Dawkins - FISH!!!

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Especially funny is this:

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The premise he argues for is something like this:

1. We know of no irrefutable objections to its being biologically possible that all of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes;

and Dawkins supports that premise by trying to refute objections to its being biologically possible that life has come to be that way. His conclusion, however, is

2. All of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes.

It's worth meditating, if only for a moment, on the striking distance, here, between premise and conclusion.

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I emailed Alvin Plantinga (the author of the book review) about this fallacy, asking for where Dawkins uses this argument. Here is his response:

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Yes, the argument is from *The Blind Watchmaker. In chapter 4 he argues that it
is biologically possible that all of life has come to be by unguided Darwinian
processes; there is also a bit of argument for that thesis in chapter 6, which
is mostly an argument for the conclusion that it is possible that life itself
came to be by similar processes. I Chap 6 he also refutes arguments for the
conclusion that the various forms of life could not have ariswin in that way.
There is no particular place where he draws the conclusion that in fact the
great variety of life *did* come to be by these means, but he says repeatedly
that it did and the subtitle of the book is "why the evidence of evolution
reveals a universe without design".


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and later after I asked permission to post his response to this thread, he writes:

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Sure, you are certain welcome to post that. (I was taking it for granted, in the review, that Dawkins actually had an argument, in TBW for the conclusion that the universe is undesigned, and wasn't merely asserting that the universe is undesigned, and claiming taht the evidence of evolution shows this, without telling us how it is supposedd to show this). if someone can find a different and better argument in the book, I'd be interested in hearing it.


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