Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Positive Atheism's Big List of Richard Dawkins Quotations part 1

This is first in a series of blog posts where I would like to take a quotation of  Richard Dawkins and examine it. What I hope to do is stir discussion. If anyone think i'm being unfair or taking something out of context, they can correct me in the comments. The quotes will come from the following link and in no particular order:

Positive Atheism's Big List of Richard Dawkins Quotations

What has happened is that genetics has become a branch of information technology. It is pure information. It's digital information. It's precisely the kind of information that can be translated digit for digit, byte for byte, into any other kind of information and then translated back again. This is a major revolution. I suppose it's probably "the" major revolution in the whole history of our understanding of ourselves. It's something would have boggled the mind of Darwin, and Darwin would have loved it, I'm absolutely sure.
-- Richard Dawkins, Life: A Gene-Centric View Craig Venter & Richard Dawkins: A Conversation in Munich (Moderator: John Brockman) "This event was a continuation of the Edge 'Life: What a Concept!' meeting in August, 2008." [sic]
I like this. I think Dawkins does understand how truly revolutionary genetics truly is. What amazes me is how much like our digital technology is but on a much more complex level. My question is...where does it come from?  Dawkins believe that it was natural process of evolution...blind and unguided. How? It's like saying Windows 7 evolved from Windows 3.11 tom Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows 2000 to Windows XP (Millennium and Vista being dead ends). Does that make sense? Or how about the evolution form 8 bit Nintendo to the Wii? Code does not write itself.
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