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I'll quote from the back cover of the book (I have a hard copy here in front of me):

A brilliant and controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially non-random process discovered by Darwin - is the only answer to the biggest question of all: why do we exist?

An enchantingly witty and persuasive neo-Darwinist attack on the anti-evolutionists, pleasurably intelligible to the scientifically illiterate

- Hermione Lee in Books of the Year, Observer

It's really no use to give a synopsis. The links I provided before, especially http://evolution.berkeley.edu/, have essentially the same information, only Dawkins is a master storyteller and goes into far more detail.

Dear readers of this thread. If you are still with us to this point, it must mean that you are intrested in the evolution-creation debate.

An argument that is constantly used by creationists in favor of creation is the watch analogy. The Theologian William Paley used it in his very influential book Natural theology.
From Natural theology:

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. (...) There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (...) Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation

Now this argument, basically the assertion that every complex thing cannot possibly come into existence by natural forces, it must have a maker, a designer, is thoroughly debunked by Richard Dawkins [/i]in his book [i]The Blind Watchmaker.

Yesterday, I found the full online version of the book by accident. So, for all of you who have been courageous enough to sit through this debate up to this point, I give you the link:
http://www.evolutionary.tripod.com/dawkins_blindwatchmaker_1996_full.pdf

Enjoy

jclord:
I am only sharing news I have read, seen and heard on the internet, TV and radio. I did not create them myself . Do your own search on line and you can find the news first hand.

That's exactly what I've done. I looked up your source and found it very biased. I would be very surprised if it were factually correct.
Going to a source such as LifeSiteNews for information on church-state separation is like going to the Ku-Klux-Klan for information on race relations.

Copied from: http://www.ffrf.org/timely/dawkins.php
"Time to Stand Up"
By Richard Dawkins

"To blame Islam for what happened in New York is like blaming Christianity for the troubles in Northern Ireland!" Yes. Precisely. It is time to stop pussyfooting around. Time to get angry. And not only with Islam.

Those of us who have renounced one or another of the three "great" monotheistic religions have, until now, moderated our language for reasons of politeness. Christians, Jews and Muslims are sincere in their beliefs and in what they find holy. We have respected that, even as we have disagreed with it. The late Douglas Adams put it with his customary good humor, in an impromptu speech in 1998 (slightly abridged):

Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, "Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not?--because you're not!" If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday,' you say, "I respect that."

The odd thing is, even as I am saying that, I am thinking "Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?" But I wouldn't have thought "Maybe there's somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics" when I was making the other points. I just think "Fine, we have different opinions." But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody's (I'm going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say "No, we don't attack that; that's an irrational belief but no, we respect it."

Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labor party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows--but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe . . . no, that's holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we've just got used to doing so? There's no other reason at all, it's just one of those things that crept into being and once that loop gets going it's very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how much of a furor Richard creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.

Douglas is dead, but I think he would join me in asking people now to stand up and break this absurd taboo. My respect for the Abrahamic religions went up in the smoke and choking dust of September 11th. The last vestige of respect for the taboo disappeared as I watched the "Day of Prayer" in Washington Cathedral, where people of mutually incompatible faiths united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the first place: religion. It is time for people of intellect, as opposed to people of faith, to stand up and say "Enough!" Let our tribute to the dead be a new resolve: to respect people for what they individually think, rather than respect groups for what they were collectively brought up to believe.

Notwithstanding bitter sectarian hatreds over the centuries (all too obviously still going strong), Judaism, Islam and Christianity have much in common. Despite New Testament watering down and other reformist tendencies, all three pay historic allegiance to the same violent and vindictive God of Battles, memorably summed up by Gore Vidal in 1998:

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal--God is the Omnipotent Father--hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is not just in place for one tribe, but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good.

In The Guardian of 15th September, I named belief in an afterlife as the key weapon that made the New York atrocity possible. Of prior significance is religion's deep responsibility for the underlying hatreds that motivated people to use that weapon in the first place. To breathe such a suggestion, even with the most gentlemanly restraint, is to invite an onslaught of patronizing abuse, as Douglas Adams noted. But the insane cruelty of the suicide attacks, and the equally vicious though numerically less catastrophic 'revenge' attacks on hapless Muslims living in America and Britain, push me beyond ordinary caution.

How can I say that religion is to blame? Do I really imagine that, when a terrorist kills, he is motivated by a theological disagreement with his victim? Do I really think the Northern Ireland pub bomber says to himself "Take that, Tridentine Transubstantiationist bastards!" Of course I don't think anything of the kind. Theology is the last thing on the minds of such people. They are not killing because of religion itself, but because of political grievances, often justified. They are killing because the other lot killed their fathers. Or because the other lot drove their great grandfathers off their land. Or because the other lot oppressed our lot economically for centuries.

My point is not that religion itself is the motivation for wars, murders and terrorist attacks, but that religion is the principal label, and the most dangerous one, by which a "they" as opposed to a "we" can be identified at all. I am not even claiming that religion is the only label by which we identify the victims of our prejudice. There's also skin color, language, and social class. But often, as in Northern Ireland, these don't apply and religion is the only divisive label around. Even when it is not alone, religion is nearly always an incendiary ingredient in the mix as well.

It is not an exaggeration to say that religion is the most inflammatory enemy-labelling device in history. Who killed your father? Not the individuals you are about to kill in 'revenge.' The culprits themselves have vanished over the border. The people who stole your great grandfather's land have died of old age. You aim your vendetta at those who belong to the same religion as the original perpetrators. It wasn't Seamus who killed your brother, but it was Catholics, so Seamus deserves to die "in return." Next, it was Protestants who killed Seamus so let's go out and kill some Protestants "in revenge." It was Muslims who destroyed the World Trade Center so let's set upon the turbaned driver of a London taxi and leave him paralyzed from the neck down.

The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the 'historic homeland' of the Jews (though the horrific stories of how Joshua and others conquered their Lebensraum might have made them wonder). Even if it wasn't justifiable at the time, no doubt a good case can be made that, since Israel exists now, to try to reverse the status quo would be a worse wrong.

I do not intend to get into that argument. But if it had not been for religion, the very concept of a Jewish state would have had no meaning in the first place. Nor would the very concept of Islamic lands, as something to be invaded and desecrated. In a world without religion, there would have been no Crusades; no Inquisition; no anti-Semitic pogroms (the people of the diaspora would long ago have intermarried and become indistinguishable from their host populations); no Northern Ireland Troubles (no label by which to distinguish the two 'communities,' and no sectarian schools to teach the children historic hatreds--they would simply be one community).

It is a spade we have here, let's call it a spade. The Emperor has no clothes. It is time to stop the mealy-mouthed euphemisms: 'Nationalists,' 'Loyalists,' 'Communities,' 'Ethnic Groups.' Religions is the word you need. Religion is the word you are struggling hypocritically to avoid.

Parenthetically, religion is unusual among divisive labels in being spectacularly unnecessary. If religious beliefs had any evidence going for them, we might have to respect them in spite of their concomitant unpleasantness. But there is no such evidence. To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.

The resilience of this form of hereditary delusion is as astonishing as its lack of realism. It seems that control of the plane which crashed near Pittsburgh was probably wrestled out of the hands of the terrorists by a group of brave passengers. The wife of one of these valiant and heroic men, after she took the telephone call in which he announced their intention, said that God had placed her husband on the plane as His instrument to prevent the plane crashing on the White House. I have the greatest sympathy for this poor woman in her tragic loss, but just think about it! As my (also understandably overwrought) American correspondent who sent me this piece of news said:

"Couldn't God have just given the hijackers a heart attack or something instead of killing all those nice people on the plane? I guess he didn't give a flying Bleep about the Trade Center, didn't bother to come up with a plan for them." (I apologize for my friend's intemperate language but, in the circumstances, who can blame her?)

Is there no catastrophe terrible enough to shake the faith of people, on both sides, in God's goodness and power? No glimmering realization that he might not be there at all: that we just might be on our own, needing to cope with the real world like grown-ups?

Billy Graham, Mr. Bush's spiritual advisor, said in Washington Cathedral:

But how do we understand something like this? Why does God allow evil like this to take place? Perhaps that is what you are asking now. You may even be angry at God. I want to assure you that God understands those feelings that you may have.

Well, that's big of God, I must say. I'm sure that makes the bereaved feel a whole lot better (the pathetic thing is, it probably does!). Mr. Graham went on:

I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. The Bible says God is not the author of evil. It speaks of evil as a "mystery."

Less baffled by this deep theological mystery were two of America's best-known televangelists, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. In a conversation on Robertson's lucrative television show (religion is tax-exempt), they knew exactly where to put the blame. The whole thing was obviously caused by America's sin. Falwell said that God had protected America wonderfully for 225 years, but now, what with abortion and gays and lesbians and the ACLU, "all of them who have tried to secularize America . . . I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen." "Well, I totally concur," responded Robertson. Bush, to his credit, swiftly disowned this characteristic example of the religious mind at work.

The United States is the most religiose country in the Western world, and its born-again Christian leader is eyeball to eyeball with the most religiose people on Earth. Both sides believe that the Bronze Age God of Battles is on their side. Both take risks with the world's future in unshakeable, fundamentalist faith that He will grant them the victory. Incidentally, people speak of Islamic Fundamentalists, but the customary genteel distinction between fundamentalist and moderate Islam has been convincingly demolished by Ibn Warraq in his well-informed book, Why I Am Not a Muslim.

The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion gives strong sanction to both--and mixes explosively with both. Only the wilfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today. Without a doubt it is the prime aggravator of the Middle East. Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different now. "All is changed, changed utterly."

Richard Dawkins is professor of the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford, and author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and Unweaving the Rainbow.

---

"Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? . . . Offer them a fast track to a Great Oasis in the Sky, cooled by everlasting fountains. Harps and wings wouldn't appeal to the sort of young men we need, so tell them there's a special martyr's reward of 72 virgin brides, guaranteed eager and exclusive.

"Would they fall for it? Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next. . . .

"Give them a holy book and make them learn it by heart. . . . As luck would have it, we have just the thing to hand: a ready-made system of mind-control which has been honed over centuries, handed down through generations. Millions of people have been brought up in it. It is called religion. . . Now all we need is to round up a few of these faith-heads and give them flying lessons.

". . . I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite--or too devout--to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. . . . Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end. . . .

"There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger. . . .

"Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place. . . . To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used." --Richard Dawkins, The Guardian, Sept. 15, 2001

LifeSiteNews is and outpost of the North American Christian Right, not exactly a neutral news source.

It's been developed in a university and sponsored by a very smal pharmaceutical company. As long as big pharma doesn't get their hands on it, there's a fair chance it will get licensed in Africa as well

elbaron:
Nferyn, could you please PM what address you want the materials sent to? (Mind you there are over 9,000 pages of essays, theories, and postulations).

Oops. I wish I had the time to go over that, but that won't be the case in the foreseeable future. I won't press you to go through the hassle to send anything. Thanks for the offer anyway, maybe later.
Another question: is abiogenesis your field of expertise by any chance?

Let's wait untill UN Aids comes out with a statement on this find. I wouldn't be surprised if the claims are a little liberal with the truth. Anyway, if this turns out to be true, this would be very good news.
A compound that attacks both aids and influenza... it's very unlikely that this wouldn't have any nasty side-effects

jclord:
@ocho,

Canada is liberal in the sense that they made gay marriage legal and made it illegal for churches to teach from the Bible about homosexuality.

Compared to Nigeria and Jamaica they seem to have the opposite opinion of homosexuality. It is interesting when you think that a pastors can be arrested for preaching from the Bible. I guess freedom of religion is not important in Canada.

I would like to see some proof for the statement that it's illegal to preach from the Bible in Canada. This is highly unlikely and probably a misrepresentation of the facts in the same manner that it is illegal to pray in schools in the US.
Some Christians are really suffering from a persecution complex. Not being able to proselitise freely against people's wishes is very different from being persecuted.

sbucareer you're really confusing me here

layi:
@nferyn
Is there a thread on that already? Obviously can't be debated here. I'm happy you are not too busy to debate. I obviously am (school) but i'll create time (even if i have to sleep late).

layi, you really don't have create time for that. It's probably a waste of your precious time, unless you really can make a convincing positive case for creationism, which I doubt. For me, it's a bit of a slow period at work, so I do have time (for the moment)

layi:
Lets do some intellectual wrestle. I'm enjoying every bit of it.

It's a fun pasttime. It helps me sharpen my debating skills.

layi:
I'll also want to know if www.talkorigin.org is authentic enough to speak for evolutionists.
Would be back

Actually, www.talkorigin.org doesn't speak for proponents of evolutionary thought at all. It's a creationist front to mislead people looking for www.talkorigins.org and leads to http://jcsm.org/ , Jesus Christ Saves Ministries
And yes, www.talkorigins.org is definitely a good reference for evolutionists, all contributers are well versed in biology and almost all of them are researchers.
If you look at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/awards/ you will see that the site really represents the mainstream, accepted scientific community

virozuru,

You don't have to worry about that. I linked to the talkorigins archive because it's far easier to have your sources close at hand than to delve into my books. This debate already took far too much of my time - luckily we're at a slow period at work, so I do have some time.

I've got works by Richard Dawkins (Evolutionary biologist, Oxford University, inventer of the concepts selfish gene, extended phenotype and meme, the most important populariser of the evolutionary synthesis - the symbiosis of genetics and evolutionary thought), Zimmer (arguably the best science writer in the US, maybe in the world), Sean B. Carroll (one of the driving forces of Evo-Devo), Daniel Dennet (philosopher, studied philosophical and social impact of Darwinian thought on culture) and Pinker (neurolinguist at MIT) that form the background of my argumentation.

@ virozuru
Please read the thread, as I've been the one debating layi. Elbaron just chimed in later today.
By the way, the Big Bang Theory has absolute nothing to do with evolution whatsoever.

layi, I suppose you're not going to make a positive case for Creationism? Would be interesting though, as there seem to be as many flavors of creationism as there are Christian denominations and then more

virozuru:
Very interesting comments on this topic.

I do not believe in the theory of evolution. First there was nothing, then a big explosion, and everything is formed. Let's say you have a jigsaw puzzle jumbled up inside a box. You cannot shake this box with all your might, open up the box, and expect a nice and neat jigsaw puzzle. I feel the same with the theory of evolution.

virozuru, I think you really need to educate yourself on what the Theory of Evolution entails before you make statements like that. I suggest you visit
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/ and http://web.archive.org/web/20011201194909/www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/evolution/evolution-for-beginners.html
If you still have questions or doubts about the Theory of Evolution after going through these sources, I'd be happy to answer your questions or direct you to somebody more knowledgeable than me.

virozuru:
@elbaron: I read the same article that you posted here from a site on google. It is very important that you note the source of this information, instead of plagarizing; it could land you in jail. It's also good to do so for different references people may want to look into on the topic of evolution.

Ouch... apparently elbaron is guilty of the same thing layi did.
elbaron, can you explain?

elbaron,

this is extremely interesting. You can send it to me if layi doesn't want it

layi:
@nferyn
U saw the icon. That was meant for a comic relief.

My bad, sorry

layi:
@elbaron and nferyn
I sure will. I'm choked up wit time at the moment (school n stuff)who knows i might still win

Is that your purpose? Does your belief need a refutation of scientific knowledge to stand on it's own?

4get_me,

For God to exist he needs to be detectable in some way. If he is in principle undetectable, then God is outside the bounds of human knowledge and no-one can claim knowledge of him.
If he is detectable, you need to be able to define his attributes in a non-contradictory manner, so that we may have something to detect him by.

If you cannot do that, it is utterly useless to even talk about God, let alone saying that [i]elbaron [/i]needs to disprove God

Betrand Russell had the following to say about this issue:

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

layi:
Do I take it that evolution theory does not explain the origin of human life in particular and life in general but just the evolutionary processes that took place amongst various life forms from time immemorial?

Evolution Theory does not explain the origin the common ancestor we share with all living species on earth, but it does explain how we evolved from there on, even though not all the pieces of the puzzle are know (if we will ever know them).
Evolutionary theory explains the underlying processes that caused all lifeforms to evolve from a common ancestor. The theory will very likely be further expanded and refined as new evidence pops up.

A very interesting subject is the new scientific field of Evo-devo or evolutionary developmental biology, which explains the development of lifeforms from a fertilised egg to a full grown adult. We are finally starting to unlock the DNA codebook that underlies the formation of life forms from fertilisation onward.
As a medical doctor, this subject will very likely be of interest to you.

have a look at:
http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/lectures/
especially lectures 3 and 4

layi, I salute you from the bottom of my heart. Don't hesitate to ask any more questions. If i do not know the answer (which is not unlikely), I can make sure that I get the information from the relevant sources.

I have created a new thread (https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-6404.msg198915.html#msg198915) to present positive evidence for creationism. This way we can keep the threads as tidy as possible

All off you creationists out there that mock Evolutionary Theory, usually out of ignorance, continuously assert that creationism offers a much better case for our biological diversity than Evolutionary Theory.

Here's your chance: offer some credible evidence for your case and explain why it is better than Evolutionary Theory in explaining biological diversity.

demmy:
So Kodewrita your belief in god is for speculatory gain heh? For your reward just in case he exist? That really is an insight, knowing that Nigerians preach one thing and do another. They don't really believe they merely adhere just to be on the safe side. SMH.

This is once more evidence that one of the main drivers of religion if fear, far more than love.
But let's leave our discussion on religion at that ,we can open a new thread if wanted.

kodewrita, if you want to discuss Pascal's Wager, please post a new subject in Religion. I'd be happy to join the discussion and debate with you, but please do not mess up this thread.
If you want to present a case for young earth creationism, do not hesitate to create a new topic as well.