Richard Dawkin's big blunder

[Anomalocaris]

If you jump out of a window you are guided by the splat paradigm. Besides splat paradigm sounds cooler than gravity. Therefore god, or intelligent design, which is no doubt the next best thing.

[pocaracas]

I like it how a theos guided evolution once.... then saw it all (most of it) get destroyed.... guided it back and bam again busted.... guided it back... and the pinnacle of that guidance would be an extremely faulty body with the largest brain available...
While the very few and disperse clues of such guidance would be that fact that some animals have evolved similar features in separate.... when such features are helpful for similar environments... -.-'

Being a theos must suck... millions of years of hard work to get busted by something as trivial as a "natural disaster", or deforestation...

[Alex K]

If you jump out of a window you are guided by the splat paradigm. Besides splat paradigm sounds cooler than gravity. Therefore god, or intelligent design, which is no doubt the next best thing.

Guided by the gravity paradigm is the name of my new avant-garde metal band, if I ever have one.
edit: hey you changed the text! Guided by the splat paradigm is a punk band name

[JesusHChrist]

Guided by Voices would be my new Indie rock band name.

Oh....wait.

[Faith No More]

If evolution isn't blind then there are theistic implications.

The only way evolution isn't blind is if you equivocate following certain scientific principles with intention. I'm sure you would consider gravity to be a blind force, but if I throw you out the window numerous times, you will follow a similar path each time. In this case the "forces" are survivability and reproduction, and given that circumstances are similar all over the earth, what is beneficial to those is also similar.

[Mister Agenda]

Fitness paradigm isn't something imbued in life. The fitness paradigm is simply the mechanism which determines what is fit and what isn't.

And my speculation can be falsified by simulating evolution without designing a fitness paradigm.

Since by 'fitness paradigm' you seem to mean 'natural selection to improve adaptation to the reproductive environment' which is pretty much what evolution is, I presume that you would consider your speculation falsified (not that speculation needs to be falsified, it needs to be supported in the first place before it rises to the level that anyone should be bothered to try to falsify it) if the reproductive environment isn't designed, for example, if the reproductive environment is random.

Is that a fair statement? If so, do you want to change anything about your speculation at this point?

[Heywood]

You don't think Dawkins is completely aware of what you say here, and hence uses blindness differently from what you would like it to mean? Your thread title is very grandiose, you might as well change it to: I define some words differently from Dawkins, and therefore he's wrong!. Darwin himself starts out his book with longish chapters on animal breeding and pidgeon fancying, what you say here has been obvious to people from the start.

I don't think Dawkins is aware of what I say here or if he is aware then he is intentionally misleading his audience to promote an atheistic worldview. I tend to think that his error is innocent until I have evidence otherwise.

By blind I mean not guided by anything. I believe Dawkins is using blind the same way.

I think that because Dawkins uses an example of evolution that is guided by a fitness function, selection mechanism, fitness paradigm...what ever you want to call it. Dawkins goes on to claim that real evolution is not like his example(which he calls a bit of a cheat), that it isn't guided to a particular form by natural selection like his computer program.

Dawkins is wrong because evolution will always home in on a specific set of targets guided by the fitness paradigm. If the fitness paradigm is sufficiently constrained, evolution will home in on an exact solution....just like his computer program did.

His computer program was not a cheat but a real example of how evolution works.

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Being a theos must suck... millions of years of hard work to get busted by something as trivial as a "natural disaster", or deforestation...

For an eternal being, billions of years is but an instance. For an all powerful being, there is no such thing as 'hard work". From a human perspective evolution as a creative process looks circuitous but this is not the case for God.

[Mister Agenda]

Evolution will always tend to make organisms fit their environment better. That's what evolution does. When humans imitate evolution by artificial selection, we do it by changing the reproductive environment. It's trivially true that if there is a God deliberately setting up all the environments to have specific evolutionary outcomes, then that God is guiding evolution. Pretty Rube Goldberg way of going about it; but mysterious ways and all that. You're entitled to believe it if you want, but it isn't science, because science actually explains things and this is just another 'God did it' non-explanation.

[Alex K]

You don't think Dawkins is completely aware of what you say here, and hence uses blindness differently from what you would like it to mean? Your thread title is very grandiose, you might as well change it to: I define some words differently from Dawkins, and therefore he's wrong!. Darwin himself starts out his book with longish chapters on animal breeding and pidgeon fancying, what you say here has been obvious to people from the start.

I don't think Dawkins is aware of what I say here or if he is aware then he is intentionally misleading his audience to promote an atheistic worldview.

Are you joking? You think that similar circumstances leading to similar looking results of natural selection is somehow at odds with an atheistic worldview? That's wrong, and your charge that there is anything to hide is ridiculous.

[Heywood]

Since by 'fitness paradigm' you seem to mean 'natural selection to improve adaptation to the reproductive environment' which is pretty much what evolution is, I presume that you would consider your speculation falsified (not that speculation needs to be falsified, it needs to be supported in the first place before it rises to the level that anyone should be bothered to try to falsify it) if the reproductive environment isn't designed, for example, if the reproductive environment is random.

Is that a fair statement? If so, do you want to change anything about your speculation at this point?

If you could generate the complexity we observe and attribute to natural selection with a completely random fitness paradigm, I would consider my speculation falsified.