Giving Thanks in a Vacuum

The fact of your own existence is the most astonishing fact you will ever have to face. Don’t you ever get used to it. The universe we live in and the fact of our existence is truly a cause for gratitude. Gratitude for our individual existence and for the process of evolution which from the blind forces of physics produces all that we know and gives it the illusion of design.

Dawkins is speaking of predictability and luck as the two halves of the creative process. Natural selection is the great engine of the predictable half, while blind chance is the other half. If some catastrophe wiped out the mammals today, the surviving vertebrates would evolve into a similar range of ecological types. Humans would have evolved again if the tape of life had been rerun.

But, the predictable engine of natural selection requires luck at certain critical points, the most obviously at the origin of life (self replication coded information that influences the world) is the most obvious case. This first step in the chain of evolution might have been a very lucky step indeed.

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wald0
A very interesting presentation but, at times a little confusing and convoluted for my taste. Dawkins generally is very good at expressing an idea in clear precise terms so I was somewhat surprised when his argument started getting a little difficult to follow. Basically though he was trying to build a case suggesting that since religion seems to be generally universal amongst human cultures it makes sense to look for some Darwinian reasoning for this. His hypothesis is that religion itself was not the result of natural selection but springs forth from something else that is- in other words it is a bi-product of the evolutionary process but not the direct result of it. He goes on of course to explain exactly what this naturally selected psychological disposition is that religion may be the bi-product of but, that is when it starts getting a little hard to follow in my opinion.
Basically his hypothesis is that religion is the bi-product of feeling gratitude or being offended by things for which there is no person to thank or blame. In other words religion arises from our natural sense of fairness or justice. If we feel the world has treated us unfairly because say our parents die unexpectedly or tragically it is natural to want to blame someone for that, to ask why me, why did I deserve this? But all too often there is no one to blame because there death was due to circumstances that are beyond the control of mere mortals such as us. So we, humans as a whole, made up someone to blame, someone to appeal to in order that we might try and stop these random tragedies that affect our lives so deeply. It’s basically just another attempt by humans to remove the random variables of life and feel in control, which makes us feel safe. Once we feel safe from the random cruelty of life we are free to move on to other things, like planning for the future and so forth.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1270359666 Vitor Fernandes
To explain fine tunning, Dawkins has to explore the Multiverse theory.
The problem with that theory is that (in theory) we can never, communicate, prove or experience the other Universes (not that we should stop trying!).
It seems as a big jump of faith, to accept as True a theory that cant never been proved.
Something like Theists arguments.
So the extremes touch.
In my opinion, no theory is false in the starting point, i accept the case that any can be true.
What i would like to see is the Atheists to accept that the existence of a intelligent Designer can be as True as Its non existence, in fact it seems much more provable and logic the first.
Usually splitting hairs with the (i dare to say) stupid fundamentalists Theists arguments, the Atheism should leave the Moral superiority that often i see in the arguments and attitudes. Maybe because they are build to contrary weak arguments (like God say it so, it his written, there is no Moral without God, etc, etc), the Atheist builded a fair bit of lack of humility, and, so to speak, became as narrow minded and fundamentalist as some of the Theist counter part.
Thank you Dawkins and KeenTalks for the talk.
Peace
misterkel
this is evolutionary psychology – a more or less bankrupt program. It appears to be science, but it presumes what it sets out to prove. Our brains are virtually unchanged since paleolithic times, hence our modern behavior is a caveman in a car idea. But it’s been demonstrated that evolution can move much faster than previously supposed. See Jablonka and Lamb, acquired transmissible traits and epigenetics for more details. Dawkins subcribes to the Modern Synthesis of Evolution with a religious fervor and will not admit of novel discoveries which make it highly questionable.
IMHO, biology is undergoing a serious revolution and will soon be seen as far more complicated with many avenues for evolutionary change, not just DNA random mutation and environmental filter. But Dawkin’s life work rests on the MS, so he defends it like a typical religious fanatic.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/about/ Vlatko
@misterkel,
Yes, but you don’t deny Dawkins because you’re skeptic of some kind. You do because you’re religious. He goes against your beliefs (whatever they are) and you’re making “straw man” in order to continue your hope that he’s wrong. Further more your argument is wrong.
Whatever turns out to be more important, Dawkins’ extended phenotype or Jablonka’s niche construction it will be win-win situation for science.
“Extended phenotype and niche construction have often been depicted as opposing views, at least until the recent ESF conferences in which a consensus emerged that the two were more complementary than contradictory.”
“Extended phenotype camp concedes that phenotypes interact on a large scale and affect the adaptive landscape in which they operate, creating feedback on the organisms that express them. In turn, niche constructionists agree that EPs can only exert direct selective pressure on genes, or any other replicators – such as memes – if there is variation in the extended phenotype associated with the replicator.”
The only debate that is alive at this moment is whether the extended phenotype or niche construction is more important as an evolutionary driving force.