rationalskepticism.org

Onyx8 wrote:"...further the cause of atheism in biology." What does that mean?

It could imply that Dawkins uses biology to push the notion that there is no god and that in this instance, his efforts misfired. Seems to me Dawkins does do that and he isn't alone; he is in a tradition going back to Darwin, of using biology as a canvas for developing and presenting an atheist vision of the world. Darwin used it when he said "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars." He was taking an opposite tack to that of Richard [!Paley so we are all heirs to one or other side of a 19th century forking in the understanding of the world. The god-believing branch may have withered and the atheist branch has become triumphalist but that is just a fashion. There’s an implicit challenge in Darwin’s position: if God did do that then Darwin will deny God. Or, if Darwin’s conception of what God should be like is something that cannot exist then God cannot exist. Either way it boils down to an assertion about the standing of the human intellect, which in earlier ages was thought to be unhealthy. It is unhealthy if triumphalism is unhealthy.

Edit: WILLIAM Payley RICHARD Dawkins, WILLIAM Payley RICHARD Dawkins,WILLIAM Payley RICHARD Dawkins,WILLIAM Payley RICHARD Dawkins...