Saturday, June 6, 2009

Richard Dawkins Thinks You're Are A Fool

I've been in a discussion over at, shoot, I've forgotten the, oh ya, Militant Ginger. We've solved the Big Bang and are on the verge of solving the origins of life. Our paper will be out in August. Tom will publish, I'll speak and Ginger will take any and all questions. Anyhow I just felt in the mood this morning for taking a few jabs at atheist High Priest, Richard Dawkins. Before I begin, I want to set the scene. This morning Tom was telling me that scientists are able to manufacture strands of RNA in the lab. "Fine," says I, "that just proves my point." Let's say that scientists one day even manufacture or "create" life itself in the lab. What that shows is that it requires intelligence to create life. Life does not, has not and will not ever come about by accident or randomness or spontaneous generation. So, to Richard:

. Richard Dawkins tells us that the unknown origins of the universe pose no problem for Darwin’s theory.
. Richard Dawkins tells us the origin of the universe really isn’t that difficult to comprehend.
. Richard Dawkins tells us that the “spontaneous arising” of DNA should not surprise us.
. Richard Dawkins tells us that “the magic of large numbers” makes anything possible.
. Richard Dawkins tells us that perhaps a billion planets in the universe host life.
. Richard Dawkins tells us his conjecture on the origins of life “completely demolishes” any need for design or designer to explain non-life turning into life.

Do any of these nonsensical statements embarrass his followers? I don’t think so.

The irony of Richard Dawkins believing that life arose from non-life in a primordial soup on planet earth is almost too much to contain without laughing out loud. What’s the irony you ask? The idea that it was a vast ocean or pre-biotic soup is not the result of specific and detailed evidence. It is in fact an idea that comes directly from the Bible. Noting this, atheist mathematician Hubert Yockey, who is no fan of Richard says that Dawkins must be a religious fanatic to even suggest such a thing. Apparently that’s how one atheist disses another atheist.

The comments above are just Richard Dawkins gambling that the majority of atheists are fools. Come to think about it, from a Biblical perspective that’s a sure bet. Obviously he’s testing the waters to see just how far he can push their gullible nature. What follows however is what proves how serious Richard Dawkins is about his smoke and mirrors show.

A living system must do at least three things:
. It must be able to process energy
. It must be able to store information and
. It must be able to replicate.

Living things do this. Non living things don’t do this.
In my mind, Richard’s comment that there are a billion or more planets with life on them shows us several things.
. Insurmountable improbabilities pose no intellectual problems for this preeminent atheist.
. Richard Dawkins hates a God that he doesn’t believe in so much that his rage has absolutely clouded his judgement.
. Or Richard Dawkins is a hypocrite of first order, contradicting what he says with what he does. Before you say ‘O Rod, that’s just unfair,’compare this next comment of Dawkins with his adamant demand that there is no God (something that cannot be supported by current evidence), and that there is life on at least a billion planets (something else that cannot be supported by current evidence).

“As a lover of truth, I am suspicious of strongly held beliefs that are unsupported by evidence.”

That’s a comment that Dawkins levels at Christians but obviously lives out in his own life.

Now, if you love watching someone attempt to beat the odds, forget Las Vegas or Monte Carlo. It’s far more entertaining to let Richard Dawkins explain how life came about. To put the modern atheist’s supposition on origins in perspective, an atheist astronomer has calculated the following regarding our coming into being.

Stephen Hawking has calculated that the odds of a life supporting universe such as ours, with it’s exquisitely finely tuned constants and quantities coming into being by chance or by accident to be 1 chance in 10,0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000, 0000000000.

(Think about that for a few moments. It’s important!) The reality of those odds should hit you like a truck. Why? Because science states that anything greater than 10 ^ 50 is the same as impossible. On the one hand Hawking has said “If all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth were possible universes, and only one of those grains of sand was a universe that allowed for the existence of intelligent life, then that one grain of sand is the universe we inhabit. It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.” In the face of this evidence, why would Hawking continue to search for natural solutions? He has to. In order to maintain their dogmatic denial of God’s existence, atheists must believe that the impossible is possible.

Not to be outdone by Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins proposes that the following all came about via random chance.

There are eighty different types of amino acids. Only twenty of them are found in living organisms.

According to evolutionary biologists, out of the eighty amino acids (that evolved from absolutely dead matter, remember, inert gases to be exact):
. The exact correct collection of amino acids were able to isolate themselves.
According to evolutionary biologists, these amino acids linked themselves together:
. In just the right sequence in order to produce protein molecules.

So what we’re faced with is:
.The extreme improbability of obtaining any specific amino acid sequence needed for the proteins of life systems.
.The high probability of breakdown by hydrolysis of amino acid chains if they were to form in the first place.
.There is no known way to achieve 100% left-handed amino acids in proteins or the 100% right-handed sugars in RNA and DNA - all of which are universal to life systems.
.All natural processes are known to produce a 50-50% mixture of left-handed and right-handed molecules.
.Photo dissociation of water vapor has been a source of oxygen since the Earth formed, and there is substantial geologic evidence that a significant amount of oxygen existed in the atmosphere prior to the advent of photosynthesis. Why does that matter?
.Oxygen breaks down amino acids and sugars that are postulated to have formed!
.There is no known natural source of the information that is present in all life systems.
.Random processes are never known to produce information.

Without any intelligence guiding the process, all the possible combinations regarding the beginnings of life just fell into place. Not only that but, as Richard knows, other molecules tend to react more readily with amino acids than amino acids react with each other. How did those extraneous molecules get eliminated? Just luck? Just time plus luck? Does Richard Dawkins have an answer? No, he doesn’t. Perhaps that’s why it irritates him so much when he meets Christians who appear to do the same thing. We tend to despise in others the flaws that we are dimly aware of in our own lives. Nevertheless, does it matter to him that he doesn’t have an answer? Apparently not. Dawkins says that - listen carefully because this is Dawkins at this best -

“Once the vital ingredient - some kind of genetic molecule - is in place, true Darwinian natural selection can follow.”

Well, yes, of course. So let’s not worry ourselves with how the vital ingredient got into place. It’s only the single most important step in all of biology. Let’s just skip along to the wonders of evolution shall we?

You see Dawkins must think you are a fool because as he knows, as improbable as a coded molecule simply appearing out of lifeless gases is, a coded molecule is not all that you need to make life. That “vital ingredient - that genetic molecule” being in place so that natural selection can follow is light years from what I’ve explained so far. My question is, does that fact matter to you? And if not, why not?

Then there’s the issue of the coming together of an equal number of amino acids that are right and left-handed. Why?
. Only the left-handed amino acids work in living matter.
. Only these select left-handed amino acids must link together in the right sequence.
. The correct kind of chemical bonds - meaning peptide bonds must come into existence.
. These have to form themselves (without any guiding principle, remember) into the correct position.
. Only then will the protein be able to fold in a specific three-dimensional way.
. If this doesn’t all happen exactly right, it simply won’t function.

Richard tells you without the flicker of a smile, and expects you to believe that this has happened not just once, which is implausible enough, but a billion times, by accident, with no intelligence guiding this process. It’s like a blindfolded person reaching into a basket full of one billion letters from all the language groups in the world and coming up with a sentence that says, in only one language -

“Atheists are gullible. They will grasp at the most preposterous claim. As long as Richard Dawkins tells them that it’s true.”

Not only must this person get all the right letters for the right words. The grammar must be correct. The punctuation must be correct. The spacing must be proper. Remember of course the letters might come out of the basket upside down, or backwards or they might simply be the wrong letters. The letters in the above three sentences represent the amino acids that have to be put together in just the right manner to make a protein molecule. In pure cynicism Richard Dawkins thinks that you, the fool that he imagines you to be, will not have any problem with this. But that’s just first step.
. Creating one protein molecule doesn’t mean that you’ve created life.
. Now you have to bring together a collection of protein molecules -
. Roughly two hundred protein molecules with just the right functions are needed to get a typical living cell.

Now we can begin to see why Richard Dawkins’ new hypothesis is a call for infinite universes. The odds of non life turning into life, accidentally, in just one universe even within an infinite time frame is infinitely impossible. In the desperate atheist mind-set, if you have enough universes where this might happen, well, it just “logically” increases your odds that the impossible might become possible. I don’t know what Oy Vey means but I think that it might fit here. Anyhow -
This of course, proposed by Darwin and upheld by today’s Senate of leading atheists requires the theory of helpful mutations. Daniel Dennett says that mutations don’t occur even once in a trillion “copyings.” And we need not just any mutation but helpful mutations. Geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti says, “[Mutation] effect in all instances is to demolish. Transgressions of the kind needed by Darwinian evolution have never been documented.” After all, with many millions of mutations in over a century of highly controlled laboratory work with the fruit fly, science has totally failed to show that helpful mutations would occur frequently enough to go from one cell to us in an eternity. Perhaps these atheist authors are suggesting that trillions of “helpful” mutations actually come about easier in the wild than in the lab? As long as Dawkins’ followers are naive enough to keep buying his books he'll keep churning out absurd thoughts one after another.

Now, we must remember that the guiding principle in assembling all these pieces is DNA. In a classic understatement, Richard Dawkins says, “all that’s needed” is DNA / RNA. Not unlike those who used to believe that maggots “spontaneously” arose from covered heaps of garbage, and thus proved that God did not exist, DNA is what Dawkins says spontaneously arose from completely dead matter. Here’s a few important points about DNA.
. Every cell of every plant and animal has to have a DNA molecule.
. DNA works hand in glove with RNA to direct the correct sequencing of amino acids.
. It’s able to do this through biochemical instructions (the information) that are encoded on the DNA. Dawkins’ “vital ingredient” is a code written in a four-letter chemical alphabet whose letters are combined in various sequences to form words, sentences and paragraphs. All the instructions needed to guide the functioning of the cell are written in that DNA code. In fact this code works just like the letters of our alphabet, to form what we want to say. But this isn’t just a sentence or even a thousand sentences. Whatever put these directions into the cell had a lot to say. In fact each single microscopic cell in the human body contains more information than is contained in 1,000 sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
. It can only be bigotry, atheist chauvinism and ultra scientism that causes Richard Dawkins to refuse to ask, “Who programmed the cell with its digital code? Who gave it the capacity to make copies of itself? Who made a universe with the laws that could produce mankind? What is the ultimate explanation for why reality is structured in this way and not another?” Dawkins, who insists that evolution operates according to principles of time and chance neglects the fact that it also depends on the exquisitely finely tuned laws of a universe that itself is not the product of time and chance. Richard Dawkins hopes that you are too dull of mind to think about that.

Where did this DNA come from and how did it come into being are important questions because the making of DNA makes the development of a protein cell look like child’s play. Both DNA and RNA are extremely complicated, yet Dawkins would have you believe that DNA appeared out of inert gas and for that to happen, all it took was lots & lots of time.

Why then, when the synthesis of key building blocks for DNA and RNA have never been successfully created except under highly implausible conditions, why would Richard Dawkins have you believe that it could come about in the hostile conditions of early earth? It’s because he thinks you are a fool. He hopes that you won’t guess that his hypotheses arise due solely to his rabid hatred for Christianity.

Klaus Dose of the Institute for Biochemistry in Mainz, Germany said, “The difficulties in synthesizing DNA and RNA are at present beyond our imagination.” Since atheist scientists are nothing if not imaginative, that statement says a lot.

As Nobel Prize-winner Sir Francis Crick said, “The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going.”

So here we have the belief system of the Richard Dawkins: A person who says that he has no need of faith. He’s a person who says that he’s sceptical of any strongly held beliefs in the absence of evidence. Yet this person confidently boasts that life began:
. When biopolymers (such as proteins) became assembled
. With only the right building blocks (amino acids)
. And only the correct isomers (left-handed amino acids) . Joined with only the correct peptide bonds
. In only the correct sequence.

How does this come about by accident? Dawkins says “mutation” as though simply saying the word solves the problems. Anyone who questions Dawkins is immediately called a “Creationist” which in Richard’s mind renders the questioner intellectually impotent. As Richard recently said, “Thinking is anathema to religion.” Meanwhile Richard Dawkins gazes into the heavens and proclaims “Lots of Galaxies? Problem solved!”

Citing Dawkins as a prime example, mathematician Hubert Yockey writes, “People who do not understand probability often say that extremely improbable events occur frequently.”

Ignoring simple chemistry and hoping no one will notice, Richard Dawkins also glibly ignores, Omne Vivum ex vivo - “Life can only come from life.” Nothing that has taken place in scientific inquiry has done anything to realistically suggest, much less prove that it can be any other way.

10 comments:

PersonalFailure said...

Here's the problem with statistics, Makarios:

The odds against holding any particular hand in a 5 card variety of poker is over 6,000,000,000 to 1.

Yet, every single time you are dealt cards, you do indeed hold that hand.

I truly believe every person should take a course in statistics. It is virtually impossible not to misunderstand statistics without having studied it.

feeno said...

PF
There is about a 96.2 % chance I don't understand your last paragraph.

Could you please say it again?

Peace and hair grease, feeno

Tom said...

(This is the same Tom that posts on Militant Ginger.)

I've never read anything by Richard Dawkins. I'm just posting my positions here.

My point about the scientists creating life (or at least a self-replicating molecule) was that they were able to create it with a relatively small amount of work. It seems plausible to me those conditions could be recreated on a planet, at least once in a hundred billion years.

I'm actually curious as to the source for your quote from Hawking. On his official website, he writes:

"The early appearance of life on Earth suggests that there's a good chance of the spontaneous generation of life, in suitable conditions. " and "One can not make nucleic acids in the laboratory, from non-living material, let alone RNA. But given 500 million years, and oceans covering most of the Earth, there might be a reasonable probability of RNA, being made by chance."

There's the (nobel prize winning) suggestion that life does not need aminio acids to form, but only the CGA and U nucleotides of RNA. That's a much lower hurdle. So most of what you're saying about amino acids is irrelevant.

Nobody here is saying unlikely events happen frequently. But it does seem possible that, over billions of years and sextillions of worlds, unlikely events might happen.

Makarios, what is your position on this, anyway? Are you claiming humans were created? Or that life was created? or something else?

lizB said...

Take care not to lump all atheists into one basket with Dawkins, friend. It starts to sound uncomfortably close to judging others. I think that's something your teacher frowned upon, no?

Your assessment of the numbers is incorrect, your quote is misconstrued, but your heart's in the right place. I applaud you for trying.

But see, some of us find talking snakes, a dude living in a whale's belly, virgin birth, resurrecting the dead, etc...just as laughable (and improbable) as you find our notions.

The key is to live peacefully among each other. Regardless of how each of us believes the planet came to be, we all must live here together.

Some of my everyday goals are to practice compassion, to share what I'm able to give with those less fortunate, to do what I can to end another's suffering, to reach out to others with a word or deed, etc...I am an atheist, but in the end, we're not so different as we seem.

Liz

Thesauros said...

And you are telling me this because . . .?

The Atheist Missionary said...

Makarios, If I may try to distil your argument into a single sentence, I think it would be this: Life is much too complex to have arisen by chance.

It sounds like you are familiar with Dawkins' work and I hope you have read Climbing Mount Improbable which is one of his lesser known works. The reason why I mention that is because the Professor considers it to be his most underrated. The Blind Watchmaker is also excellent.

Again, if I understand what you are saying correctly, you do not deny the fact of any of the evolutionary processes. It's just when we get down to the minute building blocks of life that you throw up your hands and say "God must have done it". With respect, this is a dumbing down approach that it precisely the same reasoning employed by the Creation Institute and the proponents of intelligent design. However, you appear to be a bit more intellectually honest. I take from your dissertation that you would be willing to reject the God hypothesis if you could be shown that the conditions of life could have evolved from the primordial soup or, better yet, if I could point you to another planet where some kind of life evolved independently of our own. Or would you just respond to that kind oe evidence by saying "you've just shown me how God did it" and "God has also decided to have life happen on that planet"?

Thesauros said...

“Again, if I understand what you are saying correctly, you do not deny the fact of any of the evolutionary processes.”

I’m not denying micro evolution because there is evidence for that. Extrapolating micro evolution to macro evolution is going beyond what the evidence allows. I’m therefore withholding judgment on that.
============
“With respect, this is a dumbing down approach”

I don’t think that following the evidence is the dumbing down of anything.
==============
“that it precisely the same reasoning employed by the Creation Institute and the proponents of intelligent design.”

I think it’s a significant error to think that the Creation Institute is in any way similar to Intelligent Design. The latter depends totally on available evidence while the former does not.
===========
"However, you appear to be a bit more intellectually honest. I take from your dissertation that you would be willing to reject the God hypothesis if you could be shown that the conditions of life could have evolved from the primordial soup or, better yet, if I could point you to another planet where some kind of life evolved independently of our own. Or would you just respond to that kind oe evidence by saying "you've just shown me how God did it" and "God has also decided to have life happen on that planet"?

I’m willing to go where ever the evidence leads. That is completely the opposite of what Darwinists are willing to do.
=============

The Atheist Missionary said...

... and I thought William Paley died in 1805.

Thesauros said...

Meaning?

The Atheist Missionary said...

Paley is credited with formulating the watchmaker analogy to support the existence of God and for the intelligent design of the universe (he also inspired the title of Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker.

You are a smart fellow and you know that intelligent design (as propoosed by Paley) has been thoroughly discredited by the theory of evolution. You know that the Creation Institute and their museum are as intellectually indefensible as the flat earth society. However, you apply the exact same Paley approach to the earliest beginnings of life that he applied to various species. Once you account for the knowledge that has been gained in the two centuries since he died, there is not one iota of difference between your two positions. You are much too bright to accept such a dumbing down approach and, in fairness, you appear to be willing to keep your mind open to new scientific discoveries. This is a much better approach than the Creation Institute which simply starts with the assumption of intelligent design, works backward looking for evidence to support that view and attacking evidence which contradicts it.