Dawkins At OU

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

$"If what you're saying is true, then from where do you get a moral authority to condemn as evil, Hitler, the Holocaust, slavery, that sort of thing?" This was the question I asked Richard Dawkins – Neo-Darwinist, Evolutionist, and writer of several books, including his most recent, The God Delusion. This was in a Q &A following a presentation he gave on the campus of Oklahoma University last Friday night. I plan to read his book, the one cited above, so I can refute his fatuous and often sophomoric arguments regarding the origins of life. I don't expect much difficulty in doing so. Just in case you're wondering, yes – I do know that of which I speak. I have listened to a number of his interviews, talks and tirades, for they are plentiful, splashed all over youtube and other electronic and print media. I have read his articles in different publications, as well as his absolutely adolescent pseudo-tome, The Blind Watchmaker, the title of which betrays the inert mental agility of the author found between the pages. So I am quite familiar with him and his work and in all of it, I find at best a nominal opponent. But about his talk at OU. As with his fellow Evolutionist, John Lynch who spoke at the same university a few weeks ago on his own book, Was There A Darwinian Revolution?, Dawkins began his presentation with a barrage of insecure darts thrown at the opposing side of the argument, although with a much heavier hand than Mr. Lynch (quite unlike Intelligent Design proponent William Dembski, who also spoke at OU several months ago and who derided no one, but simply stated his case then answered questions afterward). At one point, on a giant overhead screen Mr. Dawkins played excerpts from conservative actor/writer, Ben Stein's theatrical release, Expelled, in which Dawkins participated, rattling off eloquent and impressive albeit, self-absorbed, sentences of reasoned arguments defending the pro-Darwinist view. He of course did not show the part where he stumbled and stuttered through questions that challenged his intellectual capabilities. For that, you have to see the movie, Expelled. He ended this segment by labeling Ben Stein as "An ignorant fool." Incidentally, that is the equivalent of Clay Akins calling Jason Statham a wimp. During the talk, when asked by a questioner about how to rear children responsibly, Dawkins said he preferred that people, "... teach a child to think, not what to think." Then, in the very same answer, he told the gentleman that he would want to teach a child evolution. Given the overwhelming persuasion of the audience, the internecine dichotomy of Dawkins' answer seemed to fly right over the heads of the attendees, as well as Dawkins himself! In view of the inane and downright silly contradiction above, the poor man has, well, shall we be kind and merely say – an economy of intellect. Another statement by Dawkins that betrays his 220lb polemic on a 16oz brain is when he very soberly and with great apothegmatic thrust said, "A complex thing is more difficult to explain than a simple one." Hmmm ... you don't say. In answer to the question I asked when my turn at the mic came, in short, From where do you get your moral cannon, he started off by asserting that he doesn't know if we can have a 'morality' of sorts – and then promptly proceeded to give me one. In a long and convoluted prolix on the human history of morality, he came to the statement, "Well, I don't get it from religion, that much I know." This naturally brought a great brisance of hoops, hollers, and applause from the neutral and unbiased truth-seeking only students in the audience. As the cheering died down, before he could go on with his self-indulgent and puerile prattle, I asked again, "So then, where do you get your morality from?" "Well," he said a bit testily, "I'm coming to that," then continued the history lesson. Finally, after another painful and anfractuous route recounting other eras and cultures of moral standards, he said he didn't know. But then added that basically, he supposes, we get it from a natural derivation of a collective organization. Before I could follow up with whether he then thinks Hitler and slavery were great and horrific evils or just arbitrary personal preferences, he quickly turned his head and pointed to the next questioner on his left. Yes, for Mr. Dawkins to enjoy rock star status with his cult-like groupie followers is, to my mind, unwarranted. There are many others on his side of the issue, Christopher Hitchens, Noam Chomsky, and Stephen J. Gould, just to name a few, and any one of them makes Dawkins look like the Barney Fife of Darwinism. Gould, who was, without a doubt, brilliant, and should have garnered much more recognition than Dawkins ever did, is no longer with us, but even when he was alive, he was, sadly, over shadowed by Dawkins with the wider lay public. The reason for this is, I think, that the average man-on-the-street atheist is one who is basically, a shallow thinker. Self-aggrandizing as that may sound, I think it to be true. And, if so, then the shallow thinker would naturally cling to the shallow speaker (evidence of this is, with the single exception of one raving gentleman who ranted as he made his was out of the auditorium, before both Dawkins and Lynch, the Intelligent Design proponents and Christians in the audience, some of whom I knew personally, were very respectful and courteous, quietly listening to Dawkins' answers, saying nothing harsh, untoward, or disruptive. However, when William Dembski was at OU, during his Q&A, the audience hurled abusive insults and expletives at him as he tried to his answers to the people at the mic. One young man sitting right behind me who told me that he was in the science department there, yelled up to the stage from his seat, "Shut up!" as Dembski was answering a question). So, in a bizarre way, as one looks at the Dawkins hysteria, traditional anti-God, anti-Christian left wing atheists, and the whole floating, consensual, and overall bankrupt mores conundrum of those in that camp, a certain symmetry seems to come into focus ... provided one sees clearly. I shouldn't be surprised, really. This is nothing new. God spoke of it long before Richard Dawkins was ever created. The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." Psalm 14:1 (NIV) Keck$

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