The Dawkins DelusionDoes Richard Dawkins exist? Many people…

SONG OF MYSELF	"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could have only proceeded from an intelligent and powerful being...eternal and infinite...he governs all things." -Sir Issac Newton

SONG OF MYSELF

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could have only proceeded from an intelligent and powerful being...eternal and infinite...he governs all things." -Sir Issac Newton

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Posted by: GOODGREYPOET Original: 2/6/2007 1:03 AM Comments: 144 eProps: 64 Read Comments Post a Comment Back to Your Xanga Site

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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The Dawkins Delusion

Does Richard Dawkins exist? Many people would say yes. But Dr. Terry Tommyrot thinks otherwise. Following on the heels of last year's bestseller The God Delusion, comes the stunning sequel that is taking the scientific community by storm: The Dawkins Delusion. In a revealing interview, English biologist Dr. Tommyrot explains how belief in Richard Dawkins is, in fact, a harmful delusion, and how it can be explained scientifically. More specifically, Tommyrot explains how the complex patterns of language found in Dawkins' books are best explained by natural evolutionary processes and that "claiming that Dawkins did it puts an end to an inquiry that promises to give us a satisfying explanation of how these books came to be, without the need for invoking a superstitous Dawkins-of-the-Gaps hypothesis." Furthemore, Tommyrot argues that invoking some mysterious Dawkins to explain the design found within these books gets us nowhere, because it only raises more questions: "If Dawkins designed the books, then who designed Dawkins?"

Posted 2/6/2007 1:03 AM - 144 comments

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Funny stuff.

Posted 2/6/2007 1:58 AM by Da__Vinci

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Quite amusing, to say the least.

Posted 2/6/2007 2:28 AM by J05HUA - reply

The comparison of Dawkins to God, as well as the point they are trying to make, is actually pretty stupid.

Posted 2/6/2007 10:47 AM by prettyinpink42 - reply

Hahahah! Good stuff.

Posted 2/6/2007 5:06 PM by Rustophilus

- reply

"The comparison of Dawkins to God, as well as the point they are trying to make, is actually pretty stupid."
Please expand on that...

Posted 2/6/2007 7:03 PM by CormackMcKinney - reply

Finally!

Posted 2/6/2007 7:43 PM by LifeNeedsProtection

- reply

Briefly Cormack, noone is proclaiming that Dawkins created the world; however, you guys are proclaiming that God created the world. So if you mock someone that says "I dont' think God exists therefore did not create the earth" by saying "by that own logic you don't exist!" it makes you look stupid because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Furthermore, Dawkins is a person, just like you and I, and a pubilc figure, and we are aware of his existance (especially if you see him speak, etc). If he doesn't exist, then we don't exist (but lets not get into that discussion). However God is invisible and, considering the different kinds of religions, isn't always concrete in his revelations. Comparing God to a human is putting them on the same level, essentially.

Just a thought.

Posted 2/6/2007 11:02 PM by prettyinpink42 - reply

Comparing Dawking to your "God" makes comparisons between Dawkins and your "God". It means that you think of some sort of analogy here... even if extremely crude. In some way that puts Dawkins and "God" on the same level. Even if that level consists of saying that you believe Dawkins (mistakenly) thinks he has the same authority/power/etc. as your "God", you've still put your "God" and Dawkins on the same level by comparing them. So, I don't see any reason to "trust" your "God", when it's obviously the case that "Dawkins IS Dawkins".

Posted 2/7/2007 12:14 AM by Spoonwood - reply

I have to agree with Kate. I would say it would have been funny if the point it was trying to make wasn't so stupid. Why? Because Dawkins objectively can be proven to exist, etc. We have pictures and vidoes, etc. The fact is, no, Dawkins did not write those books people have that they read of him. They are produced by a printing press. In fact, we don't know if Dawkins did write everything in those books. Something could have been added or altered by an editor or maybe someone else completely wrote it with his input. Does any of this matter? No. But comparing him to God is absurd. There is no proof of God, nothing objective and the claims that the original works was written by God or the authors were "controlled by God" is absurd and then believe through editing and translation and lots of time that God's book (the Bible) is still the same as the original is absurd. Regardless, that neither matters either. The Bible is not proof of God, and there is no proof or reason to believe in God. However, we experience every day what we have come to claim as objective for the reasons that define it as objective. There is nothing objective, rational or experiential about God, period. If you have evidence to counter that, then by all means.

Posted 2/7/2007 12:53 AM by darkwolfofvoid - reply

ROFLOL totally cool dude... In my favourite game, YuGiOh, the card you just played is called "CopyCat".

Posted 2/7/2007 4:07 AM by mykid2 - reply

Once again theists resort to denying the obvious in order to uphold their dubious epistemology. Bravo.

ARU

Posted 2/7/2007 6:39 AM by Agnostics_R_Us

- reply

That's funny.

By the way darkwolfofvoid, techinically you cant prove that Dawkins exists. Unless you can prove that there is a higher power than your own conscious, it is imppossible to prove that anyone else exists.

Spoon wood "Comparing Dawking to your "God" makes comparisons between Dawkins and your "God".", Um, yeah, and your point is? Compairing two things usually makes comparisons between the two of them, it's kind of in the deffinition of the word.

Posted 2/7/2007 8:34 AM by leann2712 - reply

I think one valid point that pink and wolf have raised is that the analogy is slightly tighter between the historical truth of the man Richard Dawkins and the historical truth of the man Jesus Christ. (From which, of course, the existence of God becomes obvious). However, there are also some valid points in the analogy between Dawkins and God (the Father) Himself, such as the "who designed the designer" canard, the Humean "can't believe improbable things" canard, etc.

Posted 2/7/2007 9:29 AM by tim223

- reply

[Spoon wood "Comparing Dawking to your "God" makes comparisons between Dawkins and your "God".", Um, yeah, and your point is?]
     I have more than one point here. One of them I can state as follows: Let's suppose your "God" exists. Well, then obviously that "God" is unique, and there exist statements like "you shall have no other gods before me," and "you shall not make graven images unto the lord."  Comparing Dawkins to your "God" gives your "God" a sort of image implicitly and/or does something like putting a "god" before your "God". Get it? It's called blasphemy . There might exist otherwise comparing Dawkins to your "God" easily qualifies as blasphemy also.
     The comparison also implicitly gives far too much credit to Dawkins. Supposing your "God" real, Dawkins simply doesn't exist on the same plane as your "God" for all parties involved, including Dawkins. So, it's deliberate distortion of what Richard Dawkins is actually like or even can be like. It's also likewise distortion of what your "God" is like. Again, it's blasphemy . I really should qualify that if it were a serious comparison it's blasphemous.
     Of course it's not. It's no more serious than Stephen Colbert and his mocking of Bill O'Reilly and George Bush. And if taken that way such a comparison just works as joke, which is fine enough. But, sometimes people take such humor as indicating truths (some people actually think humor works, because it subtly indicates truths). If taken as indicating truths even implicitly , then the comparsion simply qualifies as absurd.

[I think one valid point that pink and wolf have raised is that the analogy is slightly tighter between the historical truth of the man Richard Dawkins and the historical truth of the man Jesus Christ.]
     Nowhere close to sufficiently tighter since Dawkins exists and has gotten empirically observed in the present world of 2006, as opposed to a historically inferred figure.

[ However, there are also some valid points in the analogy between Dawkins and God (the Father) Himself, such as the "who designed the designer" canard, the Humean "can't believe improbable things" canard, etc.]
     See, now you're interpretating the post as having "points", i.e. it has implicit "truth statements" to it. Again, if you do so you've put Dawkins on the same level as your "God". Simply put that profanes your "God"... it's blasphemy.

Posted 2/7/2007 12:22 PM by Spoonwood - reply

I can't prove he exists? I guess you could also say I can't prove that a rock exists, but come here and let me hit you with one and we'll see what you call that. The fact is, no, we cannot assert with absolute certainty that anything exists because all of this "reality" could just as well be The Matrix. That is beside the point, it is moot, it is pointless. We have something called objectivity which is a property of something that it is consistent regardless of interpretation. For instance, that rock is a rock regardless of what someone wants to consider it. Likewise, you and I are assumed to exist due to the same consistency. The only person who can say such consistency of the universe is fallacious is someone who has either a) a mystical experience that lends itself to a supposed supernatural experience or b) you're psychologically nuts. In either case, they are both individualized experiences which have absolutely no bearing on the objectivity that everyone else experiences. Therefore, they do not invalidate the usage of objectivity. Therefore, to say I can't prove something is to say I cannot show it is objective. I don't need to prove anything absolutely because such a proof is impossible in what we consider reality. However, if you wish to say you don't have to prescribe to such a reality, then fine you're insane. If you do prescribe, as everyone does, to this natural world we live in then you have to agree upon objectivity and the methods used to understand them (science eh?). Unless you came out of the womb experiencing the world saying "god made me, I love god, blah blah blah" then no, you came out and experienced the world as all of us do and we live in a natural world with some things objective and other things we take as subjective. But to say you cannot utilize objectivity because it counters your insane subjective beliefs (god) makes you a blatant idiot.

Posted 2/7/2007 12:23 PM by darkwolfofvoid - reply

lol...some people can even make a debate out of a joke. Its A JOKE people. You know...ha ha funny. Sheesh! Personally, I find this video funny because anyone who has ever heard Dawkins speak will immediately recognize that Dr. Tommyrot sounds almost exactly like him. Not to mention he epitomizes the arrogance and smug sense of superiority that Dawkins projects.

[By the way darkwolfofvoid, techinically you cant prove that Dawkins exists.]

I agree with you. All of our knowledge comes from our own sense experiences and as everyone knows, our senses can deceive us. Some people claim to have seen Dawkins and that Dawkins is the intelligence behind the intricate patterns of language found in books such as The Devil's Chaplain and The God Delusion. But how can we know that with 100% certainty? Has anyone here ever directly observed Dawkins writing these books? Sure, they appear to be the product of an intelligent mind who purposefully arranged the letters into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into paragraphs in order to communicate information (kinda like DNA huh?). Still, to assume that Dawkins wrote these books when none of us have ever actually observed it firsthand constitutes the Dawkins-of-the-Gaps fallacy. I'm sure that if we just give science enough time it will eventually be able to explain how these books came to be via natural evolutionary processes. Invoking Dawkins to explain them clearly violates Occam's Razor by introducing an intelligent entity that is not necessary to explain the information found in these books! After all, if natural processes can account for the much much more complex patterns of information found in human DNA then certainly it can account for the less complex patterns of information found in these books. Right?

Posted 2/7/2007 1:50 PM by GOODGREYPOET - reply

MyKid:

[ROFLOL totally cool dude... In my favourite game, YuGiOh, the card you just played is called "CopyCat".]

I guess you could call it that, from a YuGiOh perspective. As a literature major I call it a burlesque.

ARU:

[Once again theists resort to denying the obvious in order to uphold their dubious epistemology.]

What you consider to be "obvious" some of us are not so certain about. After all, how can you know that Dawkins really wrote the books attributed to him if you weren't there to observe him wrting them? Isn't it possible that the intricate patterns of language present in these books is merely the result of random chance and blind natural processes? Furthremore, wouldn't this explanation be more consistent with Occam's Razor than invoking an unecessary entity called a "Dawkins"?

Posted 2/7/2007 4:08 PM by GOODGREYPOET - reply

All of our knowledge comes from our own sense experiences and as everyone knows, our senses can deceive us.

And you completely remove the fact we have shared experiences. What do you think science is? We utilize objectivity and group consistent behavior and analysis to see what does not contradict or be inconsistent. Unless you just blatantly say "all these people analyzing x and showing its objective is BS and can be manipulated and never corrected or is fooled" then we have to agree, as I stated before, we have objective truths relative to our knowledge base which is evaluated and re-evaluated and improved and adapted so we have no or little false assumptions and instead produce new truths based on true assumptions. As I said previously the absolute base will always be on faith, faith for naturalism and science is that of empiricism, which unless you came into this world rejecting naturalism then you have always accepted these facts and only later consciously rejected them or replaced them or supplemented them with more faiths which all of us here reject because there is no basis for it. At least the one we all agree on has objectivity (consistency) and therefore can be viewed and experienced consistently by all of us.

Posted 2/7/2007 4:08 PM by darkwolfofvoid - reply

darkwolf:

[And you completely remove the fact we have shared experiences.]

I'm not denying the importanc of shared experience. After all, thousands of people worldwide have had the shared experience of being abducted by extra-terrestrials. Thousands of people have witnessed appearances of the virgin Mary, our lady of Fatima. Do these shared experiences make the existence of ETs and the virgin Mary objectively true? By your logic it sure seems to.

[Unless you just blatantly say "all these people analyzing x and showing its objective is BS and can be manipulated and never corrected or is fooled" then we have to agree, as I stated before, we have objective truths]

Again, if "shared experiences" qualify as objective truth, then the existence of ETs and the virgin Mary are objectively true.

Posted 2/7/2007 4:20 PM by GOODGREYPOET - reply

Well while we're all just joking, I guess you at least prove that intelligent beings existing who are capable of writing a decent argument is not as normative a claim as we'd generally like to rightly infer on minimal evidence. ;)

ARU

Posted 2/7/2007 4:31 PM by Agnostics_R_Us

- reply

I didn't say Shared Experience == Objective Truth. That would be absurd. I am saying consistent and empirical experiences that are shared and that carry with them objectivity are what we consider to be real experiences. That is an over-simplified analysis, but it does point in the right direction.

Lets put it this way. If X is objective then it is consistently experienced in its objective qualities. If person A experiences X, we do not know if X is real. However, if multiple people experience X and it consistently is still objective then it should be considered most certainly real. However, the first if-then needs to be proven. How is that done? Through consistent experience and testing and a knowledge base. Shared experience alone is meaningless without the analysis which stipulates from the knowledge base. When we are born we start experiencing things and continue to experience things and if x, y and z consistently are the same then we believe that x,y and z are real and later we learn to discriminate between the qualities of x, y and z and through socialization and abstraction we ultimately develop into the adult humans we are with shared experience that our x, y and z are real and our discrimination between them that is objective is real (because the subjective qualities are pointless to discuss in this analysis). You have basically said "our senses can be deceiving" well that's fine, but then that person's contribution to the shared knowledge base that is developed is moot and removed because it is not a problem with x,y and z but a problem with that person.

Posted 2/7/2007 4:43 PM by darkwolfofvoid - reply

So yeah, a lot of people claim to have experience alien abduction but there is nothing objective they have in that claim. Therefore, they contribute nothing and their claims are not taken seriously. Likewise, claims of the Bible and of God are in the same boat and are not objective and should not (and by a lot -- are not) be taken seriously. Hence, a lot of us here have laughed at your claims .. which most were serious, we take them as jokes. Ironic we take your joke seriously ;)

Posted 2/7/2007 4:45 PM by darkwolfofvoid - reply

Dawkins is just somebody that people come up with to protect their minds from things they don't understand.

Posted 2/7/2007 4:46 PM by Daveyh8 - reply

Hi darkwolfofvoid,

You've been talking a lot about "objectivity". You even talked about "consistent and empirical experiences that are shared and that carry with them objectivity." But you said that an experience being "shared" in and of itself doesn't make it "objective."

This makes me very curious. What precisely is this "objectivity" you're referring to and how can it be possessed intrinsically or "carried" along with an experience?

For example, consider these several experience claims. Which ones would you consider to be "objective", and why?

1. "I have seen Dawkins and shaken his hand."

2. "I have been abducted by aliens who took me up in a blue ship, interrogated me, then put me down on earth again."

3. "I saw Julius Caesar cross the Rubicon with his army."

4. "I saw and talked with Jesus of Nazareth tonight on the road to Emmaus, three days after he was crucified and buried."

The reason I'm asking about this is that I would like to make sure that we are being careful and consistent in our definitions of what is "objective", etc, so that we're not reasoning circularly and/or ruling out a priori any possible options which ought not logically to be ruled out. For example, if I were to say, "Any piece of so-called 'evidence' relative to 'God' is automatically subjective rather than objective", and if I were to then say, "Since there is no objective evidence supporting the existence of God, I am justified in believing that He does not exist", that would be a clear example of circular reasoning.

Posted 2/7/2007 6:11 PM by tim223

- reply

None of those claims are objective in and of themselves. They do not carry any objective quantification, nor are they objects. I can say whatever I bloody well please, but simply because I say it does not make it objectively real. However, if there is some kind of reference to an objective knowledge base (such as, Dawkins parents were found to be real and they had a child named Dawkins) then we can assume the claim carries objectivity. However, that requires it to have already been objectively found out that Dawkins exists, therefore the claim that person x shook his hand could be real (the conditions of that event have more than one object). But a claim is not objective. A claim is a claim. Objectivity has to do with objects. Therefore if I make a claim about x, y and z then as I said it carries with it some objectivity I am talking about the objects themselves x, y and z.

In your examples for those claims of things we do not consider objective need proof of their objective existence. Dawkins has that. He is not a conspiracy. He has birth records, and a credit history and videos and pictures and countless eye witnesses. This is evidence. Just like I can proof this rock I have exists if I smack you with it. I can prove I exist to you by smacking you.

But where does objectivity come from? Does not the individual who has that experience and believes it to be real (because of their personal empiricism) actually claim it objectively? Of course they do, unless they're irrational. However, that experience alone does not make anything real since they could also be insane! It is upon comparison with external consistent empiricism that we can see hey, object x is consistently object x for all n where n are the people who have or can experience it. Subjective things are subjects and if something we can call "object" x is only considered an object by person A but everyone besides A experiences it as object y then person A is simply wrong and inconsistent. This would mean there is something wrong with person A. Going further with the possible comparisons we have actual subjects. Say person(s) A see it as object x but everyone else sees it as subject x1, x2,...,xn for all n that are the other people who realize it's subjective.

As for your last statement, I have never and could not ever posit some kind of logic to disprove God. We are all agnostic in that sense. However, given what we do know, what our knowledge base offers us about the universe and what we can rationally suppose. The supposition that God exists or has any amount of certainty or even has any kind of likeliness is absolutely absurd. God is nothing more than a "God of the gaps" since he only lives in the margins of what we know and those margins have shrunk considerably for the past 2000 years. It's time for God to Go! Not off of logic, simply because it is insane and absurd from any rational standpoint.

Posted 2/7/2007 7:43 PM by darkwolfofvoid - reply

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