Richard Dawkins meets John Mackay

In the third episode of a three part series Richard Dawkins interviewed John Mackay, International Director of Creation Research. The 3½ minute segment was put together from an interview recorded before one of John’s meeting in London during November 2007. It also included excerpts of the first part of the same meeting.  

The producers of programmes like this have a great amount of freedom to use the material gathered in any way they wish - that is part of the risk anyone takes when agreeing to be interviewed. Whilst no doubt Dawkins hoped John telling his audience that “kill and be killed; survival of the fittest; nature red in tooth and claw” did not have any part in The LORD’s world when it was created ‘very good’ would sound ridiculous to the viewers, it is encouraging to know that many more million people now have been made aware of this simple but important truth. They also now know that when they die it will not because they get old, but because they are sinners. Death is not natural whether it occurs peacefully in old age, or violently at the claws of a vicious predator. Death in every form is the direct result of human rebellion against God. It is our fault and we cannot blame Him or, as Dawkins does, use it as an excuse to deny His existence. 

All that was shown before the face to face exchange between what Brian Viner, self-confessed Dawkins admirer, described in the following morning’s Independent as “the irresistible force of his [Dawkins] argument” hitting “an immovable object, as embodied in last night's programme by a celebrated Australian creationist called John Mackay, who rejects Darwinism as hocus-pocus.” It was obvious that Dawkins did not like the implications of having to acknowledge that evolution is unobserved and it is a wonder that he allowed the producers to include it - or perhaps they pulled rank. John made it clear that “What you don’t see happening is not science.” John responded to Dawkins’ defence of why the unobserved is science by saying that his arguments actually mean, “you have a faith position, and you need to admit it...” adding later that he needed to “call what you are teaching philosophy or atheism if you are really going to be honest.” In the programme Dawkins went on to illustrate the truth of John’s statement, by expressing his frustration at, and ridicule of, state school science staff for not teaching atheism in their classes!  

After meeting Dawkins, John Mackay commented that the Professor “was not good at thinking on his feet” so perhaps we should take more notice of how he responded later to the interview in his unopposed and scripted right of reply which followed in the same segment. Here is all that he said. “The refusal to believe in anything you can’t see yourself is absurd. Think about it, I never saw Napoleon with my own eyes, but that doesn’t mean Napoleon didn’t exist. John Mackay can’t see a cell or an atom or weather systems on the other side of the world. Does that mean they don’t exist? Darwin didn’t just trust his own eyes, he checked his theory through evidence gathered through extensive correspondence with naturalists across the world. Mackay, it seems to me, misunderstands science at a deep level: science is precisely not limited by what we can see with our own eyes in one lifetime. The whole wonderful endeavour of science is to investigate phenomena beyond human experience - from far off galaxies to microscopic bacteria.”  

Do we need to go any further than his opening grievance? Have Christians not been telling him and other atheists for years that their refusal to believe in anything they cannot see is absurd! Do we need to point out the obvious? Yet Dawkins and his fellow unbelievers insist we are the fools for doing that very thing. Excuse us Richard Dawkins, we do believe in what we cannot see. We call that faith, though it is based on facts - you call what you do not see science, even though it is an imaginary story imposed on the facts. You will have noticed he also accused John of not understanding science “at a deep level”, adding that the “wonderful endeavour of science is to investigate phenomena beyond human experience.” Let us remember here that Dawkins holds the Oxford University Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, so perhaps he should be able to explain what science is to the man in the street. Perhaps one day he will be able to explain to people how they are able to investigate something which is beyond their experience. Galaxies and microbes are within our experience, even though we need lenses to get good views of both. Should he not be telling the public that science is empirical? That is, based on experiment, observation and experience, rather than on theory? Isn’t that what creationists are often accused of ignoring?  

When they met, John Mackay invited Richard Dawkins to debate him next February to mark Charles Darwin’s bicentenary. Dawkins declined, acknowledging that he was no good at debating. If Darwin was the genius Dawkins believes he was, then surely he or one of his atheist friends who is good at debating should be able to defend evolutionary science with no trouble at all. To date none of them have stood up to be counted, so the good news is that if Richard wants to change his mind, the door is still open for him to accept John Mackay’s invitation.