Richard Dawkins himself said that life by chance is an impropability?

Question

Yet this is exactly what Richard Dawkins argues in his provocative and passionate new book--that life evolves through the accident of mutation, and that perfection in the natural world is the result of supreme, and fascinating, improbability.


http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Books/climb.shtml

the question is, did, or did not Richard Dawkins say that life by chance is an improbablility?

Answer 1

I've never read anything by Richard Dawkins, and don't plan on it. But, what a person says, especially if it conflicts with the Bible, may not be a great role model for me to follow.

Answer 2

And how do we judge this question of probability? Of the solar systems we have been able to examine closely enough to see the surfaces of earth-sized planets at the appropriate distance from the sun, exactly one out of one has life. Does that mean the odds are really good? No, it means that one planet is not a sound basis for determining likelihood or unlikelihood.

Dawkins' point is presumably that there are lots more scenarios one could imagine in which life doesn't make it past various cataclysmic disasters, or doesn't turn out in anything like the conscious, self-aware and reflective beings we have become. There is plenty of improbability involved in life. More foetuses are miscarried than are brought to term. Life involves improbabilities, and fortunately there is enough life, and a large enough universe and timescale, that the improbable has plenty of opportunities to happen.

Winning the lottery is improbable. But it happens all the time. Don't twist his words to mean something he clearly didn't.

Answer 3

poo poo to po po! Dawkins didn't say impossible, he said 'improbable'. That's why you don't see a Star Wars or Star Trek universe with life on every other planet. It says that the proper conditions for life are rare, but they happen to be right here on Earth. Considering the size of the universe and the odds of life, it was apparently bound to happen somewhere, it obviously did, and that somewhere just happened to be here. If it were not here, it would have been somewhere else instead and this conversation would be happening on another planet instead of this one. It says nothing that can be interpreted a favoring the probability of a God. That's another improbability that he addresses elsewhere.

Answer 4

You clearly have not read Richard Dawkins books - this is a typical religious creationist misstatement of fact. Try the dinosaurs museum's exhibits maybe you will still believe they are ready to mow your lawn.

You clearly have no idea what Richard Dawkins is trying to get you to think about. Beware of the supernatural you sheep

Answer 5

A. My atheism isn't based on Richard Dawkins' ideals, or Stephen Hawking's or Einstein's. they are experts of their respective fields of technological know-how; they are actually not "prophets", and that i don't provide a hoot approximately their religious ideals or lack thereof. B. I incredibly like the assumption of pantheism, and that i've got not any pink meat with it. i think of that is poetic, and a hell of plenty extra rational than maximum varieties of theism. I basically do not espouse it in a literal sense. i think of calling the universe "god" is multiplying entities previous necessity; why not purely call it "the universe"? it form of feels to me that the sole difference between pantheism and atheism is semantics. "Sexed-up atheism" is a competent way of describing it, for my area.

Answer 6

Well, it all depends on if you took Theology instead of Biology.
Personally, Dawkins makes more sense than Pat Robinson.

Answer 7

An improbability is not the same as an impossibility. Get a dictionary.

Answer 8

Actually it become 'perfect' due to the perception of the observer and let's say, oh.. I don't know....BILLIONS of years of trial and error.

I understand Dawkins' point and apparently you don't. IMPROBABILITY and IMPOSSIBILITY are two VERY different things.
See: dictionary.com

Answer 9

Correct, the spontaneous existence of a complex organism by chance is totally out of the question.

But by natural selection, it is statistically inevitable.

Answer 10

There is no life by chance. It's called, "Natural Selection" and pretty far from being just a chance.

Answer 11

First off that is correct and he meant what he said...life didn't occur by chance...it was through natural selection during evolution...and that book is hardly new...it was released in 1996....learn to read...

DEE dee dee......