Dawkins on the gaps of science

Richard Dawkins answers a question claiming that science fills the gaps of knowledge with skyhooks in the same way religion does.
Skyhook is a term used by Daniel Dennett:
"Dennett used the term "skyhook" to describe a source of design complexity that did not build on lower, simpler layers - in simple terms, a miracle.
In philosophical arguments concerning the reducibility (or otherwise) of the human mind, Dennett's concept pokes fun at the idea of intelligent design emanating from on high, either originating from God, or providing its own grounds in an absurd, Münchausen-like bootstrapping manner.
Dennett also accuses various competing neo-Darwinian ideas of making use of such supposedly unscientific skyhooks in explaining evolution, coming down particularly hard on the ideas of Stephen Jay Gould.
Dennett contrasts theories of complexity which require such miracles with those based on "cranes", structures which permit the construction of entities of greater complexity but which are themselves founded solidly "on the ground" of physical science."

Full video is available at google video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7023586193707783714&ei=blDCSJPmBo...

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Atheism
• atheist
• science
• Richard
• Dawkins
• religion
• skyhook

[ReadingFlyer]

Oleh, you speak as if you have any idea when, where, or how often he does speak strictly about biology. The god stuff is just the only thing that makes it to youtube. You just wanted to degrade him by calling him a preacher.

[MrJohnnyrace]

Religions are the biggest most rediculous gap known to man. More like fairy tales

[modelleg]

Excellent Prof Dawkins.

[dkthg]

"Spiritual realities" First you have to define the spirit.

[patientthomist]

Dawkins avoids the real issue concerning "science of the gaps". The real issue is that atheistic scientists assume that the answers to the "meaning of the universe" can at all be found by science. This is a faith based assumption, with no justification from the science lab, especially in light of spiritual realities like love, justice, kindness, self control and piety, which are not chemical realities.

[TheSkunkCat]

@TheSkunkCat

I think though most people don't know much about virusses beyond that they are tiny and can cause disease, and have never heard of things like viroids or prions and things like that.

[TheSkunkCat]

@TheSkunkCat

Also as for a real thing simpler then a virus.

The viroid, a plant pathogen without the protein coat virusses have.

Honestly? Stuff similar to the stuff life came from is probably still AROUND. Things that work stick, and things that don't die or change. That's how not just evolution, but how actually pretty much anything works.

[TheSkunkCat]

@TheSkunkCat

Now of course virusses come in many types, but they ARE examples of something that doesn't fulfill all biological criteria for life, but does fulfill some of them. It's not hard to take the simplest virusses and consider how they might have become more like the more complex virusses I think.

Nor is it that hard to imagine something even simpler then something like the simplest virus, but with some similarities to that. And thinking like that the sequence seems pretty logical.

[TheSkunkCat]

@TheSkunkCat

I don't even think it's all that hard anyway to imagine something inbetween bacteria and chemistry, namely because we HAVE something like that today; virusses.

[TheSkunkCat]

I think.. when talking about how life began, saying we totally don't know isn't true.

It's more that we know part of it but are missing some crucial pieces and thus can't give the FULL story.

There's much more known about abiogenesis then people (who at all know what it is) think. Incomplete data and no data are not the same thing.

And I personally think we DO know enough to comfortably conclude that the origin of life was (of course) a completely natural process (as if it'd not be anyway.)

[user6773]

??? He didn't even answer the question.