Richard Dawkins - Manipulating for Atheism

According to Richard Dawkins I am “lying for Jesus.” No, he was not referring to me in particular but to people like me. I wrote an essay entitled Dawkins Comes Out As An Intelligent Design Proponent!!!. This was based on statement that he made during an interview with Ben Stein for the movie “Expelled.”

Let us begin with the virtually ubiquitous confusion in the neo-atheist movement between “Intelligent Design” and “Creationism.” In God and Earthlings Richard Dawkins wrote:

“All the leading intelligent design spokesmen are devout, and, when talking to the faithful, they drop the science-fiction fig leaf and expose themselves as the fundamentalist creationists they truly are.”

As far as I can tell, this is his best attempt to explain why he and others constantly confuse the matter. However, even on this point he is generic and ultimately fails.
They are “devout,” but devout what? Due to the very fact that Intelligent Design is not Creationism (which specifically refers to a biblical view of origins) Intelligent Design proponents are indeed devout, they are devout atheists, agnostics, Moonies, Jews, Christians, Muslims, et al. Incidentally, Richard Dawkins refers to Intelligent Design proponents as “IDiots.”
May we likewise state, all the leading Darwinian spokesmen are devout, and, when talking to the faithless, they drop the science-facade fig leaf and expose themselves as the fundamentalist atheists they truly are. Prof. Dawkins, and many like him, seek to smuggle atheism into science classrooms in the guise of science (see my essays Protecting the Science Classroom).

The face on Mars, from the panspermia movie, "Mission to Mars"

The bottom line of the charge of “lying for Jesus” is the issue of Richard Dawkins making statements in favor of directed panspermia. Thus, let us begin by his following statements as introductory of Prof. Dawkins’ view:

“The distinguished molecular biologists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel advanced a version of the notion, probably tongue in cheek, called ‘Directed Panspermia.’ Life, they argued, could have been ‘seeded’ on the early Earth by a spacecraft packed with bacteria.”

Let us take a moment to clarify this point because there is really no “probably tongue in cheek” about it (
elsewhere, he referred to it as, “semi tongue-in-cheek”).

John Horgan wrote the following in, “In the Beginning…” Scientific American (Vol. 264, February 1991, pp. 116-125. Horgan was the senior writer for Scientific American from 1986 to 1997):

“This theory [panspermia] was proposed at the end of the last century by the Swedish chemist Svante A. Arrhenius, who asserted that microbes floating throughout the universe served as the ‘seeds of life’ on earth…About a decade ago Orgel and Crick managed to provoke the public and their colleagues by speculating that the seeds of life were sent to the earth in a spaceship by intelligent beings living on another planet. Orgel says the proposal, which is known as directed panspermia, was ‘sort of a joke.’ But he notes that it had a serious intent: to point out the inadequacy of all explanations of terrestrial genesis. As Crick once wrote: ‘The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going.’

The alien from "Mission to Mars" sending off the spores/ships to earth

One year after the above quote was published Scientific American (February 1992, pp. 16-17) featured Crick in the “Profile” section of “The Mephistopheles of Neurobiology,” in which he elucidate this issue thusly (see here for fuller quotes):

“The book [Crick and Orgel’s Life Itself] proposed that the seeds of life were sent to the earth in a spaceship launched by beings on another planet. Called directed panspermia, the theory met with derision from other scientists, and Orgel himself described it recently as ‘sort of a joke.’ But Crick insists that given the weaknesses of all theories of terrestrial genesis, directed panspermia should still be considered ‘a serious possibility.’”

The spore/ship heading towards earth

Now, back to Richard Dawkins’ statements:

“Creationists, by contrast, never miss a trick. When I have raised the science-fiction olive branch to try to argue against them, they have twisted it -- most recently in a movie scheduled to open this week -- in order to proclaim loudly, ‘Dawkins believes in intelligent design after all.’ Or ‘Dawkins believes in little green men in flying saucers.’ Or ‘Dawkins is a Raelian.’ It’s called ‘lying for Jesus,’ and they are completely shameless.”

His point is that when the issue of Intelligent Design is brought up he makes the point that there is no logical or scientific obligation to think that the intelligent designer is God since it could be an alien race and therefore, there is no need to assume the supernatural.

The astronauts amongst various spores/ships

In his article, which is actually entitled Lying for Jesus?, he elucidates the matter thusly:

“[Ben] Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could…bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario…I was charitable enough to think he [Ben Stein] was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet…The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such ‘Directed Panspermia’ was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved…my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly [sic] NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.”

Neither I nor anyone that I have read claims that Richard Dawkins has abandoned any of his Darwinist theories in favor of an exclusively directed-panspermist-intelligent-design theory. Stating, as I did, that Dawkins came out as an Intelligent Design proponent is not a lie. Primarily, let us note that to lie is not to state something that is incorrect but it is stating something that is incorrect while knowing that it is incorrect, and particularly with an intent to deceive.

Richard Dawkins first pretends to hold to a position that he does not hold.

Based on his statement, statements about him are made about his position.

He then refers to people making statements based on his pretending as liars.

We are not liars rather, Richard Dawkins is a manipulator.