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Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable,Blind Chance or Intelligent Design?
by Jack Wellman
2010-04-28 07:08:26 |
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Information Book
Climbing Mount Improbable
Dawkins, R
Norton Publishing, New York
The theory that life began when proteins, DNA, and RNA were formed by chance, or at least by chemicals coming together…whatever you want to call it, is one that can never have conclusive proof (Abiogenesis). And that also goes for the origination of the DNA/RNA. Every single science experiment that has ever been attempted to form life, has revealed that amino acids don't form as readily with any kind of stability. The amino acids that did manage to form during experiments, immediately tended to break apart every time.
Amino acids come in two forms called right and left-handed because one is a mirror image of the other. Proteins which contain all left-handed amino acids will connect correctly with the surrounding proteins. However, if a right-handed amino acid is included, the shape of the protein is changed and the protein will not work in a living cell.
Scientists have not been able to cause amino acids dissolved in water to join together to form proteins. The energy-requiring chemical reactions that join amino acids are reversible and do not occur spontaneously in water. The conclusion is that since scientists have no idea how life originally formed, and human attempts at creating life by experiment have failed miserably, time after time.
Dawkins and evolutionists believe that simple chemicals became concentrated in the ocean, making an organic broth of ever more complex chemicals out of which life emerged. Amino acids are essentially, the building blocks of life, and can form via natural chemical reactions unrelated to life.
Dawkins has always attacked Creationist’s writings about the irreducibility complex problems of life evolving on its own, yet his book, Climbing Mount Improbable, is all about probabilities. He ignores the astronomical odds of life creating itself, but seems fine with using the same outrageous probabilities. For example, Dawkins debunks creationists ideas of the impossibility of naturalistic mechanisms being the way that life could not evolve, but its no problem for him to state that the odds-to-infinity claim that over eons of time, this hill-climbing change made life possible to self-evolve. What sort of duplicity there is in this book and what hypocritical analysis for odds being okay for life evolving on its own while refuting the enormous odds that life could not have possibly evolved on its own as claimed by creationists. He wants it both ways apparently.
 Dawkins also claims that Intelligent Design is absolutely not involved, yet he draws a distinction between “objects that are clearly designed and objects that are not designed but superficially look a bit like they are, but describing them as a ‘designoid’.1 He compares a designoid as that of a human profile, using John F. Kennedy or Robert Kennedy as an example, “Once you have been told, you can just see a slight resemblance to either John or Robert Kennedy. But some don’t see it and it is certainly easy to believe that the resemblance is accidental.’(p. 3).
Dawkins blatantly suggests that the God Hypothesis is wildly improbable, yet he uses improbable in the title of his book. Look at the odds for life evolving on its own, according to Dawkins own words, “So the sort of lucky event we are looking at could be so wildly improbable that the chances of its happening, somewhere in the universe, could be as low as one in a billion billion billion in any one year. If it did happen on only one planet, anywhere in the universe, that planet has to be our planet-because here we are talking about it“ (p. 283).
An accidental world and the evolvement of life, with chance as the main mechanism, swims upstream against a logical axiomatic. That everything came out of nothing defies all logic. Cause and effect demands some Causer prior to nothingness. Chance, to Immanuel Kant, was just an excuse for ignorance. Blind chance is an event, not a noun. Chance of itself, it has no power to effect, and I submit to you that it is not the x-factor that evolutionists claim it is. And chance is not composed of physical matter. Regardless of those facts, to those who believe in evolution or carry a disbelief of Creationism or Intelligent Design, chance was the x-factor in everything coming into existence. We should expect science to deal only with facts (objective), approaching things rationally and logically.
It is self-evident that things that have a beginning also have an ending. The law of cause and effect provides that the universe could not be self-caused, or created itself. Nothing can create itself without an outside cause, at least equal to or greater than itself. To say the universe (and matter) had no cause, caused itself or has always existed, is essentially saying that all matter existed before it came into existence, which is a logical absurdity. And if there must have been something there to cause nothing to bring into existence something, then logically there was not nothing there, but had to be something that made something happen.
A self-created universe is a logical and rational impossibility because for something to create itself it must be before it is. This is impossible...it's impossible for solids, liquids and gases, it's impossible for atoms and subatomic particles, it is impossible for light, it is impossible for heat, it is impossible for God. Nothing anywhere any time can create itself because if it could it would have to exist before it created itself."2
Whether it is the Big Bang theory, scientists are essentially saying that nothing exploded into something, which is a logical impossibility. To retain a theory of self-creation is totally irrational and rejects all logic. Such a theory can be believed but it can't be argued reasonably and can never be established as a fact.
The purely logical conclusion is that a “First Cause”, as Aristotle called it, was this uncaused Causer. A pre-existing, eternal God could account for such a created order.
To cling to any theory other than a “First Cause” is to look at the universe’s origination as a theoretical equation: Space + Time + Chance = Everything. To the rational eye, this equation looks like; 0 + 0 + 0 = everything! The space did not cause matter to come into existence, nor did time. Neither can chance influence or create events. Can being come from non-being… spontaneous generation of matter from nothing? Can chance actually do anything or cause something to happen? No. Chance is only the likelihood of something occurring. There must be a cause before an effect can occur. And a cause logically demand a Causer…this infers a Creator. Like Aristotle’s “First Cause”.
What is puzzling is that random chance is given the status of a cause.
We hear there’s a chance for thunderstorms in the forecast, but the forecaster had no power to create the storms. By assigning a decimal to it (ie, 40%), we assume that the chance will cause the rain. No, it is only the likelihood of it occurring. The storms had a first cause and it was not the forecaster. Chance is powerless. It can not make something happen or create something from nothing. It is a non-being. And besides, it is a noun, not a verb (action). Has anyone ever identified anything in the universe that was uncaused? There is nothing in the universe that we know of that did not have a cause; every physical thing in the universe will have an ending, which infers that it had a beginning.
Dawkins and evolution still does not explain nor can they explain, the origins of the universe. This question should be addressed prior to any question of the possibilities of life, should it not? For without a universe, and thus matter, the question of life would be a moot point. But Dawkins avoids this impossible question because he has no answer. Aristotle was wise indeed in stating that a purely logical conclusion is that a “First Cause” was probable and in fact logical. Perhaps Dawkins would be better suited to call it Climbing Mount Impossible, for the odds he mentioned, “one in a billion billion billion” are beyond improbable, they are impossible.
1. Dawkins, R., 1976. The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, New York.
2. Sproul, Dr. R. C., Defending Your Faith. Excerpts from John McArthur. Copyright 2009.
http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/90-216
Dawkins, R. 1996. Climbing Mount Improbable, Norton Publishing, New York. (p. 261, 3, 283). ISBN 0393039307
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