Why I'm here

2008-03-01T23:17:00.000-08:00

I'm not very good at arguing. Arguing a point, that is, not just having a disagreement. If the other party comes up with something I don't know anything about, it stops me. It doesn't settle anything, I just won't go on about something I know nothing about. I think I may well be in the minority, there.

In any event, I thought I'd post stuff here and see if anyone has a reasonable argument against it, or even supporting it. What the hell. Dr. Syn isn't my real name - he's a fictional character from a set of books written by Russell Thorndyke long, long before I was born. That I haven't read yet. I'll get to it. I did like the Disney movie, which I'm told was only loosly based on the novels. But I digress.

The point is that here I can say whatever I'm thinking, and make any kind of damn fool of myself I please. And if y'all point out to me what kind of idiot I'm being, I can take your comments into consideration, find flaws in my logic, fine tune my point, and maybe even get smarter.

So let's start off with one. Richard Dawkins, in his book 'The God Delusion' and in numerous lectures and interviews I've seen, often brings up "First Cause", that if there was such a thing as God, then there would have had to have been a Creator of God. And that creator would have had a creator, and that one, and so on. Any being capable of bringing "Creation" into existence would have to be the end result of a long line of evolution, starting with some lower life form and gradually working its way into that role. It wouldn't have just appeared out of nothing. (I'm paraphrasing here).

My reaction: Yeah, so? Why is this worth bringing up again and again? If you're into logic and rationality, then yeah, of course anything sophisticated evolved from something lesser. If you're into superstition and mythology, then that whole line of reasoning is wasted. I can't see any fundie hearing that and saying "Oh, yeah, that's right" rather than just blowing it off, because, you know, God was just here first, and that's all there is to it.

Furthermore, saying "God would have had to evolve" is not going to mean anything to anyone that refuses to comprehend that anything evolves, including (especially?) homo sapiens.

In short, I agree with Prof. Dawkins, but don't see why it's such a strong point. It's either obvious or ridiculous, depending on which side of the fence you're on.

Ok, there it is. Post #1. Have at it, but be gentle, I'm new at this. I know Prof. Dawkins isn't the only one to have made this point, and that the book is over a year old, and there's hundreds of other things I could have blogged about, but I had to start somewhere.

Syn