Science vs. God no.2

So I split the sections because in the first one I presented the arguments put forward for the existence of God. I am not going to try here and disprove God. I just want to give two examples offered by non-believers:

- Russell's " Flying Teapot" and
- Dawkins's "Ultimated Boeing 474"

I will also not explain the Darwinian principle of natural selection, but let me state just for those who have never heard of it that the principle of natural selection is thought today, by the majority of people, to drive evolution on this planet and the known world. The law of chance and necessity drives life. Continuous changes in the organisms confer advantages, or disadvantages to groups, individuals, or genes (agents) and these advantages or disadvantages increase and decrease respectively the ability of the agent for survival and reproduction. Thus changes that increase these skills will naturally be passed sown to next generations whereas detrimental changes will be lost ipso facto. These changes are a product of chance and in no way driven by any intelligent supreme being. These chance differences will prevail or be lost according to the necessity of keeping them if they confer an advantage to the agent.

Bertrand Russell's "Flying Teapot"

The paradigm was intended to refute the idea that the burden of proof lies upon the sceptic to disprove the claims of religions.

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Richard Dawkins's "Ultimate Boeing 747"

Dawkins gives this example to highlight the improbability of a Supreme being out there somewhere. i will not look into the argument Dawkins puts forward as I have done so in a previous post (September 6th 2007). The general idea (and it comes from somebody else, Dawkins just borrows it) is that the probability an extremely complex structure such as a Boeing 747 aircraft being assembled from spare parts as a result of a hurricane is infinitesimal. The same goes for God, who should be considered the Ultimate Boeing 474, meaning the most complex being in this universe. Dawkins says that the probability of such a being is extremely small. So small that he is certain God does not exist. And he continuous to say that we cannot use such an improbable explanation to solve another improbable, but yet very possible and real event: life.

-John