Re: George Coyne and Richard Dawkins

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, 21 May 2024 14:58:19 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
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Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
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On Tue, 21 May 2024 10:54:16 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
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Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
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On Mon, 20 May 2024 17:16:16 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
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In this interview, at the point I link to:
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https://youtu.be/68ejfHahFK4?t=254
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Father Coyne offers Neodarwinian Evolution as an explanation for,
among other things, the origin of the universe. And Professor
Dawkins agrees with him. How does evolution of any kind have
anything to do with the origin of the universe? surely it would
need something to evolve from?

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I got the impression that he was using "evolution" in a wider
sense than just *biological* evolution, that life itself "evolved"
from chemical reactions.

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I suppose you could interpret "origin of the universe" as "origin of
the content of the universe" and then say that it evolved from pure
energy. But I am not sure if that is evolution strictly, or just
changing from one thing to another. And I am not sure if energy is
different from content, or if universe is different from content of
the universe. In summary, I am not sure.

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When talking about a subject in what is essentially a metaphysical
way. I think we shouldn't get too hung up on the precise meaning of
specific words, it's the ideas behind the words that matter.
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A fascinating interview that I had not seen before, thanks for the
link. Whilst I was aware of George Coyne, I never really explored
his ideas before and I was fascinated by how much what he was
saying echoed my own beliefs and ideas - there was nothing he said
that I would argue with and I thought he handled Dawkins extremely
well.

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The TV series from which it was excluded was quite entertaining. I
think in that series Dawkins was struggling to keep the lid on his
temper at times, although that could just be his natural expression.

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I wasn't aware of that series. Any idea why this episode was
excluded?

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At the beginning of the video Dawkins explains that it was left out as
there was too much overlap with an interview with the Archbishop of
Canterbury.

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OK, I forgot that your link started ~4 mins in. I'll be interested to
hunt down the Archbishop of Canterbury episode, but I'd expect it to
have a lot of overlap with George Coyne. I think that a lot of USians
make the mistake of regarding the likes of Ken Ham as a representative
of mainstream Christianity when he isn't - at least not outside the
USA!

Coyne sounds rather confused to me. He doesn't seem to know what God
is. He says God is not an engineer, and then he says God created the
universe, that he is a prime mover, and gave us brains, and then he says
God is superflous and doesn't explain things.