[Dialogue] The Grand Design

[Jack Gilles]

John I and II (Epps & Cock)

You saw something quite different than I did.  I found all three to be not helpful for the dialogue.  I found the Archbishop to be defending the two story universe on more than one occasion and Dawkins arguments is full of holes.  I won't try and go point by point, but I have a friend who has written a book that takes on Dawkins arguments.  And I'll attach a small segment from his opening chapter.  

You (John Epps) are very kind to Dawkins with your last statement "The two can co-exist......" because, although there is a general acceptance of evolution by most theologians (but not necessarily to the degree of mindlessness that Dawkins advocates), their side (Dawkins) does not recognize the other side at all.  All of the wonder and mystery will some day be understood as simply brain signals that trigger these feelings etc. etc.  So the whole "game" is played on the left brain rules of the game; logic, science and language.  

I'm not going to again make the case for an intelligence implicit in all things, but the ability to have a purpose to all this requires some direction, some purpose behind all the science activity.  The capacity to integrate experience and thus evolve into better survival capacity requires intelligence.

Jack

Anyway, here is an excerpt that is a commentary on Dawkins book "River Out of Eden".  "DOWNSIZING DARWIN: An Intelligent Face for Evolution" by Robert Campbell.

reface to River out of Eden:

Dawkins begins his book with a poem by Piet Hein:
Nature, it seems, is the popular name
For milliards and milliards and milliards
Of particles playing their infinite game
Of billiards and billiards and billiards.
       
There you have the bias of science wrapped up in a nut shell. Everything is the result of local interactions between elementary 
particles, going all the way back to the big bang. This is the view of the cosmic order held as immutable truth by mainstream 
science—an article of faith without a shred of supporting evidence.

Think for a moment. If all being, including the entire universe, is truly just a random game of atomic billiards, then there is no real 
or transcending basis to values of any kind, including truth. Therefore there can be no basis for saying that everything can be 
reduced to atomic billiards, for this mindless view offers no basis whatever for truth itself. It is a self contradictory position. It 
presumes a thing as true while implicitly denying there is such a thing as truth. Truth can hardly be the accidental result of atomic 
billiards.

One should be able to stop right there. The inherent contradiction should be seen by those who would maintain the position, 
discouraging them from holding to it. They should look for a more self consistent view, for an implicit order that allows of truth. .
Why don’t they then? Because they do not have access to a practical alternate paradigm that will allow us to understand how 
intelligent processes work.  (My bold and underline - JG)

I would like to be kind and give Darwinists the benefit of a few doubts that may emerge here and there, and overlook weaknesses 
in their arguments in the hope that their intentions are directed toward an impartial determination of the truth. But they don’t see 
how they can open the door to other possible options because the alternative is creationism. This is not just a matter of a 
difference of opinion over a few minor issues. Arguments on both sides are riddled with obvious flaws and flaunted in the face of 
solid evidence to the contrary. Such an entrenched approach on both sides carries with it a good measure of self-deception. They 
are reactionary positions in the evolutionary arena.

These opposing positions have little to do with the facts of the matter. They would dispense with most of philosophy, most of 
psychology, and proceed to contradict the laws of thermodynamics, not to mention the impact on our cultural traditions. On the 
scientific side this blind one-gearishness would ultimately reduce us all to mindless greed and obsessive action, all in the guise 
of logical argument.

Darwinian evolutionists must choose to ignore a large body of contradictory evidence in order to foster their beliefs. Their faith in 
the blind process of “natural selection” prejudices their efforts. On the basis of Dawkins’ book, it will be shown that extreme 
Darwinism is a blind belief without foundation, as fervent as any religion and with all the ear marks of self-deception.

To suggest, as Dawkins does at the outset, that the Darwinian view has poetic beauty and inspirational value is to seriously 
compound the deception, for now we are treading in a fanciful world of double speak. It is inconsistent with Dawkins’ argument to 
throw in a healthy dose of values, including beauty and inspiration. Beauty and inspiration are larger than the bare facts of life. 
They are universally recognized qualities that are implicitly associated in some way with ultimate truth, transcending physical 
existence. We all sense their transcendent quality and we credit their ephemeral essence as real. Values determine everything 
that we do. But here we are urged to use them in order to justify a blind materialist view with no self-consistent place for values at 
all. At the same stroke we are to believe that this is in accord with sound reason.

That’s double speak. After all, no intelligent reader is likely to deny a place in their lives for beauty and inspiration. Are atomic 
accidents beautiful? We can’t even see them, much less assert with such confidence that they determine our being. Who really 
wants to live in a world reduced to atomic billiards? Who really believes it?
If no one really believes it, yet say that it is so, why do they make such efforts to sustain the deception? Why did Darwin go to all 
the trouble in the first place? No one can deny the “extreme perfection and complication” of nature’s mechanisms, but to suggest 
that Darwin’s hypothesis explains them is an unsubstantiated leap of blind faith. Why did Darwin take this leap?

Is it as Richard Dawkins suggests, that nature’s complex mechanisms fulfill an apparent purpose? Purpose again implies 
values in anticipation of achieving a future objective. We take medicine for the purpose of curing a disease. We say it is valuable 
for achieving that anticipated result. Can we invest genes with the capacity to anticipate the future? Purpose implies intelligence 
at work to achieve a meaningful result. Then how can all creation be the accidental result of blind atomic billiards? We shall see 
that double speak pervades the arguments for Darwinism.  ....


On May 21, 2012, at 4:52 PM, jlepps at pc.jaring.my wrote:

> Thanks Paul for this fascinating dialogue. It was far more civil than some of the exchanges of ideas that often occur on this side of the Atlantic. 
> 
> IMHO, Dr. Dawkins was quite modest in his claims to certainty about things, and Archbishop Williams was quite articulate in defining what he did and did not mean by "God." It seemed, though, that Dr. Dawkins was objecting to a notion of God that Archbishop Rowan did not advocate, and that is an example of what I find objectionable about Steven Hawking's book. Of course it would be silly to expect physicists to be experts in theology, as it would be for theologians to claim expertise in physics. The two can co-exist quite harmoniously with one dealing with value and meaning (why) and the other dealing with the nature of reality and its operations (what and how). 
> 
> John 
> 
> 
> 
> At 12:40 PM 5/20/2012, you wrote:
>> I enjoyed the debate between Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams on some of these questions:
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfQk4NfW7g0
>>  
>> Maybe it adds another dimension...?
>>  
>> Paul
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  
>> In a message dated 20/05/2012 19:18:12 GMT Daylight Time, LAURELCG at aol.com writes:
>> Jack,
>>  
>> The Ground of Being that WAS before the big bang, and the Evolutionary Impulse (Becoming) that started the big bang, is what we've called God. (This I've gleaned from Andrew Cohen.) I agree it is all intelligent, but our tiny brains cannot begin to understand it. IT is the All, in the phrases, "All that is, is good." and "I am One with All That Is." Science is about grappling to understand it. Good scientists are usually in awe of what they're discovering. What else would keep someone looking in a microscope all day every day for years, or whatever laborious process is required in their discipline? Scientists like Bryan Swimme and men of faith like Thomas Berry sometimes collaborate to come up with inspired works, like The Universe Story. This is all just my humble opinion, as is the belief that the church, the cutting edge today, is the evolutionary spirituality movement. Jean Houston is a recognized leader of it and almost invariably ends her internet sessions with "These are the times, we are the people."
>>  
>> From the great central valley of California, the center of the Universe,
>> Jann  
>>  
>> In a message dated 5/20/2012 10:57:34 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, icabombay at igc.org writes:
>> As to the "Grand Design", it is the contention of some that the creative process, that which underlies all, is inherently intelligent and that intelligence can be understood.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dialogue mailing list
>> Dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net
>> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dialogue mailing list
>> Dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net
>> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net
> _______________________________________________
> Dialogue mailing list
> Dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net
> http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20120521/de2ff0fc/attachment.html>