Darwin's Angel: Part 1 of a Comprehensive Review

Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Riposte to The God Delusion, is, funnily enough, a response to The God Delusion. It is written by a bloke called John Cornwell. I have not finished it yet, and indeed might not get around to finishing it for a while, but this is part 1 which will discuss the Preface and Chapers 1-4(of 21! yes, my discussion is on the long side).

I must say, that of the content I have read, I am not enjoying this book. Often I feel there isn't really enough meat to Cornwell's argument so it was hard to discuss. Sometimes, I did not understand what he was getting at. I feel like sometimes, Richard was quoted out of context, and because he does not give the page references to the quotes of Dawkins', it is difficult to check whether a quote is in or out of context. I cannot tell if this is sloppiness or intentional so Cornwell can misrepresent Richard without sneaky atheists being able to pin him down on it(I can, I believe, sometimes, but if I can't find the quote there's no way I can.) Whether or not is it is deliberate it leads the reader to think he's trying to misrepresent Dawkins on purpose.

Here's another oddity for you: the subtitle of the book is different on the front cover where it is "An Angelic Riposte To The God Delusion" than on the inside page, where it is "A Seraphic Response to The God Delusion."

A quick note on cites: the main books used are Darwin's Angel(Cornwell, J. Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Riposte To The God Delusion, Profile Books 2007) and The God Delusion (Dawkins, R. The God Delusion, Bantam Press 2006). Quotes from Darwin's Angel will be referred to in brackets after the quote as DA, p. 2, wheras The God Delusion quotes will be TGD, p. 2.



Main Review



Preface

I don't actaully have too much to say about the preface. The first point I would make is that Cornwell, rather than writing as himself, decides to write the book from the perspective of Dawkins' guardian angel. I'm not sure, to be honest, what this is supposed to achieve. Some of these are summary points and I will adress them in the course of the main book rather than repeating myself.

Misrepresentations of Dawkins in the Preface

"He has established his own "Ten Commandments"" (DA, p.16)

I'm not sure what Cornwell means. I think he is referring to a passage in TGD where RD cites an example of some "New Ten Commandments" he found on an atheist website. Dawkins then gives some examples of some of his own that he would consider including. This is hardly setting up moral rules in stone unlike the Bible and it is merely used as an example of the way mankind's morality changes and how it is not based on religion.

"He has un-faithed, or "outed" in eternity such as Jefferson, Dostoyevsky, and Einstein; he has even "outed" my former protege Father Mendel, who was so admirably a man of both sceinec and religion."(DA, p. 16)

Dawkins actually quotes Einstein(TGD, p. 15) as saying "I do not believe in a personal god." I think this is rather a case of Einstein outing himself than Dawkins doing it for him.

Regarding Jefferson. Dawkins does not outright say that "Jefferson was definetly an atheist." His comments are more along the lines of the fact that Jefferson's ideas were compatible with atheism, and he quotes Christopher Hitchens on the issue, who believes it was likely Jefferson was an atheist, although it cannot be proved because he could not declare it at the time. This can be found on pages 42-3 of TGD.

Dostoyevsky: There is only one reference to him in the index, pg. 227, which is mainly a quote from The Brothers Karamazov, in a section discussing whether we need God to be good. I do not see any reference to Dostoyevsky's opinions on atheism, only that of one of this characters.

Mendel: Richard on Mendel "Mendel, of course, was a religious man, an Augustinian monk; but that was in the nineteenth century, when becoming a monk was the easiest way to pursue his science."(TGD, p. 99). As far as I know, it is the only entry about Mendel in the book, and Dawkins specifically said he was a religious man! Cornwell quotes this passage from Dawkins, but curiously omits the "religious man" clause(DA, pg. 16).

I A Summary Of Your Argument

As this is just a summary, I will deal with it as the claims come up in the main book.

Misrepresentations of Dawkins in Chapter I

"In your mind there is essentially no difference between an Al Qaeda terrorist and your North Oxford neighbour who goes to church twice a year."

Richard does believe moderate faith can be dangerous but he would never make a comparison this ludicrous. Richard's argument is basically that the respect for moderate faith protects fanaticism, and that a lot of fanatics are actually not taught by other fanatics, they are taught by moderates. I'm going to use an analogy and compare this situation involving racism.

A fair good percentage of a society--Society A-- is white supremacist. Let's say 60% of the population is. The non-racist whites in this society do not in any way challenge the bigotry of these people. In effect, the point I'm getting at is white supremacy is pretty much tolerated in said society.

Now take Society B. Society B still contains a minority of white supremacists, but they are criticised heavily by everybody else in society. Their political influence is next to nothing as a group.


It would be of no surprise if I told you that Society A has much more hate crime against black and Asian people than Society B. Now, this would be so even if the majority of people in society A did not not commit hate crime, or encourage violence against these groups. You can call these the "moderate" white supremacists if you like. However, these white supremacists still teach that black and Asian people are genetically inferior and not to be trusted. This would lead some people to extemism - ie. hate crime, harrassment, violence et al. And because the majority share the view that people of another race are bad, it is harder to criticise the perpatrators. This demonstrates how a more moderate viewpoint, if dissipated in a society, can be a cause of more extremist views. The societies could have the same amount of white supremacists advocating violence, but society A would still have more violence that society B because of the general attitudes held.

Chapter II - Your Sources

Cornwell criticises Richard for citing his own works and own experiences with people and their experiences of his work. For a start, Richard is going to refer to his own personal experience in a book about religion and there is nothing wrong with using anecdotes to make a valid point. Religious writers refer to their own experience of the divine, don't they, and I'm sure Cornwell sees nothing wrong with that. Secondly, one does not have the space to rehash everything one may have already argued in other books. Other arguments in other books may be useful if you want to know more about a particular topic, for example, Richard's books on evolution would be relevant to chapers 5 and 6 of TGD. Thirdly, Richard is not the only person to refer to his own work in a new book. For example, Daniel Dennett, refers back to Darwin's Dangerous Idea in his book Freedom Evolves in the section about the Life game by John Conway. Victor Stenger, in his book God: The Failed Hypothesis lists several of his own books and articles in the Bibliography and refers to Has Science Found God? more than once in the main text, eg. pg. 95, 99. Steven Pinker does it in The Blank Slate, pg. 80, 393. It's not just Richard, then.

Misrepresentations of Richard Dawkins in Chapter II.

"Your book is an innocent of heavy scholarship as it is free of false modesty." (DA, pg. 29)
Okay, this is more of an ad hominem, but in my opinion you cannot assert(and assertion it is; he doesn't argue for it) this sort of thing in a book meant to be a scholarly rebuttal of Dawkins.

"You might have discussed at least in brief your intellectual antecedents: [...] Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud."
Is this passage trying to imply that Richard is a Social Darwinist(or, technically a Social Spencerist, as it was not Darwin's idea). I can assure you that this is not true. He has stated many times that he does not believe the theory of evolution should dictate our morality. And aren't Spencer and on the other hand Marx and Freud completely diferrent. Communism relied on the idea that people could me made to conform the the Communist ideal ie. blank slate theory. Freud believed that all mental problems were to do with upbringing and not genes. Spencer was the opposite, he appeared to be a genetic determinist, or at least somebody who believed that genes were very influental in determining personality. Although nature and nurture are in no way incompatible and both are needed and both affect each other, one cannot totally agree with the thoughts of all of these thinkers. Not to mention, where has Dawkins said he is a Freudian or Marxist theorist? Nowhere to my knowledge.

Chapter III - Imagination

To be honest, I'm not sure what Cornwell's point in this chapter is. He seems to criticising Richard's dismissal of theology and Richard's apparent disdain for the imaginiation. I'm tempted to just dismiss a lot of the chapter as just being straw mannery because Richard has nothing agianst the dimention of imagination. For a start, Richard is a scientist. Science is a wonderfully imaginative discipline. How imaginitive did Einstein have to be to come up with the theory of relativity for instance? Science combines this imagination with fact and observation. How could Richard dislike imagination when imagination is exactly what drives his dicipline? In a similar vein, he also portrays Richard as having something against literature, again, I don't really see how he does. Maybe Richard is more interested in scientific fact, but then again, I am very interested in scientific fact that doesn't mean I don't read any fiction, and that's his perogative anyway. Cornwell hasn't really demonstrated that Dawkins is against or dislikes either of those things. In his book Unweaving the Rainbow Dawkins maintains that science is poetic.

There were a couple of points in this chapter I found a little bit, well, stupid. For instance, he says, "but do you really wish your readers to accept that writers such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoyevsky ... the entire canon of world literature ... is just so much untruth? Fiction?" (DA, p. 35.)

Well, isn't that the point? I'm not sure what he means, or what he's getting at. The only thing I can think of is that he thinks these books contains moral truth, which may or may not be true, but then later he says, "you no longer believe in the power of the imagination to impart literary, poetic, religious and moral truth either?"(DA, p. 36) which implies he considers the truth of literatute to be different from moral truth, so now I'm very confused. What exactly is "poetic truth"?

Misrepresentations of Dawkins in Chapter III

Already dealt with all of them above.

Chapter IV - Beauty

This is a discussion of the argument from beauty, which Dawkins rebuts in TGD. This chapter, again, seemed to be straw manning and didn't make a lot of sense in places. I think somehow he's just misread or misunderstood Dawkins, but I don't see how he's got the interpretation that he has.

For example, Cornwell says this: "You allow that art often prompts feelings of "sublimity" but then you make this curious statement: "[Shakespere's sonnets] ... are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn't." Whose standpoint are you adopting? The poet's? The reader's? God's? Or Richard Dawkins, as an angel, surveying all three? I think you might mean that a poem can have sublimity --whether the poet believes in God or not." I don't thaink that's what Richard means at all. I think it is fairly obvious from the book that Richard means exactly what he is saying here. He means that a piece of art is sublime whether God exists or not. It is pretty obvious what he means.

Cornwell then mentions that a suspention of belief is not the same thing as faith, but this is another strawman because nowhere does Dawkins say that it is.

Richard said in TGD that the argument that beauty exists, thus god exists in not spelled out properly. So Cornwell attepts to rebut this point by citing an example of a theologian who explictly spells out this kind of argument.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Your average, run-of-the mill religious believer does not read theologians, does not care what they have to say, maybe doesn't even understand what they have to say most of the time. And I'm not sure I understand this theologian's argument either, at least not in the way that Cornwell describes it. I haven't read the book in question, but Cornwell quotes him as saying "I will put forward the argument that experience of aesthetic meaning in particular [...] infers the necarssary possibility of this real presence[ie. God.]"(Steiner, G. quoted in DA, p. 40)
To me that seems like it is saying effectively that aesthestics exist and this implies that God must exist, but Cornwell doesn't like this interpretation even though it seems the most obvious on a reading of the text. He says "'[N]ecarssary probability" of God's presence is not the same as requiring that God actually exists. Steiner [...] is arguing that there is a connection, by analogy, between authentic original artistic creativity and the idea of the sustaining creation of God in the world." But doesn't God need to exist for him to have a creation? How does the idea that an analogy works make God true? And why in the cited paragraph does he appear to be saying something totally different?

Misrepresentaions of Dawkins in Chapter IV.

Nothing else I want to deal with.

That's it for part one, people!

I joined the Atheist blogroll

Finally got around to joining the atheist blogroll. If you're not already a member look into joining it here: http://mojoey.blogspot.com/2006/09/join-mojoeys-atheist-blogroll.html.

Secular Humanist Utopia?! SECULAR HUMANIST UTOPIA?!

Last Sunday, Richard Dawkins featured on a BBC programme called "Have Your Say". They had many callers phone in, mostly to disagree with Professor Dawkins. Anyway, one of the people they had on air was this guy called Father Jonathan Morris, and he was talking somewhat about the Pope's encyclical about atheism among other things. I'd just like to address some of the things that he happened to argue in this recording.

He firstly says that religion does not have a monopoly on fanaticism, which is a fair statement; there is/has been fanaticism in the name of certain political movements, most famously Nazism and Communism. However, he then compares fanaticism in the name of religion to fanaticism in the name of atheism, which is just stupid. Why? Because I don't think there exists such a thing as fanaticism in the name of atheism.
The only thing necessary to be an atheist is a lack of belief in God. I cannot see how this belief inspires a fanatical approach. There is no other tenets, there is no dogma, there is no doctrine.

Admittedly, many atheists believe that the world would be a better place without religion. But does this belief (of a better world without religion) stem directly from atheism itself? I can kind of see how they would use the logic, however the problem is that premiss 2 cannot be derived from atheism.

(1) Atheism is true and thus religions are false.
(2) The world is better off without false beliefs.
(3)Thus the world is better off without religion.

This also does not seem to tie in with what many atheists actually believe about religion. For instance, many atheists believe the world would be a better place without religion because they have seen the damage religion can do to people's lives, either first-hand or through the news media. This does not stem from atheism, but experience.

I also doubt if every atheist would agree with premise 2, at least not in several situations. For example, a good false belief might be "this medicine will stop me feeling ill" when in fact it is a placebo.

Even if most atheists believe the world is better without religion, that is not fanatical not unless it involves things like destroying religious buildings and killing religious people.

Of course, there is a much easier way to get to fanaticism through either religion or other totalitarian authority. For example:

(1) God says I should kill gay people in the Bible(Lev. 20.13)
(2) God is an unquestionable authority.
(3) Thus I should kill gay people.
These assumptions all stem from the religious dogma --god is right, you should obey god.

Onto Hitler and Stalin. As Professor Dawkins points out in the recording, both of these men did evil in the name of political ideology rather than any religious(or non-religious) belief. But anyway, this was the bit where he really annoyed me, he called the aim of Hitler and Stalin a "utopia of secular humanism." At least that's what I think I heard on the tape, because I could barely believe that he would say something THAT stupid! Oh please, Mr. Morris, tell me where it says in secular humanism to kill gay people a la Hitler, if I knew that was in it I would never have signed up!

He talks about the evils in the name of religion as if he's going "Oh, well that's not my kind of religion" and "they got the Bible wrong because Jesus doesn't condone violence" etc. Eternal Hell anybody? Sigh. *Directs Mr. Morris to the Old Testament, while she's at it*.

[warning:rant] A few other notes on the encyclical. Mostly just one, where he says that the Pope Ratpoison IV is extending a hand to atheists to help stop fanaticism both religious and atheistic? Oh, it's extending a hand now is it Mr. Rat-needs-his-balls-put-through-a-meat-grinder-zinger is it? What happened to "Homosexuality is tendency towards moral evil"? You know me, I'm about as straight as your average San Francisco Pride parade, are you sure the Pope wants to touch me, he might get teh gay disease? Oh wait, the gay disease is the AIDS, which so many Catholics have by this point due to his doctrines he's bound to have caught it anyway. The Catholic Church trying to stop fanaticism is so fucking ironic, the Catholic Church practically is fanaticism with its holier-than-thou, ban-abortion, chain-women-to-the-kitchen-sink, if-you-say-celibate-queer-we-might-just-let-you-live attitude. [/rant]

Yes, I'm aware this started off rather intelligent and degenerated into adhoms at the Catholics, but they just tick me off so much. Possibly even more that the Baptist types, merely cos the Catholic Church has way more influence in Britain than the fundie Baptists.

In short: This Mr. Morris is an idiot, and he talks way too damn loud.

NB: get recording @ http://richarddawkins.net/article,1983,Richard-Dawkins-on-Have-Your-Say,BBC

"Militant" Atheists

Recently, on Richard Dawkins' website, there have been a lot of articles posted(as it is a fairly balanced website that posts different points of view) arguing for the idea that the current crop of atheist writers are "militant" and encouraging an vehemently anti-religion point of view, as well as promoting and overly dogmatic view of certainty. Here are a few examples of this kind of thing: One, Two.

This criticism of the "New Atheists" as vehement and nasty is ridiculous. I have read Dawkins' The God Delusion, Harris' The End Of Faith and Letter To A Christian Nation, Hitchens' God Is Not Great, and Dennett's Breaking The Spell. I guess if you wanted to define "militant" as "feels strongly about something" you could make Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris look militant. But the word "militant" implies a much more aggressive, hateful attitude, possibly involving inciting violence against people. The "New Atheists" do no such thing. Dennett actually bends over backwards to be fair to religion, and its point of view is philosophical, rather than arguing against the existence of God or arguing from a political/religious harm standpoint. Hitchens' book is fairly confrontational, but that is not the same as being militant.

So why do the religious keep bringing up this point? Bear in mind it's not just the fundamentalists that make this kind of arguments(who often believe that they are being "persecuted" because gays can get married in Massachusetts) but also more liberal religious people. It may be down to the fact that religion appears to have gone uncriticised in the public sphere for so long and it has got used to its position as untouchable. I don't know what these people want the "New Atheists" to say. "Excuse me...but I think...that your god possibly isn't real, maybe?"

And to criticise the dogmatism of the New Atheists is even stupider. This is a simple case of projecting onto the opposition what one does yourself--in this case certainty on whether God exists. Based on the evidence we have(and don't have that we would expect if God existed), atheism is the most reliable current position. Dawkins specifically says his argument doesn't disprove God, only makes him incredibly unlikely. Hitchens' book deals more with the atrocities of religion, although he does make some arguments against the existence of God by criticising eg. the argument from design. Harris' books are based on current affairs as well as arguing for atheism. So they are anything but dogmatic, and they admire skepticism greatly.

Those Immoral Atheists!

Why Do Religious People Often Call Atheists Immoral?

1. You Have No Absolute Standards of Morality!

I think this is not true. There are some things, in my opinion, that are always wrong, regardless of the consequences. Adultery is one example. Although it is possible for there to be a gain in happiness if the other partner didn't find out and the adulterer had fun doing it, it would still be wrong. This is because of the betrayal of trust in the relationship. So it is quite possible for an atheist to have an absolute moral rule.

And of course, there are problems with the "It's moral because God" argument anyway, the most obvious being the Euthyphro Dilemma: Is it good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?
On one, torturing a baby could be moral if god said so, and on two, the atheist can derive the same moral conventions without God.

Also, absolute morality can be used to argue against God anyway, on the following:
(1) There are some things that it is always wrong to do.
(2) God, in the Old Testament, has done, or commanded that you do some of these absolutely immoral things.
(3) Thus God cannot be moral.

2. You Have No Reason To Be Moral!

"So, you may know what morality is, but why should you be moral all the time, as no-one is watching you!"

Here are some reasons for an atheist to be moral:

a) Duty as a reason to be moral - If you believe it is your moral duty to do something, you will believe it right to do it regardless of whether God is watching or not.
b) Compassion as a reason to be moral
c) Self-interest as a reason to be moral - Even if you break a moral conviction you have, your consciousness will haunt you about it and make you miserable. Thus, self interest can be a reason for morality.

3. The Liberal/Conservative Divide

Atheists, as a general rule, tend to be more politically liberal than theists. And atheism is often associated with liberalism by religious groups. This is one reason I believe theists may see atheists as immoral.

There is no particular justification on an atheistic worldview to argue that, say, homosexuality or premarital sex are wrong. Whereas theists often hold this conviction very strongly, due to duty to God's ethics. This leads to theists thinking that atheists are immoral, because they do not have these convictions, even though the theist thinks that they are important moral commandments.
This is just an idea of mine; it may not be correct, but it seems rather reasonable, judging on what i know of fundamentalists.

Thus concludes this discussion of atheistic ethics.

So, Is It All Meaningless?

One of the most well-known criticisms of atheism by theists is that atheism makes life meaningless. If atheism(naturalistic atheism, I should say) is true, there is no purpose, and when we die we merely cease to exist, it's all for nothing. But is this point against atheism defensible?

Temporary Life

So if life is only a brief interlude in between eras of non-existence, does that make life worthless? To me, the answer seems to be obviously "no". Most positive experiences that we have are only temporary. Love fades and good feelings die, friendships fall apart, but that doesn't mean that love or friendship are meaningless.
In a way, atheism makes life more meaningful. This is all you are going to get, so you'd better make sure you enjoy it! Whereas for religious people it is often a chore to be endured until you meet your creator.

A Lack Of Purpose

"That may be so, but isn't the fact that your life is ultimately meaningless make it not worth living? What purpose can an atheist have?"-- a hear the theist say.

Many things are ultimately meaningless. Many things theists do are ultimately meaningless, regardless of whether God exists or not. A theist reading this blog right now would be an ultimately meaningless activity.
My life is indeed ultimately meaningless. Five billion years from now, the sun will explode and any life left on the planet will be wiped out(of course, the possibility that Homo sapiens is long dead before then is high.) But that doesn't mean that it can't have meaning to me, or to people who know me.

I'd also like to say that if God exists and that my purpose is to worship him, that is a purpose pushed upon me, not freely chosen. Whereas if the atheist chooses his own path, that is free, and ultimately far more fulfilling, as only following our own choices can be.