O'Reilly vs. Dawkins

Response to Bill O'Reilly's interview with Richard Dawkins.

It’s good to see the interview conducted. I wish it could have been longer.

Observations...


O’Reilly’s Comments
1. The weakness of O’Reilly’s position of relative truth was exposed by the argument for absolute truth (even if it came from Richard Dawkins)
2. O’Reilly’s “throwing in with Jesus" comment and suggestion of openness to side with others reveals the lack of assurance and foundation of those who hold to religion but have not been drawn by God and come to the knowledge (ginosko = to know experientially, vs. oida/eido, to know cognitively or intuitively) of Christ.

Dawkin’s Comments
1. Dawkins stated “We have a very FULL understanding of why the tides go in and the tides go out and why the continuents drift about, of why life is there. Science is ever more piling on the evidence, piling on the understanding…” [CAPS - my emphasis]

Interesting that Dawkins later says “We don’t know everything.” Here’s the point, it’s one thing to say as Dawkins does that science has "full" understanding and as he says elsewhere elsewhere that “all was produced by laws acting around us”,... and being able to provide absolute, verifyable, and incontrovertable answers (and “understanding”) as to where those laws have come from, what sustains them, why they act the way they do, and to what end they ultimately serve!

It’s like a person taking a statement apart from (or while denying) the spokesman, and suggesting they fully understand and can fully explain what is being said/revealed.

Does simply giving a law a name like gravity mean that we fully understand it? I'd love to see scientists attempt not just to explain how it works, but why it works the way it works (not referring to simply the relationship between physical objects, etc., but beyond that to why there is a law to begin with, why the law is the way that it is, why it is not something else, etc.)

2. Dawkins stated ““Well, a leap of faith, you don’t actually need a leap of faith, you’re the one who needs a leap of faith, because you are actually, the onus is on you to say why you believe in something…”

Dawkins here either fails to admit he believes in something (that there is no God) or he sets forth an inconsistent standard suggesting that only Christians must provide support for their beliefs.

3. In response to O’Reilly’s statement that “You guys can’t tell us how it all got here.”, Dawkins replies ““We’re working on it. Physicists are working …If you look at the history of science over the centuries, the amount that is gained in knowledge each century is stupendous, in the beginning of the 21st century we don’t know everything we have to be humble we have to in humility say there is a lot we still don’t know.”

Here, he admits that scientists don’t know everything. That’s good to know. (Too bad many of his followers seem to think or suggest the opposite)

4. Dawkins seems to suggest that Hitler and Stalin’s actions had no relationship to their beliefs. (Obviously, he fails to understand what Scripture teaches when he says that “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”)