I just finished watching this video, so you don’t have to. Contained in it is a motley collection of unsubstantiated claims, irrational homage to ignorance, and an impressive display of hubris by one Professor Dawkins

 

Watching the video, I tried to take some notes for discussion. While I captured some of the quotes from Dawkins, there’s more than enough irrational rubbish spouted by the good doctor to fill up a shelf at the local library with his contradictions. Dr. Dawkins’ words are highlighted in red.

As you read through this (or watch the video) keep in mind Dawkins signature quote,

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference

It is a bold and unsubstantiated claim, but THAT is his epistemic foundation. From this purposeless universe, Dawkins somehow conjures up purpose. From this amoral universe, Dawkins somehow judges religion as arrogant. From this pitiless universe, Dawkins manages to create meaning in empiricistic efforts, and from the indifferent universe, he produces eloquence and courage and a TON OF MONEY from his speaking fees.

Interesting note, one can join the Dawkins’ groupie cult with an annual donation of a cool half million American greenbacks $$$$$$$$$$$

Dawkins begins his diatribe by lumping all theism into a single category and throughout the video calls them “arrogant, hubristic, full of presumptuous precision“.

An understanding of modern Darwinism should arm us with courage to fight (what I shall demonstrate) is the hubris of faith

During the Q&A time, I would have loved to have asked Dr. Dawkins, “For the accidental aggregation of stardust in a purposeless universe, with no good, no evil, just blind pitiless indifference, WHAT is arrogance? What is hubris?” There’s just no coming back from his starting point to him giving a rational answer.

We don’t yet have an agreed theory of how the evolutionary theory began in the 1st place.

No kidding. Yet throughout, he tells us the science is settled…and “Those questions have now been definitively answered once and for all by Darwin and his successors”

Nobody knows how the universe must have began

He follows up these quotes with “Theologians invoke the God-of-the-gaps at every opportunity” without realizing how he was firing blanks from his own naturalism-of-the-gaps firearm.

Without letting up on the hypocrisy, Dawkins mocks Islam from 4:40-9:10 and with the sweeping generalization fallacy declares all religion as pointless

How can people bear to live their lives bound by such insanely specific and bossy yet manifestly pointless rules?

Those were magnificently rich words coming from the guy who says the universe is purposeless.

Dawkins then leaves his perceived area of safety, biology, and stumbles blindly into philosophy and morality by saying

It’s not hubristic to state known facts when the evidence is secure. Yes, yes, philosophers of science tell us that a fact is no more than a hypothesis which may 1 day be falsified, but which has so far withstood strenuous attempts to do so. Let’s by all means pay lip service to that philosophical incantation. But muttering at the same time in homage perhaps to Galileo’s [LATIN] the sensible words of Stephen J Gould “In science fact can only mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional ascent.”

So, what is a fact? He claims it to be like phlogiston, and flat earth, and blood letting, and geocentrism…the current best guess. It’s clear that Dawkins does not understand that science is built upon the philosophy of logic, truth, morality, and induction. These foundational entities are unchanging, abstract, and universal. If like Carl Sagan said, “The cosmos is all that is, or was, or ever will be” then how does the naturalist justify unchanging abstract absolutes? They cannot. To do so, they would have to reject their own presuppositions and argue like a Christian, who can substantiate unchanging abstract absolutes with the immutable, transcendent, absolute Creator. Continuing, Dawkins quotes Gould, who invokes the idea of perversity. How does one determine something to be perverse in a universe with no good and no evil? The contradictions are building up!

But that does not stop him from declaring, without reservation, irrefutable facts:

The universe began between 13-14 billion years ago

Really? What calibration techniques (besides presumptuous extrapolation) can one use to verify this claim? What about recent claims that the universe is now over TWO billion years younger than Dawkins’ FACT claim? Uh-oh. Now that there are competing FACTS. To which arbiter of truth do these naturalists turn in order to solve their 2,300,000,000 year disagreement?

The sun and the planets orbiting it (including ours) condensed out of a rotating disk of gas, dust and debris about 4.5 billion years ago

Really? What calibration techniques (besides presumptuous extrapolation) can one use to verify this claim? What about all of the evidence that limits the earth to being younger than 100,000 years?

We know the shape of the continents and where they were at any named time in geological history and we can project ahead and draw the map of the world as it will change in the future

I’d be very interested in hearing how he would confirm this claim? He speaks of the hubris of religion, but verifying a claim of this magnitude reeks of…what did Dawkins say earlier? Presumptuous precision. It was easy for him to cast this judgment on those with whom he disagrees, but when he invokes presumptuous precision in his own claims, he feels irrationally justified.

As a reminder, Dawkins claims

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference

But he persists on in his inconsistency and word-smithing with:

Yet somehow the emergent power of our evolved brains has enabled us to develop the crystalline edifice of mathematics by which we accurately predict the behavior of entities that lie under the radar of our intuitive comprehension

Emergent power? Is that science or story-telling? What mechanism drives and fuels emergent power? Why does Dawkins expect the discovered properties of mathematics to be unchanging, abstract, and absolute in a constantly changing chaotic cosmos made only of matter? Adding to the irrational difficulties of the evolved brain which Dawkins praises, Charles Darwin (in his autobiography) was much less trusting of the reasoning power of the brain if it did indeed evolve from non-reasoning of the “lowest animals”

We are not arrogant not hubristic to celebrate the sheer bulk and detail of what we know through science. We are simply telling the honest and irrefutable truth. And honest as I’ve said is the frank admission of how much we don’t yet know

Whoa! Dawkins, you’ve straying outside your naturalistic boundaries again into the uncharted waters of philosophy and morality.  “Honest and irrefutable truth” ????!?!?! Didn’t you remind us earlier that facts are simply the best guesses or today that will undoubtedly be panned by future scientists? And what is honesty for the evolved descendants of algae? He’s now singing the praises of ignorance, but he irrationally has said in other speeches that Christians are the ones, who should be mocked.

What are the DEEP Problems for us:
How does the brain physiology produce subjective consciousness?
Where do the laws of physics come from?
What set the fundamental constants and why do they appear fine tuned to produce us?
Why is there something rather than nothing?

Those are deep problems for naturalism indeed. For those with a Christian worldview, these issues are not problems at all, because God has revealed Himself in creation, in the Bible, and in Jesus. So since the One, who knows everything and is eternally faithful, has revealed some history to us, we can be certain of the answers to the questions that his revelation answers. No interpretations of modern paradigms have higher authority that God’s revelation.

The human mind (including my own) rebels emotionally against the idea that something as complex as life and the rest of the expanding universe could have just happened. It takes intellectual courage to kick yourself out of your emotional incredulity and persuade yourself that there is no other rational choice…Which is more probable, the impossible has really happened or that the conjurer has fooled you. You don’t have to understand how the trick was done in order to take the courageous leap of reason and say hard as it is to swallow, I know it’s only a trick. The laws of physics are secure.

The human mind rebels in several ways:

• The human mind rebels against the Creator. Being born into sin, the human mind wants very much to be its OWN authority in the rightful place of the Supreme Monarch, Jesus! But through humble repentance, the human mind can instead embrace reality and worship the Creator rather than the created.
• The human mind does indeed rebel against the idea that the universe, life, and consciousness emerged from nothing. Dawkins joins Richard Lewontin in refusing to accept the mountains of evidence for God and instead choosing philosophically to suppress the knowledge of God. Confirmation of Romans 1

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism…Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door – Richard Lewontin

Finally, Dawkins claims that even though he cannot justify the very foundations of science, scientism is the ONLY means for answering deep questions:

If science…can’t answer the deep questions, then nothing can

If you interact with atheists long enough, and you’ll hear them say, “Atheism makes no claims. It’s not a worldview. It is simply: a lack of beliefs in a God.”

To that, I have a few things to say: A rock as a lack of belief in God. Algae has a lack of belief in God. So, it means nothing to say that atheism is a lack of belief in God.

Secondly, Romans 1 tells us that everyone has knowledge of the Creator, but in their unrighteousness, they suppress the truth.

And thirdly, the high priest of Darwin, Richard Dawkins claims atheism to be a worldview:

The contrast between religion and atheism: I want to argue that the atheistic worldview has an unsung virtue of intellectual courage. 

Now, he still cannot account for courage, intellect, or the laws of logic by which he could contrast religion and atheism, but he understands that atheism is a worldview. It’s just a bad one.

 

Dawkins has heard the gospel of Jesus, but he has rejected it. He now leads the deception of others that naturalism can account for reality in the rightful place of the Holy One. He is to be pitied.

Since we can trust what God has revealed to us about history (and HE has confirmed his historical revelation in the person of Jesus), we can be sure of what God has claimed about the future: hope, peace, and rest for those who humbly repent of their rebellion against the Holy One. Praise God for his amazing grace!!!