The Science of Religion and the Religion of Science2. Comment #200416 by Neuro on June 27, 2008 at 2:34 pm
3. Comment #200419 by Prosthetic Head on June 27, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I for one often prefer the audio, and i think it should always be an option where there is a video. Its good for the bandwidth impaired and also for listening to on my MP3 player when I don't have time to sit and watch a video.4. Comment #200439 by german-atheist on June 27, 2008 at 4:21 pm
if you are a native english speaker it might not make much of a difference,but i find it easier to understand a foreign language watching the speaker.5. Comment #200456 by HourglassMemory on June 27, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Oh My God!6. Comment #200472 by Auld on June 27, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Why did it take 5 years for this to be available?!7. Comment #200478 by bharmount on June 27, 2008 at 5:42 pm
3. Comment #200419 by Prosthetic Head on June 27, 2008 at 2:59 pm8. Comment #200487 by XXXXXXXXXXXX on June 27, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I'd like to thank Mr. Dawkins for pulling himself away from masterminding the military-industrial-university complex to educate us all on the evolutionary explanation of religion.9. Comment #200564 by Andr3w on June 27, 2008 at 10:38 pm
10. Comment #200572 by yyuryyub on June 27, 2008 at 11:16 pm
XXXXetc.11. Comment #200603 by Mokusatsu on June 28, 2008 at 1:19 am
I don't think I've ever heard of another possible mechanism for breeding religious susceptibility into human minds.12. Comment #200621 by Mokusatsu on June 28, 2008 at 2:02 am
Some rather weird questioners in the second one. After that kooky military-industrial-university complex guy (looking this term up in Google finds a bunch of weird political sites) there was a guy that sounded like that Gumby character in Monty Python, started off congratulating Dawkins over British educational traditions and then started making no sense at all. Then there was a lady that seemed to be coming from a post-modernist type viewpoint who, if I'm getting her question, was asking something about whether we can ever objectively know anything...13. Comment #200630 by irate_atheist on June 28, 2008 at 2:18 am
14. Comment #200633 by yyuryyub on June 28, 2008 at 2:19 am
I must be way more stupid than I have allowed myself to believe. I can't make sense of what DeRose is trying to say in the seminars or his earlier "question". I guess I'm not Harvard material afterall.15. Comment #200652 by Raiko on June 28, 2008 at 3:10 am
16. Comment #200668 by emmet on June 28, 2008 at 4:05 am
17. Comment #200672 by Muetze on June 28, 2008 at 4:38 am
18. Comment #200674 by mikesherwod53 on June 28, 2008 at 4:47 am
re emnet commet /20066819. Comment #200676 by mikesherwod53 on June 28, 2008 at 4:55 am
re :Comment #200603 by Mokusatsu on June 28, 2008 at 1:19 am20. Comment #200682 by Carole on June 28, 2008 at 5:15 am
Wubba21. Comment #200836 by Steve Zara on June 28, 2008 at 10:04 am
22. Comment #200843 by Abhishek on June 28, 2008 at 10:14 am
23. Comment #200918 by Teratornis on June 28, 2008 at 1:41 pm
i.e. many religions have at one time or another taught that non-believers should be sacrificed or executed.
A few thousand generations of systematically exterminating infidels may well have a significant impact on the breeding of religious minds.
24. Comment #200925 by robotaholic on June 28, 2008 at 2:12 pm
25. Comment #200931 by Quine on June 28, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Either that or it selects for good liars.Thomas Jefferson observed that forced religion produces not piety, but hypocrisy.
26. Comment #200932 by Teratornis on June 28, 2008 at 2:26 pm
In the questions part, someone asks about the labeling of children. I think his point was that just as children don't have the full understanding of the different nuances of christianity or islam or whatever to be able to correctly label themselves as such, the adults who call themselves Christian or Muslim also don't have a very deep understanding of their religion.
He seems to be making the case that contrary to the assumption that adults are free to call themselves muslim because they are capable of understanding what it entails to be a muslim, MOST adults who call themselves muslim don't actually have the level of understanding you would expect one to have before you would call yourself that.
So in the end, most adults and children don't actually know very much about the morality and cosmology and the overall worldview that Islam or Christianity provides. Therefore, why make a distinction based on age rather than on displaying a certain level of understanding of the implications of your self-ascribed label?
Did anyone catch that? Do I have the correct understanding of the questioner's argument?
edit: my response would be that at least adults are CAPABLE of getting full information about their religion before accepting it, while very young children don't have enough information about the world, or haven't full developed their rationality to be able to dissect the arguments.
27. Comment #200956 by Abhishek on June 28, 2008 at 3:35 pm
The certain level of understanding would be whatever it takes for the Christian to see he isn't a Muslim, if those are the two religions on offer. Obviously only a tiny percentage of Muslims understand Islamic doctrine as well as their Mufti, and if they needed to, then Islam would be in trouble.
28. Comment #201034 by DanDare on June 28, 2008 at 8:19 pm
29. Comment #201438 by contrarian on June 29, 2008 at 4:35 pm
I love it when Dawkins occasionally goes "consciousness raising" crazy... nice ones in this recording30. Comment #201618 by utelme on June 30, 2008 at 12:01 am
Harvard university, eh? More like something out of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". Some of the questioners were as articulate as my dog...barking crazy. Is anyone seriously believing that more than a fraction of religious people have even a smattering of understanding of their belief system (including all the various faith systems)? Most of the catholics I know could care less about the intricacies and intellectual theology of their faith. They just want to be led by the nose by their priest and re-assured of their salvation. Very few of them would have studied Aquinas or Augustine or any other of the early church theologians of their faith. Most adults are just as much a child in this respect as their children are. Yes, some of the adults are capable of doing the research into their religion but the vast majority couldn't be bothered. That's what makes the religious so dangerous. They don't want to think, it's too hard.31. Comment #201931 by Mokusatsu on June 30, 2008 at 12:35 pm
"When a Sunni Muslim suicide bomber kills 100 Shiite Muslims in a mosque, what exactly is being selected against?"32. Comment #202029 by jamesstephenbrown on June 30, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I found the questioner's point in the final section interesting regarding memetic selection of scientific ideas, and whether they survive simply due to effective survival mechanisms. And it got me thinking from an "meme" point of view...33. Comment #202031 by jamesstephenbrown on June 30, 2008 at 4:28 pm
""When a Sunni Muslim suicide bomber kills 100 Shiite Muslims in a mosque, what exactly is being selected against?"34. Comment #202188 by phaseshift on July 1, 2008 at 2:37 am
Abhishek: you ask about the case where a child would choose to call itself a muslim/catholic, etc. Well, I think the question is best answered with another question: what if a child decided it was ready to vote? Or to have sex? I think you get the point. There's a reason that kids have restricted rights until a certain age: they can't be assumed to have enough information and experience to make complex judgements.35. Comment #202268 by HitbLade on July 1, 2008 at 7:16 am
anyone know where to find a downloadable version? or one with video?36. Comment #202285 by Barry Pearson on July 1, 2008 at 8:20 am
by Teratornis: I'd also mention that children often have no choice in the matter. Their parents drag them off to church or temple and that is that. An adult has to actually choose to continue with a religion, whereas the young child remains utterly dependent on its parents and cannot easily defy their wishes.Nicholas Humphrey attempted to answer this point in 1998 or so.
#200956 by Abhishek: Then an interesting point the questioner raised, was that what if the child decides to call himself/herself a Muslim? If it only requires a distinction in the big catagories, a child could say I've looked at the big catagories and I think I'd like to be called a Muslim child, please.
#202188 by phaseshift: Abhishek: you ask about the case where a child would choose to call itself a muslim/catholic, etc. Well, I think the question is best answered with another question: what if a child decided it was ready to vote? Or to have sex? I think you get the point. There's a reason that kids have restricted rights until a certain age: they can't be assumed to have enough information and experience to make complex judgements.
.... Let's suppose we were talking not about children's minds but children's bodies. Suppose the issue were not who should control a child's intellectual development but who should control the development of her ... genitalia.... And the issue is not whether anyone should be permitted to deny a girl knowledge of Darwin, but whether anyone should be permitted to deny her the uses of a clitoris. And now here I am suggesting that it is a girl's right to be left intact, that parents have no right to mutilate their daughters to suit their own socio-sexual agenda, and that we as a society ought to prevent it....Children can be pressured into things that they would/will regret in later life.
.... You'll agree that, if it were female circumcision we were talking about, we could build a moral case against it based just on considering whether it is something a woman would choose for herself. Given the fact - I assume it is a fact - that most of those women who were circumcised as children would, if they only knew what they were missing, have preferred to remain intact. Given that almost no woman who was not circumcised as a child volunteers to undergo the operation later in life. Given in short that it seems not to be what free women want to have done to their bodies. Then it seems clear that whoever takes advantage of their temporary power over a child's body to perform the operation must be abusing this power and acting wrongly.
Well then, if this is so for bodies, the same for minds. Given, let's say, that most people who have been brought up as members of a sect would, if they only knew what they are being denied, have preferred to remain outside it. Given that almost no one who was not brought up this way volunteers to adopt the faith later in life. Given in short that it is not a faith that a free-thinker would adopt. Then, likewise, it seems clear that whoever takes advantage of their temporary power over a child's mind to impose this faith, is equally abusing this power and acting wrongly....
.... More worrying still, the children themselves may often be unwitting collaborators in this game of isolation. For children all too easily learn who they are, what is allowed for them and where they must not go - even in thought. John Schumaker, an Australian psychologist, has described his own Catholic boyhood: "I believed wholeheartedly that I would burn in eternal fire if I ate meat on a Friday. I now hear that people no longer spend an eternity in fire for eating meat on Fridays. Yet, I cannot help thinking back on the many Saturdays when I rushed to confess about the bologna and ketchup sandwich I could not resist the day before. I usually hoped I would not die before getting to the 3 p.m. confession"....
.... I want to propose a general test for deciding when and whether the teaching of a belief system to children is morally defensible. As follows. If it is ever the case that teaching this system to children will mean that later in life they come to hold beliefs that, were they in fact to have had access to alternatives, they would most likely not have chosen for themselves, then it is morally wrong of whoever presumes to impose this system and to chose for them to do so. No one has the right to choose badly for anyone else....
37. Comment #202467 by Abhishek on July 1, 2008 at 2:13 pm
38. Comment #203166 by Teratornis on July 2, 2008 at 12:33 pm
It's of course extremely hard to implement since most parents who impose certain beliefs on their children probably sincerely think they're doing their children a favor...
39. Comment #204103 by Theduffman on July 4, 2008 at 6:31 am
I've found a transcription of sorts of the material of these lectures:40. Comment #205920 by Luther on July 7, 2008 at 10:47 pm
41. Comment #211160 by pipelineaudio on July 15, 2008 at 2:35 pm
No wonder there is so much prejudice against americans as idiots. If all you get to hear is pompous ivy league windbags like these idiots, its perfectly understandable. It would have been much more enlightening and entertaining answering questions from hillbillies or rednecks, or the tinkerers in the rust belt.42. Comment #233859 by hornungerous on August 20, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I actually find Steven Pinker to be (at least partially) intellectually dishonest. I base this on bias (an interest in behaviorism) and his book "The Blank Slate". I would refer readers to:
1. Comment #200403 by wubba on June 27, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Twenty seconds isn't long for a lecture. Talk fast, Richard!Other Comments by wubba