Dastardly Dawkins

Let me come clean. I'm a bible-believing christian. And I read Dawkins. I find Dawkins interesting, irritating and incredibly infuriating. But...I do to some degree empathise with some of Dawkins' sentiments. As a bible-believing christian this may seem odd, but let me explain.

It is clear that he is enamoured with the idea that life can be explained by a small set of principles. In his case it is of course the relatively simple principles of evolution, such as natural selection and genetic mutation. The idea that complex things can be 'explained' by simple ideas/principles is an alluring one, and one that appeals to me also.

For example, I have always enjoyed mathematics, and in particular the approach as exemplified by Euclid whereby you start off with a small set of core axioms and then build up via 'pure' logic/reasoning to more complex theorems. Many problems can be solved by applying the reverse process - break (reduce) the problem down into it's core, essential components, which can then be solved by using the basic theorems, which then leads (going back the other way - deduction) to a solution of the main problem.

But this leads to a particular mindset that many of us analytical, scientific types have - that ultimately anything can be sufficiently explained through the axiomatic/deductive approach. Or put another way, via a basic principles + reasoning approach. I suppose this is called the scientific method (but probably a fairly narrow version of it), and it has had great success, not just in the sciences but in economics, engineering and elswhere.

And people keep searching for more basic, fundamental principles on which to build their understanding of the world. Physicists search for the unifying concepts that will harmonise their theories. Management gurus search for that secret ingredient which makes some companies succeed and others fail (or they just make up something which sounds cool, has a modicum of logic to it, and has the potential to make them a lot of money). Computer science theorists agonise over what are the fundamental concepts that programming languages should be built upon.

But is it enough? Is it sufficient? Does an understanding of the basic principles, followed by correct reasoning really provide full knowledge of a complex entity/process? Is the whole really just the sum of the parts? But what is sufficient knowledge anyhow? Even if I had a good definition of what sufficient knowledge is, how would I go about proving that the basic principles/reasoning method does not always lead to sufficient knowledge? But then I'd be using the self-same method to show that it isn't sufficient, so would my conclusion be sufficient? Am I going around in circles here?

Anyhow, I think this issue is a good one to pursue to understand what underlies much of Dawkins arguments. Perhaps I'll tackle this in my next post. Perhaps not.