Richard Dawkins

Dear Discovery Institute,

Today's letter will be a brief one. I was looking through your website, and on your front page, you are promoting an article titled "Is Richard Dawkins a Raelian?" (http://www.discovery.org/a/4589 ) This short blog will highlight the problems with this article.

"This is rich: Richard Dawkins--whose official website claims modestly to be "a clear thinking oasis"--made an incredible statement in the new movie Expelled, asserting that it is "an intriguing possibility" that space aliens "seeded" life here on Planet Earth. (I haven't seen the movie, but did obtain this partial transcript. The emphasis is mine.)"

First problem: we're supposed to listen to this guy who hasn't even seen the film talk about it? Anyway, that's not major comparably, so I'll let it go for now. However, anyone familiar with the works of Richard Dawkins would know that he often jokingly raises the possibility of life being designed by "intelligent aliens", then goes on to explain how it is not a true scientific argument because it just moves the question of causality from life to the aliens. This article, however, makes it look like Dawkins, a known athiest, actually believes this.

"DAWKINS:Nobody knows how it got started. We know the kind of event that it must have been. We know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life.
BEN STEIN:And what was that?
DAWKINS:It was the origin of the first self-replicating molecule.
BEN STEIN:Right, and how did that happen?
DAWKINS:I told you, we don't know"

Here, we see Stein questioning Dawkins on the origin of life. Fact is that scientists do not even need an origin of life theory for evolution to work; evolution by natural selection requires living forms to act upon. The film, however, apparently makes the case (like much of the ID movement) that the lack of a universally accepted origin of life theory debunks evolution. It doesn't. Evolution and abiogenesis are closely related. However, they are not one in the same. This fact shows the lack of credibility behind the ID movement as a whole; it shows that they don't even know what they're arguing against as a science.

"BEN STEIN:What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in evolution.
DAWKINS:Well, it could come about in the following way. It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved, probably by some kind of Darwinian means, probably to a very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now, um, now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer.

Ho,ho! That is precisely what the Raelians say:
Years ago, everybody knew that the earth was flat. Everybody knew that the sun revolved around the earth. Today, everybody knows that life on earth is either the result of random evolution or the work of a supernatural God. Or is it? In "Message from the Designers", Rael presents us with a third option: that all life on earth was created by advanced scientists from another world"

The problem with this statement is as follows: Ben Stein asks a question which makes Dawkins give a possible origin-of-life scenario based on Intelligent Design. It is apparent that Dawkins was most likely quoted out of context here; anyone familiar with his writings would see that he means this statement to be cynical/mocking towards Intelligent Design. Why not let Dawkins explain his perspective himself? Consider the following quote:

"Another example. Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.

This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.
"
(taken from http://richarddawkins.net/article,2394,Lying-for-Jesus,Richard-Dawkins).

So apparently the Discovery Institute actually promotes academic dishonesty. This leads to a whole new level of credibility issues. As shown by this blog, as with many of the blogs on this page, the Discovery Institute and the ID movement are not to be trusted. The Discovery Institute itself continues to come across as a dishonest organization, a very dishonest organization indeed.

PS. While you may argue that the linked article is an anomaly, here's another article showing your basis of dishonesty (and also the fact that Dawkins was forced to resort to sneaking into a showing of the film to see the film that HE was interviewed in)

"Ben Stein has him on camera acknowledging that life on Earth may, indeed, have been intelligently designed, but that it had to have been accomplished by space aliens! This is hilarious, of course, because Dawkins is death on intelligent design. But it turns out that that view applies only if it includes the possibility that the designer might be God."

(taken from http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/03/richard_dawkins_worlds_most_fa.html)

Someone is obviously being dishonest here, and judging from my knowledge of Dawkins' claims, and also his response to the film, I would say that it isn't Dawkins. The Discovery Institute has been shown to be dishonest on here before, so why not repeat the pattern? Besides, misquotation is Creationist tactic #1. It would make sense for the Discovery Institute to engage in the practice.