In Richard Dawkins’s essay about Darwin’s wasp, he makes an argument that nature’s role is to ensure DNA survival. The inductive argument begins by observing the behavior of the wasp. As Dawkins observes, the wasp inserts its stinger into the central nervous system of the caterpillar and paralyzes it. Then the wasp implants larva. The larvae eat the caterpillar alive. This may seem cruel to the human mind if we apply the concept of suffering to this process, but ultimately, this is nature at work. He cites several primary sources of data including the behavior of the wasp to the cheetah and the gazelle. This inductive thought process illustrates and supports Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Dawkins further argues that purposeful design is an illusion. In doing so, Dawkins cites the work of William Paley as a secondary source to argue his own point there is not a divine maker. Paley points out that if a watch has a watchmaker, then it follows that living bodies have a divine designer. But Dawkins asserts this cannot be true, because Darwin has proved that living bodies exist because DNA makes it possible. It is this specific inductive argument of DNA survival which Dawkins uses to refute the idea of purposeful design. We can infer here that Dawkins is interested in proving that what humans think they know about God is at best an illusion. At the end of the day, it is nature that rules. Conversely, we can look at St. Thomas Aquinas’s deductive argument in “King of the Bees” to understand his views on God. He sets forth a premise that the best way to govern is by kingship. Aquinas uses God as a primary source to support his argument. Specifically, Samuel 13:14, “The Lord hath sought Him a man after His own heart” is cited to... ... middle of paper ... ...a certain purpose, but if we tried to reverse engineer an organism, we would fail. It cannot be understood in the same way, because we don’t know what it wants. To support the inference, Dawkins cites the example of a cheetah and a gazelle. On the one hand, the cheetah is made for killing the gazelle. Conversely, the gazelle is made for survival, which defeats the cheetah’s purpose. The logical induction is this cannot be God’s utility. Dawkins concludes this is the utility function of DNA and actually “explains the "purpose" of both the cheetah and the gazelle” (Dawkins, 1995). By inference, we conclude that nature is neutral and organisms just exist because they do. It sounds almost Zen. Works Cited Dawkins, R. (1995, November). God's Utility Function. Retrieved July 13, 2011, from http://www.godslasteraar.org/assets/ebooks/Dawkins_Gods_Utility_Function_sec.pdf
William Paley’s, The Argument from Design, talks a great deal about a being coming across a watch and questioning why the watch was there and how the watch was created there. He stated that there must have been a creator to the watch. Everything that has a design has a creator and that how nobody had ever seen the creator at work as he crafts this piece of art altogether to the point of where everything is put in place and has a purpose, that if even one thing was out of place that the watch would not tick, or for that matter, never work at all. In fact however, Paley was not talking about a watch.
In conclusion, it is possible for science and religion to overlap. Although Gould’s non-overlapping magisterial claims that creationism doesn’t conflict with evolution, it doesn’t hold with a religion that takes the biblical stories literally. Moreover, I defended my thesis, there is some overlap between science and religion and these overlaps cause conflict that make it necessary to reject either science or religion, by using Dawkins’ and Plantinga’s arguments. I said earlier that I agree with Dawkins that both science and religion provide explanation, consolation, and uplift to society. However, there is only conflict when science and religion attempt to explain human existence. Lastly, I use Plantinga’s argument for exclusivists to show that such conflict means that science and religion are not compatible. It demands a rejection t either science or religion.
It is evident that McCloskey’s arguments in an attempt to disprove the existence of God lacks evidence. He disputes the existence of God based on a lack of undisputable evidence, but he provides no undisputable evidence to counter this existence. He dismisses the idea of a creator by theory of evolution. Although he may have a valid argument for evolution he still does not account for the start of the world. Everything must come from something. The cause cannot be unlimited, there was a cause that had to be free of all other causes, and this points us to creation.
However, David Hume, succeeds in objecting this argument by claiming that the experience is a necessary factor for understanding the creation of the universe. Lastly, I argued that Paley’s argument was not sufficient for proving God’s existence with the argument by design because we cannot assume the world will comply and work the way we wish
The Teleological argument, given by William Paley in 1802 states that there is a “Designing Creator”, and that everything in this world has been designed to fulfill some sort of function. He bases this argument using a traditional time piece, a watch, as an analogy. Paley states that the watch, unlike a stone or a rock, could not have been placed or created by accident, and that the existence of a watch is proof that there must be a watchmaker. He compares this watch to the existence of the universe, stating that the universe itself is proof that there is some sort of designer present, and like a watch (but unlike a rock or stone) could not have been created by accident. He then continues to state that further evidence of a God can be found in the supposed “regularity” of the universe. Paley claims that due to the universe behaving in a very apparent manner, while retaining boundaries (Newtons laws of motion, etc) that this is a very apparent display of a God having rule over a very mechanical universe. Now Darwin on the other hand was a large
The reason why the argument fails is because Paley put’s emphasis on giving things a single sole purpose. If things had multiple purposes from Paley’s point of view then it would be a lot more difficult to strike the argument down. This argument also shows the 3 point rule god. Paley has shown in this argument that god is all good, all powerful, and all knowing. The argument also gives a good argument as to how certain things must have intelligent design in order for it to be created. This is where I believe it mostly thrives. If we were to look at another argument like The Ontological Argument it states that the greatest thing that we can conceive exists in the mind, but it is greater to exist in reality than in the mind, but if nothing greater than god can be conceived in the mind then god must exist in reality. This argument can easily be torn apart if someone just believes that god is not the greatest thing that can be conceived. It also does not prove god’s existence throughout the world physically, but with the mind. Where as Paley’s argument shows god through the “creations” he has created and explaining how god is the
Anyone with even a moderate background in science has heard of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Since the publishing of his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, Darwin’s ideas have been debated by everyone from scientists to theologians to ordinary lay-people. Today, though there is still severe opposition, evolution is regarded as fact by most of the scientific community and Darwin’s book remains one of the most influential ever written.
“Science proves religious people are stupid and atheists are smart.” This is a somewhat provocative title pulled from an article on a small blog called “The Moral Minefield,” run by a group of Graduate Theological Union students and graduates (Green). This statement is exactly the kind of thing, however, that one would expect Richard Dawkins to wholeheartedly agree with. In fact, he seems to imply this sentiment throughout the entirety of his speech titled, “Militant Atheism.”
Darwin states that this struggle need not be competitive in nature and also entails a species’ efficiency at producing offspring. Natural selection works not as an active entity that seeks and exterminates species that are not suited for their environment; instead, it retains variations that heighten a species’ ability to dominate in the struggle for existence and discards those that are detrimental or useless to that species. Stephen J. Gould explains the case of r-selection in which a species’ chances of survival are most reliant on its ability to reproduce rapidly and not on its structure being ideally suited for its environment. Gould’s example shows the beneficial results of perceiving natural selection not as something that changes a species in accordance with its environment but as something that preserves characteristics beneficial in the s... ...
The metaphor behind Dawkins' theory can best be described by his opening statement: "we are survival machines-robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes" (Barlow 193). Dawkins links the natural behavior of unconscious bunches of nucleic acid (genes) to human behavior and personality by calling them "selfish." His use of this term conjures up the image of a separate individual, capable of making decisions to help its own good and disregarding our needs. By calling human beings "survival machines" and "robots," Dawkins suggests some serious moral implications regarding our existence. If we were just robots, it would seem that we would be no longer responsible for our actions, as people could attribute all evil to the gene programmers who created these robots. Also, if our primary purpose were to serve as a "survival machine" for something else, life would seem insignificant. John Maynard Smith writes that Dawkins' book is just about evolution, and "not about morals . . . or about the human sciences" (195). However, the attempt to disengage the selfish gene theory from its moral implications is seriously undermined by Dawkins' metaphors.
John Polkinghorne’s The Universe as Creation does its best to not convince the reader of Intelligent Design, but rather to dissuade the reader from the notion that although the is intelligently designed, but in this way, it has made science possible.
William Paley develops his view of the design argument through an example of a wristwatch. He has the reader imagine themselves coming across a watch on the ground. He then asks the reader how they think the watch came to be there or came to exist in the first place. Looking at the watch, Paley says that one will notice the intricate design of the watch and notice that all the parts were put together in such a way to serve a purpose, namely, to tell time. Paley believes that from looking at the watch we will be lead to think that the watch has a clever designer. The watch displays a certain evidence of its own design.
Charles Darwin has five parts to his theory of natural selection, firstly the “Geometric increase” which claims that “all living things reproduce in great numbers”, meaning that species may survive but not all will survive because, the resources used for survival for instance ,food will not be enough for all living things. “The struggle for existence” because there is a limited number of resources and can only sustain some and not all, not all living things will survive, however the question lies in which living being will survive?. “Variation” is the third part of natural selection which claims that within those living things there are variations within them that will determine whic...
The video, “What Darwin Never Knew”, is a stunning time line that details the theory of evolution formed by Charles Darwin, and the recent advancements made that answers some of the questions he simply could not. Darwin 's theory explained why today there are 9,000 kinds of birds, 350,000 kinds of beetles, 28,000 kinds of fish, and at least 2 million kinds of living species and counting. Darwin figured out that all species are connected, and he also realized that species evolved and adapted, but he did not know how.
Paley’s analogy came about from the concept of a stone. He encountered this stone during his walk and wondered how it came about (Paley, 1802, 196). He applies the idea that since a designer must have created this stone, this designer must have created other things just like how a watch is created by a watchmaker. His analogy for a watch and its watch maker becomes his key argument because he argues is that you cannot come to a conclusion that a stone was formed by a natural process, just like how when you look at a watch it has a watchmaker(Paley, 1802, 96). When comparing it back to a stone, Paley says someone must have created it. He says design requires a designer, the works of nature also requires a designer and that designer would be God. From this Paley creates his four arguments for God’s existence from analogies, which are argument from design is based on experience, argument from design assumes that we are different in kind, but same in degree, argument from design argues from mind/ thought to design, and argument from design...