I am so sick of creationists using this Dawkins quote for their argument
Offline "Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning. "
http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4218209/k.1176/The_Five_Crises_in_Evolutionary_Theory.htm
Or there is one by Walter Crick that says we must constantly remind ourselves that what we are seeing was not designed.
Please tell me I am not the only one who this pisses the fuck out of.
Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man.
Emma Goldman
- Login to post comments
Humans are pattern seekers. We see patterns that are there and ones that are not there. It is useful if you are trying to interpret whether this quarter's losses are a trend or an anomaly. It is not useful if you do not understand the scientific method or statistical analysis and you make up your mind based on the pattern you want to exist and your "common sense".
Both of these quotes are addressing this tendency to sense patterns where there are none. Taken out of context, they fit the hopeful wishes of those who wish to see the pattern of a designer. It demonstrates how totally blindly willfully ignorant some people are. And yeah, I can get pissed off about it.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
This doesn't seem be a very good quote mine to begin with. It is clear from the sentence itself that what Dawkins means is that intuitively, organisms seem designed, though they are the product of evolution. Quotes that seem to support Creationism when taken out of context are the ones that make me mad.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Any moron trying to use this quote is simply and desperately trying to imply that Dawkins is secretly admitting that there is truth to design.
NO, with the mountains he has said on the crappy argument from design, he is merely saying that our brains can be very easly fooled into believing false things because of our flawed perceptions. He is addressing mundane human psychology as to why it is easy for us to believe false things.
He describes this behavior in "The God Delusion" quite aptly and simply like a moth mistaking a light bulb for the moonlight.
I don't remember the other scientist that shows how complexity can arise out of simplicity without cognition, he had the video describing driftwood on a beach. At its final buildup with all the life utilizing the piles of collected driftwood, it could seem desigined. But we know that non-cognitive nature, such as tree branches dying and floating on water, and the tides individually carrying them in, then piling them up on shore, we see no cognition or design in that natural process.
Nature and the universe are not designed. They are merely products of an ongoing what.
Complexity is an emergent property not a starting point. When humans falsely believe that complexity must imply design they are merely anthropomorphizing human qualities on the objects around them. No different than when humans falsely believed that volcanos were gods.
Dawkins is merely saying that humans are flawed and their flawed perceptions lead them to the false placebo of the design argument.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
And if anyone wants to watch the cockroaches scatter, say to the person using this crappy argument, "Ok, if everything implies design, how about all the nasty stuff in life too. Cancer, ecoli, tsunamis, anthrax, tornados, downs syndrome,,,,,,ect ect ect ect"
The only sane and rational approach to human observation is that both the good and bad that happen in life are simply what we observe and happen because of natural events and are NOT a result of a magical super hero vs a super villain.
The moral implications of such a claimed "designer" are not only absurd, but downright bankrupt, when someone argues that position.
"Shit happens" is enough to allow us to observe both the good and bad and find answers void of superstition and magic and myth.
It should no more frighten modern believers when told that their god is fiction, than it frightens them knowing that the sun is not a thinking being. Growing up has lead humanity out of the caves, and is nothing to fear.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
The quote that 'Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved' is from Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, not his amateur-biologist-grandfather, Walter. And we should note what creationists note in these quotes, that their originators seem to be laying down the rules for other scientists, warning that certain topics, observations or speculations are taboo. Crick himself, while a vocal opponent of creationism, nevertheless promoted at one point in his career a type of "Intelligent Design" (albeit with no evident Divine intervention) called 'panspermia'.