Dawkins - FISH!!!

[NotReady]

If Dawkins played poker the way the does philosophy and logic, I would be rich. Just a few quotes from a book review by Plantinga (long time and well respected philosophy prof at Notre Dame):

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Now despite the fact that this book is mainly philosophy, Dawkins is not a philosopher (he's a biologist). Even taking this into account, however, much of the philosophy he purveys is at best jejune. You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class. This, combined with the arrogant, smarter-than-thou tone of the book, can be annoying. I shall put irritation aside, however and do my best to take Dawkins' main argument seriously.


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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. The premise tells us, substantially, that there are no irrefutable objections to its being possible that unguided evolution has produced all of the wonders of the living world; the conclusion is that it is true that unguided evolution has indeed produced all of those wonders. The argument form seems to be something like

We know of no irrefutable objections to its being possible that p;
Therefore
p is true.

Philosophers sometimes propound invalid arguments (I've propounded a few myself); few of those arguments display the truly colossal distance between premise and conclusion sported by this one. I come into the departmental office and announce to the chairman that the dean has just authorized a $50,000 raise for me; naturally he wants to know why I think so. I tell him that we know of no irrefutable objections to its being possible that the dean has done that. My guess is he'd gently suggest that it is high time for me to retire.


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And this:

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Here there is much to say, but I'll say only a bit of it. First, suppose we land on an alien planet orbiting a distant star and discover machine-like objects that look and work just like tractors; our leader says "there must be intelligent beings on this planet who built those tractors." A first-year philosophy student on our expedition objects: "Hey, hold on a minute! You have explained nothing at all! Any intelligent life that designed those tractors would have to be at least as complex as they are." No doubt we'd tell him that a little learning is a dangerous thing and advise him to take the next rocket ship home and enroll in another philosophy course or two.


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Just a few samples - you should read the whole article.

If philosophy was a china shop, Dawkins would be a gargantuan bull.

[Sephus]

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If Dawkins played poker the way the does philosophy and logic

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If philosophy was a china shop, Dawkins would be a gargantuan bull.

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did you really write these?

[NotReady]

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did you really write these?


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Dang. Went to sleep for 5 minutes and the FSM appropriated my account. Sneaky little devil.

[soon2bepro]

how about actually quoting Dawkins and argumenting against that?

That would prove a huge failure, but you have too much class for that. This guy uses straw men arguments all over, and isn't even good at that.

[Rearden]

I would have expected an article in Christianity Today and someone from Notre Dame to be more fair and balanced....

... Just like Bill and Sean over at Faux News

Hate Dawkins or love him its a sham to distill volumes of respected scientific work into a few paragraphs of wobbly logic slamming him.

[SNOWBALL]

THOSE ARE NOT THE ARGUMENTS THAT DAWKINS USES

[David Sklansky]

Bottom Line. Both sides are morons.

Just because something COULD have evolved without interference from God doesn't mean it DID come about that way.

On the other hand just because we see examples of life that are not well explained by what we now know of evolution, doesn't mean we won't eventually find such an explanation.

[thylacine]

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..........Just a few quotes from a book review by Plantinga (long time and well respected philosophy prof at Notre Dame)..........

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I've seen Plantinga speak and I read one of his papers prior to the talk that purported to use mathematics to prove his claims, and the supposed fact that he could supposedly use mathematics properly was supposed to be one of his strengths that impressed people. But as a professional mathematician I could immediately see that his arguments were complete rubbish. It's pathetic that someone with such flaky arguments as Plantinga gets respect, and the fact that he does is clearly a result of widespread pro-religious bias, rather than any kind of actual merit.

[Magic_Man]

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I come into the departmental office and announce to the chairman that the dean has just authorized a $50,000 raise for me; naturally he wants to know why I think so. I tell him that we know of no irrefutable objections to its being possible that the dean has done that. My guess is he'd gently suggest that it is high time for me to retire.

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I find it laughable that someone who is claiming that another's logic is flawed used this analogy. In this case, you would simply CALL THE DEAN AND ASK HIM IF HE AUTHORIZED THE RAISE. You would then have irrefutable objections to the claim. Duh?

[arahant]

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Bottom Line. Both sides are morons.


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Have you considered creating a macro so that you could just paste this into every discussion?