Dawkins defends comments about "Alien Designers".

Of Course aliens are real
they come from mexico!

 

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On re-reading what I wrote, I should rephrase; I believe he's arguing that any "organism" which may have lead to life on earth, regardless of its point of origin, would itself be subject to similar evolutionary processes.

 

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I think he's also talking about any decision maker with the complexity and foresight to create other complexity, not just other biological organisms.

 

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Lets keep his religious notions out of the science forums.

 

That's not a religious notion.

 

It is his notion of what the God he rejects, constitutes, in my opinion, and thus is part of his religious notions of atheism.

 

Hi,Ice.
I would say because he likes his job and peer respect. Once you've opened the door you can't shut it.
Placebo effect, stigmata and a few other things prove that the laws of physics have a bit of plasticity if enough faith is applied, yet to say that in a circle of biologists would get you black listed. People can't handle the thought of a god that can change the "rules" at any given time.

Ice have you ever observed anything that can't be explained with text book science? If you have, I doubt you'd tell me for the same reasons.

 

Not all notions about Gods are religious notions. Dawkins's aren't.

What is a "religious notion of atheism" ?

Well, I have no idea what your are talking about.

You claimed that one of the arguments Dawkins uses against a particular conception of Deity's role in creation doesn't work. I asked why not. And you say it's because he likes his job ?

 

I hope that was a joke.

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This one clearly is, since he is evangelising a notion he has decided represents God to him.

 

It's not a religious notion. It's not even a particular notion - his argument applies to an entire category of notions, no one of which (or all together) is being "evangelized" by Dawkins.

Not all notions of Gods are religious, not even if someone decides they are better representations of some Deity than religious ones.

There is an entire world of human thought, behavior, emotion, and meaning, that is not even religious - let alone theistic.

 

The category of notions his argument applies to all fall under a construct that agrees with his opinions of what the context should be.

 

This is not on topic and SAM is destroying this thread for reasons I can't even pretend to know.

 

It is actually. Dawkins made a comment that he backed up with Crick and Co's theory on panspermia and then used it to promote his ideas against intelligent design. Frankly, I find him as disingenuous as those who use their religious bias in science. He has embraced a notion of God that appeals to his narrow framework as an atheist biologist (with greater emphasis on the atheism and less on the biology). Any religious person doing the exact same thing he is would be booed out of their academic post.

 

Of course he is not commenting on a God that isn't used as an explanation for the complexity of life. The Gods that are used for that purpose are subject to his notion that the source of their complexity must also have accumulated through a natural process. It has to do with logic. If Gods have creative power to work out how a whole ecosystem will work, that inherent complexity must have an explanation.

 

Hey, I'm consistant there.

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This thread is about why he would feel the need to clarify publically about what he said in an interview considering he's a authority and why he would complicate it further by adding aliens into the mix.

Then it hit me that aliens are easier to put in a box in that they're mostly thought of as existing with our same physical restraints.

 

Sure, but its not necessarily an explanation derived by a narrow minded application of biology to all ideas.

 

Thats exactly what I'm saying.

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Of course, there is no evidence for life on meteorites either.

 

What about logic?

 

Logic requires an awareness of all variables in an equation. Or isn't that logical?