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Friday, June 27, 2008 | Reason : Science of Religion | print version Print | Comments

Audio The Science of Religion and the Religion of Science

Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Harvard University

The Science of Religion and the Religion of Science
The twenty-second Harvard University series of Tanner Lectures on Human Values 2003

Lecture 1: The Science of Religion
Wednesday, November 19, 2003 at 5:00 P.M.

Lecture 2: The Religion of Science
Thursday, November 20, 5:00 2003 at P.M.

Seminar with Dr. Dawkins and Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University and Keith DeRose, Professor of Philosophy, Yale University
Friday, November 21, 2003 at 10:00-12:00 noon

Richard Dawkins - The Science of Religion - Part 1 (1:02:05, 28.5 MB)
Richard Dawkins - The Science of Religion - Part 2 (35:35, 16.3 MB)

Richard Dawkins - The Religion of Science - Part 1 (54:07, 24.8 MB)
Richard Dawkins - The Religion of Science - Part 2 (35:36, 16.3 MB)

Seminar with Dawkins, Pinker, DeRose - Part 1 (1:00:01, 27.5 MB)
Seminar with Dawkins, Pinker, DeRose - Part 2 (57:30, 26.4 MB)

Comments 1 - 43 of 43 |

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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

2. Comment #200416 by Neuro on June 27, 2008 at 2:34 pm

 avatarIt should be video, god damn it!

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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.

Other Comments by Prosthetic Head

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.

Other Comments by german-atheist

5. Comment #200456 by HourglassMemory on June 27, 2008 at 5:03 pm

Oh My God!
More than 4 hours (if my maths isn't mistaken)!!!!

This is the sort of stuff I like!

Other Comments by HourglassMemory

6. Comment #200472 by Auld on June 27, 2008 at 5:27 pm

Why did it take 5 years for this to be available?!

Still, better late than never...

Other Comments by Auld

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 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.

I agree!
Bob

Other Comments by bharmount

8. 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.

Other Comments by XXXXXXXXXXXX

9. Comment #200564 by Andr3w on June 27, 2008 at 10:38 pm

 avatarDawkins and Pinker are among my favorite intellectuals, its a great windfall to hear them both speak at length on religion.

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10. Comment #200572 by yyuryyub on June 27, 2008 at 11:16 pm

XXXXetc.
"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."

Yes that was absurd!

Other Comments by yyuryyub

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.

What about the possibility that this isn't natural selection at all, instead it is artificial selection?

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.

Other Comments by Mokusatsu

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...

This is Harvard University?

Other Comments by Mokusatsu

13. Comment #200630 by irate_atheist on June 28, 2008 at 2:18 am

 avatarCan't wait until another bout of insomnia when I can watch all these videos.

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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.

He's like McGrath if he were stuck on a merry-go-round popping prozac

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15. Comment #200634 by Aidan86 on June 28, 2008 at 2:20 am

It seems Derose has been dede-ed in the description...

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16. Comment #200652 by Raiko on June 28, 2008 at 3:10 am

 avatarMy four hour lonely ride home on Monday is SAVED! I for my part couldn't be happier that this is audio (and I am also German ;)).

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17. Comment #200668 by emmet on June 28, 2008 at 4:05 am

 avatarAt the end of the Q&A session after "Religion of Science" (D4), I think Richard missed the point of the last questioner (a student of comparative religion). His point was, in essence, that the definition of religion adopted for the purposes of the lecture, which the questioner described as "fedeist anthropomorphic theism" (faith-based theism of a man-like god), did not exhaustively cover the academic definition of religion. I agree that the questioner didn't express himself with great clarity and succinctness, but if Richard had understood him, I think he would have agreed: there are religions that are not faith-based theisms, such as non-theistic variants of Buddhism. Indeed, Richard has previously said this himself several times and may even have said it during the lecture. The point, I think, is that the Desert Dogmas are "fedeist anthropomorphic theisms" and it wasn't at all unreasonable for Richard to limit himself to them for the purposes of the lecture.

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18. Comment #200672 by Muetze on June 28, 2008 at 4:38 am

 avatarIs there a Pinker lecture avaliable too?

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19. Comment #200674 by mikesherwod53 on June 28, 2008 at 4:47 am

re emnet commet /200668
Supporting Dawkins
There is just so much you can do in one Lecture and maybe D. just hasn't got anything interesting to say about Buddhism.
Ideally every Lecture about God would start with 20 minutes in which you pinned down WHICH concept of God you are talking about.
Anyway
THe "fedeist anthropomorphic theism" is a non-consentual reality a real pain-in-the-ass and getting worse. When the Hindus start getting in liberal rationalist faces we'll give them shit too. Meanwhile don't interupt me while I'm eating

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20. Comment #200676 by mikesherwod53 on June 28, 2008 at 4:55 am

re :Comment #200603 by Mokusatsu on June 28, 2008 at 1:19 am

What about the possibility that this isn't natural selection at all, instead it is artificial selection?

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.

Interesting isea diffcult to prove.
Off-the-cuff I find it plausible that religiosity is built into the genes but not aderance to one particular creed.

Putting on my Elitist cap and looking around me it seems blindingly obvious that most people have been culled to exterminate the Skeptic Gene. Maybe we should start our own sperm bank?

Other Comments by mikesherwod53

21. Comment #200682 by Carole on June 28, 2008 at 5:15 am

Wubba
If Richard can do a whole lecture in 20 seconds, there should be some good content in tonight's 5-second Dr Who appearance. Excellent.

I'm also voting for more audio. Oh, we weren't doing a poll? sorry...

Other Comments by Carole

22. Comment #200836 by Steve Zara on June 28, 2008 at 10:04 am

 avatarComment #200833 by babrock

I happen to be a huge fan of Dr Who. I have been all my life. I may be able to provide you with information about when particular episodes will air. But, in return, I ask just one minor thing.

Please post in English and not in text-speak. Is that really too much trouble?

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23. Comment #200843 by Abhishek on June 28, 2008 at 10:14 am

 avatarIn 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.

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24. Comment #200918 by Teratornis on June 28, 2008 at 1:41 pm

 avatarComment #200603 by Mokusatsu:

i.e. many religions have at one time or another taught that non-believers should be sacrificed or executed.


Beware the false dichotomy, which theists habitually try to slip under our noses, when they use the intentionally misleading term "non-believers". The set of "non-believers" includes everyone who does not believe in some particular religion.

When a Sunni Muslim suicide bomber kills 100 Shiite Muslims in a mosque, what exactly is being selected against?


A few thousand generations of systematically exterminating infidels may well have a significant impact on the breeding of religious minds.


Either that or it selects for good liars.

Various religions honor their martyrs, for example, people who refused to deny their faith, and died horrifyingly painful deaths at the hands of rival religions.

When Galileo was given the choice to recant his observations, what did he do? He did what any rational person would do - he lied, to save his life, and falsely recanted.

Even if a culture could sustain a selection against people who think rationally, for thousands of generations, nature would be selecting in favor of rational thinking by rewarding people who recognized its rules and took advantage of them.

In any case, in primitive cultures, long before Darwin and modern science, atheist memes were probably uncommon. There wasn't a coherent intellectual response to theism.

Other Comments by Teratornis

25. Comment #200925 by robotaholic on June 28, 2008 at 2:12 pm

 avatarI think Pinker's "2 friendly addendums" were overplayed- parents are the ones that children are trained to listen to absolutely - and they only copy their peers after their parents have instilled it-

Also some of the people asking questions were retarded- One lady tried to go more into projecting rabitness onto the lion and it was funny how Richard Dawkins said the lion is still going to eat you regardless lol -

About the issue of labeling your children - it seemed like the issue of the truthfullness of the belief stumped one guy but I liked how Dawkins showed that it doesn't matter - it's still wrong to label your children with cosmic views or outlooks - better to let them make up their own minds when they're ready -

In the first lecture, Richard Dawkins got really harsh toward religion and I really enjoyed that immensely

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26. Comment #200931 by Quine on June 28, 2008 at 2:22 pm

 avatar
Either that or it selects for good liars.
Thomas Jefferson observed that forced religion produces not piety, but hypocrisy.

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27. Comment #200932 by Teratornis on June 28, 2008 at 2:26 pm

 avatarComment #200843 by Abhishek:

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.


They don't need a deep understanding to see that Christianity and Islam are quite different. Religious people only have to know enough about their religion to distinguish it from the other religions on offer, and most of them seem to.

While lots of religions exist, most people can tell theirs apart from the others.

Adults are not likely to label themselves with extreme doctrinal precision, as in "I'm a pre-millennial, pre-tribulationist dispensational evangelical charismatic, still undecided on the predestination question" and probably even less likely to label their children as such.

Christians define their religion as what you have to believe to get to heaven. That allows for enormous diversity of belief on fine doctrinal points, although the Mormons and snake-handlers are probably pushing it. (Snake-handling is what you believe to get to heaven sooner.)


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.


How much about sexuality does a person need to know to figure out whether he is straight or gay?

How much about politics does a person need to know to choose between Obama and McCain?

The big categories are usually distinct enough that most people can figure out where they stand without having to examine all the details.


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?


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.

One can make similar arguments about politics. How many people who vote for a particular politician understand the politician's platform, voting record, etc., in sufficient detail to understand what they are voting for?

One only has to watch a politician's approval ratings creep up or down, to see that voters didn't really understand what they were choosing.

We can draw similar conclusions from the divorce rate. Some people are very sure they want to marry someone, right up until they realize it was the biggest mistake of their life.

Most cultures make lots of distinctions based on age, even though many distinctions break down in the immediate vicinity of where one draws the line. Take voting age, for example. What magical change occurs in the mind of a child at the stroke of midnight on her 18th birthday, which transforms her into a responsible adult? Obviously nothing much really changed in the course of one day, but we have to draw the line somewhere.

Occasionally someone lies about their age and gets away with it, further illustrating how age-based distinctions are inherently fuzzy. But every society draws some lines for administrative convenience, not necessarily as claims about reality.


Did anyone catch that? Do I have the correct understanding of the questioner's argument?


I don't know. I haven't listened that far yet. Even if you got it wrong, whatever you wrote is still interesting.

This harks back to Aristotle's notions of accident and essence. What properties of a thing are essential to its definition? Properties we can remove without changing a thing's essential nature are "accidents."

What is the essence of being a Christian? Does the average Christian understand that much?

At what age can a child understand that much?


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.


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.

Also, even an adult who hasn't read very widely almost certainly has a better knowledge than most children would have that there are some other religions on offer.

Other Comments by Teratornis

28. Comment #200956 by Abhishek on June 28, 2008 at 3:35 pm

 avatarComment #200932 by Teratornis
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.


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.

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29. Comment #201034 by DanDare on June 28, 2008 at 8:19 pm

 avatarStarted a new topic about science of religion in the faith and religion forum.

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30. 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 recording

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31. 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.

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32. 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?"

On the whole probably nothing if the other side kills just as many.

But nevertheless, the way evolution works is about a gradual ratchet. Bugs will evolve into perfect stick insects if there is a slight evolutionary advantage to looking a little more like a stick than the next bug.

Of course some of the very stick-like bugs will still get eaten, but if there is some pressure on the remaining population they'll evolve despite a few unlucky bugs being eaten along the way.

Similarly, if there has been some general trend toward the elimination of non-religious people by religious people, there would be a survival advantage to at least appearing religious.

How genetic that effect would be is something I'd like to know, but it isn't my field!

If RD is reading this, or if someone could point this question out to him, I'd really like to hear his opinion on this "artificial selection against religious skeptics" theory. :)

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33. 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...

If you were a false idea, what environment would you choose to inhabit?

The religious environment where you can be spread due to your "miraculous" nature, your "spiritual" significance, your "immaterial" field of magisteria and your execising / testing of "faith", what's more get written into books and taught to children without justification in fact with the accompaniment of various incentives such as eternal life, heaven, virgins etc.

OR

The scientific environment where the most well studied and intelligent people in the world try to prove you wrong and are held up as heroes if they do.

I know which field I'd choose if I were a false idea.

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34. 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?"

On the whole probably nothing if the other side kills just as many."

Well actually, if the other side kills just as many then what is being selected against is Islam... in general.

This just shows that selection pressures change over time. Throughout the last few thousand years the tendency to wage religious war has been a fantastic tool for colonisation - and hence the propagating of your culture and genes.

With the state of the world now, colonisation is a zero-sum game, and as a good evolutionist will know zero-sum games are no good for the evolution of your species. Religion it turns out has out-lived it's usefulness in a world that requires harmony rather than conquest. Hopefully religion will burn itself out without taking the rest of us with it.

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35. 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.

Sure - many adults don't either, but we can all agree that they SHOULD be in a better position to make good decisions! Even if education is lacking, at least all adults have had more time to collect life experiences and to figure out who they are and what they want. A child who hasn't had the time to do the same can't be expected to be fully responsible for its claims.

In the case of a child who would claim to be muslim, etc. it's clear that it's simply associating itself with its parents or peers, not really deciding for itself that that's what it believes. Again - many kids grow up without questioning their early beliefs, but at least they should have had the chance to - and kids haven't yet.

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36. Comment #202268 by HitbLade on July 1, 2008 at 7:16 am

anyone know where to find a downloadable version? or one with video?

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37. Comment #202285 by Barry Pearson on July 1, 2008 at 8:20 am

 avatar
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.

#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.
Nicholas Humphrey attempted to answer this point in 1998 or so.

Nicholas Humphrey, 1998, "What shall we tell the children?" (PDF):
http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/1998WhatShallWeTell.pdf

He challenged views about the freedom of parents by drawing a comparison that enlightened people would struggle with. It isn't simply whether children can at that age apparently make informed decisions. It is also whether later as adults this is something that they would have wished had been done differently.
.... 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....

.... 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....
Children can be pressured into things that they would/will regret in later life.

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38. Comment #202467 by Abhishek on July 1, 2008 at 2:13 pm

 avatarPhaseshift: Yeah, I think that's a good point about acquiring enough life experience/opportunities for you to learn about the distinctions and make up your mind. As you say, the adult version SHOULD have more time to learn about the world and themselves.

Barry Pearson: The access-to-alternatives test is interesting. I'll read Humphrey's paper when I have time. My knee-jerk reaction to the test is that it sort of advocates that the "allowed" things to impose on children would be those that are currently in the mainstream, or majority. It would rule out the extreme practices on the fringes and therefore on the face of it seems like a good rule of thumb. 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...

Other Comments by Abhishek

39. Comment #203166 by Teratornis on July 2, 2008 at 12:33 pm

 avatarComment #202467 by Abhishek:

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...


Some parents might be taking out on their children their repressed anger at their parents, for having screwed them over as children.

There are practical limits to how much the state can intrude on parental rights, just as there are limits to the percentage of total income a state can collect as taxes. Raising the tax rates tends to stimulate more tax evasion and cheating, diverting economic activity away from productive work, and thereby shrinking both the tax base and the fraction of levied taxes that actually get collected.

So it probably all comes down to what a would-be reformer can persuade parents to do (or refrain from doing) with their children. Anyone who has talked to a theist knows that persuasion is a weak tool, particularly in the short term, when going up against entrenched emotional belief systems.

One point we didn't see in the brief excerpt from Humphrey's paper is the fate of the child's immortal soul. What the parent does to the child need not be noticeably beneficial in any way in the temporal realm if the parent firmly believes it is in the best eternal interest of the child.

To someone who firmly believes in the prospect of eternal torture, what price would be too high to pay in this life to avoid it?

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40. 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:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/283285/RICHARD-DAWKINS-Religion-of-Science

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41. Comment #205920 by Luther on July 7, 2008 at 10:47 pm

 avatarDoes anyone know where I can find the paper DeRose mentioned at the end of his seminar talk?

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42. 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.

Even so, I have my share of Yale and Hardvard friends, and I don't think the idiots on these audio files fairly represent them.

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43. 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:

Not so fast, Mr. Pinker: A Behaviorist Looks at the Blank Slate. A Review of Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Why Pinker Needs Behaviorism:A Critique of The Blank Slate

and any writing by David Palmer. (Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies)

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