<Post-Darwinist>

Further to the question of Dawkins' existence, a commenter at Uncommon Descent suggested that I rely on the consensus of a number of "real" scientists, meaning "(And, of course, by “real” scientists I mean only those who already assume in advance that Richard Dawkins exists–we will quite naturally exclude any posers doubting the existence of RD by careful manipulation of the peer review process.)"

(But why believe me anyway?: Remember, important new Brit academic Dr. Terry Tommyrot did the groundbreaking research that enabled yer humble hack to start figuring it out. (Read a transcript of his recent interview here.)

And I replied,

TerryL, … I wouldn’t try building a deck that way - everything handing off everything else. At some point I need foundations - solid evidence.
Now, here’s what I’ve got: Two competing hypotheses
1. The books wrote themselves. Under a Darwinian interpretation of life, this is inevitable.
Objection: There wasn’t enough time for the books to write themselves.
Objection easily overcome: Only a closet creationist would dare to think that time or probability has anything to do with it. But, for the record, reading “Dawkins”‘ latest, The God Delusion, gave me a sense of eternity passing by. There certainly IS enough time, if you count perceived as well as actual time.
2. My lead blogger and well known kidder, Bill Dembski, cooked up the whole thing, obviously to ensure shelf space for books on ID theory when he didn’t have a budget.
Lines of evidence:
- the ID guys have the most to gain from the existence of “Dawkins” and especially from his recent anti-God crusade, a fact that Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse has been pained to note.
- Every time “Dawkins” opens his mouth, more people come to Uncommon Descent and the Post-Darwinist and such. The Darwinists would have found a way to shut “Dawkins” down long ago, IF he realy existed. I used to wonder why they didn’t but, hang!, I think I’ve pretty much got the answer now.
- Dembski is the only person who has informed me that he has received e-mails from “Dawkins”. Well, … I used to get notes from the tooth fairy …
- In the past, the reason we weren’t seeing “Dawkins” in debate with ID folk is that “Dawkins” allegedly had a policy of not debating folk like Dembski. Hmmm, yeah I’ll just BET “Dawkins” had that policy.
- I have firm evidence that my lead blogger is a relentless kidder.
Objection: Dembski isn’t smart enough to write all those books, and besides pious little old ladies at his church would be real mad at him if they ever found out that he had actually written and marketed a bunch of Darwinist books, and now an anti-God book.
Hmmm, well, how smart would Dembski actually have to be to pull it off? Writing a lot of Darwindunits - you could actually work with a template in word processing and speed it all up some. “Dawkins” is also said to have written a word processing program,come to think of it. And Darwinists are pretty gullible; there’s no problem with whether THEY would fall for it.
And I remember Bill telling me once that the church he goes to is long on reformed tough-guys and short on dim, pious old dears. The tough guys would probably just slap him on the back and say, “Nice one, Bill!”
See, I bet the TROUBLE started when McGrath demanded to know why “Dawkins” wouldn’t debate him …
Now, if “Dawkins” wants to show up at a debate WITH Dembski (okay, I’ll take McGrath, as long as Dembski is actually present and not obviously manipulating “Dawkins”), then I’ll accept his existence. Otherwise, I am simply going to hold to my original opinion that my lead blogger is an irrepressible kidder and quite capable of cooking all this up. - Denyse, Toronto