Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
The Evolution Of A Thinking Christian
Chris Campbell is a hell-obsessed Christian opinion columnist for the online version of the Houston Chronicle. He also write a blog, sponsored by the Houston Chronicle, called Thinking Christian. Chris and I have tangled before.
Chris' latest post attempts to tackle Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion. In it, Chris' employs possibly the lamest creationist apologetic of them all; The Argument From Personal Incredulity which says, basically, "I don't understand how it happened, so god did it".
[Chris Campbell] Also, I disagree with his arguement that complex things don't have to be designed and made by intelligence. When was the last time you saw a watch just evolve from a piece of metal all by itself. Even if you let the metal sit there for millions of years I bet you that a watch will never appear. What need was there for a human being to evolve by itself and how could it survive slow changes? It just makes no sense and sounds totally impossible that just by slow changes human would appear. Even over a supposed period of millions of years it just is not possible by chance or by slow changes.
More below the fold...
This is a slothful way of thinking. Just because an ignorant scientific layman like Campbell doesn't understand biological evolution does not mean that it did not happen. He's saying that he's just too lazy to put forth the personal effort required to learn and understand the basics of biological evolution.
It's really not that hard to understand. Small changes in allele frequency accumulating over billions (not just "millions", as Chris claims - he's off by an order of magnitude) have produced the current, existing biological life forms that we are familiar with today.
Yes, even humans.
This change in the frequency of alleles is the fact of evolution. There are also many different theories of evolution that attempt to explain the mechanism by which alleles change in frequency. This is why evolution is considered by scientists to be both a fact and a theory.
This is one of the toughest concepts for non-scientists to wrap their heads around. I know it took me a while, but once you understand it, everything else tends to fall into place and starts making sense.
We are not here because of some magical god thing. Magical god things are holdovers from our species' early attempts to explain what we did not understand. Now that we are making huge strides in understanding biological evolution, there is no reason at all to excuse the laziness of invoking a magical god thing to explain it.
And that's really what Dawkin's book is all about. Of course, there are plenty of unreasonable, ignorant, lazy folks who prefer the easy way out. The easy way out is to exclaim piously that "god did it". It doesn't require any thought at all. It's simple, it's lazy, it's easy.
And it's wrong.
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Minor correction. A billion
Minor correction. A billion is a thousand-million. Chris is off by three orders of magnitude, rather than one.
Aside from that minor detail, I'm with you all the way.
Houston Chronicle?
I take the Chronicle and have read it almost every day for years now. I don't think I've ever seen this guy in the print edition.
Print Edition
Hi ense,
Hmnn... You might be right. I just assumed that because he was an opinion columnist for the Chronicle online that he was also one for their print edition. My mistake.
the easy road leads to the dark side it does
Part of their "arguement" is designed to appeal to those of little intelectual calliber who are more likely to be swayed by a common sense arguement like "no matter how long I wait the metal will never evolve into a watch." And also arguements like the one about how no one has ever seen a lizard evolve into a mammel therefor it cannot be true, ignoring the fact that this evolution took longer than the lifespan of a human or even of a civilization (as if either of those can be considdered a long time in geologic terms).
Definitely.
Definitely. It's like if I stumbled upon a pyramid in the jungle of Central America and just simply claimed that "God" must have made it, rather than doing the archeology. Or with the lump of metal example he uses, sit back and claim that the rust/tarnish which occured on it was due to God rather than learning a little basic chemistry. There is no end to how claiming "God" is the solution for anything you just don't bother to try to really understand.
Gah. This level of intellectual laziness makes me sick.
Jim Downey
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
re: Chris Campbell
If this is an example of a "thinking" Christian I'd hate to see a "thoughtless" one. I actually found this thread on the 19th and left a comment, but Chris doesn't seem to interact much on his own comments section.
tantum religio potuit suadere malorum
Lucretius
clueless
How can anyone be so clueless? And then criticize the arguments of others based on his own ignorance? Maybe by the time he gets into high school he will have learn some of the rudiments of science, and biology in particular. Just imagine the trouble our country would be in if our leaders were as ignorant and unwilling to learn as this guy is.
Yeah, that tired argument is
Yeah, that tired argument is not rational at all. There is no force on the watch in his example, there is a force on living organisms. The force in question (wrong word) is the fact that all organisms are not created equal and some die out before they pass along their genes. Throw in a shitload of energy from the Sun and it makes complete, logical sense that organisms that survive better will survive better! Little tiny advantages multiply over time.
While I can't explain this nearly as well as you or PZ, it seems to me that fucktards like Chris Campbell are purposefully trying to construct a strawman argument to appeal to people who have already made up their minds that god did it.
Yes, metal will not spontaneously leap into the form of a watch no matter how long you wait. Duh. That is not relevant.