10:25 - 12:43 Dawkins: For centuries, it seemed preposterous to suggest, given the magnificence of living creatures, that they are the result of a freak accident. Then along came Darwin and postulated evolution by natural selection, which is between design and a freak accident. The cosmos has yet to have its Darwin, to explain how the laws of physics came into existence. It's not helpful to postulate a Creator, because a Creator, too, needs to be explained. It's difficult enough to understand how simple things like matter and energy came into existence, but it's much more difficult to explain even a deist God, not to mention a more complex God who hates sin and gets himself born of a virgin.
Dawkins dodges the question on rational intelligibility. Instead, he misinterprets Darwin's model. Darwin postulated how already existing simple organisms became more complex through natural selection. He did not offer a theory on how the first replicating organisms came into existence. Modern speculations suggest a freak accident (or a series thereof), as opposed to creation, but fail to provide any evidence. Whether matter and energy are simpler to grasp than God depends on your grasp. As does whether the world as we know it is simpler to understand with eternal matter or with an eternal God. The fundamental issue is that either eternal matter or an eternal God is vastly different from the human experience (i.e. that things are born/created, and they perish/change eventually). Constant matter and a constant God both challenge our experience of how things are and how things behave. The challenge is not addressed in merit by postulating that matter/God needs no origin by definition; that's just an attempt to define the problem away. And the inconvenient question looms large: can eternal matter somehow render the universe (i.e. itself) rationally intelligible, and if we assume so, then how?
12:44 - 14:20 Lennox: Darwin said nothing about the origin of life or the origin of the universe. Atheists say our thoughts are the result of a mindless, unguided process - what does that have to do with truth? Steven Pinker suggests evolution has to do with reproductive success and nothing with truth. John Gray argues that evolution ultimately undermines the assumption that we can give credence to what we think. Thus, atheism undermines the assumption of rationality.
How the unintelligent processes of evolution can lead to intelligent thoughts that tell us anything 'true' about reality outside the evolutionary framework is a valid problem.
14:21 - 14:47 Dawkins: It is absurd to suggest that - because our minds are produced by brains and brains evolved by natural selection - that undermines our ability to understand the world. Brains are good at surviving, and they are surviving in the world.
So, successfully replicating bacteria understand the world? There is an important distinction between information that helps you survive and information that helps you understand the larger context (plus you need to be able to process that information). The former serves reproductive success, the latter is the stuff of philosophy. Proof that there is a distinction: philosophers are seen as inept at surviving; survival is practical, intuitive, and philosophy is anything but.
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