Dawkins' hubristic contempt for Religious faith is amusing. Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection and Adaptation stands and has more "empirical evidence" behind it---(Science, much like Religion, is just another value system--it has its liturgy, priests and ethos--it attempts to explain the world) Is it the last word? Who knows? But to entirely debase believers, as a Scientist, no less, is crass. Sir Isaac Newton, Decartes, Pascal and Leibniz---Men who Darwin respected and scientists who had faith. As if Dawkins could sneer at Newton or Pascal? I say this as a non-believer. Science itself requires faith. it's just another fideism, based on the belief that the human mind can etch out cosmic laws through empirical research, equations or hypotheses proven post-festum. Here I would like to pause and mention David Hume's argument against causal connections and progress in time in his A Treatise of Human Nature....Much of the pulp Dawkins writes is Scientific Gospel..Science has brought us closer to mapping the Atomic Nucleus, and with the very same knowledge, Nuclear Weaponry. Does Dawkins really believe in Progress through human intellect via science? Had he met or ever read Oppenheimer, Dirac or Wolfgang Pauli? I doubt it...He cherry picks and Propagandizes like a Vatican Official for his cause. Nothing wrong with that.......The only true Atheism is silence. For you admit a belief in Transcendence in utilizing shared signs and expecting to be understood. That's a Leap of Faith which ultimately leads to Deism. For who or what is the hidden third that endorses agreement? Even through the multiplicity of languages and their mutability and mortality, one ascribes a Deus Absconditus as the invisible third.
Hume also smashed the Intelligent Design theory in his Dialogues Against Natural Religion....He also intimated that science itself was a religion of man's ratio. Humans ascending the Cosmic Throne. Scientists use Hume carefully. Kant was so distraught over the skepticism in Hume's Treatise he was compelled to write his Critique of Pure Reason. These events occurred in the late 18th early 19th century. My how far Dawkins has progressed!
