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Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda
by Richard Dawkins
On 18th April, the day Ben Stein's infamous film was released, Michael Shermer received the following letter from a Jew (referencing a past article that Shermer had written debunking the Holocaust deniers) whose identity I shall conceal as "David J".
Shermer wrote to Mr J to ask if he had by any chance just seen Expelled, and he received this reply:
It seemed to me that Ben Stein and his lying crew were more to blame than Mr J himself for his revolting letter. I therefore decided to write him a personal letter and try to explain a few things to him. It then occurred to me (indeed, Michael Shermer suggested as much) that there are probably many others like him, whose minds have been twisted in this evil way by the man Stein, and that it would be a good idea to publish the letter. I decided to wait 24 hours to see if he would reply, although I didn't expect him to. I am now publishing my letter to him, exactly as I sent it to him except that I have removed his name.
Richard
Dear Mr J
Michael Shermer forwarded me a letter from you which suggests that you have unfortunately been taken in by Ben Stein's mendacious and/or ignorant suggestion that Darwin is somehow to blame for Hitler. I hope you will not mind if I write to you and try to undo this grievous error.
1. I deeply sympathize with you for the loss of your relatives in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, I don't think that could really be said to justify the tone of your letter to Michael Shermer, who is a kind and decent man, as even you seemed to concede in your second letter to him, and the very antithesis of a Nazi sympathizer.
2. Hitler's horrible opinions were not all that unusual for his time, not just in Germany but throughout Europe, including my own country of Britain, by the way. What singled Hitler out was the fact that he somehow managed to come to power in one of Europe's leading nations, which was also one of the world's most technologically advanced nations. Hitler had a lot of support in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist. It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to win the Church's support for his regime. In this he was very largely successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened. And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism. For example, here is a typical quotation, from the end of Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf.
3. Going further back in history, where do we think the toxic anti-Semitism of Hitler, and of the many Germans whose support gave him power, came from? You can't seriously think it came from Darwin. Anti-Semitism has been rife in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as "Christ-killers". While, as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that "All Jews should be driven from Germany." By the way, do you hear an echo of those words in your own letter to Michael Shermer, "We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States." Don't you feel just a twinge of shame at those truly horrible words of yours? Don't you feel that, as a Jew, you should feel especially regretful that you used those words?
4. Now, to the matter of Darwin. The first thing to say is that natural selection is a scientific theory about the way evolution works in fact. It is either true or it is not, and whether or not we like it politically or morally is irrelevant. Scientific theories are not prescriptions for how we should behave. I have many times written (for example in the first chapter of A Devil's Chaplain) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes to the politics of how humans ought to behave. I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at the beginning of my very first book, The Selfish Gene, that we should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics. Darwin himself said the same thing, in various different ways. So did his great friend and champion Thomas Henry Huxley.
5. Darwinism gives NO support to racism of any kind. Quite the contrary. It is emphatically NOT about natural selection between races. It is about natural selection between individuals. It is true that the subtitle of The Origin of Species is "Or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" but Darwin was using the word "race" in a very different sense from ours. It is totaly clear, if you read past the title to the book itself, that a "favoured race" meant something like 'that set of individuals who possess a certain favoured genetic mutation" (although Darwin would not have used that language because he did not have our modern concept of a genetic mutation).
6. There is no mention of Darwin in Mein Kampf. Not one single, solitary mention, not one mention in any of the 27 chapters of this long and tedious book. Don't you think that, if Hitler was truly influenced by Darwin, he would have given him at least one teeny weeny mention in his book? Was he, perhaps, INDIRECTLY influenced by some of Darwin's ideas, without knowing it? Only if you completely misunderstand Darwin's ideas, as some have definitely done: the so-called Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and John D Rockefeller. Hitler could fairly be described as a Social Darwinist, but all modern evolutionists, almost literally without exception, have been vocal in their condemnation of Social Darwinism. This of course includes Michael Shermer and me and PZ Myers and all the other evolutionary scientists whom Ben Stein and his team tricked into taking part in his film by lying to us about their true intentions.
7. Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed out. Darwin's great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realise that the same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of the whole of life: "natural selection", the "survival of the fittest". Hitler didn't apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidiently is. Hitler tried to apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers, gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of NATURAL selection; and Hitler's eugenic policies had nothing to do with natural selection.
8. Mr J, you have been cruelly duped by Ben Stein and his unscrupulous colleagues. It is a wicked, evil thing they have done to you, and potentially to many others. I do not know whether they knowingly and wantonly perpetrated the falsehood that fooled you. Perhaps they genuinely and sincerely believed it, although other actions by them, which you can read about all over the Internet, persuade me that they are fully capable of deliberate and calculated deception. You are perhaps not to be blamed for swallowing the film's falsehoods, because you probably assumed that nobody would have the gall to make a whole film like that without checking their facts first. Perhaps even you will need a little more convincing that they were wrong, in which case I urge you to read it up and study the matter in detail -- something that Ben Stein and his crew manifestly and lamentably failed to do.
With my good wishes, and sympathy for the losses your family suffered in the Holocaust.
Yours sincerely
Richard Dawkins
Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!
Shermer wrote to Mr J to ask if he had by any chance just seen Expelled, and he received this reply:
Yes I have. You know, I respect you as a human being and you have done great work exposing psychics and frauds, but this is a very touchy issue that affects me and family emotionally. Our family business was affected because of Auschwitz because now, our family has nothing. It is gone. Things began to make sense once I saw the movie and I am just appalled. I have learned a lot from Ben Stein, a Jewish brother, who has opened my eyes up a bit.
It seemed to me that Ben Stein and his lying crew were more to blame than Mr J himself for his revolting letter. I therefore decided to write him a personal letter and try to explain a few things to him. It then occurred to me (indeed, Michael Shermer suggested as much) that there are probably many others like him, whose minds have been twisted in this evil way by the man Stein, and that it would be a good idea to publish the letter. I decided to wait 24 hours to see if he would reply, although I didn't expect him to. I am now publishing my letter to him, exactly as I sent it to him except that I have removed his name.
Richard
Dear Mr J
Michael Shermer forwarded me a letter from you which suggests that you have unfortunately been taken in by Ben Stein's mendacious and/or ignorant suggestion that Darwin is somehow to blame for Hitler. I hope you will not mind if I write to you and try to undo this grievous error.
1. I deeply sympathize with you for the loss of your relatives in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, I don't think that could really be said to justify the tone of your letter to Michael Shermer, who is a kind and decent man, as even you seemed to concede in your second letter to him, and the very antithesis of a Nazi sympathizer.
Now I truly understand who you atheists and darwinists really are! You people believe that it was okay for my great-grandparents to die in the Holocaust! How disgusting. Your past article about the Holocaust was just window dressing. We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States!Just look at those words of yours. Probably you regret them by now. I certainly hope so, but I'll continue to write my letter to you, on the assumption that you still feel at least a part of what you wrote.
2. Hitler's horrible opinions were not all that unusual for his time, not just in Germany but throughout Europe, including my own country of Britain, by the way. What singled Hitler out was the fact that he somehow managed to come to power in one of Europe's leading nations, which was also one of the world's most technologically advanced nations. Hitler had a lot of support in Germany. His horrible bidding was done by millions of ordinary German footsoldiers, and the great majority of them were Christians. Many were Lutheran, and many (like Hitler himself) were Roman Catholic. Very few were atheists, and whatever else Hitler was he most certainly was not an atheist. It is sometimes said that Hitler only pretended to be Catholic, in order to win the Church's support for his regime. In this he was very largely successful. So, whether or not Hitler was himself a true Catholic (as he often claimed) the Church bears a heavy responsibility for what happened. And Hitler himself used religion to justify his anti-Semitism. For example, here is a typical quotation, from the end of Chapter 2 of Mein Kampf.
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.Hitler's obscene anti-Semitism was able to hold sway in Germany because there was a deeply embedded history of anti-Semitism in Germany, and indeed in Europe generally.
3. Going further back in history, where do we think the toxic anti-Semitism of Hitler, and of the many Germans whose support gave him power, came from? You can't seriously think it came from Darwin. Anti-Semitism has been rife in Europe for many many centuries, positively encouraged by most Christian churches, including especially the two that dominate Germany. The Roman Catholic Church has notoriously persecuted Jews as "Christ-killers". While, as for the Lutherans, Martin Luther himself wrote a book called On the Jews and their Lies from which Hitler quoted. And Luther publicly said that "All Jews should be driven from Germany." By the way, do you hear an echo of those words in your own letter to Michael Shermer, "We Jews will fight to keep people like you out of the United States." Don't you feel just a twinge of shame at those truly horrible words of yours? Don't you feel that, as a Jew, you should feel especially regretful that you used those words?
4. Now, to the matter of Darwin. The first thing to say is that natural selection is a scientific theory about the way evolution works in fact. It is either true or it is not, and whether or not we like it politically or morally is irrelevant. Scientific theories are not prescriptions for how we should behave. I have many times written (for example in the first chapter of A Devil's Chaplain) that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to the science of how life has actually evolved, but a passionate ANTI-Darwinian when it comes to the politics of how humans ought to behave. I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at the beginning of my very first book, The Selfish Gene, that we should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics. Darwin himself said the same thing, in various different ways. So did his great friend and champion Thomas Henry Huxley.
5. Darwinism gives NO support to racism of any kind. Quite the contrary. It is emphatically NOT about natural selection between races. It is about natural selection between individuals. It is true that the subtitle of The Origin of Species is "Or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" but Darwin was using the word "race" in a very different sense from ours. It is totaly clear, if you read past the title to the book itself, that a "favoured race" meant something like 'that set of individuals who possess a certain favoured genetic mutation" (although Darwin would not have used that language because he did not have our modern concept of a genetic mutation).
6. There is no mention of Darwin in Mein Kampf. Not one single, solitary mention, not one mention in any of the 27 chapters of this long and tedious book. Don't you think that, if Hitler was truly influenced by Darwin, he would have given him at least one teeny weeny mention in his book? Was he, perhaps, INDIRECTLY influenced by some of Darwin's ideas, without knowing it? Only if you completely misunderstand Darwin's ideas, as some have definitely done: the so-called Social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and John D Rockefeller. Hitler could fairly be described as a Social Darwinist, but all modern evolutionists, almost literally without exception, have been vocal in their condemnation of Social Darwinism. This of course includes Michael Shermer and me and PZ Myers and all the other evolutionary scientists whom Ben Stein and his team tricked into taking part in his film by lying to us about their true intentions.
7. Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans. But this interpretation gets it historically backwards, as PZ Myers has pointed out. Darwin's great achievement was to look at the familiar practice of domestic livestock breeding by artificial selection, and realise that the same principle might apply in NATURE, thereby explaining the evolution of the whole of life: "natural selection", the "survival of the fittest". Hitler didn't apply NATURAL selection to humans. He was probably even more ignorant of natural selection than Ben Stein evidiently is. Hitler tried to apply ARTIFICIAL selection to humans, and there is nothing specifically Darwinian about artificial selection. It has been familiar to farmers, gardeners, horse trainers, dog breeders, pigeon fanciers and many others for centuries, even millennia. Everybody knew about artificial selection, and Hitler was no exception. What was unique about Darwin was his idea of NATURAL selection; and Hitler's eugenic policies had nothing to do with natural selection.
8. Mr J, you have been cruelly duped by Ben Stein and his unscrupulous colleagues. It is a wicked, evil thing they have done to you, and potentially to many others. I do not know whether they knowingly and wantonly perpetrated the falsehood that fooled you. Perhaps they genuinely and sincerely believed it, although other actions by them, which you can read about all over the Internet, persuade me that they are fully capable of deliberate and calculated deception. You are perhaps not to be blamed for swallowing the film's falsehoods, because you probably assumed that nobody would have the gall to make a whole film like that without checking their facts first. Perhaps even you will need a little more convincing that they were wrong, in which case I urge you to read it up and study the matter in detail -- something that Ben Stein and his crew manifestly and lamentably failed to do.
With my good wishes, and sympathy for the losses your family suffered in the Holocaust.
Yours sincerely
Richard Dawkins
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Posted: Sunday, April 20, 2008 | PermalinkComments 51 - 100 of 1947 | | View Alternate Comment Thread
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers52. Comment #164813 by 120DaysofSondheim on April 20, 2008 at 6:04 pm
This sort of thing I think is exactly the outcome that most worried us, spreading lies and inciting hate. I should note, you still won't see Atheists picketing the film or telling people they will go to hell for seeing it, we aren't protesting, we accept that people have the right to make and view whatever kind of film they want, even if it's a bunch of lying bullshit.Other Comments by 120DaysofSondheim
53. Comment #164814 by Ohnhai on April 20, 2008 at 6:05 pm
I just sent an email to Josh asking him to ask Richard to consider getting this open letter into as many papers as he can...@ Bill G
While it is true that as natural beings nothing we do can be considered 'unnatural', the difference with Natural selection (NS) over Artificial Selection (AS)is that there is no driving goal in NS, where as AS is usually a deliberate attempt to force a particular species down a particular path.
So while it is 'natural' for us to participate in AS, animal husbandry or what ever you want to call it, AS is always guided and directed and thus not NS.
The good Dr Dawkins makes the point that now we understand (ish) evolutionary principles and are beginning to grasp their power over behaviour as well as form we can strive against that to wean out the more undesirable/anti-social tenancies, to tame the tooth and claw.
Other Comments by Ohnhai
54. Comment #164815 by Zaphod on April 20, 2008 at 6:06 pm
47. Comment #164805 by Hmmmm on April 20, 2008 at 5:52 pm
OK...I have plenty of reading material on that one.
Here's an new question to make you sigh and groan...but I would like an answer to.
I have heard many different aguments from homology...similar body stuctures...DNA based, etc...and they all seem to provide different "family trees". If the science is truely as sound as it appears to be, shouldn't there be more convergence in the research?
Convergence is evidence that selection has operated. For instance in the evolutionary lineages leading to langurs and cows, changes have occurred at the same five sites in the lysozyme protein (a widespread enzyme, used in defense against bacteria), and the changes have been similar or identical.
I just realised you might not be talking about the evolutionary term convergence. It is defined as
The process by which a similar character evolves independently in two species. It is a synonym for homoplasy, i.e., an instance of a convergently evolved character is a similar character in two species that was not present in their common ancestor.
If you don't mean this do you mean multi-disciplinary research? Like astrobiology.
Other Comments by Zaphod
55. Comment #164816 by Count von Count on April 20, 2008 at 6:09 pm
BillG-
what basis do you delineate between the proper and improper applications of Darwin's theory?
Here's a quick answer. Apply Darwin's theories if you want to explain biology (or similar hereditary processes). Essentially everything else is an improper application.
Darwin's theories show us how things are. They are not to be taken as recommendations for behavior. (This is often referred to as the is/ought fallacy.)
Other Comments by Count von Count
56. Comment #164817 by MaxD on April 20, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Hmmmmmm
There actually is quite a deal of convergence. But different researchers will be led to set their outgroup (This is the group to which you think a group is closely related but that will give you-if your initial research is good, a sound way to compare the group you are interested in) differently. I did a bit of work as an undergrad trying to work out the phylogenetics of the Corvidae (the crows, jays and the magpies). I compared the traditional corvidae with two different out groups. Hermit Thrush and, what I hoped was a much closer relative, the Carolina chickadee. In both cases my relationships stayed the same, and the novelities, I discovered remained.
The big key is outgroup selection (about which we can quibble as researchers) and the number of base pairs which should be large, those base pairs ought to come from a gene that is highly conserved (that is that doesn't exhibit for reasons of functionality lots of random change). The reason is very simple. If I just compare say 10 base pairs from a gene for eye color whatever results I get aren't goint to be terribly meaningful. Maybe there is a lot of change in this part of the sequence. Am I looking at junk DNA? Who knows you are just looking at 10 bps anyway, on a gene that fluctuates randomly without much selective penalty.
Outgroup selection is important too. If had done my bp comparisson using an aligator as my out group, all the members of the Corvidae would look much tighter than they might be. Or what if I used a squid as my out group? You see how that could throw things off. In my case I based my two out group comparissons on anatomical clues, and literature research. I picked two out groups from the the same order Passeriformes because I wanted to see if my initial assumptions were justified. If I got a different cladogram with the Hermit thrush then perhaps I would be back at the drawing board.
My cladogram though conformed, in large part to cladograms predicted on morphology alone. My novel results came from the genus Persoreus and a long suspected paraphylly in Corvus. (For anyone interested, my analysis suggests that the Gray Jay and the Siberian Jay are not likely as closely related as was once thought, and their similarities stem largely from convergence, though both seem to belong rather firmly in the Corvidae.)
Other Comments by MaxD
57. Comment #164818 by Quine on April 20, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Film reviewer maligned for exposing Expelled. Other Comments by Quine
58. Comment #164820 by Roland_F on April 20, 2008 at 6:11 pm
34. Comment #164790 by Hmmmm on April 20, 2008 at 5:29 pmOk...but there are plenty of nature specials that explain animals eating thier own young as being benefical to the species. It obviously compassion isn't always selected.
The black widow spider is eating here male partner after she is fertilized, not sure if this compassion of the male to 'offer' himself as the first hearty meal for the female to have the energy to produce the offspring. Other spiders offer themselves as meal for the offspring who are feasting on their disintegrating mother as head start. So natural selection is not always nice, but it's not the fault of the scientist who first describes the Evolution by natural selection, as it's not the fault of Isaac Newton and his Gravity theory if you fall down the stairs, as it's not the fault of Mr. Alzheimer if you get Alzheimer disease etc.
So the term 'Darwinist' or 'neo-Darwinist' is very unfitting, and used from theist to discredit the scientific description of natural selection because their fundamental literal Bible Genesis interpretation is not fitting (other theists including late Pope John Paul 2 had no problem with Evolution).
But there are also nice examples of empathy recorded in the animal world, like vampire bat regurgitating blood for others who can't make it out of the cave to feed themselves, mothers who protect their young. Also long before the Christian religion was invented Neanderthals were caring fore each other : the skeleton discovered had a broken arm badly grown back together - so during his healing their tribe must have supported him - without God Yahweh spreading morality and empathy only to homo sapiens through Jesus.
Other Comments by Roland_F
59. Comment #164823 by Neil Schipper on April 20, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Mitchell:No one lets the Nazi thing go.What makes it stand out is the rational and bureaucratic nature of the genocide, along with the fact that it came from what was considered among the most civilized population of the world, the Austro-Germans, a population associated with astonishing advances in math, the bio and physical sciences, literature, philosophy, music and art. The Holocaust revealed things about man that he wasn't quite ready to know.
No one brings up the fact that the pilgrams that formed the US and Canada massicured 80% of the 100 million or more natives in the americas.This is false. Some 80% or 90% of the deaths were by diseases contracted inadvertently (aside from one or two instances where blankets carrying disease were purposefully given to Indians, causing several hundred or thousand deaths). Aboriginal contact with the Europeans was surely a disaster for the aboriginals, but it was not due primarily to genocidal intentions -- appetite for land, wealth, control, safety -- yes, all these things, but not genocide.
Check out the book "In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000 Year History of American Indians" by Jake Page. It is sympathetic but historically grounded.
Other Comments by Neil Schipper
60. Comment #164824 by Zaphod on April 20, 2008 at 6:14 pm
"Nazis! It's all about Nazis. In a parallel universe even crazier than our own, Ben Stein is making a documentary about how the Nazis utilized the controversial theory of gravity to make bombs that fall from the sky to the earth, and so the theory of gravity must be wrong. But we are here, and here, Ben Stein is telling us with a straight face that because the Nazis thought it would be a good idea to breed people like people breed animals, the theory of evolution must be wrong."
From Lies, Damned Lies, and "Intelligent Design"
Other Comments by Zaphod
61. Comment #164825 by Goldy on April 20, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Also long before the Christian religion was invented Neanderthals were caring fore each other...And before that, H. erectus http://home.entouch.net/dmd/compass.htm
Other Comments by Goldy
62. Comment #164826 by MaxD on April 20, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Hmmmm,
You must further realize that evolutionary processes are not doing anything for the species or even the individual. They are simply changing gene frequencies from one generation to the next. Of course that will have an effect on the phenotypes produced. So thinking in terms of adaptations that are "for the good of the species" is likely to produce a certain amount of confusion.
Other Comments by MaxD
63. Comment #164828 by Enlightenme.. on April 20, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Hmmm's question's seem to be getting harder by the second..hmmm Other Comments by Enlightenme..
64. Comment #164829 by Christopher Davis on April 20, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Diacanu, You are on your game this evening.
Hmmmm, There are lots of examples of (seemingly)altruistic behaviour in the animal world...and lot's of disagreement on how it could have evolved. I had an anthropology professor who absolutely bristled at the idea of anything that even smelled of "group selection". She was adamant that natural selection worked only at the individual level, therefore there was no such thing as behaviours that contribute to the survival of the species.
I disagreed, somewhat. I contend that there are behaviours that are mutually beneficial to both the group (notice I didn't say species)and to the individual. I argued that such behaviours could even be more beneficial to the group than they are to the individual, as long as they still show a net benefit to the individual (who would also benefit by being a member of the group). If these behaviours increased the group's prosperity and helped it outcompete groups of conspecifics, then these behaviours would eventually become fixed in the species.
Showing compassion for one's fellow human beings could easily be such a behaviour
Other Comments by Christopher Davis
65. Comment #164831 by Enlightenme.. on April 20, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Perhaps I'm getting paranoid, is it just me - or does the letter sent to Shermer at this time possibly have an agenda? Suspiciously timely? Other Comments by Enlightenme..
66. Comment #164832 by AdrianT on April 20, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Beautiful letter, maybe the reference 1 Thess 2: 14-16 would also have been a useful addition?
Frankly I should sue the fools who made this film for wanton misrepresentation. It's like the early christians who raised the angry mob that burned down the Library of Alexandria.
Other Comments by AdrianT
67. Comment #164835 by MaxD on April 20, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Christopher Davis,
You'll have to demonstrate how that would work at the genetic level which is the only way it can be justified as biological evolution.
It seems to me that empathy, and compassion can arise just fine in terms of individual level selection. And clearly we needn't venture very far mentally to see out this works out in parent offspring interactions. Sometimes individuals, and the genes that code for the beneficial phenotypes, can reap great rewards for helping out a fellow with a long memory.
Other Comments by MaxD
68. Comment #164838 by Russell Blackford on April 20, 2008 at 6:30 pm
To hmmm: no one has ever answered how the will of a god could provide the basis for morality. It was already known in antiquity that this kind of explanation ends up being incoherent. So whatever the source(s) of morality may be, we know that that is a bad answer.For better or worse, questions relating to the naturalistic sources of morality are difficult ones that are investigated by moral philosophy (with the aid of various fields of science). I'm working on a book on that very topic, among my other projects, but it's difficult - who knows whether I'll be able to complete it and find a publisher?
It may well be that philosophical and scientific investigations will, in fact, force us to revise some of our morality in the end, because some of it may turn out to have a basis that is not rational. Even if some moral ideas made sense at the time they were adopted in our cultural history, they may not serve us well in the twenty-first century.
But these are large and complex questions. I can understand why people might hope that there is a simple answer that will leave their own moral code unscathed, but I don't think there is any good reason to expect that it will turn out like that.
On the other hand, we can be pretty sure, even now, that there's a rational basis for encouraging such virtues as kindness, courage, honesty, and the capacity for love. Such virtues are necessary for individuals to flourish and for societies to survive. You have every reason to try to encourage those qualities in your children and to be glad if you possess them yourself, as I imagine you do (fortunately, most people do, to a greater or lesser extent).
(Other virtues, however, may not have such a rational basis: it's not at all clear that piety, chastity, or the more religious kinds of humility - as opposed to a bit of basic modesty about your abilities and achievements - are virtues at all, though they were long considered such in Christendom.)
Richard, thank you so much for writing this open letter. It sets the record straight very clearly, whether or not Mr J himself is persuaded. It also shows, yet again, that you are yourself a kind and decent, as well as courageous, man.
Other Comments by Russell Blackford
69. Comment #164839 by Teratornis on April 20, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Comment #164773 by Hmmmm on April 20, 2008 at 5:08 pm
No one really answered the question...and I am curious. I understand your point about naturalism not being a philosophy, if someone really believes we evolved from inert chemicals, what is the basis for goodness to our fellow man.
No one answered your question, because there is no compact logical refutation to nihilism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism
Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical position which argues that existence is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Nihilists generally assert some or all of the following:
* There is no reasonable proof or argument for the existence of a higher ruler or creator.
* Objective morality does not exist; therefore no action is preferable to any other.
* In the absence of morality, existence has no higher meaning or goal.
A far-from-compact logical refutation to nihilism might follow from a complete mechanistic understanding of the human brain. That is to say, it may turn out that there really are certain ways to live and to construct a society that can maximize collective human happiness, and/or miminize collective pain, or minimize the suffering of the people who suffer most. However, to make utilitarianism into a logical argument would require the ability to quantify the impact on human happiness of various moral codes, and humans do not have the ability to do that yet. We have no quantitatively rigorous way to measure the happiness of one person and compare it to the happiness of another person, except in the most extreme cases (a person who just won the lottery is probably happier just now than a person being waterboarded at Guantanamo).
So, for the time being, we can only argue from our general impression that a country like Sweden is a better place to live just now than a warlord society like Iraq.
One way to estimate the best ways to order a society is to go look at some, and see whether people are trying to move out of one society and into another.
Other Comments by Teratornis
70. Comment #164841 by Teratornis on April 20, 2008 at 6:35 pm
7. Hitler did attempt eugenic breeding of humans, and this is sometimes misrepresented as an attempt to apply Darwinian principles to humans.
Hitler didn't even get that part right, because the main group he targeted for extermination - the Jews - were the very group which had been, for some time, producing a disproportionate share of Germany's intellectuals and accomplished citizens: attorneys, physicians, scientists, musicians, educators, successful merchants, etc. Hitler did incalculable damage to the German economy by driving the Jews first out of work, and then out of existence.
Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews was not motivated by a desire to actually improve the human species, but instead it was motivated by envy, as well as by the despot's instinctive understanding that intellectuals stand in the way of absolutism. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all targeted intellectuals, because intellectuals are typically the most liberalizing influence in a society. Intellectuals tend to value ideas over dogma; intelligence over allegiance; questioning over obedience; and reason over blind faith. Intellectuals tend to disperse the power in society, rather than concentrate it into one man. It's almost impossible to get all smart people to agree on anything, and it's especially hard to get them all to follow one charismatic man over the cliff. The constant questioning and second-guessing of intellectuals frustrates the man of action, who wants everything to be simple and black and white. Thus the intellectual is the natural enemy of the despot.
Hitler's unproductive relationship with his own generals illustrates this. Hitler seems to have truly believed in the superiority of the German soldier, so he repeatedly ignored his generals' advice about when it was time to retreat, with disastrous consequences for the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad and elsewhere.
Other Comments by Teratornis
71. Comment #164842 by Steve Zara on April 20, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Comment #164829 by Christopher Davis I had an anthropology professor who absolutely bristled at the idea of anything that even smelled of "group selection". She was adamant that natural selection worked only at the individual level, therefore there was no such thing as behaviours that contribute to the survival of the species.
She was wrong. Natural selection works primarily at the level of the gene, not the individual. This is why it can seem to act at the group level. A group can contain multiple copies of the same gene. A gene can assist its own survival by assisting with the survival of individuals within the group that have the same gene. This can work by kin selection - acting in ways beneficial to families, or by a genes somehow recognising individuals who have copies of the genes (the "green beard" idea). There are also strategies for competing in a group where other instances of individuals using the same strategy are present - Evolutionarily Stable Strategies. Genes for such such strategies will tend to survive.
Other Comments by Steve Zara
72. Comment #164845 by Roland_F on April 20, 2008 at 6:39 pm
It is really sad to see such a letter from 'David J' to Michael Shermer and the posted reply from Prof Dawkins here on April 20 (Hitler's Birthday !).First I thought it's a crank mail, as in Israel I encountered well educated Jews about the history of Hitler who would not fall into the crude propaganda trap of Ben Stein. But when this "David J' is US citizen every dump propaganda might fell on fertile ground, and he mean it really.
Other Comments by Roland_F
73. Comment #164847 by aquilacane on April 20, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I'm disturbed people may actually start to believe we are somehow responsible for the Holocaust. How the hell did this happen? This is all I bloody need. I'm really put off. I've felt the hate, but this is different; can't say I fancy being on the other end of that stick. Other Comments by aquilacane
74. Comment #164849 by dadamo on April 20, 2008 at 6:42 pm
As Richard mentions, the word "Dawrin" appears nowhere in Mein Kampf. I downloaded an English version and searched for "God" (using the Windows
find /I "God" *html
command. Here's what I found (the search also found the word goddess.)
---------- MKEPILOGUE.HTML
---------- MKINTRODUCTION.HTML
incarnate denial of the beauty of God's image in His creation."
urge to protect themselves against what they consider to be a scourge of God.
this sin against the image of God, even though they continue to emphasize the
and how depraved and ungodly is this riff-raff which is physically degenerate
them the blessings of the Church. While our European people, God be praised and
who was given to the world as a gift of God's grace. For the future of the
constantly talking about the Will of God merely from the lips but that in
actual fact he fulfils the Will of God and does not allow God's handiwork
to be debased. For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain
His work wages war against God's Creation and God's Will."
---------- MKV1CH01.HTML
occasion. Indeed it was the hand of the goddess of eternal justice and
---------- MKV1CH02.HTML
harsh one; but to-day I see in it the wise workings of Providence. The Goddess
pitiable scenes follow, scenes that cry out for God's mercy.
He curses God and the world and finally ends up in a House of Correction for
had no intention of mixing in Germany's internal affairs �" God
---------- MKV1CH03.HTML
dissolution only proves that the gods had decreed the destruction of Austria.
We thank God that the inner spirit of our German democracy
stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of
---------- MKV1CH04.HTML
---------- MKV1CH05.HTML
is no play-acting and where the hand of the Goddess of Destiny puts the truth
---------- MKV1CH06.HTML
Their very existence is an incarnate denial of the beauty of God's image
---------- MKV1CH07.HTML
---------- MKV1CH08.HTML
said to please the gods only because they wish for and demand the impossible.
---------- MKV1CH09.HTML
---------- MKV1CH10.HTML
control of the State, money became more and more of a God whom all had to serve
and bow down to. Heavenly Gods became more and more old-fashioned and were laid
They close their eyes in reverend abhorrence to this godless scourge and pray
hence. Little of God's image will be left in human nature, except to mock
from the temples of the Gods and the public edifices that belonged to the
---------- MKV1CH11.HTML
human race out of the Temple of God; because then, as always, they used
themselves against what they consider to be a scourge of God. Having come to
---------- MKV1CH12.HTML
'silent workers' generally pretend to know God knows what. Not one of
the Goddess of Vengeance was now getting ready to redress the treason of the
---------- MKV2CH01.HTML
again. And so, internally armed with faith in the goodness of God and the
image of God among His creatures would sin against the bountiful Creator of
---------- MKV2CH02.HTML
against the image of God, even though they continue to emphasize the dignity of
depraved and ungodly is this riff-raff which is physically degenerate and
blessings of the Church. While our European people, God be praised and thanked,
people in Europe, kindly and seriously, that it is much more pleasing to God if
You have one God, and that is your money. We do not turn to you, however, for
in money but in other gods, into whose hands they confide their lives. Above
which live in seclusion, than among the primitive masses of the people. God
God's day and filching daily bread from an honest public. Then it will be
life to-day. Yet a time will come when men will again bow to higher gods. Much
---------- MKV2CH03.HTML
What God Himself could not do is achieved by some Theophrastus Paracelsus
---------- MKV2CH04.HTML
---------- MKV2CH05.HTML
---------- MKV2CH06.HTML
spoken word to-day, they do it only because they realize �" God be praised
---------- MKV2CH07.HTML
I should no longer wish to be a German. But, thank God, all this is impossible.
by a measure of strength, that the gentle goddess of Peace can only walk in
company with the god of War, and that every great act of peace must be
---------- MKV2CH08.HTML
---------- MKV2CH09.HTML
---------- MKV2CH10.HTML
indifference whether Bavaria or any other particular part of God's whole
to the world as a gift of God's grace. For the future of the world,
talking about the Will of God merely from the lips but that in actual fact he
fulfils the Will of God and does not allow God's handiwork to be debased.
For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape,
war against God's Creation and God's Will. Therefore everyone should
circles, in god-forsaken blindness of their religious strife, could not
---------- MKV2CH11.HTML
organization, propaganda agents and God knows what else. And then they all
---------- MKV2CH12.HTML
---------- MKV2CH13.HTML
up the fight in our defence. And God does not follow the principle of granting
imprecations before the throne of the Almighty God or on pious hopes in a
would be transformed into an ardent prayer: "Almighty God, bless our arms
---------- MKV2CH14.HTML
result would be so miserable that, surely to God, it would not be worth while
can it be lawful in the eyes of God and our German posterity to allow the blood
of our people to be shed once again. Before God, because we are sent into this
---------- MKV2CH15.HTML
goddess of a higher truth and a better legal code, will smile as she tears up
Other Comments by dadamo
75. Comment #164851 by Radesq on April 20, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Morality like most things in the life of human beings takes its roots from tribalism. There are some things that are good in one group, tribe, clique, political party, etc... but are bad in another. What seems good to you is most likely whatever you are used to. There may be some universally held rights and wrongs. Looking at what little I know of history and different cultures -- I'm not so sure. You shouldn't call it moral relativism though because one can (and might just as well, I think) consider their own morality superior to other out groups until shown otherwise. Other Comments by Radesq
76. Comment #164852 by Elles on April 20, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Personally, if I'd written a letter to Michael Shermer and gotten a reply from Richard Dawkins, I'd be scared out of my wits and probably fallen out of my chair.I hope these victims can find the truth on their own. We just need to make them aware of sites like Expelled Exposed and try to open their minds.
Other Comments by Elles
77. Comment #164853 by Teratornis on April 20, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I have several times said that a society based on Darwinian principles would be a very unpleasant society in which to live. I have several times said, starting at the beginning of my very first book, The Selfish Gene, that we should learn to understand natural selection, so that we can oppose any tendency to apply it to human politics. Darwin himself said the same thing, in various different ways. So did his great friend and champion Thomas Henry Huxley.
We would not want to live in a society where the relationship between different individual humans and different groups of humans is no-holds-barred "Darwinian" in the sense of the relationship between, say, lions and zebras. We can see that sort of deadly-serious Darwinism in places like Iraq today.
But in various species of social animals, evolution has produced a range of social behaviors. Some are quite brutal, such as the fighting between elephant seal bulls over females, while in other species, the sorting out of differences tends to be more stylized, often not involving fighting at all, but rather displays of plumage, singing competitions, the building of bowers, and so on. (Do the stylized competitions among flying birds follow from their relative fragility? Unlike mammals, which can bang up their rivals severely, and still limp around to eat grass, even a little damage to a bird prevents it from flying at all, and thus dooms it completely. Perhaps birds had no choice but to make peace, and natural selection sorted this out in due course.)
Competition between humans shows similar variations. In warfare, the goal is to kill the enemy before he kills you. While we deplore war, we also understand what invariably happens if we choose not to prepare for it - a pragmatic realization I would call very Darwinian. In peacetime, we have rules to restrain competition, so we may get the benefits of selection without the messy business of killing people or destroying resources.
I imagine that the competition for something like a Simonyi professorship might be, metaphorically speaking, almost a bloodsport in its ruthless efficiency at winnowing out the unfit. The more prestigious the award, the higher the washout rate must be, and the greater the anguish of the vanquished. Simonyi himself made his fortune working for Microsoft, a corporation legendary for its competitive prowess (just ask its many ruined competitors). But in civilized competition, losers don't have to die, they just settle for less prestigious careers - or find their solace in religion.
One reason Darwin's theory is so easy to grasp is because competition is as natural for humans as breathing! We all began competing with our fellow humans as soon as we met them. When we started school, the competition stiffened, and we've been locked in it all our lives. We compete over jobs, money, mates, awards, who's the smartest, prettiest, most athletic, most musical, you name it. Humans like to compete, and we like to watch others compete. A whole industry of professional sports exists to give us exciting spectacles of competition over nothing in particular. People who excel in arenas of intense competition - for example, science - become heroes to those who follow their exploits. On the other hand, one of the worst things we can call someone is "loser." (If that's not Darwinian, what is?)
As Michael Shermer mentioned in his interview, there's a lot of Darwin in Adam Smith's invisible hand.
The tragedy of Ben Stein's argumentum ad Hitlerum is when people overreact to the other extreme, imagining that every form of competition is inherently evil, and we must level all playing fields by beating down those with a natural propensity to win. But as Orwell pointed out, this is ultimately futile. No matter how equal we force all the animals to be, some animals invariably end up more equal than others. As long as humans continue to have inequalities of genes and environments, outcomes will also be unequal.
Other Comments by Teratornis
78. Comment #164854 by clover on April 20, 2008 at 6:51 pm
dont be so sure about that elles.
i provided the link to someone and it was dismissed as an "underhanded collection of propaganda". ironic isnt it?
Other Comments by clover
79. Comment #164857 by Atticus_of_Amber on April 20, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Hmmmm, FWIW, see my "Hell, here it is in full:
A common criticism of the so-called "new atheists" (who I prefer to call the "new anti-dogmatists") is the "problem of morality": how, many religious critics ask, can we be good without God? Isn't the fact that people are good, that people can tell good from evil, evidence for the existence of God? Even if God is a myth, isn't He necessary to inspire people to acts of goodness and to keep them from falling into immorality? And in any case, don't we get our morals from our religious traditions?
A key problem here is that this "good without God" criticism is really at least five different arguments jumbled together.
The argument from scripture
First comes the argument from scripture: "how can we know what's good without a book of rules, like the Bible?" This is the one that Richard Dawkins so ably rebuts with his "cherry picking" point in his recent best-seller, The God Delusion. The Bible is full of horrible acts and recommendations. It also contains some very kind and good acts and rules. Most Christians don't follow the former any more, but continue to follow the latter. How do they chose? What do they use to "cherry pick" the Bible in this way? It's not something in the Bible, it's something in the reader. If this moral sense exists in us and allows us to pick the good bits of the Bible from the bad, what do we need the Bible for, except as one among many anthologies of moral propositions on which to practice our moral sense?
The platonic argument
Second, there's the Platonic "by what standard" argument: "granted we have an innate moral sense, but how can we know what's right and wrong if there is no absolute standard of right in the universe?", says the theist. "Doesn't our ability to recognise that some acts are good and others evil imply that there must somewhere exist a perfect thing of goodness to be the standard? Doesn't our moral sense itself act as evidence of the existence of God?"
Here the error is epistemological: of course we can judge degrees of something even though a perfect sample of that something does not really exist. Nowhere in reality is there such a thing as a perfectly straight line. Yet we are easily able to judge and even rank the straightness of connections between two points in the real world with relative ease - this hand-drawn line on this piece of paper is straighter than that one; this rooftop is straighter than that one; the path of this meteor is straighter than that one, and so on.
The argument from the mysterious origin of morality
The third argument is related to the second, the "origins of morality" point: "Granted we have a moral sense, but where did that come from?" say the critics. "It can't have evolved, because it often gets us to do things that aren't selfish, even in the sense of enlightened selfishness."
This argument misunderstands the neo-Darwinian insight popularised in Professor Dawkins' 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. We are genuinely altruistic because our genes are "selfish". A gene that causes its carriers to be genuinely altruistic will have a reproductive advantage if its carriers live in groups of largely related individuals. By risking its life for the group because of the genuine altruism given to it by the gene, one carrier of that gene will increase the reproductive chances of other carriers of the same gene. (The selfish gene explanation also works for groups where the same non-relatives regularly interact and can engage in "reciprocal altruism".)
Evolution has given us what Dawkins calls a "lust to be good", much in the way it has given us a lust to have sex (we're "horny to do good", as one interviewer put it recently). Does this mean that altruism only makes sense if it's for relatives? Only in the sense that sex only "make sense" when it's done for procreation - or that love only "make sense" if it's being used to solidify a pair-bond for the 20 or so years needed to help the survival of offspring. The evolutionary explanation for an urge is not the same thing as a justification for why we should, as rational creatures, promote or fight that urge today.
Mirror neurons and moral progress
Recent research by neuroscientist such as VS Ramachandran and Marco Iacoboni have discovered what are being called "mirror neurons". When a monkey experiences pain from, say, being kicked in the testicles, several neurons can be observed to fire in his brain. But if the monkey observes another monkey being kicked in the testicles, a few (not all) of those same neurons fire in the observing monkey's brain. (I've chosen the example for dramatic effect. I doubt this was the actual experiment conducted.)
It seems mirror neurons evolved as the means by which primates learn skills from each other: observe the other primate doing the skill, feel which mirror neurons fire, then try to make the same mirror neurons fire by doing the action - repeat, refine, learn skill. One side effect was empathy, the ability to feel the pain and pleasure of others (another side effect, according to some researchers, may have been the development of consciousness itself).
It appears that this new capacity for empathy allowed altruism to develop, and that mutation propagated because of the reproduction-enhancing properties of altruism discussed by Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. But from the gene's perspective, altruism is a two-edged sword: it's great if your carriers sacrifice themselves for other carriers, but it's horrible if your carriers start sacrificing themselves for non-carriers.
The solution seems to have been the "taming" of the empathy/altruism characteristic by the evolution of in-group v out-group thinking. What evolved (one suspects both genetically and culturally) was a distinction between the in-group, where empathy was appropriate (and whose members were likely to carry many of the same genes) and out-groups, where empathy was blocked or even turned into its dark twin antipathy - the tendency of animals to feel the pain of others and enjoy it.
The story of moral progress seems to me to be the story of the marriage between our evolved capacity for empathy and our evolved capacity for reason. As we apply our reason to our urge to be altruistic, and as we become more interconnected with strangers, we see fewer reasons to put people into the "out group". Our psychological "in group" expands until in some people it covers not just the whole human race, but sentient non-human animals too.
Of course there are gradations. Seeing my wife happy gives me more pleasure (and seeing her in pain causes me more suffering) than seeing a stranger I admire happy (or in pain). And an admired stranger's happiness matters more to me that that of a stranger I've never even heard of (though I still feel bad when I witness or hear of such a stranger suffering). But most of us in the liberal democratic West have very few people in our "out-group" - and we tend to feel ashamed about feeling that way even about them.
The role of religion in moral progress
"But," asks the fourth version of the good without God criticism, "hasn't religion in general, and Christianity in particular, been the context in which this moral development has occurred?"
And the fair answer is yes, religion in general (and Christianity in particular) has helped enormously. Just as alchemy made many discoveries that were built on by chemistry, and astrology made some discoveries that were built on by astronomy (mostly in the field of cataloguing astral bodies, but still useful discoveries), Christianity made or widely propagated several moral innovations that modern secular moral philosophy has built upon. (Similar claims can be made for several other religions.) Not for nothing did Richard Dawkins once write an article entitled "Atheists for Jesus".
But religion has also contaminated the stream with some very strange and unfounded ideas. Just as there is no evidence that one can turn lead into gold and there is no evidence that the movements of the planet Venus affect my destiny; there is no evidence that there is a "soul" that enters the human zygote at conception, or that there is an afterlife in which kindness is rewarded and cruelty is punished. And it is religions' reliance on the dogma of faith that makes it so hard to use reason to sort the good ideas from the bad.
The sanction argument
This, of course, leads us to the fifth argument of the theistic "problem of morality" critic, the sanction argument: "why be good if there's no comeuppance in the afterlife?"
This argument seems to say that people would be evil if they did not fear punishment in hell or that they would not help their fellow humans without the hope of a pay-off in heaven. Aside from being questionable theology even in its own terms, the sanction argument reveals a very dim view of human nature. Many humanists simply believe human beings are better than that and are, on average, getting better all the time - that we are, as someone once said, "rising apes rather than fallen angels".
Moreover, the argument that people would be horrible without belief in God seems to have been falsified by the experience of organically atheist societies such as Sweden, as I argued in a previous post. Of course, the fact that widespread atheism doesn't lead to social chaos still leaves open the question of why it doesn't. But the neuroscience and evolutionary arguments put above do suggest that humans are more innately good than many religious people would credit.
For my part, I think an important answer was provided by the ancients - virtue or self-respect. (And isn't it interesting that "virtue ethics" is making a comeback in academic philosophy?)
We judge the acts of others, and think well or ill of them as a result. But we also do the same of ourselves. Self-hatred is actually a rather nasty psychological torture and an important part of mental health is having a good reputation with oneself. We can gain a good reputation with others either by actually being good, or by tricking others into believing we are good. But with our reputations with ourselves, the latter course involves a level of self-deception that is itself mentally unhealthy. Good deeds, it seems to me, really are their own reward.
Other Comments by Atticus_of_Amber
80. Comment #164861 by barry21 on April 20, 2008 at 7:00 pm
The patience shown by Professor Dawkins in time and again in taking these tired arguments apart point by point is superhuman.It makes me happy that a mind as sharp as his leads all of our efforts to combat ignorance wherever it is found.
I am not so forgiving of the author of the letter to Shermer. 149 years after the publication of "Origin", people have no excuse for not knowing better.
Other Comments by barry21
81. Comment #164864 by Diacanu on April 20, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Teratornis-
Humans like to compete,
I don't.
I loathe it.
A lot of it depends on luck, or health, which is also luck.
Thus, I find it to be a lousy way in most every day cases to gauge ability.
I feel as empty and hollow in victory as I do in defeat.
The whole process is punishingly loathesome to me.
As Michael Shermer mentioned in his interview, there's a lot of Darwin in Adam Smith's invisible hand.
I think it's all a bunch of shit.
And by that, I mean libertarian philosophy period.
Other Comments by Diacanu
82. Comment #164871 by Enlightenme.. on April 20, 2008 at 7:11 pm
"In warfare, the goal is to kill the enemy before he kills you"
Not necessarily - Denying the enemy his objective can be achieved by all sorts of means - incapacitate, wreck his economy etc.
(Ex-military ;)
In all seriousness though, many in the military get touchy about the fallacy they're all cold-blooded killers that that simplification feeds.
Edit: I forgot change his mind, discourage etc.
The sum up was Achieve his surrender/...(Hudna)
Other Comments by Enlightenme..
83. Comment #164872 by Radesq on April 20, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Atticus: Sounds very reasonable to me...good post. Other Comments by Radesq
84. Comment #164873 by Teratornis on April 20, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Comment #164861 by barry21:
The patience shown by Professor Dawkins in time and again in taking these tired arguments apart point by point is superhuman.
That's one way to look at it. But for a lot of people, giving the same lesson repeatedly is not such a great burden. We call them "teachers."
How many times did Billy Graham give essentially the same sermon? Doing the same thing over and over is not what I would call "superhuman." It's a lot easier than working through a new argument for the first time.
I'm actually more impressed by an Alister McGrath or a Dinesh D'Souza, who manage to stick to obviously indefensible positions. Imagine getting mowed down in a debate by Christopher Hitchens, and trying to have faith the next morning. That's what I would call superhuman.
Other Comments by Teratornis
85. Comment #164875 by MaxD on April 20, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Steve Zara made my day with ESS (evolutionary stable strategies). I think what Christopher Davis may be talking about is culture because it certainly doesn't fit a workable model of evolutionary change that I know of. Other Comments by MaxD
86. Comment #164878 by MaxD on April 20, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Diacanu,
Do you forget the great wisdom from Conan, when he was asked what is best in life?
"To crush your enemies before you,
to see them driven before you,
and to hear the lamentation of their women."
Hopefully that will help you see the light about competition.
Other Comments by MaxD
87. Comment #164879 by Christopher Davis on April 20, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Steve Zara, I don't want to to protray my professor as an idiot (she wasn't), or mysef as one either for that matter. When I speak of the individual, I'm including his genes.
However, I'm not so sure that it isn't more accurate to say that "evolution proceeds at the level of the gene, while natural selection operates at the level of the phenotype".
Of course we both know that the genotype drives the phenotype.
MaxD, I would simply suggest that you think about it as the genes that drive the behaviour being propogated more frequently into the next generation. For example...
Gene X "produces" Behaviour A (66% concordance)
Behaviour A increases individual reproductive fitness (2%)
Behaviour A increases the fertility rate of the group (10%) thereby allowing Gene X to propogate sucessfully in an even larger population....
Also, the Group with Gene X prospers at the expense of conspecific groups who do not have Gene X.
Now this seems feasible to me, but unfortunately I don't currently have the resources to run a mathematical model on it. But hey, I'm just an Army Sgt. with a B.A. in Anthropology...I realize I've still got a lot to learn. However, I'm still wary of limiting the process of natural selection strictly to the gene. I feel it is more accurate to speak of selection at the level of expressed traits.
Other Comments by Christopher Davis
88. Comment #164881 by Bonzai on April 20, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Do you forget the great wisdom from Conan, when he was asked what is best in life?
"To crush your enemies before you,
to see them driven before you,
and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Sounds like Biblical value rather than evolution.
Other Comments by Bonzai
89. Comment #164883 by Christopher Davis on April 20, 2008 at 7:39 pm
MaxD, What I'm speculating could definitely be more of a case of cultural transmission than biological evolution but...
then we are left to ponder exactly how much our genes influence our behaviour, and by extension our culture.
Now before I start to sound like someone who thinks people a virtual slaves to their genes, let me clarify that I see my model as aplicable to explaining how altruistic behaviour might have emerged and survived in early primate species, not to the behaviour of modern man.
Other Comments by Christopher Davis
90. Comment #164886 by waxwings on April 20, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Looks to me like Shermer and Dawkins are getting trolled. Other Comments by waxwings
91. Comment #164887 by Hostile2012 on April 20, 2008 at 7:48 pm
I would really appreciate the response to this letter.Other Comments by Hostile2012
93. Comment #164889 by Bonzai on April 20, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Well I am not a biologist so I don't have a definitive opinion on this, but I often wonder whether the contention that evolution only operates on the gene level is hard established science or just a particularly influential dogma.I have the feeling that it is one of those things like some cosmological models, which the science itself is not really that definitive about despite the strongly held opinions of advocates.
Here is a quote from Wikipedia on group selection.
In recent years, the limitations of earlier models have been addressed, and newer models suggest that selection may sometimes act above the gene level. Recently David Sloan Wilson and Elliot Sober have argued that the case against group selection has been overstated. They focus their argument on whether groups can have functional organization in the same way individuals do and, consequently, if groups can also be "vehicles" for selection. For example, groups that cooperate better may have out-reproduced those which did not. Resurrected in this way, Wilson & Sober's new group selection is usually called multilevel selection theory.[11]
Although Richard Dawkins and fellow advocates of the gene-centered view of evolution remain unconvinced (see, for example, [12][13][14]), Wilson & Sober's work has been part of a broad revival of interest in multilevel selection as an explanation for evolutionary phenomena. Indeed, in a 2005 article[15], E. O. Wilson (often regarded as the father of sociobiology) argued that kin selection could no longer be thought of as underlying the evolution of extreme sociality, for two reasons. First, some authors have shown that the argument that haplodiploid inheritance, characteristic of the Hymenoptera, creates a strong selection pressure towards nonreproductive castes is mathematically flawed (e.g. [16]). Secondly, eusociality no longer seems to be confined to the hymenopterans; increasing numbers of highly social taxa have been found in the years since Wilson's foundational text on sociobiology was published in 1975[10], including a variety of insect species, as well as a rodent species (the naked mole rat)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection
Other Comments by Bonzai
94. Comment #164894 by CShepGuy on April 20, 2008 at 8:18 pm
On Rotten Tomatoes.com, which compiles many different movie reviews and gives movies a percentage score, Expelled earned 0% among their top reveiwers, which I have never seen before even for the worst movies I've ever seen. They all ripped it apart. It was reassuring.
Seeing such a strong consensus made me think that maybe the only people that this movie will impress are so far gone already that not much new damage will be done.
Other Comments by CShepGuy
95. Comment #164902 by Geodesic17 on April 20, 2008 at 8:36 pm
I just made the mistake of actually reading a page of the Discovery Institute's Website.I can't help but wonder what cruel methods of indoctrination the past generation of Creationist kids were put through. If the methods employed in this film show anything, it is that these people are very calculating in their manipulations of the minds of children. And yet, when they are confronted with evidence, it is as if the internal parent in their mind is signing a permission slip so that they can be excused from the room. If anything, it isn't just a matter of intelligence. It seems to be more about mental abuse.
Anyhow, these people need an empathetic shrink. I can't help but wonder if an application of Transactional Analysis could explain all of the games Creationists play.
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96. Comment #164906 by MaxD on April 20, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Bonzai,
I don't think that gene selection is an example of an influential dogma. Rather Sloan still has a lot of work ahead of him. I certainly remain unconvinced of the notion, simply because as described I don't think it distiguishable from stochastic processes. Time will tell if SWilson's model will bear research fruit.
Christopher Davis,
Don't sell yourself so short. I'm just stating what I think are some difficulties for any biological group related theories of evolution. I'm not saying it isn't possible. I just think that as yet there is no serious demonstration of such processes. When speaking of cultural strategies then the process becomes more likely. Here culturally transmitted tricks of survival may indeed outperform other groups so a trick will be adopted and spread, or non conformers would fade away.
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97. Comment #164912 by Geodesic17 on April 20, 2008 at 8:51 pm
CShepGuy:It seems that the only people giving it positive reviews are conservative Christian nationalists.
At the present, the folks at http://www.endtime.com/ are too concerned with selling their own propaganda to care about Expelled.
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98. Comment #164913 by Layla Nasreddin on April 20, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Damn, Quine, how can you continue reading that crap? ;) (Yes, I know, it's important to be open to all points of view, but still...there have got to be limits!) Other Comments by Layla Nasreddin
99. Comment #164915 by jonwes on April 20, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Beautiful!I'm fairly new to all this. I just recently read The God Delusion, and it has me so excited. Just as this letter has me excited. I think it's sad that it's needed in the first place, but it gives me hope. Hope that maybe, even if it's individual by individual, reason might just win the day.
If nothing else, maybe Expelled can be a positive tool in the long run. It's preaching to the choir, and while the choir have shown up and decided to sing along to the same old song I think for those who are skeptical or wary of their own faith it will be a stark example of just how weak an argument ID/Creationism has to make.
Expelled, Ben Stein and its producers are cynical to the extreme - counting on their audience being too stupid to ask questions or spot their lame manipulations. I think that's TRUE elitism. But you, Professor Dawkins, and all the wonderful people I've encountered on this site believe that people are too smart for that.
I want to believe that too, and I think the proof is becoming more apparent every day. That fills me with so much hope and encouragement.
Thank you.
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100. Comment #164920 by Geodesic17 on April 20, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Quine:The author of that lovely rant has a bio at this site:
http://www.grassrootinstitute.org/bios/fox.shtml
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51. Comment #164811 by Border Collie on April 20, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I can't imagine any Darwinist (who has read Origin at least once) of any sort of anti Semitism. Good grief! I can see it having the opposite effect, however. Darwin's writings were not mind-constricting, they were mind-expanding. I'm not a scientist, but I've read Origin and Descent and I saw nothing in either about social Darwinism. In fact, the more Darwin I've read, the more I see utilizing his writings as excuses for social Darwinism as completely idiotic.Other Comments by Border Collie