examples at the Atheist Alliance convention-- available for viewing at richarddawkins.net or at youtube. I don't think anything he said regarding the topic can be construed as dishonest... he did answer, and the answer was edited out... the pause was left in, and is left to imply that Dawkins didn't know the answer. It was a question on par with "how far is it to the end of the earth"-- there is no quick answer for such a misguided question... especially not when asked by people you suddenly realize have very dishonest intent. Dawkins is eager to teach everybody what he knows-- with tons of evidence... he loves knowing this stuff and sharing it with others... he doesn't pretend to be the only one in the know-- I am convinced that everything he does is hyper scrutinized for "error" while the egregious actions of those trusted folks that are supposedly speaking on behalf of an invisible moral guide-- regularly get a pass to do the most dishonest, vile, objectionable stuff while people look the other way.

 

[jjramsey]

I don't think anything he said regarding the topic can be construed as dishonest... he did answer, and the answer was edited out... the pause was left in, and is left to imply that Dawkins didn't know the answer.

No, articulett, the problem is that Dawkins' answer wasn't edited out. That's what Brayton found out. Surprisingly enough, the bad answer that the creationists showed was the bad answer that Dawkins gave.

 

[Dunstan]

No, articulett, the problem is that Dawkins' answer wasn't edited out. That's what Brayton found out. Surprisingly enough, the bad answer that the creationists showed was the bad answer that Dawkins gave.

Although I realize this happened in a recorded interview rather than a debate, this incident still demonstrates another reason why debating creationists is a mug's game. Even a biologist of Dawkins' credentials and experience in public speaking will make the occasional verbal gaffe or weak answer, and when it happens, creationists will milk it for years, and claim that it is evidence against evolution generally rather than of a debating mistake. It's not good enough to be at the top of your game 99.9% of the time, and no human being is going to top that.

 

[articulett]

No, articulett, the problem is that Dawkins' answer wasn't edited out. That's what Brayton found out. Surprisingly enough, the bad answer that the creationists showed was the bad answer that Dawkins gave.

In the clips that I've seen-- the answer is not shown at all... just the pause... and it's used in several different clips-- with different questions asked... I didn't see any clip where any answer was provided-- maybe the OP linked such a clip. I have however seen several clips from creationists where no answer is shown at all... and some even where different questions are asked and Dawkins' pause inserted. The understanding of most creationists who observe that clip (as was intended) was that Dawkins' didn't know the answer-- had Dawkins not paused, I'm sure that whatever answer he did give would not be remembered or recognized... it's a bad question.

I am sure, that like myself, most people viewed clips involving no answer at all... just the pause and it's inference. To make Dawkins sound dishonest when he accurately reflects the clips I saw in comparison to the dishonesty of the creationists, amazes me. To repeat, the clips I saw had no answer at all... I suspect this is true of the clip that most people have seen.

You are free to cut and paste the words of Dawkins being dishonest compared to the link of the actual show as aired... to support your viewpoint. I find that those accusing Dawkins of dishonesty are a little more dishonest than he is when the facts are examined. I have not heard Dawkins like with facts or inferences... I don't even hear him mispeak very often... I am well aware of creationists and their dishonest inferences which they will insist are not "lies".
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html

Perhaps rationalists have a different view of what is and isn't honest just like some of us clearly have different views about what is and isn't arrogant.