Facing such a reality,"
Facing what reality? All we have here in the opening statement, is one man's opinion, and suddenly it's some kind of inescapable "reality." There are other scientists who look at the same universe and see a wealth of information pointing to a vast intellect designing the universe for the support of life. The parameters for this are so narrow, that the odds of this happening on earth are next to impossible, even with billions of years of blind chance working.
This is not necessarily inconsistent with evolution. Evolution cannot account for the possibility of a "guiding hand" behind the scenes making evolution happen. Evolution is inconsistent with Biblical literalism and inerrancy.
The parameters for this are so narrow, that the odds of this happening on earth are next to impossible, even with billions of years of blind chance working.
Odds only matter if in the beginning you set the end result to be the current state. Odds have nothing to do with it when the end state is unknown. According to evolution, we are just as likely to have our current world as we would be to have any other.
In other words, what are the chances you will be doing something, anything, in the late afternoon tomorrow? 100%. What are the chances you'll be doing a specific thing? Then odds then could possibly be calculated.
Anyway, just for grins, here's some more context to Dawkins' quote that I put together some time ago:
This quote comes at the end of chapter 4 of River Out of Eden. The chapter tries to explain why we see certain patterns in living things. Why there always tends to be a 50-50 ratio between males & females, even in species where it produces large inefficiencies of resource usage. Why Pacific salmon only return from several years in the ocean to spawn once in their lives & then die, while Atlantic salmon get to play out the cycle several times before dying. Why older people's bodies slowly break down, and why Huntington's chorea attacks older people but never younger people.The chapter also examines why some of these patterns are so cruel:
Cheetahs give every indication of being superbly designed for something, and it should be easy enough to reverse-engineer them and work out their utility function. They appear to be well designed to kill antelopes. ... [A cheetah's features] are all precisely what we should expect if God's purpose in designing cheetahs was to maximize deaths among antelopes. Conversely, if we reverse-engineer an antelope we find equally impressive evidence of design for precisely the opposite end: the survival of antelopes and starvation among cheetahs. It is as though cheetahs had been designed by one deity and antelopes by a rival deity. Alternatively, if there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is He playing at? Is He a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports? Is He trying to avoid overpopulation in the mammals of Africa? Is He maneuvering to maximize David Attenborough's television ratings? These are all intelligible utility functions that might have turned out to be true. In fact, of course, they are all completely wrong. ...Dawkins' answer: It only makes sense if you look at genes as selfish replicators and organisms as their tools for replication.
- River out of Eden, pg 105
To return to this chapter's pessimistic beginning, when the utility function - that which is being maximized - is DNA survival, this is not a recipie for happiness. So long as DNA is passed on, it does not matter who or what gets hurt in the process. It is better for the genes of Darwin's ichneumon wasp that the caterpillar should be alive, and therefore fresh, when it is eaten, no matter what the cost in suffering. Genes don't care about suffering, because they don't care about anything.Then he gets philosophical:If Nature were kind, she would at least make the minor concession of anesthetizing caterpillars before they are eaten alive from within. But Nature is neither kind nor unkind. She is neither against suffering nor for it. Nature is not interested one way or the other in suffering, unless it affects the survival of DNA. ...
- Eden, pg 131
Theologians worry away at the "problem of evil" and a related "problem of suffering". [A school bus full of Catholic kids crashed & many died, and people asked how could a loving, all-powerful God allow it to happen.] [O]ne priest's reply: "The simple answer is that we do not know why there should be a God who lets these awful things happen. But the horror of a crash, to a Christian, confirms the fact that we live in a world of real values: positive and negative. If the universe was just electrons, there would be no problem of suffering."If Dawkins is wrong, then why do you think an antelope's life ends so gruesomely? What does God have against antelopes and caterpillars, anyway?On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
- Eden, 132-133