Intelligent design and Richard Dawkins

Arch-atheist Richard Dawkins gave an unusually revealing interview to Ben Stein in "Expelled", later complaining that if he knew the producers' full intentions, he would not have granted the interview.[1]

Here, in an unguarded moment, he reveals his candid thoughts about intelligent design:

STEIN: Well, then, who did create the heavens and the earth?......how did it get created?
DAWKINS: Umm, well, by a very slow process.
STEIN: Well, how did it start?
DAWKINS: NOBODY KNOWS HOW IT GOT STARTED. We know the kind of event that it MUST have been. We know the sort of event that MUST have happened for the origin of life.
STEIN: And what was that?
DAWKINS: It was the origin of the first self-replicating molecule.
STEIN: Right, and how did that happen?
DAWKINS: I told you, WE DON’T KNOW
STEIN: So, you have NO idea HOW it started?
DAWKINS: No, no, nor has ANYBODY.
STEIN: Nor has anyone else. What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in evolution.
DAWKINS: Well, it could come about in the following way. It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved, by probably by some kind of Darwinian means, probably to a very very high level of technology, and DESIGNED a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Um, now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it's POSSIBLE that you might find EVIDENCE for that if you look at the DETAILS of BIOCHEMISTRY, MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, you might find a SIGNATURE of some sort of DESIGNER
STEIN NARRATION: Wait a second! Richard Dawkins thought that intelligent design might be a legitimate pursuit?
DAWKINS: Mm, and that DESIGNER could well be a higher INTELLIGENCE from elsewhere in the universe. That higher INTELLIGENCE would, itself, have had to have come about by some explicable, ultimately explicable, process. It couldn’t have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That’s the point.
STEIN NARRATION: So, Professor Dawkins was not against intelligent design, just certain “types” of designers… such as God.[2]

## Notes[edit]

1. ↑ Ed can't find one yet
2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M_ZF8r5e7w