I'm not a Christian, Muslim or Jew. I don't believe in God. I find it slightly unnerving that there's still religious fundamentalists out there that flatly refuse to accept scientific evidence of evolution and more, and yet...
I can't stand Richard Dawkins.
I know that there's some dangerous ideas put out there by fundamentalists, but for the most part, if they stick to themselves and are generally good people who don't interfere with others then I don't really care what they believe.
Not necessarily this article, but generally, and especially listening to him talk live (radio, conferences etc) Richard Dawkins is arrogant and pig headed. It's kind of ironic that by dedicating his life to setting them straight, Dawkins has become as much of a fundamentalist evangelist as the religious fundamentalists he spends his time mocking.
It may be insensitive to be so blunt about it, but I think the longer you're an atheist the harder it gets to keep a "live and let live" attitude.
I liken it to having a friend who truly, sincerely believes in Santa Claus. At first, you might just laugh it off as a harmless quirk. But as time goes on, and every day you're hearing about Santa Claus this and he won't stop going off about whether or not he's on the Naughty or Nice list this year, you might start to tactfully point out some of the flaws in his belief.
How fast would Santa need to go to cover the entire world in one night? Why has there never been a photograph of Santa? What about people who don't celebrate Christmas?
Your friend laughs, and explains that you need to have more faith in Santa Claus, and that if you don't watch out you're going to be on the Naughty List. And now every time you go out for a drink your friend is telling people about Santa Claus, and he's posting Santa-related links on your Facebook wall. How long can you put up with that before you just snap?
On second thought, I would dispute calling it a reductio ad ridiculum. We obviously share the opinion that serious belief in Santa Claus as an adult is ridiculous, but in reality belief in Santa Claus and belief in God share equal amounts of supporting evidence.
> I know that there's some dangerous ideas put out there by fundamentalists, but for the most part, if they stick to themselves and are generally good people who don't interfere with others then I don't really care what they believe.
It's easy to have this perspective if religious fundamentalism has not had a major impact on your life. However, if your parents were religious fundamentalists, you would likely view things in a different light (or, more likely, you'd be just as religious as them).
Mine are, and I enjoyed a childhood characterized by a morbid fear of eternal damnation, church twice weekly, private Christian school to ensure that I did not come into contact with peers from less- or non-religious households, and a total abhorrence of modern science and particularly evolution. However, my parents are intelligent people - it was not their fault they were both born into religious households - and they instilled in me a great love of reading, which backfired for them because, as a science/computer geek, I eventually started in on science books and started to question everything.
For me it was like a great window of truth opened on the world and suddenly, everything made sense - and was also so much better than I had been taught. Of course, that caused no end of problems within my family, in part because I passed along my newfound knowledge to my younger siblings. Dawkins would have been proud of me as a young adolescent.
Most of my friends from those days never read what I read, and they carry on in the same fundamentalist, "the earth is 6,000 years old and homosexuality is evil" fantasy land. And of course, they indoctrinate their children just as thoroughly as they were indoctrinated. Religion excels at that.
Meanwhile, my parents, who I love dearly, are still convinced they are both heading for an eternity burning in hell because they have yet to experience the born-again moment that Protestant Christians pine for. The problem, I think, is that they are too honest with themselves. They really just need that single powerful religious moment (aka hallucination) that they would get if they fasted for three days and prayed continually in a closet, but they haven't had it. So these dear, sweet, kind and incredibly honest and ethical people are still plagued by the morbid fear I managed to cast off as an adolescent.
Just because people are "good" doesn't mean that the religious beliefs that have taken over their lives are not damaging to the lives of others and particularly children. I would take Dawkins' earnest, educated, rational and well-meaning brand of urgent atheism over fundamentalist religion any day.
> Meanwhile, my parents, who I love dearly, are still convinced they are both heading for an eternity burning in hell because they have yet to experience the born-again moment that Protestant Christians pine for. The problem, I think, is that they are too honest with themselves. They really just need that single powerful religious moment (aka hallucination) that they would get if they fasted for three days and prayed continually in a closet, but they haven't had it.
As a Christian myself, it's sad to hear there are people who don't seem to understand what they purportedly believe. I'd love to sit down with people like your parents to discuss things, as my own knowledge of scripture is fairly advanced (and I would dare to say sound, despite knowing that many in this thread would see it as a crock of BS). But I do fear that type of discussion can be difficult. I've spoken with so-called fundamentalists in the past, and I find their knowledge mostly based on whims and hearsay, rather than actual scripture. Therefore, it becomes tiring if they are not willing to have a 2-way conversation.
It is ironic, because the word "fundamentalist" would indicate to me an adherence to basic fundamentals. In that case, I would call myself a devout fundamentalist, but the word unfortunately does not have that meaning in our society. I wonder why these people are called fundamentalists, and not simply extremists or something else that makes more sense.
Earnest, educated, rational. Yes, these words might describe Dawkins, but well-meaning?
I agree that indoctrination into a fundamentalist religion probably doesn't give a child the best chance at a happy, well balanced life. I think it is important that science continues to be made available, and people like Dawkins make it not only available, but easily digestible and understandable.
But seriously, running around the world, telling people they are "idiots" and to "f*ck off" if they don't see the world the way he does? Doesn't sound very well-meaning to me.
This may be a reference to a televised discussion between Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins. The internet has managed to lose the full meaning (and the quotation marks) of what Dawkins actually said. He was quoting the editor of New Scientist (I think) who said something like "If you don't think science is interesting, you can fuck off".
I know that there's some dangerous ideas put out there by fundamentalists, but for the most part, if they stick to themselves and are generally good people who don't interfere with others ...
If only.
When Dawkins et al get their own worldwide television networks and suitably sized fund-raising and political infrastructure then I'll entertain the idea that atheist advocates are anywhere near like that of the fundamentalists.
I agree. Here's why that will never happen (and I'm sure you know this):
Only the mistaken need proclaim their philosophy with grandiloquence. It is painful for atheists to proselytize with the only effective mechanism--propaganda--as it is a cognitive dissonance. The psychological truth is that the young mind is highly pliable and choice of religion is an axiom--unlike a formal system, the human mind has no need for internal logical consistency. For some large percentage of people, the only effective method is propaganda and indoctrination--an unfortunate irony.
As a Christian... I wish everyone would agree not to call it "fundamentalism". There is nothing fundamental about the views of this subset of Christians. The term is pure marketing, wild enough for good TV and, thus, wild enough to acquire impressionable followers, and the beliefs are not fundamental.
I see the stance against evolution as just a form of We vs They, a political tool more than religious, unnecessary for Christianity at large, and damaging to the religion in the long run if it persists. I have seen it create stupidity in otherwise fairly intelligent individuals because they want to be seen as part of the group, not ostracized from their equally-susceptible peers. For similar reasons, I have had friends reject the religion entirely, as they do not want to be a part of this insanity. As for me, it is another nail in the coffin of my interest in the organization aspects.
I remember when "The God Delusion" was a hot topic hearing groups of otherwise intelligent people hi-fiving each other over how smart they were because they were atheists, & how COMPLETELY WRONG religion of any kind is.
Maybe I just got all my anti-religious rage out of my system early in my life, but observing people carry on like the very fundamentalists they claim to despise (but it's ok, cuz we're secular!) is very disappointing.
Being a religious fundamentalist and good person who does not interfere with others, well those don't go together, at all.
If you honestly think that is possible, you should seriously rethink your stance.
Whether you tolerate them or not is meaningless, they cannot tolerate you, because of what you don't believe in.
You might wanna learn to recognize an enemy when you see one.
If you're describing Dawkins as fundamentalist, then you either a) don't know much about him, and what he stands for, or b) have a grave understanding of what fundamentalism means.
It bothers me that Dawkins gets that accusation that often, when it's clearly false.
According to Wikipedia, Fundamentalism is the "strict adherence to specific theological doctrines". According to my dictionary, the definition of theological is "Of or relating to or concerning theology". Atheism, according to Wikipedia again, is "the rejection of belief in the existence of deities." It seems to me then that I could argue that one could be an "Atheist Fundamentalist" although that wasn't my point. I was using the term liberally, and by way of analogy.
My point was that it is this stubborn adherence to a particular point of view that got Dawkins so fired up in the first place. And, although _I agree_ with Dawkins point of view, traveling the world telling people they are "idiots" for not thinking in a particular way is just as bad, or worse. Even if it is a view backed up by science.
As you concede, Professor Dawkins' views are backed (and, in fact, a product of) science. This means that to the extent that anyone can be right or wrong about anything, Richard Dawkins is correct in his arguments. Maybe he isn't civil in the way he confronts people who disagree. Maybe he's ineffective in convincing them. Those are things that are important to you personally, but you're letting that distract you from the fact that what he's saying is true, which ought to be the only thing that matters.
In a way, I think this is a major way you and people who share your attitude towards Richard Dawkins miss what is perhaps the most poignant part of his message. His crassness is actually a rebellion against the passivity and political correctness that he feels constrains non-believers socially and politically. The crux of his message is a call to arms to those people, encouraging them to deny religion the automatic respect it has enjoyed for centuries. To say that he isn't meek enough in delivering this message is undercutting it's core.
He is _right_ about evolution, there are no two ways about it and I never said otherwise. If someone tries to tell him that he is wrong about that, he has every right to put them straight. He is, after all, an evolutionary biologist.
My problem isn't this. My problem is his you're wrong, I'm right attitude. There is a place for that, and it is indeed Science. When you're dealing with people though, you should have some respect. If his message is to automatically _deny_ respect to others simply because of a belief they hold, then he's more like a religious fundamentalist than I thought.
Yes, I understood your position to be that from your previous comment. I'll repeat that I think you're missing the point.
The offensive part about religious fundamentalism isn't stubbornness or denial of respect. These are corollaries to dogmatic thinking, but not its defining features. Positions rooted in science are by definition not dogmatic and therefore cannot be fundamentalist. Lack of respect for differences of opinion is indeed a shared trait between Richard Dawkins' views and those of fundamentalists, but that's a rather trivial similarity. At their core, they are philosophical and moral opposites.
Consider as an analogy what would happen if I had a difference of opinion with my doctor about what my illness is that was completely counter to the best information available through examinations and tests. My doctor wouldn't be stubborn or dogmatic for considering me an idiot in that instance. My opinion has no value and therefore is owed no respect.
The specifics of their views are irrelevant, at their core they are identical. They both believe they know best, and they both believe that it is in everyones best interest that they push their view onto others. The fact that Dawkins is 'right' or that a religious fundamentalist's view is dogmatic is irrelevant to my point. (and to clarify again, Dawkins is in my mind, absolutely right)
The doctor analogy is interesting, because my health has been _seriously_ compromised by western medicine. They gave me advice that was based on 'the best information available through examinations and tests' and I'll forever pay the consequences. If they had respected others opinions then I would have never suffered the way I have.
I'm not saying science will tomorrow find evidence of a creator god that made the world in six days, not at all. I'm just saying that we don't always know what is best for others, and should never presume to do so. For some people, living a religious life is the best possible outcome. They have a moral and ethical system they can look towards when they aren't sure how to proceed. They have hope when everything else is falling apart, etc etc.
To you and I, and indeed to Dawkins the idea that some bearded guy in the clouds created the world and the universe, will help you through life and grant you seven virgins when you die is delusional and utterly disproved by science. But if this world view is helping someone respect others and live a happy and fulfilled life, then why does it matter what he or she believes? And more to the point, who does Dawkins think he is going around telling people like this that they are idiots?
Make the information available. Tell people about it, grant interviews, attend conferences and seminars and host talks about your ideas. Just don't be a dick about it.
> Positions rooted in science are by definition not dogmatic and therefore cannot be fundamentalist.
Alas, when humans enter the picture, it can get difficult. Human nature can be inherently very dogmatic, just due to political reasons alone.
> My doctor wouldn't be stubborn or dogmatic for considering me an idiot in that instance. My opinion has no value and therefore is owed no respect.
Have you had no experience or seen no experience of your friends where the doctor was wrong? Humans make mistakes, but they should be aware of that possibility. Doctors who consider their patients idiots are not sympathetic to listen to their patients' claims.
My dad's friend once went skiing and broke a leg. The doctor said there was nothing wrong because the x-ray showed no fractures. The guy was in pain. My dad convinced the doctor and technician to do more x-rays at different angles. They found the fracture. Had the doctor simply thought my dad's friend was playing games because the data said everything was OK, he would have been venturing on malpractice. There are many stories like this where malpractice actually was the result. People who think that understanding the data better gives them the right to consider others idiots run the risk of being the biggest idiots of all.
On the topic of medicine, perhaps the best known story of scientific dogma was the medical community's understanding of ulcers and how to treat them. Science can be dogmatic too, but it's not the fault of science, it's the fault of people who can be dogmatic by nature.
Argh. This makes my blood boil. There are many good responses to this comment but I want to address one idea in particular: the idea that by putting things in the same category you can make them equal.
It's terribly poetic to say that Dawkins, in his opposition to fundamentalism, has become a fundamentalist himself. But poetic doesn't mean true, and this particular trope abuses poetry for deceptive ends. Let us exhaust this "fundamentalism" idea. What does fundamentalism mean? Does it mean strongly believing in something? Does it mean accepting that thing as true? Am I a fundamentalist gravitarian because I tell everyone who asks that gravity is true?
Any definition of fundamentalism as "strong belief that something is true" is so common as to be useless. But that's not quite what's happening here. You might characterise a fundamentalist belief in God as one that would brook no counter-argument. A stronger definition than before: "belief that something is true that accepts no evidence to the contrary". Does Dawkins believe that? Let's ask him:
"I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution is true than when I say it is true that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it. [...] My belief in evolution is not fundamentalism, and it is not faith, because I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming."
This is from his book The God Delusion, which I infer that you haven't read. I don't blame you - I put it off until last year because I had heard that Dawkins was uppity and confrontational. I can't speak to who benefits by that impression, but it is fiction. The book is, if utterly uncompromising, extremely polite and calm in tone. Dawkins treats religion with neither kid gloves nor boxing gloves. His intent isn't to injure, it's to challenge.
It frustrates me so much that people repeat mistaken ideas like "Dawkins is a fundamentalist" even while he seems to take such great pains to make his points clear. People who are not familiar with his work or his opinions accuse him for things he's never said. To gleefully point out that a biologist and someone who mutilates female genitals for a living are both "fundamentalists" is not clever. It's a deceptive attempt to make unequal things equal by putting them in the same category.
You echo that idea in your earlier allusion that people should be left to believe what they believe. Can I label anything as a belief and therefore make it equally valid? Is a 'belief' that man was created by ejaculating into a river equally valid to a 'belief' that the total momentum within a closed system will remain constant?
We can do better, and you owe it to yourself to do better. I know disagreement isn't in vogue, and it might not win you friends at parties, but it's the intellectually honest thing to do.
Please, read Dawkins' work. Disagree with him if you like, but at least don't do it out of ignorance. Feel free to start with "Fundamentalism and the Subversion of Science", the entire chapter of The God Delusion dedicated to your "fundamentalists are equal" argument.
Good point. I'm an atheist, but it always makes my blood boil when atheists apply false moral equivalence between the effects of different religions, as if all religions have equally bad consequences.
In case anybody was wondering, Richard Dawkins explicitly says that there are huge differences in harm between various religions and the members within those religions, and that if all religious people were the friendly, liberal kind, he probably wouldn't have bothered writing a book about it.
I _never_ stated that Dawkins and someone who circumcises unwilling females should be compared. I never said all fundamentalists are equal. I used the word fundamentalist liberally, as I have explained elsewhere.
The comparison was made because both religious evangelists and Dawkins both believe they know what is best for someone else and would like to force that upon them.
And yes, you should be allowed to hold you own beliefs, no matter how wacky they might be, and still be respected. And you do. They mightn't be as wild or deep rooted as the world being created in six days, but you still have them. You might find that many of your beliefs aren't based on reality, or scientifically provable.
Why should I respect people’s believes? What’s the reasoning behind that? Shouldn’t I be free to not respect what other people think?
Also: Where are you getting the idea that Dawkins would like to force something on people? I would like a quote for that. Does Dawkins really demand, say, laws?
I never said you should respect people's personal beliefs. I said you should respect people, irrespective of their beliefs, out of common decency. Simply for being another human being.
And Dawkins carries on like a child when people won't accept his version of events (once again, a version that I believe). Watch any one of his hundreds of interviews or YouTube videos. Specifically, if you like, linked twice on this thread, where he quotes someone else to enable him to tell those who don't believe him to 'f##k off'. Or the innumerable where he calls people idiots for not agreeing with him.
I've listened to Richard Dawkins debate live several times. In no instance have I ever heard him being anything other than perfectly gracious, even when being repeatedly personally attacked, so I'm having a hard time understanding your criticism of him - which amounts to calling him names.
The man is one of the most important thinkers of our time. He is gracious and intelligent. His arguments cut with such logic that they often offend. When people have their belief systems ripped from under them there is bound to be high emotions but Dawkins handles all this brilliantly.
Why don't you ask Rebecca Watson (co-host of The Skeptics Guide To The Universe) what she thinks of him?
There was an incident at a recent skeptics conference where Watson was accosted & hit on by an attendee in the small hours of the morning while riding an elevator.
She used her podcast & blog to describe the incident, hinting that maybe hitting on an un-escorted female in the middle of the night while the two of you are stuck in an elevator together is a good way to make said female feel vulnerable & uncomfortable.
Well, Dawkins wen't on to have a foaming at the mouth tirade about how she was carrying on like a hypothetical hysterical muslim woman who was all offended by being offered a coffee and that she should just toughen up.
He was rightly slammed by many for this, but the guy sounds like a dick to me.
[edit: in response to reply]
I understand his message. I also think he was "foaming at the mouth" and a "dick". I am an atheist. I am also not so besotted by the cult of personality that I can't see past Dawkins contributions & still think he's a dick.
[edit edit: after some thought]
On reflection calling Richard Dawkins a "dick" is not the right thing to do. Replace "a dick" with "an insensitive man".
There was an incident at a recent skeptics conference where Watson was accosted & hit on by an attendee in the small hours of the morning while riding an elevator.
No, there was an instance where a man asked Watson to his room for coffee, and when she turned him down, he accepted it. No one accosted anyone at any point in that exchange, and that's precisely the point Dawkins and others were making.
He was wrong about that. Humans tend to be wrong from time to time and say stupid things. That’s just how it is. He certainly, however, wasn’t foaming at the mouth or being a dick.
I don’t always like what Dawkins has to say (which, I should add, is perfectly normal – I do feel that way about most people) but I don’t think you can call him arrogant in general. Most of the time he is very polite in what he says.
As I said below, I think he probably is a sexist, but I wouldn't go so far as calling him a dick. As someone who only recently became a feminist, I think it's easy to make the mistake of thinking that Watson was over-reacting. This is probably what Dawkins thought - which of course makes him a sexist, and unaware of his privileges, but all this, IMHO, still isn't enough to make him a dick.
You have a fair point, name calling isn't particularly endearing in intelligent conversation.
I suppose the strong language is a response to my feeling that Dawkins did abuse his position in that incident.
I also feel that he is an unnecessarily divisive personality due to the hard line he takes (look at the controversy his name being mentioned on HN has caused amongst a group who I would imagine are sympathetic to his message).
I see. The parent characterized Dawkins as "arrogant" and "pig headed", and now you've characterized him as "foaming at the mouth", on a "tirade" and a "dick". You've also misstated his argument.
We get it. Many hate his message and because they can't argue coherently against that message, they mostly just call him names.
What about people who agree with his message, but still think he's a dick? Are they not allowed to exist?
Dawkins is an intelligent atheist skeptic, but he's also an incredibly sexist, insensitive ass whom many believe is consistently hurting the cause he claims to promote. You're allowed to think the latter even if you largely agree with his opinions as an atheist skeptic.
After Shaftgate, many noticed that Dawkins quit speaking on the issue.
Many put up guesses as to why this happened, and I think the 'why?' is now clear. Dawkins has shown with his actions time, time, time and again, that he is supportive of everyone in science and skepticism. When it became clear that words, discussion, reasoning were useless against what he was up against, he stopped using words, discussion, and reasoning, and kept doing what he do, which is, to 'do':
>The dawkins foundation is going to pay for childcare so moms can attend future cons. Feminist cred reestablished, well played
More twetters:
>Childcare at future TAM to be sponsored by Dawkins Foundation
AWESOME!
ERV translation:
>You all keep throwing your bordello parties and pajama parties and getting drunk all the time and acting like overall jackasses in the name of 'supporting women in skepticism'. Im going to actually support everyone, including women, by providing childcare at future TAMs. flipseveryoneoff
The non-response this move has gotten, the stunned silence from the True Feminists mirrors that of the duped Evangelicals before. Stricken dumb by being too dumb to understand what just happened. Its hysterical.
I wish I could take an ounce of credit for any of this-- providing childcare at meetings is something I have been talking up and down since the Texas Freethought Convention last year. Camp Quest provided 'day camp' for the kids of attendees. That was such a weight off of so many parents, especially single parents, including single moms, shoulders. Furthermore, having low-stress, kid-friendly activities has helped the OKC Atheists grow exponentially-- picnics, trips to zoos and museums, meet-ups at a pizza place instead of a bar, etc. Weve gotten so big we actually had to make a break-off 'secular parenting' group (though all are still welcome if they are doing something cool and you want to tag along).
You want more members?
Have more low-intimidation, social meet-ups. Not every skeptic group has to meet in a pub. Not every meeting needs to be a lecture. Yes, karaoke nights at a bar are my favorite, but something as small as a few 'kid friendly' events, or day-care for day-long events goes a fuckovalong way to generating a warm, welcoming group.
Anyway, I rant all over the place about this, including to Dawkins very recently, but I cant take any credit. Apparently this move has been in the works for a long time, with Camp Quest. Apparently before Twatson fell down and threw a temper tantrum and demanded everyone kiss her invisible boo-boo.
She made her move. A rash decision.
Dawkins made his. Carefully planned for some time.
Richard Dawkins has done more for women that the femiskeptics have ever done.
"Doing things for women" has absolutely nothing to do with feminism. That's like claiming that someone isn't racist because they've "done things for black people", and shows a total lack of understanding of what sexism (or any sort of discrimination) even is.
Just like racism isn't only about black people, feminism isn't only about women, and "doing things for women" does not exonerate you from being sexist any more than having a black friend, or giving money to a historically black school, makes it completely okay to be racist.
I'm not sure you do. I think Dawkins is essentially right about how religion is evil, and I think he's done a great deal for the atheist "movement". At the same, he came off looking like a sexist in the Rebecca Watson fiasco.
The point is, I think his message is correct and important, and yet I think he's probably a sexist. These two are orthogonal attributes.
Why would anyone want to hear what Rebecca Watson thinks about anything? She has a herd of rabid dogs on her heels but nothing else worthwhile, as exemplified by the elevator fiasco. Sure, if you looked at ten seconds of her video and nothing else it was pretty reasonable, but context matters and there was a lot of it that the femiskeptics like to ignore.
> Not necessarily this article, but generally, and especially listening to him talk live (radio, conferences etc) Richard Dawkins is arrogant and pig headed. It's kind of ironic that by dedicating his life to setting them straight, Dawkins has become as much of a fundamentalist evangelist as the religious fundamentalists he spends his time mocking.
Hardly. Dawkins can be very blunt, be he is hardly a fundamentalist. How do you think he should act?
He is an evolutionary biologist, so he should make what he knows about evolutionary biology available. Tell people about it, write books, grant interviews, attend conferences and seminars and host talks about his ideas. But show some respect.
At the end of the day, no matter how loopy or wacky a persons beliefs are, they deserve respect. There is just no need to go around calling people "idiots" or telling them to "fk off" if they don't want to take on his world view.
If a scientist is producing good research that is getting published in peer reviewed journals and is generally acknowledged to be contributing to the advancement of the field, I don't care how weird his personal beliefs are.
I think the concern Dawkins tries to show in that article is that it is very difficult to trust people with religious beliefs in certain fields because those beliefs necessarily introduce a bias.
Everyone is bias. Even if you are an Atheist you are bias. You have a cultural bias, a sexual bias, etc etc. Your everyday experiences condition you to react to particular situations in particular ways.
Obviously sometimes people have a vested interest in the results of a study, but that's something different, and doesn't only apply to people of faith.
It has to said that Dawkins is one of the most heavily baised authors I've ever read.
It makes it very difficult to trust his arguments about other religions, because he is so heavily biased towards his own... (and yes, I do think that when atheists hold such closed views as Dawkins that they are effectively religious).
No, the idea that the human race is progressing morally is a highly contentious bit of Enlightenment philosophy. The fact that we can have this conversation over the freaking internet is ample proof that humanity is progressing intellectually, given that it requires an insane amount of distributed knowledge and capabilities that didn't exist when the Enlightenment was beginning.
Dawkins doesn't bother me any more than any other atheist I've read. The fact that he lives and is popular in my time makes him no more threatening to my faith than Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Lucretius, A.J. Ayer or Bertrand Russell. I know where my faith fits in the history of ideas, and I'm comfortable in the capacious intellectual house it affords me. Dawkins is amusing at best, annoying at worst. As a philosophical atheistic thinker I find he's small beer indeed and I'd rather read Nietzsche.
In my own intellectual journey (not necessarily the same as my journey of faith), I find no attraction to reductionism of any kind. It's always seemed to me a truncated worldview, artificial and strained, ignoring the real content of our deepest intuitions of meaning, beauty, love and justice. I side with Plato and Cicero contra Lucretius, Aquinas contra Bacon, etc. (yes, Bacon was a Christian, I disagree with his metaphysics). I believe the Scientific Revolution was a necessary reform on the excesses of Aristotelian Physics, but in many ways we through the baby out with the bathwater when we chucked Formal and Final causes out by fiat. But that's another discussion...
I write that preface to provide some context on what my real concern is with regards to Dawkins and the legions of young enthusiastic atheists that I run into, in person and on the web: the absolute philosophical illiteracy of so many naively confident advocates of reductionist science and the silly caricatures of faith they hold to. Mostly what I find in this generation of non-believer is not reflective, self-conscious atheism but rather an inherited, brittle and angry atheism that assumes the final triumph of reductionist materialist science has been accomplished. For these dogmatics the mere existence of faith or religion of any kind is really appalling and a cause for anger and aggression. There's simply no difference between, say, Wendell Berry and Pat Robertson, C.S. Lewis and Jerry Falwell, Dostoevsky and Fred Phelps.
It's just flat strange and saddening to me, to know that there are those who truly think that the Santa Clause analogy would have been devastating to St. Augustine or Tolstoy or Tolkien. That the existence of reflective intellectual Christians like Annie Dilliard, Flannery O' Connor or Walker Percy so long after Darwin is merely an anomaly to be ignored.
This kind of naivety makes not only for fruitless engagement across the theistic/atheistic boundaries, but for increasing hostility and social disintegration. When I read Dawkins and those that find his simplistic reductions of religion intellectually appealing, I'm not offended as a believer, I'm not threatened intellectually, but I am discouraged about the future of community. If the main participants in the the great God Debate (which is really no more acute now than at any other time in history, and probably a good bit less than late 19th Century Britain at least) don't have the intellectual resources or emotional charity required for deep engagement of such a weighty matter, then we not only have more anger, hostility and misunderstanding, but we become more impoverished in our self-understanding on both sides.
"I find no attraction to reductionism of any kind. It's always seemed to me a truncated worldview, artificial and strained, ignoring the real content of our deepest intuitions of meaning, beauty, love and justice."
Every piece of technology you use was built on insights provided by reductionism. Nothing you do is benefitted by the reductionist-less grand metaphysical musings of Zeus worshippers. In every age of humanity, there have been reductionists slowly advancing the state of the species, and high-concept self-proclaimed thought leaders using intuition to make eventually-meaningless but feel-good declarations about things like beauty, love, and justice. Of course reductionism doesn't feel attractive - it requires the surrender of the ego in pursuit of fact. It makes sense that you wouldn't feel threatened by alien ideas if you allow yourself to disregard reason.
Ah, here we go. Don't really have the space here to unpack the metaphysics behind this, but I'd start by pointing out that there's a difference between pursuing causality on one plane of experience, and demanding dogmatically that every aspect of reality will always and must always submit to the reductionist program.
I humbly suggest to you there are other philosophical points of view that don't necessarily involve Zeus worship. You can reject dogmatic reductionism without any religious cant whatsoever -- the Enlightenment and modernity are replete with thinkers that do so. Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, heck even Descartes himself to some degree. Contemporaries like Husserl, Bergson, Whitehead and Hans Jonas all have a robust view of Science and the power of Baconian observation, but also reject dogmatic reductionism. In particular I'd point to Whitehead's famous essay on the history of Science in _Science and the Modern World_, and Jonas' essay "Is God a Mathematician?" as good examples of purely philosophical rejections of reductionism that don't entail any religious dogma whatsoever.
The style of writing you use is different from mine. I make declarative statements about facts when talking about my point of view, and suggestions and conditional statements about yours. You use suggestions and conditional statements about your own point of view (as well as references to famous people who appear to share it), and declarative statements about mine.
I suspect that this is because I'm trying to understand, and you're trying to be well-rounded, which I think is a social attribute, not an intellectual one. I think this is evidence that a reductionist point of view is more likely to result in accurate understanding. I should point out that I only use the word reductionist because you used it; to me it sounds silly. It's like putting the suffix "ist" on the end of "logic" or "1+1=2" to suggest that there's a viable alternative and that the jury's still out.
There's simply no difference between, say, Wendell Berry and Pat Robertson, C.S. Lewis and Jerry Falwell, Dostoevsky and Fred Phelps.
Is this sarcasm? Maybe it's too late for me... Robertson, Falwell, and Phelps will be rightfully lost in the tides of history but C.S. Lewis and Dostoevsky had important things to say and conveyed them quite well. (I don't know Berry.)
It's just flat strange and saddening to me, to know that there are those who truly think that the Santa Clause analogy would have been devastating to St. Augustine or Tolstoy or Tolkien. That the existence of reflective intellectual Christians like Annie Dilliard, Flannery O' Connor or Walker Percy so long after Darwin is merely an anomaly to be ignored.
I am a non believer, not quite interested enough to be an "atheist", but I never paid much attention to the arguments atheists made. They seemed contrived and unnecessary. When I attended college and started meeting people from many different backgrounds, I couldn't help noticing that there are hundreds of different faiths. Which one any given person belongs to depends more on their friends, family, and geographic location than anything else. This is pretty arbitrary for something ostensibly so important and serious. So it seemed to follow that all religions must have been made up over the years.
As the years have worn on since college I've discovered that the reason I fell out of faith so easily probably had to do with how my mind worked. Like Dawkins in this respect, I had a hard time taking theology seriously. I just though it was an offshoot of history and literature but it seems people believe there is actually some philosophical credibility to it. I can actually read texts from the history of modern religion/science (like Aquinas and Lucretius) and find them interesting but modern theology I cannot digest for some reason. So it is particularly difficult for me to engage with serious theists.
That being said, I also don't read atheist texts. Seems like a waste of time. And I don't need an encyclopedia of arguments for something that seems plainly true to me.
Sorry, I wasn't saying "there's no difference", I was lamenting that there are those who think "there's no difference."
I don't disagree with pretty much anything you've said. There's a huge geographic and societal component to religion, and that seems...undemocratic? I guess it would seem more 'fair' that every individual would arrive at their worldview purely from a 'rational' standpoint devoid of influence.
But of course it doesn't work that way for any worldview religious or otherwise. It never could work that way. Even those of us who fancy we have an 'examined life' and are attempting to be intellectually honest come at these questions with an existing interpretive framework inherited from family and society. And I don't think this is any less true of atheism or agnosticism than religion.
Nevertheless we try, right? Try to be objective, try to engage questions with honesty and courage and be as reflective as we can. Both negative and positive experiences with religion influence this. What's strange is I've met a number of Chinese over the last few years who grew up under communist, atheist rule and are now disenchanted with it, and deeply curious about religion and Christianity in particular.
What does it mean? Not sure. What to do? Not sure there either. I seem to have faith, you don't. I don't know what that means. I see the world a certain way, I can't help it. I like exploring and articulating that worldview, I want to have as much integrity within it as I can, I know that there are certain points of view that I disagree with, but ultimately, to quote David Byrne -- how did I get here? That remains mysterious and pretty humbling to me.
He was trying to say, leading from the preceding sentence:
"[For dogmatic people] there's no distinction between [acclaimed artist/thinker] and [Bible-thumper/wanker]. [but there is for me]"
You might have the causation exactly backwards for friends. I've heard of cases where the causation is backwards for geography too (Mormons move to Utah, evangelicals move to Colorado, Muslims move to Dearborn).
In general, sure, faiths are correlated with original geography and race and class and what have you. That isn't, however, a well-formed argument against their ultimate truth or untruth. It might be a well-formed argument about how they spread.
Not this: "would have been devastating to St. Augustine or Tolstoy or Tolkien."
It's simplistic. And as an argument against specific dogma and teachings, it is quite effective. It's not meant to make a profound philosophical statement, it's meant to elicit exactly your response. Atheists are subjected to seemingly endless shitstorms (see: banana argument, peanut-butter argument, etc), it feels good to return the favor. Most of us know that we're never going to get through, so we might as well have fun.
Not sure I follow you. Are you saying its content is simplistic (meaning an argument that oversimplifies an issue by ignoring complexities) but rhetorically useful to get a rise out of your opponent? How is that productive? This was the point I was making: all too often the specific brand atheism that Dawkins' writing seems to inspire is more interested in tweaking fundamentalists than engaging faith as such. Hell, I love to tweak fundamentalists as much as the next guy, but where does that get us? Might as well go cow-tipping...
"Are you saying its content is simplistic (meaning an argument that oversimplifies an issue by ignoring complexities) but rhetorically useful to get a rise out of your opponent?"
Yes. Exactly.
"How is that productive?"
It's not, nor is it meant to be. It's entertainment for atheists, nothing more. You should not attempt to determine the philosophical sophistication of anyone who uses it from the fact that they are using it.
There are tons of atheists who will be willing to have level headed and informed philosophical conversations with you. I however, and many others, are not interested in such things. Dawkin's is often appreciated by both groups.
As the person who made the Santa Claus argument, I'll say that this is spot-on.
I feel like I can hold my own in a serious discussion, but it really does get tiring making the same arguments over and over again, especially to people who tend to argue logic with non-logic.
Apologies to anyone who mistakenly saw a Q.E.D. at the end of my Santa Claus story.
No, I understand it completely. He's making the mistake however of assuming that anyone using the Santa Claus argument is attempting to make a philosophical point.
Perhaps analogous to the idea that anybody using an argument in favor of faith, no matter what terminology they couch it in, is attempting to make a rational point.
This argument is getting really tired and I'm very disappointed to see it at the top of this thread. It's a lot like star wars fanatics claiming that people who have no interest in star wars have not considered the intricacies of canon with regards to who shot first, Han or Greedo, or the finer points in the psychological narrative of the prototypical journey Luke Skywalker finds himself on. It's worse, even, because at least star wars fans generally understand that their obsession is fictitious.
If you completely reject the foundation of superstition that underlies all religion by nature, what mullions they adorn their respective windows with becomes less and less interesting at the same time. This does not make you a dirty unwashed peasant not fit to breathe the same air as the fine milliners who have clothed the emperors noble brow; it just makes you someone who is aware that the emperor has no clothes.
Beautifully written. As somebody who could probably best be described as some flavor of agnosticism (I've heard my viewpoints described as Apathetic Agnosticism) I agree with many of your points about the shrillness of Atheists.
I was raised in a highly religious home and at a very early age, six or seven, found myself quickly asking questions that were not answerable by even the most educated theists in my family (I have two doctors of theology in my extended family) -- or rather were answered with what could be summarized succinctly and disappointingly as "because God says so".
I can understand the beauty that such belief can create -- and the nostalgic view of that beauty that can color ones worldview...even if in the end their deep explorations into the questions of faith is met only with more and more elaborate phrasings of "because God says so".
There is a beauty in the brilliant work and mental energies gone into constructing elaborate philosophies and edifices of the soul justifying that simple phrase.
I've found many atheists capable of enjoying that beauty on many levels, but with so many being the first generation of their ilk, have lived a life of persecution, disaffection, dissatisfaction and disappointment blended with feelings of betrayal often end up as harshly rejectionary of anything that smells like something they've already defended themselves and dismissed thousands of times every day.
Personally, as a person of math, science and engineering, I've come to the conclusion that "is there a God?" is a non-question in the same vein as "should trees take accounting classes?" and find atheist consumption with answering that question with a "NO!" to be both tiresome and wasteful, but I understand why they feel the need to answer it, and why they need to answer it in a shout.
I've never once see an Atheist imply that Phelps and Lewis should be judged equally, just as I've never even conceived of someone dismissing someone's accomplishments purely because of their faith. Likewise, I'd like to thank you for reinforcing the notion that Atheists are angry. As one who feels persecuted, I often do feel angry about it. But to assume that I'm not versed in religious, theological, or philosophical texts is irritating. Have you ever actually engaged these people you refer to, to explore if they have this depth of knowledge you seem to require them to have to have an opinion?
Are you equally scathing of the millions that vote to keep me from having rights because their preacher on Sunday that they blindly listen to, tell them I'm a filthy sinner? Ignorance is not unique to any side, and well-versed-ness is not a requirement for having an opinion. And from where I'm sitting, Robertson, Lewis, Falwell, Phelps, the Greeks, the Romans, they all make the same fundamental mistakes in logic as far as I'm concerned. Of course, I'm not going to get riled up about it unless the live half way across town and I have to see them with their signs on my drive to work twice a week.
For what it's worth, I don't even find Dawkins to be that terribly reductive. Much of his talks and writings revolve around very real, palpable, tangible and timely issues. He addresses them at high levels and reduces them and disassembles them. Also, I don't understand your first sentence at all, it seems like just another attempt to lump and dismiss atheists.
It's all anecdotal, no doubt, but the Atheists I know are FAR, FAR better versed in the Bible than the typical Christians that we come across who want to shout at us, insult us, call us names or inform us of the tortures we'll endure after we perish. Similarly, I'm shocked at the droves of people on my campus that haven't been to church in years, haven't read the Bible, are generally not good people, and can't even enumerate reasons why they cling to their faith, but happily rush out to vote for anti-gay Republicans. We can talk about the sad state of theological discussion in our society, but I see a far less intellectual "default" position in place.
From reading a couple of replies now, I'm thinking that I didn't express myself well. I respect atheists, especially ones that have taken the time to think about the world and their place in it and the nature of truth. Most atheists are engaged with the big questions and that's more than I can say for most. I probably have more in common with the average atheist, in terms of our desire to engage big questions and draw conclusions, than most of my Christian friends on that count.
I also realize in my post that I haven't adequately taken into account how persecuted most atheists probably feel. It's a problem of perception on both sides -- both feel attacked and misunderstood. But I can definitely see how an atheist in America might feel marginalized.
I respect the atheist if nothing else for the simple fact that they have the integrity to hold to a conviction, the intellectual curiosity to engage the biggest questions and then the courage to stand with that conviction in a society that doesn't tend to hold with such opinions. With such atheists I can have long discussions and good beer. Beer seems to be a recurring theme with me here...
A clarification then (the reply tree seems to halt, so I'm posting this higher up):
I run into a lot of atheists these days who've read Dawkins, Dennett, Sam Harris, maybe even Stephen Pinker, heck maybe even the whole John Brockman crew of "Brights" and so forth. And that's all, and I don't understand that. I'm no exemplar of intellectual integrity, but I'm just too curious to not read contrary points of view. I thought that was the point. When I first started questioning my own faith, I went after the best atheists I could find to read, which at the time were guys like Antony Flew, Quentin Smith Kai Nielson, Peter Singer. Then later some pretty deep reading of Russell and Ayer. On the existential side Sartre, Camus and finally the greatness of Nietzsche.
I don't find that same aggressive curiosity and charitable engagement with this generation of atheists that have latched onto the Four Horsemen, and honestly I don't find the Four Horsemen all that compelling, even at a distance. Dennett of course is the deepest intellectual of the bunch but I don't find much new there. Consciousness Explained just really, really wasn't, sorry. But that's ok -- we can debate that, I would just like to see some curious, adventurous young atheists who can read both Dawkins and someone like, say, Christopher Dawson or T.S. Eliot -- not just for the sake of debate and argument but for the understanding of the soul of a worldview that deserves at least respect and not derision.
A good argument is enough. I'm a mathematician and I have not read any of the original papers of Euler, Gauss, etc. but understand and accept their results fully. To me, philosophical and theological reasoning are not fundamental as they may be to you, because I have accepted they are an outcome of a particular brain architecture with its own tendencies and biases, itself an outcome of a more general process. This argument is convincing to me because it seems a natural progression to our realizations that humanity is not fundamental (which, coming from antiquity, is counterintuitive), and a natural extension of the shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric point of view. Understanding our reasoning capacities as the outcome of a natural physical process leads to my agreement with Dawkins's claim that any philosophical result prior to 1859 can be disregarded.
We have a limited amount of time. I was a faithful, practicing Catholic who scoffed at atheist ideas because I didn't understand them. I remember the precise position I sat while reading the God Delusion when my brain was shocked into realizing "Wait a second, I'm agreeing with this." I took a few more months to verify the ideas were sensible, and what I got was much more; a worldview with more coherence and explanatory power than anything I'd yet seen. So for me, I don't spend my time on reading further theological / atheist philosophy for the same reason I am not proofchecking Deligne's demonstration of the Weil conjectures, even though I accept and use his result.
"Understanding our reasoning capacities as the outcome of a natural physical process leads to my agreement with Dawkins's claim that any philosophical result prior to 1859 can be disregarded."
I'm sorry my friend, but...no. I'm open to a lot of ideas and directions that a discussion may take but this is just a non-starter, a laughable example of exactly the sort of benighted, willful ignorance that dooms fruitful discussion. This is the kind of statement you can only make if you haven't read philosophy written before 1859. I mean, of course, _The Origin of Species_ was a watershed to be sure, but there's certain philosophical freight even Darwin can't carry.
I think underneath this is a problem of false analogy. Philosophical insight is not the same species as math, and doesn't "build" the same way, in a scaffold of proofs and deductive confidence towards an inevitable conclusion that, once reached, can be accepted on its own terms without understanding of the prior movements.
I'd suggest reading a bit further and broaden your engagement. As a mathematician, you might appreciate Pierre Duhem's views on religion and history, Whitehead's ideas on the history of science, and in particular I'd say check out Hans Jonas' "Is God a Mathematician?". All of those pass the 1859 smell test as well, so, bonus!
Thank you for the references. I wasn't trying to debate the point, only offer one perspective on your question. To elaborate a little more, the reason why philosophy prior to 1859 is not relevant is because philosophy is the study of human thought (and the answers it produces to philosophical questions), whereas the origin of the organ which produces human thought was fundamentally misunderstood without the evolutionary framework. A good analogy here is alchemy; Darwin's results implied prior philosophy was the wrong approach as chemistry implied the confused results of alchemy, and all the latter's results were reduced to no more than historical curiosity.
As an addendum, the reason why philosophy has been unsuccessful at producing answers is because it assumes human thought or language or existence as something fundamental. As Eliezer points out, rather than ask "do we have free will?", the productive perspective is to ask "what sort of algorithm does our brain run which makes it believe such a question is meaningful or answerable?" Have you read the Less Wrong series on rationality? It's a good exposition of the thinking process of someone like me.
Certainly the attempts prior to 1859 were brave, but it was quackery. Much like Erdos's comments on the collatz conjecture, we are not yet ready for such questions (although neuroscience will get us close in the next century).
"the origin of the organ which produces human thought was fundamentally misunderstood without the evolutionary framework."
This is a concise version of the fundamental category mistake Dawkins makes. In one sentence, we've dogmatically blown past thousands of years of deep reflection on the mind/body question. It's not as if the idea that mind were reducible to matter had never been broached before, or that the Mendelian breakthrough provided some evidence that was philosophically pertinent. And Certainly Origin of Species does not put a cap on that discussion any more than Dennett's Consciousness Explained does. It's very much a live question to this day, as it was a live question when Cicero and Lucretius engaged on the very same terms.
If the mind/body problem has not been settled now (and it certainly wasn't in 1859, that's more than anyone could possibly claim) then for that reason at least no one should take Dawkins seriously on this count, and fortunately very few serious thinkers do.
"although neuroscience will get us close in the next century"
This is first-rate eschatology, more cashing out of the infinite blank check of the Future of Science (let us pray). This is dogmatism, not science, not philosophy. It's hope.
I see. Let's say we completed the study of a new field, neurophilosophy, where we learn precisely the neural mechanisms for how and why we generate the philosophical questions we do, and why we find them "interesting," and why we reason about them the way we do. I don't think that would convince anyone as to why classical philosophical arguments bear no merit. I never bought into the fundamental category division, but for the first time, I see the issue clearly. Then I am flabbergasted as how to even conceive bridging the gap, my mathematical intuition tells me it is nonsensical, and that we must throw away the non-physical category--but is that like throwing out the baby with the bathwater?
This is very tricky, and my arguments above on religion don't appeal to my last few posts on "philosophy before 1859," but we digress. Thanks for the back-and-forth!
Likewise, this is all good stuff. I think we've exhausted the dialectic limits of the HN comments section. As a parting shot I'll point you one last time to the Jonas essay, "Is God a Mathematician?" It cuts straight to the question you just broached.
> Philosophical insight is not the same species as math, and doesn't "build" the same way […]
Err, I think this one is a non-sequitur. The actual argument would be to say that science and philosophy aren't the same. But, as a believer of reductionistic materialism myself, I fully expect science to confirm or disprove nearly every philosophical insight there ever was (except maybe the moral ones, but even then, moral realism isn't far from my mind).
Of course, it's not like Darwin invalidated all prior philosophy, but it did invalidated some beliefs, like Young Earth Creationism.
So here is what I believe to be the correct phrasing: "Any philosophical result prior to the science that falsified it can be disregarded". Well, you can scrap "philosophical": it applies to any result.
"I fully expect science to confirm or disprove nearly every philosophical insight there ever was"
"Any philosophical result prior to the science that falsified it can be disregarded"
These are the non-sequiturs. Science is a sub-species of philosophy, whether you're willing to acknowledge it or not. Any reasonable survey of the history of science and its foundations must acknowledge this from an historical standpoint, and any objective examination of the ideas should quickly see Science's dependence on philosophical foundations.
I don't want to be unkind, but this is precisely the kind of historical and intellectual illiteracy I'm talking about. What you're stating here is truly dogmatic and emotive, and disconnected from anything resembling a healthy contextualization or understanding of the centuries of thinkers and writings that were poured into building the very worldview you take for granted.
You and I would have to go through some long discussion and/or remedial reading to get to the point where we could progress the argument reasonably, and I suspect you'd run out of patience and just wave your hand, make another high-handed dogmatic statement about The Sovereignty of Science and move on to something that made you less uncomfortable. I hope not, but my experience with discussions like this makes me suspect so.
I think I agree with most of what you just wrote. Now, regarding my "correct" phrasing, I did not reduce the sentence to its essence. If I do, there's not much left: "Any result that has been falsified can be disregarded", which is a near-tautology (sorry about that).
About science being a sub-specie of philosophy, well, it certainly looks like so. I am not well versed in the history of science and philosophy, but I do recall that many scientific fields either spawned from philosophy, or answer what was once philosophical questions. As for philosophical foundations, well, there's Bayes, Occam's Razor, and of course the plain old scientific methodology. We indeed don't have to look very far.
Now about my assumptions:
In a trivial sense, there's only one reality (or world, or universe). Each of us looks at it from a different window, of course, but if it weren't the "same" reality, we wouldn't be interacting at all. Now the trick is to figure out what this reality is.
Relativism is bullshit. More precisely, for any given two contradictory models of reality, at least one of them contains mistakes. Yes/no questions are even easier: the correct answer is bound to be either "yes" or "no". Not neither, not both. For instance, for any definition of "God", there is a God, or there is none.
Bayesianism is most probably the best we'll ever have to understand reality. Note that it rules out the possibility of ever forming absolutely correct answers: for any yes/no question, I am bound to qualify my answer with probabilities, and that will not match reality itself. For instance, if reality says "yes", while I say "yes with probability 90%", I am wrong. Less wrong however than "yes with probability 65%".
Reductionist materialism is very probably correct. That is, there is no such thing as an indivisible mental entity. Minds are composed of parts (like neurons), and so are love potions (if there's such a thing). In principle, anything, whether it thinks or not, can be studied and ultimately understood in non-thinking terms. It may be beyond the grasp of our mere human brains, however.
Determinism is probably correct. Given current knowledge, it means that the universe probably follows some form of the Everett branches (the Copenhagen interpretation is just crazy).
I really appreciate this answer. What you're doing here is some good philosophical reasoning, setting up an epistemological foundation for the practice of science. Popper would have something to say about your use of inductive/Bayesian reasoning as a foundation -- I think you've mixed a little Popper in here with your use of 'falsification'. If you're interested in this stuff, you might look into the problems with induction as an epistemological foundation, and how Popper attempts to solve that problem in his Objective Knowledge.
Good stuff.
As far as reductionism is concerned, my problem with it, in a nutshell, is that at its core it is dogmatic and built on core metaphysical assumptions that a reasonable person doesn't have to accept. I suggest to you that your confidence in materialism/reductionism is inherited and only seems likely and intuitive to you because most moderns are steeped in materialist metaphors and abstract confidence in reductionism and the hope for prediction and control it provides. But that hope is really based on the triumphs of Newton, not the last hundred years, as your citation of Copenhagen and String, etc., demonstrates. At the very least it must be acknowledged that physics has not progressed as it was hoped 150 years ago, and our expectations for what we eventually can and can't know are being truncated or qualified into increasingly abstract and near-poetic models. Does the boson exists? Branes, strings? Will we ever get a GUT? Those are live questions and at the very least should cause the triumphal materialist a measure of humility.
Any number of philosophers in the last 100+ years have pointed out that reductionism is not the only possible model and has never been the only possible scientific model. In the modern era, from Leibniz on we've had basic philosophical systems and metaphors that would fit very nicely into modern physics, but would require a basic inversion of our idea that at the core reality is dead matter, rather than something like rudimentary/primitive mind. Spinoza, Husserl, Whitehead, Bergson are just the biggest names that advocated some version of this.
For some reason it's very difficult for us moderns to give up the basic dogma that reality must be dead matter, or mute energy or some paradoxical balance of the two (paradox?! in science?! that's mysticism!)
Thanks for the heads up. Now about reductionism: I believe it is true because it looks like so. To me, at least. Before Darwin, Newton, and the discovery of neurons, reductionism was an incredibly hard sell. Now however, I'm quite confident about it. But should something unexpected happen, I may well change my mind (it would be hard, but not as hard as forsaking Bayesianism itself). Sure, there are some (huge) loose ends, but it still looks like there's reasonable hope. And of course, Occam's razor strongly favours reductionism, though it could still lose.
Regarding "dead matter", I'm not sure the term is useful. The wave function, which is supposed to be at the bottom of all things (according to current physics), isn't even close to what we intuitively call "dead matter". Its behaviour certainly is (conceptually) simple and deterministic, though.
I hadn't exactly Popper's falsification in mind. But even from a Bayesian perspective, most experiments that don't end up as predicted still deal huge blows to the underlying theories.
"simple and deterministic" -- I do like that better, although "dead" does indeed convey the essence here: it's not alive, it's not thinking.
Occam had prior philosophical assumptions to support the Razor of reknown, namely his metaphysical nominalism, which I reject in favor of something closer to a reformed Aristotelian formalism, which to me is far more intuitive than nominalism or reductionism.
Lastly, reductionism was actually not a hard sell at all, it had its advocates long before Darwin and in fact the advent of Darwin was really highly desired and favored by this camp. The fact that Wallace and Darwin were pursuing very similar agendas at the same time speaks to this. We had the notion of evolution and atomism since the pre-socratics, just no plausible scientific evidence to give it public political traction and philosophical (in the sense of epistemological) credibility.
So I guess I end up agreeing with you -- it was a hard public sell before Darwin, but reductionism's advocates had been around for thousands of years. Also see F.A. Lange's _History of Materialism_. That also may be of interest to you. Lange was a Kantian who had tremendous influence on other atheist thinkers, especially Nietzsche.
Hmm, I'm a bit lost by your paragraph about Occam. (I know next to nothing about the distinctions between nominalism and formalism, maybe I should check this out.) For now, I just trust the formal version of Occam's razor, based on Kolmogorov complexity (or Solomonov induction, the two are equivalent), but I don't fully understand those yet. (I should definitely check this out).
So, for now I must admit, that feels like a leap of faith. I am very confident, but my curiosity isn't satisfied yet.
Ok, let me apologize. "Laughable" and "benighted" are the kinds of uncharitable language I'm arguing against using. The charitable read of this statement would have acknowledged its substance -- the idea that after Darwin there was a 'clearing of the decks' so to speak, and to some degree that's true although not to the extent Dawkins claims. From a philosophical standpoint, certainly Teleology was seen to have been dealt a death blow, at least the kind of teleology advocated by folks like Paley, and that was a massive turn. I'm unaware of any serious philosopher or historian of ideas that would suggest it's wise to dismiss all prior developments out of hand, though. If that's not laughable, it's certainly dangerous.
I don't see why. Without mechanical tools and rudimentary physics, progress on flying machines was nil until the Wright brothers. Without better tools to study brains, there is no reason to expect we have produced any valuable answers to the sorts of "big questions" brains ask about themselves.
> A good argument is enough. I'm a mathematician and I have not read any of the original papers of Euler, Gauss, etc. but understand and accept their results fully.
Here what would answer one of my friends. He happen believe atheism is true, but more importantly, he's a literary person. So:
"To understand [such and such author]'s ideas and concepts, you have to impregnate yourself with their original thoughts. That is, you must read their original works. Secondary sources just won't do."
I tried to reply that I didn't need to read Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica to understand Newtonian physics, but he seems to think that philosophy is different. (But then, where to that "Philosophiæ" comes from? Oh yeah, he meant literary philosophy, of the kind that somehow cannot be true nor false.)
I think the root of the problem is something akin to dualism. Many people (including some atheists) postulate that between the laws of physics and the human soul, there is something that is not only unexplained (true), but actually unexplainable. In other words, "Poof Magic", though they won't ever use that ridiculous wording. So, below the "Poof Magic" threshold, we have the lowly matters that you can indeed explain. Above it, the very notion of truth is muddled.
As you may guess, "science" is placed below the threshold, and "philosophy" is placed above. The first is about facts we can check, about theories that can be improved or disproved. The second is more about schools of thought, which are neither right nor wrong, neither true nor false, they just "are" (this way, no one can claim his own school of thought is better than any other).
Another key difference between "science" and "philosophy" is the treatment of secondary sources. They can be wonderful for "science", but they are worthless for "philosophy". To understand a philosopher's ideas, you must "impregnate yourself with his thoughts", that is, read his original works. And of course you are not allowed to judge the veracity of those works.
Now here is the killer argument: theology is to be placed above the "Poof Magic" threshold. Therefore, (i) you have to read them all before you claim anything about them, and (ii) you cannot say they were false anyway, it's just a school of though, that is "by definition" no worse nor better than any other.
I have never defeated the killer argument. I need to get rid of the "Poof Magic" nonsense first, and the burden of proof is always on my shoulders. Even If I manage shake it, the real reason why people make the killer argument is because its comfortable. They can never be wrong with it, and it avoids arguments.
But, you know, if we disagree, at least one of us must be mistaken, right? Wouldn't it be interesting to know who?
Oh, no doubt. I have long ago realized that from a psychological point of view, it is purely axiomatic whether to "have faith" or not, and is primarily a factor of one's upbringing. Unlike formal systems, the brain has no need for internal logical consistency. (And it could be argued that many religious systems are internally consistent given you accept their axioms; in which case there is absolutely no hope of resolving the argument without appealing to Bayesian inference and noting that my choice of axioms is a better fit for the evidence, but this is a very subtle point to grasp. For example, read the story of Luke Muehlhauser, who read mountains of philosophy and theology and in the end was only convinced by the dissonance in historical evidence for Jesus, an implicitly Bayesian argument: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?page_id=3)
Another nice argument is by Occam's razor, that the scientific choice of axioms has less complexity and is devoid of localization, whereas systems like Catholicism have strong focus on arbitrary notions like Jerusalem or sacristy. These arbitrary notions are explained on-the-nose by evolutionary thinking (our ancestors made up stories because of their psychology), whereas they are inexplicable in Catholic thinking. (Why did Jesus choose to come alive when did? He just picked a time and place at random.) Of course, Occam's razor is only an aesthetic choice that agrees with evidence, again a Bayesian argument. It's difficult to base one's life philosophy on an aesthetic choice, so naturally a religious upbringing overwhelms.
EDIT: I should point out that the Bayesian argument is locally uncontrollable. My mother claims to have had a sensory experience--when facing doubts about divorcing my father--complete with vivid sounds and imagery, of Jesus appearing to her and telling her she must stay with him. I admit if I had such sensory evidence, the scientific axioms would be hard to swallow, and the Catholic system would be a strong contender (Bayesionally speaking). Thence stems the problem of faith.
But, you know, if we disagree, at least one of us must be mistaken, right? Wouldn't it be interesting to know who?
Chances are, both of you. Put another way, you are both right in ways you wouldn't suspect, and wrong in the same fashion. The unknown unknowns of epistemology, so to speak.
For nuanced questions, I agree. But many important questions are quite clear cut. For instance, "is there a God?", or "is there an afterlife?" hardly admit any other answer than "yes" or "no" (for any given definition of "God" and "afterlife", that is).
"Understanding our reasoning capacities as the outcome of a natural physical process leads to my agreement with Dawkins's claim that any philosophical result prior to 1859 can be disregarded"
On a side note: Of _course_ _Dawkins_ would say that, being an evolutionary biologist... :)
I guess I'm curious for more clarification on your post then. I guess I don't get the point. I feel like it would be summarized, "Lots of people like to loudly be ignorant about their beliefs". I don't disagree with that, but I don't find it uniquely or even tilted towards atheism.
Further, I still don't understand the reductive criticism on Dawkins. Again, I find much of his positioning to be directly related or relatable to very palpable issues. Even in his books, he uses real life modern and historical examples and addresses their basis in logic and their societal effects before breaking it down and discussing it in what I might call a reductive fashion.
If anything, I feel like you're looking for a philosophical discussion that Dawkins, and I would suspect many Atheists, are flatly uninterested in.
(I find myself a little surprised to see such a discussion surrounding Santa Claus. I won't purport to know how the cited individuals would reply to such a simplistic response, but I've yet to have it sufficiently answered and though it may spark a larger discussion, it's simplistic nature is a way for me to express how little initial\fundamental stock I put in the existence of either.)
In closing, yes, beer and a good theological discussion sounds nice. Most of the people who were willing to sit down with me simply refer me to a higher authority now though (they tell me that they can't answer my questions and to go ask a Preist or a Preacher, I've already been Catholic once though :P).
To me Richard Dawkins is a bit like Carl Von Clausewitz or Nietzsche. In a sense they all see their respective fields with an astonishing clarity and try to lay it all out in the open. But due to the sheer size and complexity of their work, few in their audience posses necessary sophistication to understand it completely.
Thus Dawkins spawned a legion of believers that got everything mixed up and who by applying their teaching literally, become more dogmatic than their target.
I'm sorry, but you say that you're versed in scripture?
Well, clearly you're not. You would know that we are ALL sinners and that Jesus Christ died for our sins.
You are not versed in scripture, nor do you have knowledge of what sin is.
It is one of the core beliefs of Christianity that we are all sinners and that all sins are equal in God's eyes -- just any any Christian. But in practice, most tend to treat some people as a lot more sinful than others, and to be looked down upon for that. Hitler, for example, or gay people, or the 9/11 terrorists, or swingers.
Scripture does not define typical Christian behavior; let's not conflate the two.
Well, since the concept of sin is well defined in the bible it is silly to equate it to what some silly people say it is.
>Scripture does not define typical Christian behavior; let's not conflate the two.
Exactly, thank you.
Blurring this line is exactly what irks me, if you're going to 'talk shit' about Christianity then use scripture.
Otherwise, properly define that you're simply arguing against stupid people.
Don't say you know scripture, and then use anecdotes to show it.
Sin is well defined in the bible, it doesn't matter what people think it is or what it should be.
BTW, I'm aware the author didn't make this claim directly, but this notion is what irks me.
If you ask any Christian, and indeed they know the nature of the equality of sin, then these 'common' Christians that don't follow scripture and bash people can't exist.
If that's the case, are these people you are talking about being Christian, or just being people?
I have always been a firm atheist viewing the church as "architecture and hypocrisy" but lately I try to be more open minded about other peoples beliefs. The marquee on the church down the road reads
"Freedom of the mind is the beginning of all other freedoms".
Great quote, and it reminded me that I have been too judgemental, which is what has bothered me most about religion.
>>the absolute philosophical illiteracy of so many naively confident advocates of reductionist science and the silly caricatures of faith they hold to.
(I can agree that Dawkins doesn't really have the background to do the theological/philosophical detailed arguments.)
I just note that to be religious is to make claims about the world ("reality", for some form of meaning) that is not based on reason or proof of facts.
So I really can't see a reason to take any religious belief more seriously than Son of Sam's world view.
I'd be more impressed if you weren't limited to insults for a motivation of what makes your supernatural creatures more likely to exist than the flying spaghetti monster.
The argument often centers on evolution vs creationism.
Yet Atheists and Christians would do well to pay more attention to Christ's resurrection, did it happen in history? Are there primary and secondary sources? How many of these sources are independent of each other and to what degree are they coherent, neutral, biased or opposed? How soon after the event were they written? Have they survived intact?
As the apostles themselves declared:
"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead." - 1 Corinthians 15:14-15
I must preface this comment with a personal note: Dr. Dawkins is the reason I understand biology, evolution, and all living things. I have read all of his books on evolution, including The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, and many others.
This being said, I have always been appalled by Dawkins' deeply ironic crusade against religion. The simplest explanation for the widespread phenomenon of organized religion is best described by none other than Dawkins himself: Religion is a vestigial extended phenotype.
Dawkins popularized the idea of an extended phenotype. This theory postulates that the phenotypic effects of genes are not restricted to a single organism. In effect, certain gene expressions could result in behaviours which affected the said gene's rate of survival. This is a profound theory, because it posits a very strong evolutionary foundation for human socialization and behaviour. As discussed in Robert Wright's "A Moral Animal", and Matt Ridley's "The Red Queen", among many other works, recent evidence has made Dawkins' extended phenotype theory extremely plausible.
Thus, if we are to analyse religion from the view that it is a set of behaviours which maximizes a set of genes' reproductive success, everything begins making a great deal of sense. Paradoxically, if Dawkins used his his own theories to explain the phenotypic phenomenon that is organized religion, he'd have the vast support network of evolutionary scientists around the globe who would provide endless empirical examples[1] to validate his theory. Yet, Dawkins continues to treat religion as a philosophy, and attempts to tackle it philosophically. As many philosophers have pointed out, this is not Dawkins' strong point and he comes off sounding like an extremely misinformed amateur at best, and an inflammatory pundit at worst.
Furthermore, it is the scientific explanation of religion which is likely to be the most useful and profound, and as Ridley, Wright, and many others have demonstrated, what we can learn from these insights are far more pertinent to the human condition than Dawkins' misplaced philosophical crusade.
I sincerely hope Dr. Dawkins sees the unbelievable irony in his approach, and addresses it promptly. As one of the most popular scientists in media today, he could reverse a great deal of enmity that various religious groups have developed towards scientists and the scientific community. Scientific illiteracy is the greatest enemy of our time, and I do believe Dawkins is making the issue much worse by inflaming the public with his misinformed rhetoric.
Science has explained every natural phenomena known to man, and its explanatory power is only growing as we gather new empirical evidence. There is a growing body of research which demonstrates that all human behaviour is guided by a deep evolutionary purpose. This is especially true of religious behaviours which are widespread and have severe fitness costs. Religious behaviours are thus best understood as a vestigial extended phenotype, and not as an ontological philosophy.
If Dawkins is aware of my points, his approach does not seem logical. The God Delusion approaches religion as a broken philosophy or a disease of the mind, not as an evolutionary phenomenon.
He does not quote any of the plethora of papers written on this subject, such as can be found here:
A scientific approach to religious behaviour would not invoke philosophical arguments such as NOMA, or dismissive arguments such as labelling behaviours practised by the majority of the human species as a "mass delusion".
It isn't. In terms of Eliezer-style rationality, a much more effective approach would be to study marketing and psychology techniques and take a more calculated approach to changing minds. But I think Dawkins is disinterested in this because of its artificial (albeit highly effective) nature, and would rather speak raw truth. For him, the goal is to get the scientific viewpoint out to as many people as possible, not change their minds. He would ideally like for them to realize on their own that the scientific viewpoint is more cogent. He knows there are more effective means, but perhaps it offends his notion of purity. I suppose that is ironic.
As pointed out by others, Dawkins does consider the evolutionary mechanisms behind evolution. In The God Delusion he offers additional possible mechanisms to the one you mention. But Dawkins' goal is not to understand the mechanism by which religion came about. Rather, it is to show people that religion is both wrong and harmful.
You see, even if you find the spot in the brain that causes people to believe in God (if such a thing exists), it will not convince anyone that there is no God. The believers will simply say that God put it there. If you want to convince, logically, that there is no God, you have to do so at a philosophical level like Dawkins does. Having said that, I think it that there are more effective ways to achieve this goal than to ram people with the truth head-on like Dawkins does.
This is akin to saying that human sexuality is wrong and harmful, or male competition is wrong and harmful.
It is taking a purely evolutionary phenomenon and assigning it a nebulous moral value. Religious behaviour is a direct result of natural selection. Comparable phenomena include homosexuality and extra-marital pairing. As scientists, we cannot make value judgements on these natural phenomena. If we do so, we must clearly leave the realm of science and enter the realm of advocacy.
This is akin to saying that human sexuality is wrong and harmful, or male competition is wrong and harmful.
logical falacy: is != ought
As scientists, we cannot make value judgements on these natural phenomena.
The evolutionary explanations for the origin of religious behaviour is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether the claims made by religions are true. Religions make testable claims like the existence of miracles, science can be applied to these claims. More broadly, Dawkins uses a scientific approach to make a very strong argument that religions are not accurate descriptions of reality.
Religion is wrong in the sense that it is based on incorrect assumptions, namely that God exists. This is not a moral statement. Whether or not it is harmful is to be decided by the evidence (many terrorists are religiously-motivated etc.), and I agree this point is harder to establish, because religion also brings comfort and so on. Anyway for Dawkins this issue seems secondary to the first one.
As for your second paragraph, but of course this is advocacy! Dawkins is not acting as a scientist here, I think this much is clear. He is an advocate who draws on his scientific knowledge and his rational philosophy to make his case.
"Yet, Dawkins continues to treat religion as a philosophy, and attempts to tackle it philosophically. As many philosophers have pointed out, this is not Dawkins' strong point and he comes off sounding like an extremely misinformed amateur at best, and an inflammatory pundit at worst."
I've heard this before but I don't know much about religion or philosophy so to me Dawkins usually seems to make sense. Can you explain why you think he comes off as an amateur?
Fair enough point. Both sides tend to exaggerate their own martyrdom. Atheists are treated appallingly in many quarters of society, and for that the anger is understandable. And if you're referring to my post (re: dismissing atheism) then I didn't express well enough that I was discouraged about the kind of atheism I run into all too often, that seems either angry or merely out to tweak and provoke rather than discuss. I have tremendous respect for many strands of atheism. Nietzsche had a staggering integrity, his writing still amazes me. I have had many great conversations over many good beers with thoughtful atheists. I don't dismiss it -- I want to understand it mostly. I don't 'get' atheism the same way they don't 'get' me, but that's ok. Bar's still open and we can keep talkin. That's the kind of discussion I was trying to advocate.
Would this "bashing" be tolerated against any group other than Christians?
The 'intellectual fight' for 'enlightenment' is the thin veneer the anticlerical Jacobins lay on their murderous ideology. Loot the Church, rape the nuns, kill the christians - started here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e, repeated too many times in many places over the last couple of centuries.
And when their legitimate heirs Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot murder a few score million people, these Jacobins start talking about the "crimes of the Inquisition".
> Would this "bashing" be tolerated against any group other than Christians?
Yes..A lot of groups are more tolerant than Christians(on average)...but if you assume that the only 'groups' that exist are Abrahamic religions only then your hypothesis would be true.
Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China: all examples of states who have exemplified Dawkin's anti-religious secularization and education in the utmost extreme. Thought-policing and religious intolerance have always lead to the massacre of countless thousands.
This isn't reddit, this isn't related to programming or even computers.
Yes, I'm Christian and I find this guy annoying.
As a programmer though, I couldn't care less about him.
Hacker is a state of mind, a kind of deep curiosity about how things work and what I can do about it. This topic, therefore, is about the ultimate hack...why are we here, how does the world work and what can I do about it?
this isnt the programming subreddit either....nowhere has it been ruled that Hacker News discussions will strictly be programming related....I understand that this annoys you but please dont be dogmatic!
I can't stand Richard Dawkins.
I know that there's some dangerous ideas put out there by fundamentalists, but for the most part, if they stick to themselves and are generally good people who don't interfere with others then I don't really care what they believe.
Not necessarily this article, but generally, and especially listening to him talk live (radio, conferences etc) Richard Dawkins is arrogant and pig headed. It's kind of ironic that by dedicating his life to setting them straight, Dawkins has become as much of a fundamentalist evangelist as the religious fundamentalists he spends his time mocking.