To this day, and in quarters where they should know better [I don't think he's referring to the jehovahs here!], Darwinism is widely regarded as a theory of "chance."This argument (from Chapter 3) is made more elaborately in Dawkins's most recent book, The God Delusion, which I recommended in January, when it came out in trade paperback format.
It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it couldn't work. You don't need to be a mathematician or physicist to calculate that an eye or a haemoglobin molecule would take from here to eternity to self-assemble by sheer higgledy-piggledy luck. Far from being a difficulty peculiar to Darwinism, the astronomic improbability of eyes and knees, enzymes and elbow joints, and the other living wonders is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve, and that Darwinism uniquely does solve. It solves it by breaking the improbability up into small, manageable parts, smearing out the luck needed, going round the back of Mount Improbable and crawling up the gentle slopes, inch by million-year inch....
The height of Mount Improbable stands for the combination of perfection and improbability that is epitomized in eyes and enzyme molecules...
...As we have seen, to invoke chance, on its own, as an explanation, is equivalent to vaulting from the bottom to the top of Mount Improbable's steepest cliff in one bound. And what corresponds to inching up the kindly, grassy slopes on the other side of the mountain? It is the slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants that Darwin called natural selection...It was Darwin's great achievement to discover the gentle gradients winding up the other side of the mountain. [pp. 77-79]
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
God didn't vault Adam and Eve to the top of the mountain
Richard Dawkins, after referring in his 1996 book, Climbing Mount Improbable, to "any number of Jehovah's Witnesses tracts [that] make the mistake of treating Darwinian natural selection as [a random process]," goes on to say:
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The publishers of Jehovah's Witnesses all understand that natural selection is the driving force behind Darwin's theory, working with the raw material supplied by mutation. They don't accept that as an adequate explanation for the diversity of life, but they all understand that to be the current theory.
ReplyDeleteSince a mutation is a misreplicating of a gene, an accident if you will, "chance" seems a not unfair word to describe it.
JW tracts that mention evolution don't necessarily go into the details of Darwinian theory. (Our books certainly do, however) Perhaps Dawkins just saw a few tracts.
But the other alternatives are more disquieting: Either his research is very spotty on a subject (us) of which he professes knowledge, or he is deliberately misrepresenting our views. And if he does it with one group, might he not do it with others? But perhaps we can charitably grant him the first option: he only saw a few tracts.
Hope you don't mind the observation, for old times' sake. If it was opinion, I'd let it be. But in this case, he is factually wrong about a subject with which I am familiar.
FYI: Aaltra....see it. Think a French and humorous version of Straight Story and you will be in the ballpark.
As a parable, I quote Bob Herbert's op-ed column, “Palin’s Alternate Universe,” in today's New York Times:
ReplyDeleteWhere is the evidence that Governor Palin even understands these complex and enormously challenging problems? During the debate she twice referred to General McKiernan as “McClellan.” Neither Ms. Ifill nor Senator Biden corrected her.
But after Senator Biden suggested that John McCain’s answer to the nation’s energy problems was to “drill, drill, drill,” Ms. Palin promptly pointed out, as if scoring a point, that “the chant is ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ ”
How’s that for perspective? The credit markets are frozen. Our top general in Afghanistan is dialing 911. Americans are losing jobs by the scores of thousands. And Sarah Palin is making sure we know that the chant is “drill, baby, drill!” not “drill, drill, drill.”