This is a very good discussion:
Anthropology, Creation, Creation/ Evolution, Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Anthropology, Creation, Creation/ Evolution, Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams
This is a very good discussion:
the archives near Emmaus 
Thanks for posting this conversation. I’m currently listening to it.
Reblogged this on Celucien Joseph: Scholar, Intellectual, and Cultural Critic.
Richard Dawkins an almost assured atheist (6 or 6.9 out of 7 Points!) was discussing about some great propability and again and again with his illogical conclusions and questions. Rowan Williams it seems to me an almost assured christian was apparently worse prepared discussant then Richard Dawkins. Therefore it was very bad discussion for me.
Rowan Williams is a bloody mumbler and should stick to writing, you strain to hear him and just become exasperated.
Celucien
You’re welcome!
Mirche and Phillip
Wow, tough crowd! I hope I never do a public speaking event with either of you present. If you think Williams mumbles you’d die listening to me.
@Brian: I don’t think R. Williams mumbles, but I still don’t think that it was a good discussion. Tell me please why it was good discussion for you? Was it just because Rowan Williams didn’t mumbled?
I found the civility of the conversation quite refreshing. That there were many points of agreement made it helpful (juxtaposed with say a conversation between Dawkins and someone who outright rejects evolution). Neither participant overreached when there were areas of unknowing. The chat about the nature of human consciousness in relation to human identity was worth exploring (I enjoy reading a bit here and there on neuroscience), and it has been one of the many things that I’ve found to point toward a deity. Also, Williams made a very strong point that God’s act of “creating” is likely something very different from when we make things. That allows the conversation to move past Intelligent Design debates to some extent and “God of the Gaps” language which unnerves scientist who find such ideas to (rightly) prohibit further research. Those are a few observations.
Brian, thanks for the link, very interesting!
Unfortunately I did stop listening after 18 minutes, cause I found the debate a bit disappointing – due to the poor arguments proposed by both “opponents” (honestly I thought that Dawkins, as a scientist with an atheist agenda, could do better).
At minute 11:40″ Dawkins clearly summarizes the root of the problem: “Laws of physics have CONSPIRED…”. Fair enough. Believers think that God built both the “laws” and the “conspiracy” (and usually they wonder why He didn’t build them better!) , while atheists think that the laws are what they are by a bizarre chance of fate. I think there wasn’t much more to say, other than beginning scientific/philosophical speculation on the nature of such “conspiracy”, and ultimately on the nature of the laws of physics. But apparently the “opponents” had their pre-packaged agenda to follow, with no much space left for any impromptu debate..
At minute 17:20″ Dawkins tries to explain evolution as a mix of random and non-random events, comparing this process to a computer that plays chess: more or less he says that “computers are only machines made of electrons that move randomly, then there is a higher layer of complexity, that is the software, which produces the ability to play chess”.
He fails to see that this is the very same argument of “Intelligent Design”, where the software in this case represents the unexplainable “intelligence at work”, an intelligence that cannot be (and actually is not) produced by underlying random electrons movements.
At this point Rowan Williams fails to see the weakness of such Dawkin’s argument and continues with his pre-packaged agenda by introducing a new topic (the raise of consciousness, of something like that).
At this point I decided to follow my own agenda, that is to move to more productive activities 🙂
Apart from my last sentence (that is a criticism to the two opponents), thank you very much for your continuous efforts to find and propose dozens of very interesting links to very interesting public debates!
Talita
It is quite odd that some will resort to personifying the evolutionary process while denying the existence of a deity. At the very least, if evolution and natural selection self-govern and determine, shouldn’t we consider these things gods in a way?
If one believes that the laws of physics didn’t come to existence but always existed, and that these laws for inexplicable reasons are shaped in a way that leads to spontaneous emergence of order from disorder, of life from dead matter, and the appearing of consciousness… then yes, they would be eternal and would shape things as gods would do 😉
The whole idea of ‘a law’ implies a law-giver since laws are proscriptive …..
I find it hard to imagine how some can study scientific laws, presuppose logic, mathematics, and reason and still deny the metaphysical under-pinnings that make this possible.
Andrew, you are correct. Personally, I don’t think that while talking of things of science some people intentionally deny the metaphysical implications: quite often they ignore them either because they are actually ignorant about them, or because they consider metaphysics arguments as something “not true” as they cannot be proven scientifically.
Here the problem is simply logical, not metaphysical: a statement like “I consider something as true only if it can be scientifically proven” it is self-refuting because it cannot be scientifically proven This is a well-know logical contradiction that undermines the basis of the belief that science method is the only way to get “true knowledge”.
According to Dawkins an evolutionary biologist “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Dawkins used a computer simulation of a chimpanzee at a typewriter trying to producing Shakespeare to show natural selection quickly producing biological complexity from random mutations. In this research a program called WEASEL generated the Hamlet phrase “Methinks it is like a weasel” (23 characters) starting from a randomly typed parent. Using a 50 key typewriter the odds against finding a 23 character string are (1/50)23 or around 8.3 x 10^-40). In the real world chimps have not evolved sufficient intelligence to use let alone design computers; the only primates to do so to date are humans; chimps are not even dexterous enough not to garble keystroke. Using an optimistically fast and dexterous estimate of 1 chimpanzee-keystroke per second it would take 1.5 x 10^22 billion years, far longer than the estimated age of the Universe. Producing a page of 250 characters, a play of 10,000 characters, or a volume of 50,000 characters of Shakespeare would be overwhelming even for a legion of tribes of chimps set the task. If there did exist an alpha male with enough intelligence to recognize Shakespeare, and who could organize the tribes, check and filter the intermediate results, the chimps or their offspring (40 ‘generations’ are needed for 23 characters according to Dawkins), would surely overcome their aging leader, destroying their typewriters in a riotous rebellion. They would start cracking nuts for food long before producing a handful of words
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/richard-dawkins-loses-debate-against-former-anglican-head-rowan-williams-at-cambridge-university-full-video-89364/#UipurCoqMpkL3rWT.99