GordonAckerman’s Weblog

Dawkins addresses the criticism  that he is just as much a fundamentalist as those he argues against. He does this, as so often, by knocking down straw dolls.

He finds a quote that seems to suggest the author of has no regard to evidence. “if all the evidence in the world turned against creationism … I would still be a creationist.” then suggests that this shows all religious people don’t think. I think that is a bit of a big logical jump. If one person is unthinking it does not show that all religious people are unthinking.

Before looking in detail at the quote let me point out that there have been various eminent scientists that took a similarly dogged approach to an idea that they held onto. Einstein himself held out strongly against the idea of Heisenburg’s uncertainty principle on the grounds that Einstein believed that “God does not play dice.”Though we can not see much fruit of that reservation it is an interesting parallel to Wise’s statement from a most eminent scientist. That reservation did lead to a very thorough testing of the idea as Einstein did all he could to show inconsistencies in it. Having got past such testing it is now pretty fixed in quantum theory.

It is might be also illuminating to see that many scientists withheld their acceptance of the wave nature of light, even though such a great scientist as Newton clearly demonstrated it. It was only when someone challenged such a strongly “proven” scientific theory that we were able to begin to comprehend the photoelectric effect and go on to develop quantum mechanics in the first place. There are many cases where scientist have gut feeling about the way things should be and hold onto them despite the prevailing zeitgeist. Some are in error but others make great leaps forward. So such dogged holding onto ideas is by no means unscientific.

But to return to Wise’s quite. This quote shows a quite different approach to unreasoning acceptance of ideas. Kurt Wise is saying that he is a creationist of the basis of the word of God. This is just such an impression of the way that things should be as seen in the previous two paragraphs. But it is not without evidence. Such a blog is too limited a space to thoroughly discuss all the evidences supporting scripture, but suffice it to say, there is ample historical evidence of its veracity, there is much internal evidence in scripture in its consistency and the prophetic predictions. But perhaps the strongest for the individual is the evidence of its words and promises proving true in our lives as we test them. This then is by no means an ignoring of evidence, but rather a comparing of evidence.

Before I go on must say that I find the term fundamentalist a thoroughly unuseful one. All it seems to mean is all that you find objectionable about others that you can then lump together and imply that each “perpetrator” is guilt of the whole panoply of crimes. So even though I regard Dawkins as guilty of the crimes he is ascribing to others in this section of the preface I will not stoop to calling him such a thing.

Dawkins does however show that he is guilty of not looking at the evidence in that he unreasonably holds onto his preset beliefs when he states, “all available evidence favours evolution.” He may decide that the balance of evidence favours evolution, but to deny any contrary evidence (and there is a lot) even exists is clear blinkered thinking.