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!
Showing posts with label The Richard Dawkins Fan Club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Richard Dawkins Fan Club. Show all posts
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Another cartoon
Hint: If you don't get it, try reading the opening few sentences of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene.Still doesn't make it funny, but alas...
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
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
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
Sunday, 2 December 2007
Wednesday, 29 August 2007
Dawkins' God by Alister McGrath: A Critical Look
This essay is a critical look at the ideas of Alister McGrath, who argues against some of Richard Dawkins' ideas. I will deal with the arguments that he uses agaisnt RD.
Chapter Two: The Blind Watchmaker
McGrath portrays Dawkins' ideas as being:
--Darwinism is necassarily atheistic
--Darwinism is the only way to explain the world because as God and other explanations(like Lamarckism) fail as explanatory principles. [Dawkins' reasoning goes along these lines: It either came about by "creation" or it came about by some form of "evolution". The mind first view(the creator) explains nothing, because it leaves us with the bigger problem of who created the craetor. Thus, we end up in an infinite regress of gods if we do not postulate some way of getting complexity from non-complexity, hence evolution.(see Dennett 1995;Dawkins 2006)]
McGrath has three objections to Dawkins' positions:
1. The Scientific method is incapable of proving or disproving God's existence. Science only deals with naturalistic explanations. If we are to answer the question of whether God exists, we cannot decide by science.
2. Just because God need not be invoked in the explanatory process of evolution doesn't mean he doesn't exist.
3. The "God as watchmaker" idea is an outdated view of God's creation and not typical of the Christian tradition.
Objection One
Dawkins would agree that one cannot prove/disprove the existence of God. But that does not mean that we cannot say anything about God by using science. If one wanted to be philosophical, one could argue that "we can't prove anything", or that we haven't proved any of our scientific theories correct, only that they are not false based on the evidence. As I argued in my article "Propositions and The Existence of God" the God Hypothesis makes predictions about reality, and thus can be tested using science. Withdrawing it form rational enquiry effectively makes God a meaningless idea. Thus, science can comment on the supernatural.
McGrath cites an example where 2 theores in science are equal, and we don't know which one is correct, but people decide which one is right. Firstly, they don't dogmatically assert which one is right, and the evidence will eventually be king when it comes in. Secondly, scientifically, theism and athiesm are not on the same footing; atheism is more parsimonious. It fits with more facts(eg. problem of evil, callousness of the universe, etc) and is less ad hoc than theism. If one is an atheist, a lot of facts are already explained.
Also, what other grounds are there to decide other than science? Personal experience? But we know people's personal experiences can contradict science. People can appear to percieve ESP or spirits even though there's no evidence those things are real.
Objection Two
If we don't need to invoke God as an explanatory principle for anything, and we have no evidence for his existence, it's pretty likely he doesn't exist. It is again, more parsimonius to postuate atheism.
Objection Three
I think that Mr McGrath has failed to note the millions of Christians who do believe in a creator who craeted the world instantaneously in 6 days. Besides, The Blind Watchmaker book is about evolution, at least for the most part. Most bits have very little to do with god(eg. his chapter on Steve Jay Gould's punctuated equilibria.)
Chapter Three: Proof And Faith
--Dawkins defines faith as belief without evidence.
--McGrath doesn't agree with this definition, and says that faith is based on the evidence, and cites and metions Christian Theologians to make his points.
The problem with this is that if faith was based on evidence, it would be called knowledge! McGrath doesn't even try to argue that belief in God is based on evidence. I mean, this is the point where you would expect the typical theistic arguments to come out, eg. Argument from Design or Anthropic Coinicidences, Dembski's Information Theory, Moral Arguments, Arguement from Beauty etc etc. And he makes none of these! I was a little surprised at that, because he has made the assertion that belief in God is based on evidence, without attempting to present any evidence.
Another problem with his arguments is that he does what he accuses Dawkins of doing in Chapter 2: picking a group unreperaentaive of Christians. Christian Theologians, in general, only speak to intelligent, well educated, moderate[in Biblical interpretation] Christians. They do not encompass the views of eg. your average Bible Belt fundamentalist.
--God could have designed the universe to be self sustaining.
I'll just hand over to the master Sam Harris on this point: "The fact that a bowdlerized evangelical Christianity can still be rendered compatible with science (because of the gaps in science and the elasticity of religious thinking) does not mean that there are scientific reasons for being an evangelical Christian."
--God doesn't need to be explained as he could just be a brute fact.
Occam's Razor. If God supposedly just exists, why can't the universe/multiverse/matter/energy just exist?
--Dawkins' atheism is overconfident and too brashly concluded, and he is too ferocious in promoting atheism.
So it isn't reasonable to believe that God doesn't exist becaus ethere's no evidence for it? Dawkins would change his mind if you gave him evidence(unlike a lot of believers.) And as for Dawkins promoting atheism, that's just the pot telling the kettle it's black. Yes, Dawkins promotes atheism as a rational worldview. But it often seems like if any atheist says "I don't believe in your delusions." they are a "militant atheist", which is just rubbish.
--RD doesn't know anything about Christian theology, so he shouldn't talk about it so rashly and openly.
Christian theology is not the same thing as the God Question. One can have read quite a lot on the existence of God and know jack all about Christian theology and its history(ie. Me.)
--radical theory change in science, one day the scientific ideas we believe to be true may turn out not to be so.
True. But variation, selection, reproduction = evolution.
--Dawkins is wrong to call religion a source of human misery. Athough religious people do evil, they also do good.
--Science has been used to research bombs and other ethically dubious things. Dawkins would say this is an abuse of science, so why can't evils commited in religion's name be abuses of religion?
Is it immoral to know how to manufacture a bomb? Technically, if you gave me the right equipment and chemicals, I could make TNT. It's immoral to drop a bomb(in most circumstances at least) but that's a different question.
Evils commited in the name of religion aren't abuses in the name of religion, because most of them are imbedded in the tenets of religion. eg. Islam says it is for the glory of Allah to kill unbelievers. How can it be an abuse of religion to follow this command? Jesus says you can cure people by exorcising demons. How can it be an abuse of religion to do this? Judaism says its just dandy to mutilate your kid's genitals. How is it an abuse of religion to do this? Immorality has nothing to do with the tenets of science, which is/should be (ethical as in not involving human rights abuses)research.
--"Stalin was an atheist"
Yeh, so? The Communists had dogma of their own.
Chaper Four: Cultural Darwinism
--Memetics is the theory of a cultural replicator that ispassed on by imitation.
--McGrath has some objectiosn to the theory of memetics:
1. There is nor reason to assume that cultural evolution is Darwinian, or that evolution has anything to do with culture. There is telelogy in memetics and some of it is Lamarckian.
2. There is no direct evidence for the existence of memes
3. the analogy between the meme and the gene is flawed
4. The meme is not needed as an explanatory hypothesis.
Objection One
There are some reasons to suggest a memetic view of culture. Blackmore's The Meme Machine has some interesting information on memetics, and some suggestions as to why it is a useful concept. It does explain some things not accounted for on other views, like a purely sociobiological one.(eg why do we have big brains? Why do we do so many things our genes "dislike" eg. Birth Control? Why is it so hard for us to stop thinking? Why do we talk constantly? etc)
Admittedly there is some telelogy in cultural evolution. But is this really any different from human breeders selecting the features that they like in an animal and breeding for it, ie "artificial selection"? Artifical selection doesn't invalidate evolution.
As for the Lamarckian charge, yes some cultural evolution could be described as Lamarckian or "copy-the-product". But this doesn't really matter, because the real idea behind the meme is that of a replicator. How that replicator does it is not relevant to whether memetics is valid.
Objection Two
Admittedly we don't know how memes are stored in the brain. But Darwin never knew how heredity worked, as he never read the works of Mendel. We someday may know where memes are stored. The evidence is not in on this one.
Besides, cultural replication by imitation exists. Thus memes exist.
Objection Three
There is no real problem of a false analogy. The idea is the idea of a replicator. It does not have to be a replicator analogous to the gene in every single way. In fact, everything else could be different. Provided memes are replicators, the analogy is fair.
Objection Four
As I mentioned above, Blackmore's book has some interseting work on how memetics explains things better than rival theories appear to.
Also, at one point, McGrath suggests that atheism and theism are both memes and thus both equally valid. This isn't nesacarily true. Athesim nor theism have to be memes. Memes are spread by imitation. I did not become an atheist by imitating other atheists, thus my athiesm is not a meme. The same could occur for theism. Religion is a meme, but "theism" merely most likely is. Of course, them both being memes doesn't put them both on the same footing. "The Earth is billions of years old" and "The Earth is 6,000 years old" are both memes that are obviously not equally valid.
Chapter Five: Science And Religion
--RD says Religion is a medieval and uninspiring way of looking at the universe, wheras science is a wonderful way of looking at everything.
--McGrath disagrees because he believs that religion can inspire awe and reverence of nature and creation.
This criteria is fairly subjective. Being as it is mainly aesthetics, it is down somewhat to opinion what a view inspires. I do agree with Dawkins somewhat on this point, because "because God" is not an inspiring answer to anything at all, wheras science is an interesting journey of discovery about the universe we live in. I don't believe I have grounds to say that my aesthetic opinion is "right" or better than anybody else's however.
I'm done with this. This does not critique every position put forward in Dawkins' God, just the main points. There were some things about this book that irritated me:
--It has some comments I would consider unnecassary that lowered the tone eg "Now perhaps Dawkins is too busy writing books agaisnt religion to allow him time to read works of religion."(pg.99) merely beacuse Dawkins isn't particularly well versed in the history of theology. I thought this comment was uncomfortably snarky. [yes, I know the "New Atheists" make snarky remarks, but they are usually aimed at people who deserve it and they are actually funny ;)] Also, he constantly uses words like "polemical", "rhetoric" to describe some of Dawkins' work. I just found it annoying, because Dawkins' work isn't rhetoric.
--A lot of his comments are hypocritical. He goes on about evidence based reasoning, and how great he thinks it is, but presents no evidence for God's Existence. He also says how Dawkins' arguments lead only to agnosticism. Fine, if you think that, but then why are you a Christian Theist? It's perhaps a reasonable comment for an agnostic to make, but he's a thesit.
I read this stuff so you don't have to, folks. :)
Works Referenced/mentioned:
McGrath, Alister. Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and The Meaning Of Life, Blackwell Publishing 2005.(obviously!)
Blackmore, Susan. The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press 1999.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion, Bantam Press 2006.
Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin Press 1986.
Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Penguin Press 1995.
Sam Harris quotation comes from this address: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060815_sam_harris_language_ignorance/
Chapter Two: The Blind Watchmaker
McGrath portrays Dawkins' ideas as being:
--Darwinism is necassarily atheistic
--Darwinism is the only way to explain the world because as God and other explanations(like Lamarckism) fail as explanatory principles. [Dawkins' reasoning goes along these lines: It either came about by "creation" or it came about by some form of "evolution". The mind first view(the creator) explains nothing, because it leaves us with the bigger problem of who created the craetor. Thus, we end up in an infinite regress of gods if we do not postulate some way of getting complexity from non-complexity, hence evolution.(see Dennett 1995;Dawkins 2006)]
McGrath has three objections to Dawkins' positions:
1. The Scientific method is incapable of proving or disproving God's existence. Science only deals with naturalistic explanations. If we are to answer the question of whether God exists, we cannot decide by science.
2. Just because God need not be invoked in the explanatory process of evolution doesn't mean he doesn't exist.
3. The "God as watchmaker" idea is an outdated view of God's creation and not typical of the Christian tradition.
Objection One
Dawkins would agree that one cannot prove/disprove the existence of God. But that does not mean that we cannot say anything about God by using science. If one wanted to be philosophical, one could argue that "we can't prove anything", or that we haven't proved any of our scientific theories correct, only that they are not false based on the evidence. As I argued in my article "Propositions and The Existence of God" the God Hypothesis makes predictions about reality, and thus can be tested using science. Withdrawing it form rational enquiry effectively makes God a meaningless idea. Thus, science can comment on the supernatural.
McGrath cites an example where 2 theores in science are equal, and we don't know which one is correct, but people decide which one is right. Firstly, they don't dogmatically assert which one is right, and the evidence will eventually be king when it comes in. Secondly, scientifically, theism and athiesm are not on the same footing; atheism is more parsimonious. It fits with more facts(eg. problem of evil, callousness of the universe, etc) and is less ad hoc than theism. If one is an atheist, a lot of facts are already explained.
Also, what other grounds are there to decide other than science? Personal experience? But we know people's personal experiences can contradict science. People can appear to percieve ESP or spirits even though there's no evidence those things are real.
Objection Two
If we don't need to invoke God as an explanatory principle for anything, and we have no evidence for his existence, it's pretty likely he doesn't exist. It is again, more parsimonius to postuate atheism.
Objection Three
I think that Mr McGrath has failed to note the millions of Christians who do believe in a creator who craeted the world instantaneously in 6 days. Besides, The Blind Watchmaker book is about evolution, at least for the most part. Most bits have very little to do with god(eg. his chapter on Steve Jay Gould's punctuated equilibria.)
Chapter Three: Proof And Faith
--Dawkins defines faith as belief without evidence.
--McGrath doesn't agree with this definition, and says that faith is based on the evidence, and cites and metions Christian Theologians to make his points.
The problem with this is that if faith was based on evidence, it would be called knowledge! McGrath doesn't even try to argue that belief in God is based on evidence. I mean, this is the point where you would expect the typical theistic arguments to come out, eg. Argument from Design or Anthropic Coinicidences, Dembski's Information Theory, Moral Arguments, Arguement from Beauty etc etc. And he makes none of these! I was a little surprised at that, because he has made the assertion that belief in God is based on evidence, without attempting to present any evidence.
Another problem with his arguments is that he does what he accuses Dawkins of doing in Chapter 2: picking a group unreperaentaive of Christians. Christian Theologians, in general, only speak to intelligent, well educated, moderate[in Biblical interpretation] Christians. They do not encompass the views of eg. your average Bible Belt fundamentalist.
--God could have designed the universe to be self sustaining.
I'll just hand over to the master Sam Harris on this point: "The fact that a bowdlerized evangelical Christianity can still be rendered compatible with science (because of the gaps in science and the elasticity of religious thinking) does not mean that there are scientific reasons for being an evangelical Christian."
--God doesn't need to be explained as he could just be a brute fact.
Occam's Razor. If God supposedly just exists, why can't the universe/multiverse/matter/energy just exist?
--Dawkins' atheism is overconfident and too brashly concluded, and he is too ferocious in promoting atheism.
So it isn't reasonable to believe that God doesn't exist becaus ethere's no evidence for it? Dawkins would change his mind if you gave him evidence(unlike a lot of believers.) And as for Dawkins promoting atheism, that's just the pot telling the kettle it's black. Yes, Dawkins promotes atheism as a rational worldview. But it often seems like if any atheist says "I don't believe in your delusions." they are a "militant atheist", which is just rubbish.
--RD doesn't know anything about Christian theology, so he shouldn't talk about it so rashly and openly.
Christian theology is not the same thing as the God Question. One can have read quite a lot on the existence of God and know jack all about Christian theology and its history(ie. Me.)
--radical theory change in science, one day the scientific ideas we believe to be true may turn out not to be so.
True. But variation, selection, reproduction = evolution.
--Dawkins is wrong to call religion a source of human misery. Athough religious people do evil, they also do good.
--Science has been used to research bombs and other ethically dubious things. Dawkins would say this is an abuse of science, so why can't evils commited in religion's name be abuses of religion?
Is it immoral to know how to manufacture a bomb? Technically, if you gave me the right equipment and chemicals, I could make TNT. It's immoral to drop a bomb(in most circumstances at least) but that's a different question.
Evils commited in the name of religion aren't abuses in the name of religion, because most of them are imbedded in the tenets of religion. eg. Islam says it is for the glory of Allah to kill unbelievers. How can it be an abuse of religion to follow this command? Jesus says you can cure people by exorcising demons. How can it be an abuse of religion to do this? Judaism says its just dandy to mutilate your kid's genitals. How is it an abuse of religion to do this? Immorality has nothing to do with the tenets of science, which is/should be (ethical as in not involving human rights abuses)research.
--"Stalin was an atheist"
Yeh, so? The Communists had dogma of their own.
Chaper Four: Cultural Darwinism
--Memetics is the theory of a cultural replicator that ispassed on by imitation.
--McGrath has some objectiosn to the theory of memetics:
1. There is nor reason to assume that cultural evolution is Darwinian, or that evolution has anything to do with culture. There is telelogy in memetics and some of it is Lamarckian.
2. There is no direct evidence for the existence of memes
3. the analogy between the meme and the gene is flawed
4. The meme is not needed as an explanatory hypothesis.
Objection One
There are some reasons to suggest a memetic view of culture. Blackmore's The Meme Machine has some interesting information on memetics, and some suggestions as to why it is a useful concept. It does explain some things not accounted for on other views, like a purely sociobiological one.(eg why do we have big brains? Why do we do so many things our genes "dislike" eg. Birth Control? Why is it so hard for us to stop thinking? Why do we talk constantly? etc)
Admittedly there is some telelogy in cultural evolution. But is this really any different from human breeders selecting the features that they like in an animal and breeding for it, ie "artificial selection"? Artifical selection doesn't invalidate evolution.
As for the Lamarckian charge, yes some cultural evolution could be described as Lamarckian or "copy-the-product". But this doesn't really matter, because the real idea behind the meme is that of a replicator. How that replicator does it is not relevant to whether memetics is valid.
Objection Two
Admittedly we don't know how memes are stored in the brain. But Darwin never knew how heredity worked, as he never read the works of Mendel. We someday may know where memes are stored. The evidence is not in on this one.
Besides, cultural replication by imitation exists. Thus memes exist.
Objection Three
There is no real problem of a false analogy. The idea is the idea of a replicator. It does not have to be a replicator analogous to the gene in every single way. In fact, everything else could be different. Provided memes are replicators, the analogy is fair.
Objection Four
As I mentioned above, Blackmore's book has some interseting work on how memetics explains things better than rival theories appear to.
Also, at one point, McGrath suggests that atheism and theism are both memes and thus both equally valid. This isn't nesacarily true. Athesim nor theism have to be memes. Memes are spread by imitation. I did not become an atheist by imitating other atheists, thus my athiesm is not a meme. The same could occur for theism. Religion is a meme, but "theism" merely most likely is. Of course, them both being memes doesn't put them both on the same footing. "The Earth is billions of years old" and "The Earth is 6,000 years old" are both memes that are obviously not equally valid.
Chapter Five: Science And Religion
--RD says Religion is a medieval and uninspiring way of looking at the universe, wheras science is a wonderful way of looking at everything.
--McGrath disagrees because he believs that religion can inspire awe and reverence of nature and creation.
This criteria is fairly subjective. Being as it is mainly aesthetics, it is down somewhat to opinion what a view inspires. I do agree with Dawkins somewhat on this point, because "because God" is not an inspiring answer to anything at all, wheras science is an interesting journey of discovery about the universe we live in. I don't believe I have grounds to say that my aesthetic opinion is "right" or better than anybody else's however.
I'm done with this. This does not critique every position put forward in Dawkins' God, just the main points. There were some things about this book that irritated me:
--It has some comments I would consider unnecassary that lowered the tone eg "Now perhaps Dawkins is too busy writing books agaisnt religion to allow him time to read works of religion."(pg.99) merely beacuse Dawkins isn't particularly well versed in the history of theology. I thought this comment was uncomfortably snarky. [yes, I know the "New Atheists" make snarky remarks, but they are usually aimed at people who deserve it and they are actually funny ;)] Also, he constantly uses words like "polemical", "rhetoric" to describe some of Dawkins' work. I just found it annoying, because Dawkins' work isn't rhetoric.
--A lot of his comments are hypocritical. He goes on about evidence based reasoning, and how great he thinks it is, but presents no evidence for God's Existence. He also says how Dawkins' arguments lead only to agnosticism. Fine, if you think that, but then why are you a Christian Theist? It's perhaps a reasonable comment for an agnostic to make, but he's a thesit.
I read this stuff so you don't have to, folks. :)
Works Referenced/mentioned:
McGrath, Alister. Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and The Meaning Of Life, Blackwell Publishing 2005.(obviously!)
Blackmore, Susan. The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press 1999.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion, Bantam Press 2006.
Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin Press 1986.
Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Penguin Press 1995.
Sam Harris quotation comes from this address: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060815_sam_harris_language_ignorance/
Sunday, 12 August 2007
"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.
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.
Saturday, 11 August 2007
The Enemies Of Reason
Richard Dawkins has a new two-part programme, due to be shown on the 13th and 20th August on Channel 4(UK). It's called The Enemies Of Reason, and it is about the claims of New Age healer types, faith healers, dowsers, mediums etc and about how it's all bunk. Should definitely be worth watching, so here's a reminder to watch it if you have the chance to!
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