Abiogenesis is impossible

[snowtracks]

as it turns out, even your top echelon guy is not that sure of himself anymore.

Why don't we ask the man himself, rather than go with a notoriously quotemined version?

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.

Well, you will have guessed how Mathis/Stein handled this. I won't get the exact words right (we were forbidden to bring in recording devices on pain of a $250,000 fine, chillingly announced by some unnamed Gauleiter before the film began), but Stein said something like this. "What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN." "Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE." I can't remember whether this was the moment in the film where we were regaled with another Lord Privy Seal cut to an old science fiction movie with some kind of android figure — that may have been used in the service of trying to ridicule Francis Crick (again, dutiful titters from the partisan audience).

aliens, i suspected they would be paraded out to explain things.

[The Grand Nudger]

Gottta love them aliens, stealing our jobs - not to mention all the white women.

So, howsabout that proof?

[Esquilax]

aliens, i suspected they would be paraded out to explain things.

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Dawkins said that panspemia is a possibility in answer to a hypothetical question about designers posed by Stein. It doesn't mean he actually believes aliens were involved, or is using that to explain things: in fact, that's precisely the dishonest quote mine Stein was lying about in the first place!

So to recap: not only have you not admitted you were wrong when you are demonstrably wrong, but you've actually doubled down on the verifiable lie that Ben Stein told in his documentary!

Now, are you a fucking imbecile, or a con man? Because now it's one or the other.

[snowtracks]

Why don't we ask the man himself, rather than go with a notoriously quotemined version?

aliens, i suspected they would be paraded out to explain things.

dawkins had his chance, one doesn't get the luxury of going back to the office and backtracking and saying this is what was meant.
but that not the main point, which is he was entirely unsure of himself.

[Esquilax]

aliens, i suspected they would be paraded out to explain things.

dawkins had his chance, one doesn't get the luxury of going back to the office and backtracking and saying this is what was meant.
but that not the main point, which is he was entirely unsure of himself.

Triple down!

I'm going to say imbecile.

[Cyberman]

dawkins had his chance, one doesn't get the luxury of going back to the office and backtracking and saying this is what was meant.
but that not the main point, which is he was entirely unsure of himself.

Ok. If I asked you which was the better starship captain - Kirk or Picard - and you said Picard, I can go around posting your answer and saying "lol, snowy thinks Star Trek is real !!!!11!oneoneone!!"

[The Grand Nudger]

You think so Esq? See, I just think we have a troll on our hands.

@ Lek, still waiting on that proof. Anytime sweetheart.

[Crossless2.0]

dawkins had his chance, one doesn't get the luxury of going back to the office and backtracking and saying this is what was meant.
but that not the main point, which is he was entirely unsure of himself.

Triple down!

I'm going to say imbecile.

You're being far too kind.

[Mister Agenda]

aliens, i suspected they would be paraded out to explain things.

Turns out you were wrong. Try actually reading the post.

[Mister Agenda]

what science demand is adequate evidence not absolute proof. to have absolute proof lies beyond human reach since it demands complete knowledge of anything in the universe which is impossible because humans are within and part of the universe. so what it comes down is practical proof. for instance gravity, we accept the truth of gravity based on sufficient testing and observation. the biblical God invites a testing that's based on logic and testable facts which will result in a biblical faith based on objective evidence.

The biblical God floods planets to the mountaintops, sends improbable plagues, parts seas, stops the sun in the sky, and so forth. The current God sends his son and mistress to make appearances on toast. If the old one was still around, his violations of the laws of physics would be apparent to science. But as soon as we have a way of knowing whether miracle stories are actually true, they dry up when ever a scientist comes near. There's a logical explanation for that.