Thursday, September 19, 2013

Who Designed the Dawkins?

3 comments:

Steven Satak said...

Haha! Reminds me of an exchange from the movie Time Bandits:

[Ultimate Evil (played by David Warner)]:
What sort of Supreme Being created such riffraff? Is this not the workings of a complete incompetent?

[His assistant, Baxi]:
But He created you, Evil One.

[Ultimate Evil]:
What did you say?

[Baxi]:
Well He created you, so He can't be entirely...

[Ultimate Evil blows Baxi to bits]: Never talk to me like that again! No one created me! I am Evil. Evil existed long before Good. I made myself. I cannot be unmade. *I* am all powerful!

Dawkins is very much like that. So full of hubris, he doesn't realize how daft he really sounds.

I am a robot said...

Hahah good one Steve. Reminds me of a Carlin quote.

"Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would've been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago."

Steven Satak said...

@IRA Robot: exactly my point! Carlin was so full of himself at times, and especially towards the end, that his anthropomorphic idea of a Supreme Being never seemed to strike him as ironic. Or even inappropriate.

Was Carlin in fact the supreme intelligence, able to judge his Maker by 20th Century humanist standards? It seems he was willing to do so even if he was *not* the supreme intellect.

George always did mis-represent God in his tirades. His standard tactic was to erect a strawman God and then knock him down and of course, he was right and it was funny. But it didn't mean the thing he was mocking was really God. Or that he was correct.

George hated a lot of things, but authority of any kind (other than his own) was always the primary target. Always. He even took on liberals who fancied themselves to be moral authorities.

God Bless him. I hope he got what he wanted.