Sun, 01 May 2005
Salon recently published an interview
with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins who has written a number of
books explaining evolution. I hadn't heard of Dawkins until a few months ago
when I saw him on NOW
with Bill Moyers. I've been meaning to pick up one of his books.
Some choice quotes from the interview:
For a long time it seemed clear to just about everybody that the beauty and
elegance of the world seemed to be prima facie evidence for a divine creator.
But the philosopher David Hume already realized three centuries ago that this
was a bad argument. It leads to an infinite regression. You can't statistically
explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have
been designed because you're still left to explain the designer, who must be,
if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing. Design
can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate
explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the
designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.
You are working on a new book tentatively called "The God Delusion." Can you explain it?
A delusion is
something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.
Religion is scarcely distinguishable from childhood delusions like the
"imaginary friend" and the bogeyman under the bed. Unfortunately, the
God delusion possesses adults, and not just a minority of unfortunates
in an asylum. The word "delusion" also carries negative connotations,
and religion has plenty of those.
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