JOHN Ricketts suggests that we look at certain articles on the internet on the subject of Darwinian evolution, which are hilarious not because they are funny but because they are ill-informed and frankly silly.

They are far from alone in this – may I point to the writings of one very famous scientist whose writings are as hilarious as anything which has emerged from the Protestant underworld.

I refer to Richard Dawkins and his book The Blind Watchmaker – the Book of the Year (1986), the purpose of this tome was to “explain the very improbable”.

This very improbable is the emergence and development of living organisms on Earth.

Dawkins gives the impression that this is a one-off freak event, unplanned, purposeless, giving rise to an unplanned and purposeless evolution.

However – he claims it has happened.

According to David Hume: “It is commonly allowed by philosophers (scientists) that what the vulgar call chance is but a secret and concealed cause.”

The investigation of secret and concealed causes is what science is all about and if the cause of the event is not discovered a scientist must say – “I do not know!”

Dawkins does not know, but in order to mask his ignorance, he invents a hypothetical entity called improbability.

When he comes to explain this notion, he falls flat on his face – on pages 19-60 of the Watchmaker, he claims that if one sits in a church long enough (say a trillion years) contemplating a marble statue of the Virgin Mary, the statue will, sooner or later, wave an arm at you.

This is not in spite of but because of the laws of physics.

He admits that this is improbable but says: “It could happen”.

He has a friend who has calculated the probability that it will happen and Dawkins admits, to give it a figure, the chances of it happening are one to a trillion, trillion, trillion against, but: “It could happen”.

Dawkins must be the wildest gambler in recorded history.

For the same reasons, Dawkins believes that if you sit in a field long enough, watching a herd of cows, one of them will eventually jump over the moon – I kid you not.

He suggests that the probability of this happening is roughly the same as that of the arm-waving statue – so that if one could happen, so could the other.

This hypothetical cow would have to kickstart its flight into space at 25,000 mph in order to escape the gravitational drag – after Winston Churchill, I say: “Some cow. Some kickstart!”

Dawkins seeks to legitimate his improbable arrival of life on Earth with ludicrous stories of arm-waving statues and cows jumping over the moon – stories to which no sane man could give one jot or tittle of credence – as though he had written a final QED of his thesis.

The tragedy of Dawkins is that life has arrived: but no one has seen an arm-waving statue or seen a cow jumping over the moon – if someone had seen either of these things happening – who would believe them?.

Dawkins does not believe in fairy stories for children – he does believe in fairy stories for scientists – and they love them, as the panegyrics to the Watchmaker on its publication show.

Dawkins does not appear to know the first thing about probabilities – for instance, considerations of probability are based upon the observation of large numbers of events.

Percy Bridgman pointed out some 80 odd years ago that one cannot discuss the probability of events which have never been observed and which are presumed to have happened in circumstance of which absolutely nothing is known.

His notion of the improbable is meaningless – there is nothing else that can be said.

Cyril Govier

Stonehouse