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Orr on Dawkins
by Jason Rosenhouse
Reposted from:
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2006/12/orr_on_dawkins.php
Evolutionary biologist H. Allen Orr has this lengthy essay in the current issue of The New York Review of Books. Officially it's a review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Joan Roughgarden's Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist, and Lewis Wolpert's Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origin of Belief. Actually, though, Orr says almost nothing about those latter two books.
Orr begins by describing his admiration for much of Dawkins' previous work. (He describes The Selfish Gene as the best work of popular science ever written). This is meant as a prelude to what Orr fancies to be a devastating smackdown of The God Delusion. So before explaining why many of his criticism's are wide of the mark, let me first express my own admiration for Orr's writing. His own essays on evolution and creationism are always insightful, and his book Speciation, coauthored with Jerry Coyne, is a must read for anyone seriously interested in evolutionary biology.
Now let's see what Orr has to say about Dawkins.
After summarzing the contents of Dawkins' book, Orr repeats the standard complaint that Dawkins does not deal seriously with the subtleties of religious thought. Orr writes:
Let's take it from the top. Orr accuses Dawkins of not squarely facing his opponents, and then rattles off a list of examples meant to establish that point. In reality he only establishes that he has not apprehended Dawkins' targets.
Dawkins provides no serious discussion of Jewish or Christian theology? Of course not, because such theology is mostly irrelevant to how religion is actually practiced. Theology is an academic pursuit, and like many such pursuits it concerns itself primarily with esoterica far removed from people's actual lives. Much Christian theology in particular tends to take the form of viewing the Bible as a complex cipher, one that requires years of training to understand properly.
And since Orr is criticizing Dawkins' superficiality, it is a bit rich for him to reduce Augustine's views to the slogan that he rejected biblical literalism. Augustine did take the view that the Bible should be interpreted in as literal a way as possible, and in some of his writing he even endorsed a young-Earth position. He was willing to countenance a somewhat allegorical interpretation of Genesis, but that was only because he felt the Bible should not be read in a way that contradicts what clear scientific evidence is telling us. A worthy sentiment, certainly, but not one that finds much theological justification.
At any rate, Dawkins is perfectly aware that many serious Christians do not accept Biblical literalism. So what? Dawkins' book is primarilty about the reasonableness of believing in a creator God, and on the social impact of widespread religious belief. The minutiae of different schools of Christian thought just isn't the concern of this book.
Next up is Dawkins' failure to wade into the internecine disputes about the status of religious propositions. That is because for most believers there is no such dispute. For them religious propositions have precisely the same meaning as every other sort of proposition. When they discuss God they are talking about a real entity, with real motivations and desires, who really cares about the people he literally created from nothing. It is these people, not some small cadre of academic navel-gazers, Dawkins means to address.
I'm going to gamble and say that Dawkins is familiar with the role of the church in the rise of modern science. This is a common talking point among those who wish to argue that science and religion are not necessarily hostile to one another. It is unclear to me why anyone thinks it is relevant to modern discussions of theism and atheism. The church funded scientific investigation as a way of further understanding God's glory. The idea was that nature and its workings were themselves a sort of divine revelation, meant to conpliment the revelation found in Scripture. It's a lovely notion, and science should be grateful that at least some Chrstians of the Middle Ages felt that way. But the fact remains that as soon as scientists started turning up bits of data that contradicted Scripture, the relationship between science and religion got distinctly chilly.
Dawkins doesn't try to understand the attitudes of religious people? Well, score one for Orr.
Orr sums up all of this intellecutalizing by protesting that Dawkins' book is too middlebrow. Of course it's middlebrow! It was intended as a popular-level book published by a mainstream outfit that people are actually intended to read. Dawkins frequently refers people to other books that give more detailed coverage of the topics he was discussing. One example is J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism. Many critics have cited this book as one people should read if they want, you know, a serious treatment of arguments for the existence of God. Now don't misunderstand me: Mackie is brilliant, his arguments are spot-on, and the world is a better place because he wrote that book. But, I'm sorry, his book is incredibly dense, difficult to read, and frankly, incredibly boring. And I say that as someone who finds this subject fascinating. Dawkins meant for his book to be read, you see, and that sometime means giving short shrift to the views of Wittgenstein and James.
Orr eventually turns away from listing things he wishes Dawkins had discussed to replying to the things Dawkins really does discuss. And this is where Orr really steps in it. Try to believe that a smart guy like Orr actually wrote the following paragraph:
Orr is right that others have made his first point, but he does not bathe himself in glory by following their bad example. There is nothing in Dawkins' argument that tries to rule out design by philosophical gymnastics. He is merely pointing out that invoking design as the explanation for the universe leads to profound conceptual difficulties. Explaining the universe by concocting an entity that is even harder to explain is about as fruitful as saying the Earth rests on the back of a giant tortoise. It just raises more questions then it solves.
These difficulties are sufficiently severe, in his view, to make us very skeptical of design explanations. The situation is all the worse for people who argue that it is the very complexity of the universe that triggers a design inference. In that case, the very same logic that led us to hypothesize God in the first place is what requires that we provide an explanation for God.
In replying to this argument you can try arguing that God is actually very simple, or that he is not the sort of entity that requires an explanation, or that it is reasonable to assume God is eternal but that we know from the Big Bang that the universe had a beginning. These replies are inadequate, but they at least meet Dawkins' argument head-on. What you don't get to do is argue that Dawkins' argument makes design seem very unlikely, so clearly he must be wrong. That is all Orr has done here.
The second point is even sillier. Yes, of course, God's existence might be a brute fact of the universe. We might be stuck with it in spite of the conceptual issues it raises. Dawkins would say (as would Orr, I suspect) that if you are going to go the design route, you had better have an awfully good argument for doing so. At present there is no such argument. But the bare possibility that God exists despite the lack of a good argument, and despite the conceptual difficulties it raises, is the reason Dawkins entitled this chapter of his book, "Why There Almost Certainly is No God."
Having done silly and sillier, let's move on to silliest. That's Orr's closing remark about Dawkins' own assumptions being question-begging. Why can the laws of nature be taken as given? Because they are given! We know the laws of nature exist. We're stuck with them. The fact is that when you are reasoning about the origin of the universe, you have to start with something. That is unfortunate, but that's the way it is. So Dawkins' takes the attitude that at least by going his route we explain the universe in terms of the simplest things that are known to exist. Orr can call this a large assumption if he wishes, but surely it is smaller than the assumption made in creating, from whole cloth, an entity with mind-numbing supernatural powers, and arguing that that is the thing that has always existed.
Moving on, we should also comment on the following bizarre paragraph:
Let us begin with the obvious: The reason Orr was asked to review this book is that he is an evolutionary biologist. If biologists have no particular qualifications for discussing this topic, one wonders why he didn't tell the editor of the NYRB to find a theologian instead.
And I suspect that Dawkins' intention in writing this book had little to do with a desire to put shiny new ideas down on paper for the first time. Probably his reasons were more prosaic: He has a view of this subject that is not well-represented in mass-market literature, especially in this country, and he has the clout and the recognizability to actually get such a book published.
But it's the rest of this paragraph that gets really weird. Religious hostility to evolution was born out of ignorance, fear, politics and sheer shock of the new? Maybe. But a better explanation is that religious hostility was born out of the entirely correct realization that Darwin's work posed a genuine threat to their beliefs. Many believers responded to Darwin with a "So what?" Show me a believer who had that reaction and I'll show you someone who either didn't understand Darwin's work, or made a point of not thinking carefully about it. You might be able to reconcile traditional Christian belief with evolution, but it requires some serious mental engagement to do so. Orr admits as much in his next paragraph:
So apparently a thorough understanding of evolution does enhance your qualifications for discussing evolution. This admission pretty seriously undercuts the point, such as it is, of the previous paragraph.
After all this Orr bashing, let me close with one place where I think he gets it right. As much as I liked Dawkins' book, and as much as I think in nearly all cases his arguments are better than those of his critics, there are some places where I think Dawkins gets it wrong. Orr nails one of them:
This, alas, is correct, One of the weaknesses of Dawkins' book is that he frequently writes as if the really important distinction in forging a civil, livable society is theism vs. atheism. It isn't. The important distinctions are secular society vs. government involvement in religion, and rational thought and evidence vs. irrational faith and revelation. You can reasonably say that theism is more closely associated with the bad parts of those last two dichotomies, and atheism is more closely associated with the good parts. But atheism good / theism bad is not born out by the evidence.
Anyway, go read the rest of Orr's essay. I think most of his major points are wrong, but he is an engaging and interesting writer nonetheless.
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2006/12/orr_on_dawkins.php
Evolutionary biologist H. Allen Orr has this lengthy essay in the current issue of The New York Review of Books. Officially it's a review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Joan Roughgarden's Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist, and Lewis Wolpert's Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origin of Belief. Actually, though, Orr says almost nothing about those latter two books.Orr begins by describing his admiration for much of Dawkins' previous work. (He describes The Selfish Gene as the best work of popular science ever written). This is meant as a prelude to what Orr fancies to be a devastating smackdown of The God Delusion. So before explaining why many of his criticism's are wide of the mark, let me first express my own admiration for Orr's writing. His own essays on evolution and creationism are always insightful, and his book Speciation, coauthored with Jerry Coyne, is a must read for anyone seriously interested in evolutionary biology.
Now let's see what Orr has to say about Dawkins.
After summarzing the contents of Dawkins' book, Orr repeats the standard complaint that Dawkins does not deal seriously with the subtleties of religious thought. Orr writes:
The result is The God Delusion, a book that never squarely faces its opponents. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins's book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions (are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they're terminally ill?).
Instead, Dawkins has written a book that's distinctly, even defiantly, middlebrow. Dawkins's intellectual universe appears populated by the likes of Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Carl Sagan, the science popularizer,[3] both of whom he cites repeatedly. This is a different group from thinkers like William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein--both of whom lived after Darwin, both of whom struggled with the question of belief, and both of whom had more to say about religion than Adams and Sagan. Dawkins spends much time on what can only be described as intellectual banalities: "Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question."[4]
Instead, Dawkins has written a book that's distinctly, even defiantly, middlebrow. Dawkins's intellectual universe appears populated by the likes of Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Carl Sagan, the science popularizer,[3] both of whom he cites repeatedly. This is a different group from thinkers like William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein--both of whom lived after Darwin, both of whom struggled with the question of belief, and both of whom had more to say about religion than Adams and Sagan. Dawkins spends much time on what can only be described as intellectual banalities: "Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question."[4]
Let's take it from the top. Orr accuses Dawkins of not squarely facing his opponents, and then rattles off a list of examples meant to establish that point. In reality he only establishes that he has not apprehended Dawkins' targets.
Dawkins provides no serious discussion of Jewish or Christian theology? Of course not, because such theology is mostly irrelevant to how religion is actually practiced. Theology is an academic pursuit, and like many such pursuits it concerns itself primarily with esoterica far removed from people's actual lives. Much Christian theology in particular tends to take the form of viewing the Bible as a complex cipher, one that requires years of training to understand properly.
And since Orr is criticizing Dawkins' superficiality, it is a bit rich for him to reduce Augustine's views to the slogan that he rejected biblical literalism. Augustine did take the view that the Bible should be interpreted in as literal a way as possible, and in some of his writing he even endorsed a young-Earth position. He was willing to countenance a somewhat allegorical interpretation of Genesis, but that was only because he felt the Bible should not be read in a way that contradicts what clear scientific evidence is telling us. A worthy sentiment, certainly, but not one that finds much theological justification.
At any rate, Dawkins is perfectly aware that many serious Christians do not accept Biblical literalism. So what? Dawkins' book is primarilty about the reasonableness of believing in a creator God, and on the social impact of widespread religious belief. The minutiae of different schools of Christian thought just isn't the concern of this book.
Next up is Dawkins' failure to wade into the internecine disputes about the status of religious propositions. That is because for most believers there is no such dispute. For them religious propositions have precisely the same meaning as every other sort of proposition. When they discuss God they are talking about a real entity, with real motivations and desires, who really cares about the people he literally created from nothing. It is these people, not some small cadre of academic navel-gazers, Dawkins means to address.
I'm going to gamble and say that Dawkins is familiar with the role of the church in the rise of modern science. This is a common talking point among those who wish to argue that science and religion are not necessarily hostile to one another. It is unclear to me why anyone thinks it is relevant to modern discussions of theism and atheism. The church funded scientific investigation as a way of further understanding God's glory. The idea was that nature and its workings were themselves a sort of divine revelation, meant to conpliment the revelation found in Scripture. It's a lovely notion, and science should be grateful that at least some Chrstians of the Middle Ages felt that way. But the fact remains that as soon as scientists started turning up bits of data that contradicted Scripture, the relationship between science and religion got distinctly chilly.
Dawkins doesn't try to understand the attitudes of religious people? Well, score one for Orr.
Orr sums up all of this intellecutalizing by protesting that Dawkins' book is too middlebrow. Of course it's middlebrow! It was intended as a popular-level book published by a mainstream outfit that people are actually intended to read. Dawkins frequently refers people to other books that give more detailed coverage of the topics he was discussing. One example is J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism. Many critics have cited this book as one people should read if they want, you know, a serious treatment of arguments for the existence of God. Now don't misunderstand me: Mackie is brilliant, his arguments are spot-on, and the world is a better place because he wrote that book. But, I'm sorry, his book is incredibly dense, difficult to read, and frankly, incredibly boring. And I say that as someone who finds this subject fascinating. Dawkins meant for his book to be read, you see, and that sometime means giving short shrift to the views of Wittgenstein and James.
Orr eventually turns away from listing things he wishes Dawkins had discussed to replying to the things Dawkins really does discuss. And this is where Orr really steps in it. Try to believe that a smart guy like Orr actually wrote the following paragraph:
The reason seems clear. The first argument leads to a conclusion Dawkins despises, while the second leads to one he loves. Dawkins, so far as I can tell, is unconcerned that the central argument of his book bears more than a passing resemblance to those clever philosophical proofs for the existence of God that he dismisses. This is unfortunate. He could have used a healthy dose of his usual skepticism when deciding how much to invest in his own Ultimate Boeing 747 argument. Indeed, one needn't be a creationist to note that Dawkins's argument suffers at least two potential problems. First, as others have pointed out, if he is right, the design hypothesis essentially must be wrong and the alternative naturalistic hypothesis essentially must be right. But since when is a scientific hypothesis confirmed by philosophical gymnastics, not data? Second, the fact that we as scientists find a hypothesis question-begging--as when Dawkins asks "who designed the designer?"-- cannot, in itself, settle its truth value. It could, after all, be a brute fact of the universe that it derives from some transcendent mind, however question-begging this may seem. What explanations we find satisfying might say more about us than about the explanations. Why, for example, is Dawkins so untroubled by his own (large) assumption that both matter and the laws of nature can be viewed as given? Why isn't that question-begging?
Orr is right that others have made his first point, but he does not bathe himself in glory by following their bad example. There is nothing in Dawkins' argument that tries to rule out design by philosophical gymnastics. He is merely pointing out that invoking design as the explanation for the universe leads to profound conceptual difficulties. Explaining the universe by concocting an entity that is even harder to explain is about as fruitful as saying the Earth rests on the back of a giant tortoise. It just raises more questions then it solves.
These difficulties are sufficiently severe, in his view, to make us very skeptical of design explanations. The situation is all the worse for people who argue that it is the very complexity of the universe that triggers a design inference. In that case, the very same logic that led us to hypothesize God in the first place is what requires that we provide an explanation for God.
In replying to this argument you can try arguing that God is actually very simple, or that he is not the sort of entity that requires an explanation, or that it is reasonable to assume God is eternal but that we know from the Big Bang that the universe had a beginning. These replies are inadequate, but they at least meet Dawkins' argument head-on. What you don't get to do is argue that Dawkins' argument makes design seem very unlikely, so clearly he must be wrong. That is all Orr has done here.
The second point is even sillier. Yes, of course, God's existence might be a brute fact of the universe. We might be stuck with it in spite of the conceptual issues it raises. Dawkins would say (as would Orr, I suspect) that if you are going to go the design route, you had better have an awfully good argument for doing so. At present there is no such argument. But the bare possibility that God exists despite the lack of a good argument, and despite the conceptual difficulties it raises, is the reason Dawkins entitled this chapter of his book, "Why There Almost Certainly is No God."
Having done silly and sillier, let's move on to silliest. That's Orr's closing remark about Dawkins' own assumptions being question-begging. Why can the laws of nature be taken as given? Because they are given! We know the laws of nature exist. We're stuck with them. The fact is that when you are reasoning about the origin of the universe, you have to start with something. That is unfortunate, but that's the way it is. So Dawkins' takes the attitude that at least by going his route we explain the universe in terms of the simplest things that are known to exist. Orr can call this a large assumption if he wishes, but surely it is smaller than the assumption made in creating, from whole cloth, an entity with mind-numbing supernatural powers, and arguing that that is the thing that has always existed.
Moving on, we should also comment on the following bizarre paragraph:
The reason Dawkins thinks he has something to say about God is, of course, clear: he is an evolutionary biologist. And as we all know, Darwinism had an early and noisy run-in with religion. What Dawkins never seems to consider is that this incident might have been, in an important way, local and contingent. It might, in other words, have turned out differently, at least in principle. Believers could, for instance, have uttered a collective "So what?" to evolution. Indeed some did. The angry reaction of many religious leaders to Darwinism had complex causes, involving equal parts ignorance, fear, politics, and the sheer shock of the new. The point is that it's far from certain that there is an ineluctable conflict between the acceptance of evolutionary mechanism and the belief that, as William James put it, "the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe." Instead, we and Dawkins might simply be living through the reverberations of an interesting, but not especially fundamental, bit of Victorian history. If so, evolutionary biology would enjoy no particularly exalted pulpit from which to preach about religion.
Let us begin with the obvious: The reason Orr was asked to review this book is that he is an evolutionary biologist. If biologists have no particular qualifications for discussing this topic, one wonders why he didn't tell the editor of the NYRB to find a theologian instead.
And I suspect that Dawkins' intention in writing this book had little to do with a desire to put shiny new ideas down on paper for the first time. Probably his reasons were more prosaic: He has a view of this subject that is not well-represented in mass-market literature, especially in this country, and he has the clout and the recognizability to actually get such a book published.
But it's the rest of this paragraph that gets really weird. Religious hostility to evolution was born out of ignorance, fear, politics and sheer shock of the new? Maybe. But a better explanation is that religious hostility was born out of the entirely correct realization that Darwin's work posed a genuine threat to their beliefs. Many believers responded to Darwin with a "So what?" Show me a believer who had that reaction and I'll show you someone who either didn't understand Darwin's work, or made a point of not thinking carefully about it. You might be able to reconcile traditional Christian belief with evolution, but it requires some serious mental engagement to do so. Orr admits as much in his next paragraph:
None of this is to say that evolutionary biology cannot inform our view of religion. It can and does. At the very least it insists that the Lord works in mysterious ways. More generally, it demands rejection of anything approaching biblical literalism. There are facts of nature--including that human beings evolved on the African savanna several million years ago--and these facts are not subject to negotiation.
So apparently a thorough understanding of evolution does enhance your qualifications for discussing evolution. This admission pretty seriously undercuts the point, such as it is, of the previous paragraph.
After all this Orr bashing, let me close with one place where I think he gets it right. As much as I liked Dawkins' book, and as much as I think in nearly all cases his arguments are better than those of his critics, there are some places where I think Dawkins gets it wrong. Orr nails one of them:
Part of Dawkins's difficulty is that his worldview is thoroughly Victorian. He is, as many have noted, a kind of latter-day T.H. Huxley. The problem is that these latter days have witnessed blood-curdling experiments in institutional atheism. Dawkins tends to wave away the resulting crimes. It is, he insists, unclear if they were actually inspired by atheism. He emphasizes, for example, that Stalin's brutality may not have been motivated by his atheism. While this is surely partly true, it's a tricky issue, especially as one would need to allow for the same kind of distinction when considering religious institutions. (Does anyone really believe that the Church's dreadful dealings with the Nazis were motivated by its theism?)
In any case, it's hard to believe that Stalin's wholesale torture and murder of priests and nuns (including crucifixions) and Mao's persecution of Catholics and extermination of nearly every remnant of Buddhism were unconnected to their atheism. Neither the institutions of Christianity nor those of communism are, of course, innocent. But Dawkins's inability to see the difference in the severity of their sins-- one of orders of magnitude--suggests an ideological commitment of the sort that usually reflects devotion to a creed.
In any case, it's hard to believe that Stalin's wholesale torture and murder of priests and nuns (including crucifixions) and Mao's persecution of Catholics and extermination of nearly every remnant of Buddhism were unconnected to their atheism. Neither the institutions of Christianity nor those of communism are, of course, innocent. But Dawkins's inability to see the difference in the severity of their sins-- one of orders of magnitude--suggests an ideological commitment of the sort that usually reflects devotion to a creed.
This, alas, is correct, One of the weaknesses of Dawkins' book is that he frequently writes as if the really important distinction in forging a civil, livable society is theism vs. atheism. It isn't. The important distinctions are secular society vs. government involvement in religion, and rational thought and evidence vs. irrational faith and revelation. You can reasonably say that theism is more closely associated with the bad parts of those last two dichotomies, and atheism is more closely associated with the good parts. But atheism good / theism bad is not born out by the evidence.
Anyway, go read the rest of Orr's essay. I think most of his major points are wrong, but he is an engaging and interesting writer nonetheless.
Comments 1 - 48 of 48 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #14719 by Jared on December 24, 2006 at 6:21 pm
Rosenhouse says almost exactly what I would WISH myself capable of saying about Orr's article. Well done, sir! Other Comments by Jared
3. Comment #14734 by k1mgy on December 24, 2006 at 8:03 pm
The Haggardists keep hammering on Dawkin's door: "Let's argue about the Bible". It's a trap. The God Delusion was certainly not written as a scholarly critique of the Bible or any other religious text. Why? Because from the start the validity of these texts are dubious at best. Besides, Dawkins shreds the existence of any God, and without resorting all that much to any Bible, other than using passages as laugh-track.Orr writes, "But since when is a scientific hypothesis confirmed by philosophical gymnastics, not data? Second, the fact that we as scientists find a hypothesis question-begging--as when Dawkins asks "who designed the designer?"-- cannot, in itself, settle its truth value. It could, after all, be a brute fact of the universe that it derives from some transcendent mind, however question-begging this may seem. What explanations we find satisfying might say more about us than about the explanations. Why, for example, is Dawkins so untroubled by his own (large) assumption that both matter and the laws of nature can be viewed as given? Why isn't that question-begging?"
We have what information we have, and the vast majority of it points to an evolutionary past, not a creationist one.
The trap is to enter the argument on the Haggardist's terms. This is to be avoided. They have no cards to play, so it's smart to avoid the game entirely and "call a spade a spade".
Other Comments by k1mgy
4. Comment #14735 by Kimpatsu on December 24, 2006 at 8:11 pm
"The church funded scientific investigation as a way of further understanding God's glory."Exactly so! This was a Medieval worldview; namely, that the world was really one big codebook, and the purpose of humanity was to find the keys and decipher the code. An example would be the rose, which Medievalists saw in terms of Xian allegory (thorns for the crown of thorns, red for the blood of Christ, etc.) Once science moved away from such gnosticism into methodological naturalism, and determined that the rose's colour, for example, is naturally selected to attract pollinating insects and had nothing to do with Xian allegory, the Church dropped science funding like a hot potato. The real clash between science and religion began with the Renaissance. To maintain the proposition that science and religion are not mutually antithetical is to adopt a Medieval viewpoint. It is 500 years out of date. What a pity so few people understand that what characterised the Renaissance was a paradigm shift in the way people thought. It was NOT (contrary to popular belief) merely an extension of existing ideas; it was the wholesale rejection of the existing worldview and the replacing of that worldview with the seeds of Enlightenment values. Orr clearly doesn't get it, but Dawkins does.
I know whose books I'd rather give as gifts this Xmas.
Other Comments by Kimpatsu
5. Comment #14739 by Aussie on December 24, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Dawkins wrote TGD to appeal to a very general audience with the intention that it be as widely read as possible. In this he has been spectacularly successful.The more adverse controversy such as this that develops the more public interest the book will generate and the more copies will be sold and read. It is really a pity that nobody has yet tried to ban it.
Brilliant marketing strategy Richard!
Other Comments by Aussie
6. Comment #14741 by DavidJMH on December 24, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Is it really worth spending any time at all, trying to get through to those who are either unable or unwilling to open their minds from blind faith and bigotry. They cannot conceive of an open mind that is free to explore and learn, so any reasonable attempt to educate, let alone convince is time wasted. Far better to totally ignore them and spend one's energy exploring the universe. If, as they seem so sure, there must be a "God", then let them prove it beyond reasonable scientific doubt.Other Comments by DavidJMH
7. Comment #14746 by jdaigle on December 24, 2006 at 9:59 pm
I am also sick and tired of the "stalin card". Stalin was a magical thinker who had people killed for disagreeing with him, even about science. He also had fewer people straight up murdered than the christian Hitler (most of the millions counted as deaths on stalins head in communist russia starved as a result of his wholesale rejection of agricultural reality), and he invited the church back to Russia when it suited him.Further, if atheism has to cop to every peasant who starved or died of disease or in prison in Russia and China, lets give Christianity every Native American who died of disease or starvation or in prison, and every European peasant who died as a result of bad economic planning or war or in prison. And lets be fair, and use population adjusted numbers.
The 30 years war alone killed 30% of the European population, the Great Famine between 10-25%. This happened in a christian culture and was worsened through poor management, so christianity gets the blame.
Disease alone killed perhaps 80% of the Native Americans, disease brought by Christians, so again, blame christianity. Stalin and Mao never even approached killing 80% of the populations of their countries!
Christianity in America has killed entire cultures, entire languages, whole ethnicities... at his worst, Stalin never came close to those kinds of excesses. When christians came upon Native American's with whom they had started a war, they killed entire villages, slaughtered entire tribes to the last human. They starved them out of hiding, rounded every last one of them up and put them in camps to be force fed christianity. They took their children away to be raised in christian schools... not to be raised as equals, as was done with kidnapped children under Mao or Stalin, but as a servant race. Many tribes remain trapped in poverty and segregation to this day. Even Stalin only hung on for so long... but the christian institutionalized brutalization of Americas native peoples seems set to go on forever.
I haven't even started on African slavery... more actual dead bodies than Stalin or Mao, according to some sources, and justified by the leading religious thinkers of the time.
Other Comments by jdaigle
8. Comment #14754 by brilyn on December 24, 2006 at 10:42 pm
recognizability....For the love of all that's holy: the word is Recognition.... ;)
Otherwise, good rebuttal.
Other Comments by brilyn
9. Comment #14762 by 1859 on December 25, 2006 at 12:09 am
Been waiting all morning for the appearance of a certain beared person but without luck. Have tried to develop sophisticated reasoning to understand why "he" has not arrived.Personally I blame Stalin, Hitler and Dawkins as we all know that everything is the fault of atheists! What shall we tell the children?
Dawkins-the murderer of Father Christmas!!
Other Comments by 1859
10. Comment #14774 by Zaphod on December 25, 2006 at 1:50 am
I think Orr is so wide of the mark in his critisisms that someone was bound to point it out. Rosenhouse does this well.It really really really pisses me off when people always say stalin or hitler etc where atheists or whatever. Hitler was a catholic. I don't know about Stalin but even if both where atheists, the fact that they where wasn't what droven them to their extremes. Atheism is when you don't believe god exitst. There is a book that you base this on or follow. Stalin and Hitler both has their own dogmatic belief system and it wasn't the dreaded "ATHEISM" since it has but one belief GOD ISN'T REAL.
You could put religion into a more wider group by calling it a dogmatic belief. Like Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Hitler Etc etc etc etc, all the mass murdering dictators of the world had their own dogmatism. Basically belief without evidence backing up the actual claims. Religion as it exists for the massive majority of people out there makes claims that have no evidence or are in direct contrary to the evidence. Atheism by it's nature isn't dogmatic. Human beings can make any belief dogmatic its just that religion makes it so much more easier
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11. Comment #14793 by Duff on December 25, 2006 at 5:17 am
Yeah, we all know Stalin, knowing there was no God to punish him, just killed all those people because he was an atheist and he could. That is the kind of simple, un-encumbered by the thought process, kind of thinking that religious types are so inclined to do.Religion, the opiate of the simple people.
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12. Comment #14809 by ICONIC FREEDOM on December 25, 2006 at 10:51 am
Comment #14734 got me thinking that if this "god" really wanted to do well by people, perhaps it would've never introduced or "inspired" Darwinism to begin with, stuck with the religious rituals and be done with it. Why would a god who wants everyone to praise him, etc. not produce some scientific proof as we've evolved to dispell any "mythology of science", then?
It doesn't exist, that's why. The very nature and idea that there is some "god" out there is so absurd. While Dawkins and others feel agnostic about it because scientific proof could present itself at some point(I respect their choice to do this)I find the whole god concept ridiculous and I won't have such nonsense part of my life in any way, shape or form, it's just stupid.
Why would my little pea brain, or any other human pea brain, give a rat's ass about WHO created all this? It's such a waste of energy and only being pursued so that religion can say they're right and start imposing their garbage on us all.
I dare say that scientists with any level of intelligence probably wouldn't care about such fantasy, they have more important things to research and discover, of which we all benefit.
At least that can be said of science, WE ALL BENEFIT, the same can't be said of religion. That understanding alone should move people to reconsider their faith based ideas.
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13. Comment #14815 by Riley on December 25, 2006 at 12:41 pm
rydrum2112 wrote: "Stalin killed people because they didn't follow his views, which had nothing to do with his being atheist- [...] He killed, so people would obey him and his political views not atheism."Replace "atheist" with "theist" and the same defense would apply to theism and the terrible acts commited by theists.
Rosenhouse's final point is a very good one. I'll add to his point by saying that the really important distinction between what's right and what's wrong in society is the degree to which faith (into which I include ideology and charismatic leadership) is relied upon as an authoritative source for governing decisions; it is not the belief or non-belief in a personal god.
Instead of articulating sweeping attacks upon institutions and "religion" in general (and inviting unconstructive retaliatory comparisons to non-theists such as Stalin and Mao), I suggest that there is much more to be gained simply by identifying and attacking the problematic behavior itself, namely: faith-based decision making. By attacking the behavior and not the group-affiliation, we can humbly acknowlege that all institutions to at least some extent suffer from this human malady, wether the institution officially claims a belief in the supernatural or not.
We can recognize and point-out that this problematic behavior exists more prominantly in religious institutions than in say, "The Department of Agriculture" (if in fact it does), but going overboard to point this fact out is just prodding an emotionally charged pissing match, and what is gained by that?
I would suggest that more is lost than gained as attempting to assassinate the character of an institution mostly evokes defensiveness among its self-identified members and further entrenches group identification and group loyalty.
If there could be a root of all evil in human society, first on my list of candidates would be "us-them think".
--
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14. Comment #14856 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 26, 2006 at 2:39 am
But that is exactly what happened in physics. Quantum mechanics turned out to be much more complex and counter-intuitive than the classical physics that preceded it. For all that, quantum mechanics appears to be staggeringly true, and this trend is continuing.I don't expect that Dawkins or Rosenhouse would dispute this in any detail. Rosenhouse puts the point elegantly at the outset :
Dawkins provides no serious discussion of Jewish or Christian theology? Of course not, because such theology is mostly irrelevant to how religion is actually practiced. Theology is an academic pursuit, and like many such pursuits it concerns itself primarily with esoterica far removed from people's actual lives.
IDmiller, it really is that simple. Sure there may be some wispy, indefinable force that created the universe. It may even be concious, perhaps intelligent. However, it is almost certainly NOT any of the anthropomorphic, intervening, prayer answering, omnibenevolent, omnipotent cultural constructs that humans worship.
If this seems like a leap to you, I'll be happy to explain it, although any modestly intelligent person who attempts to align main stream religious dogma and reality should see the point immediatley.
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15. Comment #14864 by blackbeauty on December 26, 2006 at 5:29 am
I am eagerly waiting for a very sharp- witted and intelligent person to disproove Richard Dawkins. This gentleman: Dr. Orr has a long way to go. I sometimes wonder if some of these scientists have enough self-knowledge to grow out of their egoistic or jealous self-images.A true scientist should have sufficient self-knowledge to keep aside his petty ego and rise above competitive little ego.
Shreeniwas Aiyer, The Netherlands
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16. Comment #14883 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 26, 2006 at 10:18 am
I do not disagree with Dr Dawkins' conclusions, but I do think that when he gets away from his area of expertise his arguments get somewhat leaky.Thats the point though LD, theology is not an "area of expertise" as you so quaintly term it, but made up nonsense.
As regards the condescension, I'd recommend you brace yourself for more of the same. Anyone representing theology as an "area of expertise" in this kind of reason based forum is likely to be subjected to plenty of condescension:-)
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17. Comment #14889 by LDmiller on December 26, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Testing....LDmiller, not IDmiller
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18. Comment #14891 by LDmiller on December 26, 2006 at 12:36 pm
briancoughlanworldcitizen,Thats the point though LD, theology is not an "area of expertise" as you so quaintly term it, but made up nonsense.
As regards the condescension, I'd recommend you brace yourself for more of the same. Anyone representing theology as an "area of expertise" in this kind of reason based forum is likely to be subjected to plenty of condescension:-)
You are completely off the rails as to what I said.
My posts had nothing whatever to do with theology, as "an area of expertise" or in any other way, other than in your head. I was not suggesting theology as an alternative in any way.
I was referring (as were Orr and Rosenouse) to the soundness of some of the TGD scientific arguments. I take it you are not a scientist.
Please stop reading your own notions into what I posted.
L D Miller
PS Thanks to Josh for changing my username!
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19. Comment #14895 by Sailnsouth on December 26, 2006 at 1:41 pm
At some point you just have to go back to more basic ideas. The reason you write a book like TGD is because the belief in gods is a delusion. Unfortunately once you flesh out that argument you open yourself up to the inane comparisons with all the mass murderers in history and which ones were atheists and which were not...all completely beside the point.The truth is good for the soul even if the world it represents is not touchy-feely nor compatible with all the esoteric visions people form for their gods.
Plus, there is certainly no true solidarity between religions. That is one of the biggest myths yet forwarded in an attempt to advance the belief in a god. The fact of religions marked differences, animosity towards one another, and their geographic nature just adds to their improbability!
Again back to simplicity, The Christians have already denied a Buddhist, Egyptian, Hindu, or animist god. Atheists (and TGD) just eliminate one more. The logic in that is unassailable.
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20. Comment #14899 by seals on December 26, 2006 at 2:39 pm
"(Does anyone really believe that the Church's dreadful dealings with the Nazis were motivated by its theism?)"I dont know what happened, but accepting this is true ie. the church was not motivated, in some dreadful dealings with the nazis, by theism. The church is an organisation whose responsibility and raison d'etre we are led to believe is to provide help/consolation in times of need for the vulnerable, which they failed to do. And supposing that stalin and hitler were both atheists, although this doesnt seem clear cut either.
So both atheism and the church failed to do the right thing... but whereas atheism has been shown not to be a magical shortcut to morality, the church has failed in its higher moral aim. It just seems that whether morality is present is irrelevant to religion or its absence, so why do we need religion.
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21. Comment #14913 by Pieter on December 26, 2006 at 4:52 pm
This Hitler and Stalin thing is bugging the hell out of me as well. Thus in an attempt to help the debate along i strongly suggest that everyone go out and buy a copy of John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty". This wonderful piece of victorian classical liberalism (which is arguably the most influential work of political philosophy in the Western world) also (more or less) advocates an atheistic political system. Mill was an atheist, as were most of his close friends, family, and colleagues, and by and large the cases and examples of illiberal social forces which he rails against are religious.Thus continue to refute any claim on the Fascism/Communism - Atheist connection with the 'political dogma' argument, but also counter with the faithless, dogma-less political system that is unadulterated classical liberalism. This is the true atheistic political system. Religion constrains one's liberty, society's liberty, all liberty. An end to religion is an end to these political shackles and the fastest route to social freedom, the result of which is a liberal society. ~PQ
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22. Comment #14914 by hmsbeagle3 on December 26, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Rydrum2112 has got it right. This hand-wringing about the likes of Stalin and Hitler is exhausting. These men were psycopaths whose individual traits manifest themselves on a (tragically) grand scale.Mao, Pol Pot...all the rest.
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23. Comment #14918 by JohnC on December 26, 2006 at 8:05 pm
I was interested in LDMiller's criticism:I found Professor Dawkins' argument of simple -> complex to be one of his weakest. While demonstrably correct in terms of biological evolution (e.g., the fossil record), it is by no means settled in either physics or cosmology.
This is a example of the something of which I myself have at times been guilty - namely, criticising what we think RD has said, rather than what he actually wrote. So here is what TGD actually says about this issue, from the beginning and the conclusion of the argument, respectively:
And although Darwinism may not be directly relevant to the inanimate world - cosmology, for example - it raises our consciousness in areas outside its original territory of biology (p114) ... We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to the match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer. (p158)
There are enough people out there shamelessly caricaturing TGD and its argument in an attempt to prop up their shopworn theologies. We should, supporters and opponents alike, resist the temptation on this website.
Meanwhile, on the Stalin furphy I have posted on this at the original Orr thread:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,462,A-Mission-to-Convert,H-Allen-Orr-NYBookscom#14827
so I shan't repeat myself here, except to add that Richard's actual position is again more nuanced than often portrayed, despite the occasional rhetorical excess ;-)
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24. Comment #14920 by JohnC on December 26, 2006 at 8:20 pm
I was waiting for someone to bring out that moment. David Attenborough reports that it was unrehearsed, unscripted and done in a single take. For those who missed this high point of Bruno's astounding series (still the best thing on science ever put on television), here is the YouTube link:http://youtube.com/watch?v=8mIfatdNqBA
Other Comments by JohnC
25. Comment #14924 by LDmiller on December 26, 2006 at 9:52 pm
JohnC,I was interested in LDMiller's criticism:
I found Professor Dawkins' argument of simple -> complex to be one of his weakest. While demonstrably correct in terms of biological evolution (e.g., the fossil record), it is by no means settled in either physics or cosmology.
This is a example of the something of which I myself have at times been guilty - namely, criticising what we think RD has said, rather than what he actually wrote. So here is what TGD actually says about this issue, from the beginning and the conclusion of the argument, respectively:
And although Darwinism may not be directly relevant to the inanimate world - cosmology, for example - it raises our consciousness in areas outside its original territory of biology (p114) ... We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to the match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer. (p158)
Point taken. There are other instances that did bother me, but I do not have the book annotated, chapterized and versified (g).
There are enough people out there shamelessly caricaturing TGD and its argument in an attempt to prop up their shopworn theologies. We should, supporters and opponents alike, resist the temptation on this website.
I repeat, I was not trying to promote any pet theology other than to point out the fact that physics (cosmology in particular) appears to be unraveling a bit.
As a result of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, Hawking is having to overhaul his life-work, and there are a number of new questions arising from our improving instrumentation.
(One local instance of particular interest to me, at least, is the anomalies discovered in timing variations in the GPSS system as well as the so far puzzling results from the Gravity Probe B program. These phenomena could go so far as to negate the Big Bang hypothesis as we know it. Specifically, the universe may be many times older than we currently think-- maybe even infinite.)
Point is, these results show that science is not the signed, sealed and delivered case that many commenters here seem to think. However, I attach no theological import to this. Indeed, I think that this is the tremendous strength of the scientific method: it gives us a method for self-correction as well as the only way we really know anything.
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26. Comment #14925 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 26, 2006 at 10:04 pm
I was referring (as were Orr and Rosenouse) to the soundness of some of the TGD scientific arguments. I take it you are not a scientist.Please stop reading your own notions into what I posted.
L D Miller
It's a public forum LD, try not to be so sensitive.
Apologies if I'm misrepresenting you, but you are responding to a post defending Dawkins approach, primarily to theology.
Since no one actually knows what the origin of the universe is, in either the religious or scientific community, and at least in the scientific community no one claims to know, your criticism is somewhat vauge and superficial. What science is it he needs to improve on?
Try and firm it up next time .... eh?
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27. Comment #14926 by briancoughlanworldcitizen on December 26, 2006 at 10:08 pm
Point is, these results show that science is not the signed, sealed and delivered case that many commenters here seem to think. However, I attach no theological import to this. Indeed, I think that this is the tremendous strength of the scientific method: it gives us a method for self-correction as well as the only way we really know anything.Nothing to disagree with there. Apologies for the theology detour:-)
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28. Comment #14927 by LDmiller on December 26, 2006 at 10:21 pm
briancoughlanworldcitizen,It's a public forum LD, try not to be so sensitive.
Apologies if I'm misrepresenting you, but you are responding to a post defending Dawkins approach, primarily to theology.
I was responding to the portions of the Rosenhouse post mischaracterizing the "laws of nature", including them being as "given". I did not address the theology dispute. Sorry if I strayed away from your personal priority.
Since no one actually knows what the origin of the universe is, in either the religious or scientific community, and at least in the scientific community no one claims to know, your criticism is somewhat vauge and superficial. What science is it he needs to improve on?
I think Mr Rosenhouse need to improve considerably on his notions of science. And that is what I commented on.
Try and firm it up next time .... eh?
Try and get some manners meanwhile.
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29. Comment #14928 by JohnC on December 26, 2006 at 10:35 pm
@LDmillerThanks for your concession on the point at issue (though "versification" was perhaps one polemical step too far).
But you now say: "... [p]hysics (cosmology in particular) appears to be unraveling a bit."
Well, I think the astonishingly new discipline of cosmology (which only really got going with the discovery of microwave background radiation) is, like all children, growing in leaps and bounds - but it is still a child. What is perhaps approaching a crisis of confidence is the commitment of particle physicists (at a real institutional level of funding and staffing) to the string/M theory research project.
But who is saying that science is a "signed, sealed and delivered case"? It was John Horgan in the End of Science (a not unappealling book) who declared that it was all over for major discovery. Break out the champagne and retire. He was hardly met by grateful acclamation from the science community.
I actually watched the 15 hours of Beyond Belief videos in the past week (as my Xmas recreation) and self-satisfied gratification was not my impression. Indeed, scientists seem to be as happily fractious as ever. And on the parenthetical points you identify as your real interest, all I can is: Yes! bring on more confounding evidence, please. There is nothing physicists fear more than being unable to test their many conflicting speculations with new, improved and inevitably more expensive tools.
But none of this empowers for a second the supernaturalist agenda. Like Carl Sagan in his final weeks, I am intensely grateful that I have lived in a time where so much has been discovered about our universe, but this is a happiness shaded by the melancholy that I will not know the many things that will discovered after I am gone.
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30. Comment #14929 by LDmiller on December 26, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Point is, these results show that science is not the signed, sealed and delivered case that many commenters here seem to think. However, I attach no theological import to this. Indeed, I think that this is the tremendous strength of the scientific method: it gives us a method for self-correction as well as the only way we really know anything.Nothing to disagree with there. Apologies for the theology detour:-)
Our messages are crossing--
I guess the reason for bringing up the scientific uncertainty at this time is that 2007 may well be a very "interesting" year for cosmology. Consider the reaction of the theists if announcements are made like
"Science shows universe to be infinitely old!"
"Excess red-shift effect shows universe much larger than previously thought."
"Time found to be multi-dimensional" (Hawking is now allowing for two dimensions last I saw; some want as many as 4.)
This is fertile ground for theists to exploit. If we were in an Age of Enlightenment it would be truly exciting (which it is for some of us), but since we have powerful forces trying to re-run the Middle Ages (did you read the Pope's Urbi et Orbi this year?), it could be some very rough sledding for Reason.
Loose reasoning as noted in Mr Rosenhouse's post does not help.
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31. Comment #14930 by hopeful on December 26, 2006 at 10:57 pm
LDmiller said: "Point is, these results show that science is not the signed, sealed and delivered case that many commenters here seem to think."On the contrary I think most people here see science as quite open-ended and eagerly await the next chapter...
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32. Comment #14931 by JohnC on December 26, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Jason's a mathematician, but one who has put in some practical good work precisely in combatting "powerful forces trying to re-run the Middle Ages". Not every formulation in his blog reaction to Orr may have been an expemplar of iron-clad reasoning and phrasing, but neither have your own responses in this forum. Let's try to cut each other a little slack, where appropriate. Other Comments by JohnC
33. Comment #14932 by LDmiller on December 26, 2006 at 11:19 pm
@LDmillerThanks for your concession on the point at issue (though "versification" was perhaps one polemical step too far).
It was a joke. The "grin" lamp was on.
But you now say: "... [p]hysics (cosmology in particular) appears to be unraveling a bit."
Well, I think the astonishingly new discipline of cosmology (which only really got going with the discovery of microwave background radiation) is, like all children, growing in leaps and bounds - but it is still a child.
It also is showing signs of being a mis-reading of the tea leaves. It may in fact be out of date, Nobel prizes notwithstanding.
What is perhaps approaching a crisis of confidence is the commitment of particle physicists (at a real instituional level of funding and staffing) to the string/M theory research project.
But who is saying that science is a "signed, sealed and delivered case"? It was John Horgan in the End of Science (a not unappealling book) who declared that it was all over for major discovery. Break out the champagne and retire. He was hardly met by grateful acclamation from the science community.
I was commenting on the attitude expressed by many (non-science, I believe) commenters here about the water-tightness of the scientific case.
I actually watched the 15 hours of Beyond Belief videos in the past week (as my Xmas recreation) and self-satisfied gratification was not my impression. Indeed, scientists seem to be as happily fractious as ever.
True, but the split seemed to be between the "hard science" types and the others. Davies' lecture on the origin of the "laws of nature" (session #5) was met with MEGO (Mine Eyes Glaze Over) by the Philosophers-- notable lack of questions, let alone understanding, even allowing for the fact that these Deep Matters are incredibly hard to discuss and express.
And on the parenthetical points you identify as your real interest, all I can is: Yes! bring on more confounding evidence, please. There is nothing physicists fear more than being unable to test their many conflicting speculations with new, improved and inevitably more expensive tools.
The Gravity Probe B experiment took 50 years to develop the technology to make the measurements to the required degree of accuracy. Many physicists and engineers devoted their entire careers to it. It is a story worth reading:
http://einstein.stanford.edu
But none of this empowers for a second the supernaturalist agenda.
I entirely agree, but as Professor Dawkins has pointed out many times, the theists are nothing if not clever at appropriating scientific uncertainty and flux for their agenda.
Like Carl Sagan in his final weeks, I am intensely grateful that I have lived in a time where so much has been discovered about our universe, but this is a happiness shaded by the melancholy that I will not know the many things that will discovered after I am gone.
Yes, I found Carl Sagan's deathbed story related by Ann Druyan to be an incredibly moving thing. And in many respects I consider Richard Dawkins to be the philosophical heir to Carl Sagan. You could do worse.
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34. Comment #14936 by JohnC on December 27, 2006 at 12:03 am
Ok, so we've moved from debate to conversation. So some things to talk about ...1. On cosmology I think you are dead wrong. It's just getting going - pessimisim about a discipline that has origins and development of the universe as its subject is surely wrong. We don't know, we want to know, and we have the discipline of science to guide us. I am an optimist.
2. Contributions to this forum cover a wide gamut of positions and understandings. Let's agree that RD should not have to carry the diversity of those opinions, while we can all be pleased there is a meaningful debate at all.
3. I was initially trained in philosophy, and was actually heartened by the genuine attempt to deal with the science at Beyond Belief. Susan Neiman knew there was something rotten about Stuart Hameroff, and was clearly pleased to hear Krauss and others denounce it as rubbish. As for Paul Davies, he spent a long time on this side of the world (Australia), and what do you expect as a reaction to someone who proclaims to have found (yet another) solution to the problem of the "levitating super-turtle". I didn't see too many scales falling from the eyes of the physicists present, so let's not indict the philosophers.
4. Theists are clever at turning the normal practice of science into propaganda. This is actually a real problem, with biologists starting to second-guess themselves about engaging in their normal debates for fear of being quote-mined by that idiot Dembski and his acolytes. My response is that if we allow ourselves to be intimidated in this way we have already lost. The combative, take-no-prisoners style of TGD is, in my view, precisely the required response to this very real problem. Let's stop apologising for our own skepticism. More power to RD.
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35. Comment #14966 by salanor on December 27, 2006 at 2:10 pm
JasonThis, alas, is correct, One of the weaknesses of Dawkins' book is that he frequently writes as if the really important distinction in forging a civil, livable society is theism vs. atheism. It isn't. The important distinctions are secular society vs. government involvement in religion, and rational thought and evidence vs. irrational faith and revelation.
Why is it surprising that a biologist should not get too deep into social science, especially as the main point of his book is to demonstrate that God is fiction, not that atheists are good? This is not a "weakness" but a matter of focus.
It is the responsibility of atheist social scientists to pick up the thesis in "The God Delusion" and show how every variety of politician, dictatorial or otherwise, appropriates a "school of thought" for their benefit. This would support RD's alarm at the appropriation of morality by fundamentalist Christians in US (who have an inordinate influence on global affairs) and show that the alarm is actually warranted.
Atheists aren't "more good" than theists; they just don't believe a nonsensical explanation for their "goodness" or "badness".
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36. Comment #15029 by QP on December 28, 2006 at 10:14 am
Jacob Bronowski, for his ground-breaking series 'The Ascent Of Man' said this:
"This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods."
Some thirty years ago, I first heard this, and now it is memorised. Whenever I encounter the theist/atheist 'argument', I remember Bronowski's words, repeat them, and walk away.
I am not responding to the originator of this comment, as they have left. However, to anyone reading this, I'd like to point out how this only applies to the theist side of the argument. Only they profess to have absolute, unquestionable knowledge. Although this is not confined to religion, it is a feature of any dogmatic belief system. However it is inherent in the structure of religion, whereas science always leaves open the possibility of it's being wrong. How many were executed before we let go of Newton's clockwork universe? This may have been the point of the quoted comment, but it seemed suitably ambiguous to warrant clarification.
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37. Comment #15031 by JohnC on December 28, 2006 at 10:48 am
QP, uncountable pages have been written in an attempt to understand the evil of the Holocaust. Yet for my money Bronowski's unscripted crie de cour in that muddy pond at Auschwitz came as close to the heart of matter as we are ever likely to get. It showed not the power of rationality as such, but the power of a fully human response in possession of a rational mind. Other Comments by JohnC
38. Comment #15036 by QP on December 28, 2006 at 11:12 am
Okay, you're obviously looking at this from a much different angle than me. I thought it was about how the two people in the atheist/theist argument are both in a dangerous state of mind, whereas you see it as an example of "...the power of a fully human response in possession of a rational mind.".Other Comments by QP
39. Comment #15044 by Tremayne on December 28, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Though I'm unavoidably biased on matters of religion, I interpret the Bronowski quote above as an indictment of religiosity, be it theism, naturalism, etc., without necessarily diminishing the other factors that played a role.
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40. Comment #15087 by BocoDragon on December 28, 2006 at 9:10 pm
The constant references to Stalin and Hitler are frustrating, but expected. When one believes morals to be the result of God's guidance, the lack of belief in God must signal a lack of morality. The theist scans recent history for repulsive figures to confirm their worst fears. It's pretty easy to build a short list of nominally 'atheist' tyrants, because those universally despised villains of our culture have often been labeled 'atheist' by our religious-leaning culture.Why does Dawkins (indeed: any person comfortable with atheism) gloss over these accusations? The solution is obvious: he is already an athiest, and moral. He really has no reason to take these concerns seriously; he is living proof that with science and rationalism central to one's worldview, morality is still an aspect of humanity.
The argument ("what about atheist Stalin?") seems like a logical concern to a worried theist, whose God-mandated view of morality doesn't assume pure altruism in humanity, but to an athiest who is already good of his own accord, it seems an absurdity.
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41. Comment #15437 by atomicpurple on December 31, 2006 at 10:03 am
Jason Rosenhouse seems to be under the impression that Dawkins wrote this book as an intelluctual debate on the interactions of science and religion throughout history.There are plenty of books of this nature - 'highbrow', polite discussions on these interactios and all their complexities.
But Dawkins wrote something different. Dawkins wrote the book version of every reply to those religious believers whose goal in life is to convert by fire, sword or gentle words, everyone to their belief. He points out the inherent fallacy in the argument 'mine is the one true god', and seeks to point out that history based on religion is not as wonderful as it may appear in hindsight.
He also takes this moment to warn of the problems we face if we allow religious devotees too much sway. As they say, 'objects in the rear view mirror...'
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42. Comment #148406 by Hasan on March 23, 2008 at 12:01 am
Stalin's acts were motivated by comunism, which evolved into a religion over time. Communist Manifesto became its holy scripture, and dialectical materialism its omnipotent god. Atheism itself makes no claims on morality. It is just a conclusion that given the available evidence, there is no reason to believe in a god or gods. This is where it stops. Humanism, which is the ethical outlook associated with atheism, though does make ethical and moral statements and there has been no action found to date that there has been any evil motivated by humanism.To say that Dawkins is wrong in saying that Stalin's deeds were not motivated by atheism itself, is to show a complete misunderstanding or rather ignorance of what atheism means. And to say that theism did not/does not motivate deeds is to make religion empty of all its meaning, and which is something that religious people themselves would never accept. Theism by itself might not suggest any moral course but it is not defined in this manner. Theism means belief in a dog who listens to you, watches over you, and is going to reward or punish you. That is all it takes to motivate actions.
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43. Comment #148410 by epeeist on March 23, 2008 at 1:33 am
Comment #14895 by SailnsouthSmall disagreement:
Again back to simplicity, The Christians have already denied a Buddhist, Egyptian, Hindu, or animist god. Atheists (and TGD) just eliminate one more. The logic in that is unassailable.
Christians have denied that gods such as Odin, Zeus and Osiris exist, but there again nobody much believes in them any more.
They are also happy to discard smaller religions, like Wicca, that do not have a large influence in the world.
However, with religions that do have an influence like Islam, Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism they make alliances.
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44. Comment #148418 by Richard Morgan on March 23, 2008 at 3:42 am
Excuse me for interrupting this thread.MUSIC UPDATE
For PZMyers : "EXPELLED : another hole in the sock."
The Myspace dedicated player :
1. We saw the comet.
In "Climbing Mount Improbable", Richard Dawkins mentioned taking his baby daughter out one night to see a comet. He explained that she was probably too young to know what was going on, but since she would live to see it again (and he would not) he wanted her to be able to say, later in her life, that she'd seen it twice. I was very touched by this idea, and so composed this piece of music for Richard and his daughter.
2. Paula Kirby : TNT Truth, not Tales.
Well, it all started with Paula KIRBY, didn't it, this "Fleabytes" business!
3. MPhil : Emfill Rox!
An amazing young philosophical mind. (I asked my son Anthony to compose this piece, being a little unwell myself at the time.)
4. Past Fleas.
RD asked this question :
What would music inspired by the fleas sound like?This composition is my answer.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2303,Add-another-flea-to-the-list,RichardDawkinsnet
Something to make them seem ridiculous, pathetic, desperate?
5. Cartomancer : Gunshots and a Wobbly.
I'm chronically tone-deaf to the point where I didn't know what all the fuss was about when Jemini were the UK entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. My beloved teases me mercilessly about it. I tried to come up with some praise beyond "That sounds nice", or "I liked the wobbly bit with all those notes in it" but my abilities fail me utterly when it comes to describing my appreciation of music..But Cartomancer is one of our most remarkable contributors, and deserved an, er, shall we say, appropriate musical portrait, with recognisable sounds.
6. Steve Zara : Simply SteveZ.
Enough said. Steve has a fine mind, and is totally lovable.
Standalone player (right column)
1. EXPELLED, another hole in the sock.
For PZ Myers
2. Sock on the Stair Reel : Bullshit!
BULLSHIT? This composition has already been banned by 18 radio stations in the USA and by most of my family.
3. Past Fleas.
4. Fleabytes : a thredley.
This is a medley of themes which expresses my impression of this everlasting thread.
5. Fingerprints, past time. (from The Lava Lizard's Tale.) (Voice : Richard Dawkins)
6. Broken Rings (from The Salamander's Tale) (Voice : Lalla Ward)
7. DIACANU.
(Mike told me himself that he felt that this portrait was pretty accurate. If you don't believe, read his comments!)
8. Bryan English : Bryan of OZ.
One of Australia's finest rock musicians.
9. Hitchindebate.
I composed a spontaneous impression of Christopher Hitches in debate with, well, just about anybody really.
10. The Quote Miner's lament.
11. Weeflea's always right.
Guess who this is?
12. Call me "Richard".
And guess who this is?
Standalone player (left column)
Sound track : Fingerprints, past time. (without the voice)
http://www.myspace.com/fleabytes
Other Comments by Richard Morgan
45. Comment #148424 by irate_atheist on March 23, 2008 at 4:12 am
"Only two things are infinite. The universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
One more idiot to add weight to the proof of Einstein's Theory of Human Imbecility.
Other Comments by irate_atheist
46. Comment #148430 by Steve Zara on March 23, 2008 at 4:25 am
Comment #148406 by HasanTo say that Dawkins is wrong in saying that Stalin's deeds were not motivated by atheism itself, is to show a complete misunderstanding or rather ignorance of what atheism means. And to say that theism did not/does not motivate deeds is to make religion empty of all its meaning, and which is something that religious people themselves would never accept. Theism by itself might not suggest any moral course but it is not defined in this manner. Theism means belief in a dog who listens to you, watches over you, and is going to reward or punish you. That is all it takes to motivate actions.
I think we have to be careful with terms. Theism really is defined in a way that does not suggest any moral course. What happens almost always is that it is used as one of the foundations of religion.
I think, for the purposes of discussion and clarity, it helps to keep theism purely as an opposite to atheism, and free of any other baggage, to illustrate the corresponding lack of baggage of atheism.
Other Comments by Steve Zara
47. Comment #148436 by Richard Morgan on March 23, 2008 at 4:36 am
Excuse me for interrupting this thread.MUSIC UPDATE
For PZMyers : "EXPELLED : another hole in the sock."
The Myspace dedicated player :
1. We saw the comet.
In "Climbing Mount Improbable", Richard Dawkins mentioned taking his baby daughter out one night to see a comet. He explained that she was probably too young to know what was going on, but since she would live to see it again (and he would not) he wanted her to be able to say, later in her life, that she'd seen it twice. I was very touched by this idea, and so composed this piece of music for Richard and his daughter.
2. Paula Kirby : TNT Truth, not Tales.
Well, it all started with Paula KIRBY, didn't it, this "Fleabytes" business!
3. MPhil : Emfill Rox!
An amazing young philosophical mind. (I asked my son Anthony to compose this piece, being a little unwell myself at the time.)
4. Past Fleas.
RD asked this question :
What would music inspired by the fleas sound like?This composition is my answer.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2303,Add-another-flea-to-the-list,RichardDawkinsnet
Something to make them seem ridiculous, pathetic, desperate?
5. Cartomancer : Gunshots and a Wobbly.
I'm chronically tone-deaf to the point where I didn't know what all the fuss was about when Jemini were the UK entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. My beloved teases me mercilessly about it. I tried to come up with some praise beyond "That sounds nice", or "I liked the wobbly bit with all those notes in it" but my abilities fail me utterly when it comes to describing my appreciation of music..But Cartomancer is one of our most remarkable contributors, and deserved an, er, shall we say, appropriate musical portrait, with recognisable sounds.
6. Steve Zara : Simply SteveZ.
Enough said. Steve has a fine mind, and is totally lovable.
Standalone player (right column)
NEW!1. EXPELLED, another hole in the sock.
For PZ Myers
2. Sock on the Stair Reel : Bullshit!
BULLSHIT? This composition has already been banned by 18 radio stations in the USA and by most of my family.
3. Past Fleas.
4. Fleabytes : a thredley.
This is a medley of themes which expresses my impression of this everlasting thread.
5. Fingerprints, past time. (from The Lava Lizard's Tale.) (Voice : Richard Dawkins)
6. Broken Rings (from The Salamander's Tale) (Voice : Lalla Ward)
7. DIACANU.
(Mike told me himself that he felt that this portrait was pretty accurate. If you don't believe, read his comments!)
8. Bryan English : Bryan of OZ.
One of Australia's finest rock musicians.
9. Hitchindebate.
I composed a spontaneous impression of Christopher Hitches in debate with, well, just about anybody really.
10. The Quote Miner's lament.
11. Weeflea's always right.
Guess who this is?
12. Call me "Richard".
And guess who this is?
Standalone player (left column)
Sound track : Fingerprints, past time. (without the voice)
http://www.myspace.com/fleabytes
Other Comments by Richard Morgan
48. Comment #318779 by dougodell on January 14, 2009 at 12:16 am
Read Genesis. Just follow the chronology. No need for apologists in later books to try and wash up the previous blunders. Just take it a chapter at a time. No need for reading it scattered and cherry picked by religious charlatans. No thinking, sane person can get to Chapter 33 without realizing this is a poorly written fabrication. Abram (Abraham is pimping his wife and sister as a bribe for livestock pay-offs; Cain's crops are not acceptable. Blood must be spilled. I suspect the author (s)-if you can wade through the rest of the Old Testament) were schizophrenic or suffering migraine headache hallucinations.No, you will never explain the scientific method, evidence, double blind experiments, or independent peer review to those so afraid of dying that they must have a clean, simple answer that takes no thought or work.
Dinesh D'Souza profers that science cannot tell us how we got here (the universe or life on earth) so science does not have all the answers. The man obviously does not understand scientific process and evidence. He'll take a leap of faith, as all mythologists do. I suspect half of them can't believe it either. But the hucksters are fleecing the flock and making a lucrative living while still on earth!
Other Comments by dougodell
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1. Comment #14718 by rydrum2112 on December 24, 2006 at 5:44 pm
The thing about stalin is tiring.Stalin killed people because they didn't follow his views, which had nothing to do with his being atheist- it had to do with how he thought a country should be run. He killed, so people would obey him and his political views not atheism.
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