ATHEIST DAWKINS MAKES A CASE FOR INTELLIGENT DESIGN

By Dr. John Juedes

 DAWKINS' LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH "SKYHOOKS"

Dawkins ridicules everyone who thinks that the extremely complex life on earth could have been created in complete form. He calls this a "skyhook," that suddenly delivers the complex "building" of life. To him, this idea is impossible because it postulates a  designer who is even more complex than the building.

Dawkins lobbies for a "crane" instead of a skyhook. A crane, like Darwinian evolution, assembles the complex building one very small piece at a time over millions of years.

But in reality, Dawkins uses the skyhook hypothesis to fill the gaps in his evolutionary story whenever he can find no crane to do the job.

Of course, Dawkins does not call it skyhook when he uses one, since this would make his contradiction too obvious.

FOUR GAPS IN DAWKINS EVOLUTIONARY STORY

Dawkins admits to four gaps in his story of the evolution of the world by tiny increments over millions of years. His problem is that Darwinian theory seems to work for the development of life after it is already established in complex form, but cannot account for either the origin of life or origin of a universe which is friendly to life.

The four gaps in Dawkins' story are actually so large they amount to chasms the size of interplanetary distances rather than crane-sized gaps.

The four chasms Dawkins admits to are: the first appearance of the self-replicating eucaryotic cell (The God Delusion [TGD], pp. 168-169) which makes life possible, human consciousness and the origin of the universe with the precise parameters necessary for life to exist. Each of these elements is extremely complex in itself, and doesn't allow for any mechanism to build it one tiny piece at a time over millions of years in the Darwinian way.

SCIENCE OR "SHEER LUCK?"

Dawkins addresses the origin of life very briefly. He does not describe how very complex even simple life would have to be, and contradicts himself about how improbable its accidental appearance would be. In one place he says it "may be improbable," suggesting the first life may actually be probable- and high likelihood. A few sentences later he calls it "sheer luck" (TGD, p. 168).

Dawkins emphasizes in his preface that all his statements are based on solid evidence and fact: "My passion is based on evidence. Theirs, flying in the face of evidence as it does, is truly fundamentalist" (TGD p. 19). But on the most critical issues, he abandons any hope of presenting g evidence, and instead explicitly resorts to "sheer luck" and "major infusions of luck" (p. 169).

While his forthrightness is admirable, it is ridiculous-- or a lie-- to claim his beliefs are based on evidence.

Dawkins never asks an important question: why have scientists never produced life from nonliving materials under ideal lab conditions when the best evolution scenarios of the accidental occurrence of life postulate far less than ideal conditions? The Frankenstein and Dawkin idea of the creation of life remains fiction.

GOD OF THE GAPS OR SHEER LUCK OF THE GAPS?

Dawkins criticizes people who point to a gap in scientific evidence for evolution and say that God filled the gap by His intervention. Dawkins replaces this "God of the gaps" with his "sheer luck of the gaps." He pulls out luck whenever complexity and improbability hit proportions that are astronomical even by his standards.

Each human cell contains DNA with 3.1 billion letters spread across 24 chromosomes. The DNA includes 20,000 - 25,000 protein-encoding genes. (The Language of God, Francis Collins, p. 168) Although a roundworm with just 959 cells is much less complex that a human, the gene count is similar, not drastically simpler. Dawkins' claim that the complex code for life could suddenly appear by random collection of elements that just happened to be in the ideal place at the same time and interact in the ideal way and be able to replicate repeatedly without dying first makes even "sheer luck" implausible.

The second gap Dawkins admits to is the appearance of an eucaryotic cell. Life is extremely vulnerable. It needs to have usable elements concentrated in a small secure place, protected from danger and dilution by a membrane which is permeable enough to let nutrients in while letting wastes out. Dawkins refers to a book about the problem of the cell, The Cooperative Gene by Mark Ridley. But conveniently does not describe the magnitude of the problem or the improbability of its spontaneous appearance. Dawkins even seems upset that Ridley describes the huge problem the theory of evolution faces in the cell, a problem Dawkins would prefer to keep unknown. Dawkins calls on sheer luck of the gaps to step in.

The third unexplainable chasm Dawkins admits to is the appearance of human consciousness. Humans can understand they are separate from others, can think, evaluate themselves and others, and all operate by some version of a universal moral law that discerns good and bad, right and wrong, shame and punishment. Again, there is no Darwinian crane to bring this about.

The fourth unexplainable gap Dawkins admits to is the basic laws of the universe which all have to be set very precisely in order for life to exist. They are mathematically measurable and govern how the universe works. For example, the strong force inside the atom must have a very precise value for any atoms to exist or for anything but hydrogen to exist.

Other writers such as Hugh Ross (Creator and the Cosmos) go into greater detail about how exact a plethora of aspects of the cosmos must be in order for life to exist. Here also Dawkins vastly understates his problem.

Dawkins cites Martin Rees in Just Six Numbers, who states that six fundamental constants have to be extremely finely tuned for life to exist anywhere in the universe. One is the strength of the "strong force" which binds the atomic nucleus, which must be exactly 0.007 for any elements besides hydrogen to exist.

IMAGINATION, NOT EVIDENCE

Dawkins' reliance on sheer luck of the gaps reveals several important things about his argument against design.

First, it shows that Dawkins does not consistently base his conclusions on evidence. The actual evidence regarding these gaps is stacked against evolution by chance.

Second, Dawkins' call to believe in sheer luck is exactly that- a statement of belief, not of science.

Third, it shows how much Dawkins resorts to imagination to support his theories rather than evidence. He actually criticizes proponents of intelligent design for a "failure of imagination" when they assert that God answers a particular problem in nature rather than evolution. Dawkins meant this in a positive way- that scientists need to be creative in finding natural solutions to area of the unknown. But Dawkins certainly resorts to imagination without any evidence to fill his gaps.

In a vain effort to fill the gap of the origin of life, Dawkins imagines "sheer luck" while conveniently avoiding describing how implausible luck would be.

The Frankenstein problem remains. If humans can't create life even in ideal, controlled lab setting- how can it occur by luck in uncontrolled, unideal, undirected environments?

To try to fill the gap of the perfect universe, Dawkins imagines different varieties of "multi-verse," an infinite number of universes, hoping one would turn out right. Again, there is no evidence for such thing, nor is there an admission that an impossible gap is any less impossible in more universes.

CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING

Dawkins advocates a "Darwinian  consciousness-raising." "Consciousness-raising" is a religious term used mainly in Hindu and New Age circles. It refers not to intellect, but to superseding the mind and intellect using altered states of consciousness. Dawkins really is advocating a nearly religious, imaginative approach to evolutionary gaps which takes leaps of faith unsupported by scientific evidence.

Dawkins' "consciousness raising" shows a failure of logic. Darwinism is a life science. It postulates that once complex life exists, it can improve itself by mutation, the death of useless mutations, and the replication of useful mutation. But the step by step process of improvement of life does not apply to the origin of the mathematical laws of the universe, nor to the sudden transformation of inanimate elements into reproducing, animate life, nor to the complex cell structure.

Dawkins' "Darwinian consciousness-raising" is the last resort of an atheist who has a complete lack of evidence.

These four chasms in Dawkins' theory of the origin of complex life and consciousness are not just minor bottlenecks. Everyone one of them is essential, pivotal and completely unexplainable by Dawkins' atheistic hypothesis.

 DAWKINS' POOR UNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION

Dawkins criticizes religious people who speak about science as ignorant and uninformed. Yet, he viciously attacks religion while showing a great deal of ignorance about it.

He declares that all religion is "indistinguishable" and "harmful," and especially lumps together Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But there are dramatic differences between these and other religions in belief, behavior and values.

Take Christianity and Islam as an example of religious differences.  The concordance (index of words that occur) of my New Testament lists hundreds of verses in which the word "love" (or a variation, like "loving") is used- averaging at least twice per page. But the concordance of my Quran lists no instances at all. Even allowing for any differences in the size of the books and concordances, it is obvious that the New Testament (NT) has a comparatively huge emphasis on love, which affects the religious life of every Christian who is dedicated to living by the NT. While not all who claim to be Christians live lives of love, the faith itself constantly draws them to it in a way that Islam does not. Certainly Dawkins would not wish to live in any state that imposes the brutal Islamic sharia law, which imposes brutal punishments on unbelievers and other law breakers, and in which women lack basic rights and are at the mercy of their fathers or husbands.

Even nonChristian professors of religion will agree that religions dramatically differ on their conceptions of God, human condition, how to overcome problems, death, life after death, morality, and so forth. The followers of religions also practice their faith in dramatically different ways.

RELIGIONS' STRAW MEN

Dawkins takes a scattergun approach to attacking religion which destroys his credibility. A balanced and persuasive approach would be to seriously address religion's role and impact on human life. This entails describing religions separately (sin not all are alike), including both positive and negative effects.

Dawkins' biased method is to scan 4,000 years of religions, find the most extreme and corrupt examples of the behavior of religious people, and portray these as the full and accurate picture of all religion.

Imagine what science would look like if a critic like Dawkins surveyed 4,000 years of science, and picked the worst examples of scientific practice and asserted that these represented the true nature and quality of science as a whole. People would not even have to go back 4,000 years to find examples of the destructive power of science.

The best medical science in the United States probably killed George Washington (by bleeding him). In Vienna in 1846, 24 percent of women whose babies were delivered by doctors in hospitals died, while only 2.4% of those delivered by midwives died (Sherwin Nuland, How We Die).

Science caused horrible destruction and radiation sickness by developing atomic power, and enabled deadly terrorism by inventing explosives.  The worst hacks and extremists, as well as the most advanced science of any century, are responsible for untold pain, stupidity and destruction, yet Dawkins praises science instead of condemning it as intrinsically harmful to humans, as he does all religion.

Dawkins attacks the dogma of theology. Yet his anti-religious dogma is loaded with more vitriol than that of theology. He attacks freedom of religion in the United States, condemning the Bill of Rights as preferential to religion. He twists personal rights and liberty- basic American values-- into preference. By the same strange logic, Dawkins should condemn the right to free speech as unduly preferential to those who have an opinion or a newspaper.

If Dawkins ran America, he would surely tyrannically oppress religious people much as other atheists such as Joseph Stalin and Mao have done.

Dawkins also shows his misunderstanding of religions by painting an ugly and false caricature of the God of the Bible. Without any kind of reasoned description of God as described in the New Testament, he condemns the Christian God as a "psychotic delinquent" and "monster."

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