Any Opinions/Thoughts On Richard Dawkins Much Appreciated!

[SacKings384]

As some of you may not know I am currently in college and have been given the assignment of writing a philosophy paper on any author of an essay in my book "Voices of Wisdom" (if anyone has it that would be awesome) Either way, I have chosen to do my essay on Richard Dawkins, leader of the new atheism movement and hardcore Darwinist. I don't need to provide much else on who he is because if you're responding to this thread you probably know of his ideas. Anyways, any opinions/thoughts on his views would be much appreciated. I like to get understand other views and incorporate them into my essay.

If this is not the place for that and is deleted I understand

 

[VF21]

I have some concerns over this, but I'm going to leave it for now and hope our members can answer your request for various opinions/thoughts withoutgetting into arguments with any others who respond.

If it does get heated, I'll just have to close it.

 

[Bricklayer]

Well...

I think your answer or answers is going to depend to a significant degree on what level you are looking to work. And by that I mean simply are you looking at Dawkins simply as the prototypical Darwinist and contrasting him to creationists at that level? Or are you looking at the nuances of his evolutionary theory as opposed to Steven Jay Gould's for instance? (the so called "Darwin Wars"). If its the former, then you will probably want to concentrate on his works tryign to disprove creationism, if its the latter then it gets more complex and you are going to want to focus on his own extreme gene-related evolutionary theories -- kind of the founder actually. If its jsut a Darwinist vs. a creationist, then whether the Darwinist leans towards individual genes as the primary/only significant evolutionary factor (as Dawkins does) or believes that species/group survival also plays a significant roile isn't really very significant. If you're looking to define Dawkins within the scientific community however, such nuances have been key to his debates and legacy.

 

[SacKings384]

The essay in the book specifically goes into Darwinism vs Creationsim. He goes a little bit deeper than just natural selection though (as your post has shown you may already know that) Are there any specific gaps in his thinking other than the only one I have come up with so far which is basically, he is no better than the creationsists at thoroughly explaining how it all started. As we all know in science for every effect there MUST be a cause. Yet it's the one thing they can't explain. Anything I'm missing? And VF don't worry I don't intend on turning this into a religious debate at all...

 

[D-Mass]

Brick is correct...Dawkins is pretty different from most evolutionary biologists in the extent to which he believes that organisms are simply vehicles for genes.

From the standpoint of what you mentioned re: the starting point of all life, Dawkins would most likely take an approach that expands on the Miller-Urey experiment from 1953. Biochemically, all of the elemental ingredients for life (C, H, O, N, etc.) were all present on Earth since the beginning. Methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in the atmosphere, coupled with large amounts of water vapor from evaporating oceans and geothermal vents could easily be reassembled with energy from lightning, etc. to form simple amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Other than water, living things are primarily made of proteins. The question really becomes then, how did these early organic molecules become self-replicating (or, did they replicate each other somehow)...that is really the crucial missing step. Not a huge stretch of the imagination, but certainly not an experimentally established process. I'm not sure of Dawkins' specific answer to this, but I'm certain he must have something out there that outlines his ideas on it.

 

[SacKings384]

Wow thanks D-Mass and Brick! Both of you really put me on a good track. I'll be sure to check into that D-Mass

 

[bibbinator]

Haven't read Dawkins, but recently had a discussion about his ideas with a friend who is interested in him.

Dawkins sounds like a reductionist to me. I prefer holism and emergentism.

Muss is a reductionist - he appears to believe if he can work the stats right he'll win. Holism would say that the winning approach is to get the team right, personel, chemistry and staff and the winning stats will follow. After all you can't win the game without having winning stats. Take it from a statistician.

 

[Gargamel]

Don't forget to include discussion of the Dawkins Thunder Dunk theory in your paper.