Richard Dawkins slaps creationists into the primordial soup

[n2doc]

His books sell in their millions, his TV programmes are rapturously received, and he’s appeared in Doctor Who. Not bad for a 67-year-old academic. Now Richard Dawkins, scourge of creationists, is championing his Victorian hero



Richard Dawkins is that rare specimen, a public intellectual, a knight of the mind who goes into battle against the ignorance and foolhardiness of the populace. Unlike the French, who worship their public intellectuals, giving them pet names such as les intellos, and airing them regularly on serious television and in print, the British like to shove academics into a musty corner, or laugh at them. This was not always the case: the Victorians, with their public lectures and royal societies, gloried in debate and celebrated the thrills of fresh knowledge. The nearest we get to this now is celebrating the thrill of Germaine Greer walking out of Celebrity Big Brother.

The marginalisation of academia is partly self-created by its pomp and obfuscatory language. Dawkins broke out of the ghetto long ago thanks not just to an extraordinary mind, but to a gift for elegant communication and controversy: the English-language version of his recent paean to atheism, The God Delusion, has sold 1.5million copies (it has been translated into 31 other languages). He is big in airport bookshops. In 1976, when his first book, The Selfish Gene, was published, The New York Times explained the mind-expanding pleasure of his science-lit as “the sort of popular science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius”.

In these barren, thoughtless times, Dawkins gives people something substantial to chew on. His audience is surprisingly grateful, and also relieved to see someone slapping creationists about and tossing them into the primordial soup, as well as explaining atheism positively. Before I went to interview him about his new three-part television series, Dawkins on Darwin, various over-excited friends offered to accompany me and texted questions for me to ask him; signed copies were requested of The God Delusion, which one Iranian exile said he had recently found himself reading as his plane landed – everyone else was clutching the Koran.

The Darwin-Dawkins combo was of some fascination too; one acquaintance lent me her much-loved copy of On the Origin of Species. “The language is beautiful. I read it for a Victorian literature course, not science,” she said. And that, perhaps, is one of the reasons for the strong connection between Dawkins and Darwin. “Every line of Darwin, you know he really wanted to be understood,” says Dawkins. “There was no pretentious showing off about him.”

more:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article4331024.ece

[EVDebs]

1. The problem for Dawkins is the Big Bang's Augustinian era...

"Augustinian era

Before the Big Bang

In 1952, George Gamow, one of the founding fathers of Big Bang cosmology, proposed that the period before the Big Bang be called the Augustinian era,<1> after the philosopher Saint Augustine, who believed time was solely a property of the God-created Universe, so that there was no time prior to the creation of the universe. The phrase "Augustinian Era" is meant to convey the idea that the known laws of physics break down in a gravitational singularity of infinite density at the time zero of the Big Bang, so that according to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity there were no times prior to that point. However, physicists believe that general relativity becomes incompatible with quantum mechanics at the Planck scale, so that the predictions of general relativity cannot be trusted before the Planck era when energies and temperatures reached the Planck scale, and that we need a theory of quantum gravitation before we can say anything about times before the Planck era.<2>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang#Augustinian_era

Vas es los ? "God-created Universe"...

BTW, I have no problem with evolution despite my being a Christian.

Scientist at Work | Francisco J. Ayala
Roving Defender of Evolution, and of Room for God

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/science/29prof.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[wtmusic]

2. How is it his problem?

Sounds like a Christian problem to me. If there's no time, then how can God "create"...?

[EVDebs]

3. Circular argument

If there's no God, and hence he/she/it didn't create, how could there then be a creation ? which is what Gamow was leading to.

[wtmusic]

4. No, a circular argument leads

directly to Heidegger's "why is there anything" question, which is paradoxical. Creation is a man-made conceptual fallacy, and like God it's made in his own image.

[EVDebs]

7. Oh maybe not. nt

[Indenturedebtor]

5. The ontological argument is the very definition of circular reasoning

Just because we don't know exactly what happened or how things came to be (or even if they always were, as linear time on the quantum level is an illusion), does NOT mean that we have to ascribe their existence to some sort of god being.

The existence of God is not the simplest explanation for things by any means. And it's not the only one either. Your desire to hide God in the last moment where it is possible for it to exist doesn't really factor into reality imo. No offense. It's just like those fantasy stories where the Elves are forced further and further away from the world of men. When you destroy their last little grove of forest the Elves will leave the world.

When we figure out exactly how the big bang went down I wonder if intelligent people will no longer believe in god?

[EVDebs]

8. So, tell me more about this Augustinian epoch

Just because we know a little bit of how 'he/she/it' did creation doesn't mean we'll ever grasp the whole enchilada.

[Orsino]

6. That's not an argument for God...

...and has nothing to do with evolution, so it's not Dawkins' problem.

[EVDebs]

9. Then what IS Dawkin's problem ? nt

[Orsino]

10. Same as everyone else's...

...the superstitious loons who dismantle our science curricula.

[Posteritatis]

11. The fact that people conflate abiogenesis or the Big Bang with evolution? (nt)