Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Book review: Andrew Brown on Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”

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No friend to religion, Andrew Brown nonetheless says that Richard Dawkins’s “incurious and rambling” diatribe against religion “doesn’t come close to explaining how faith has survived the assault of Darwinism, opening with

It has been obvious for years that Richard Dawkins had a fat book on religion in him, but who would have thought him capable of writing one this bad? Incurious, dogmatic, rambling and self-contradictory, it has none of the style or verve of his earlier works.

It gets better from there – or worse, I guess, if you bought The God Delusion. Which reminds me to come to the point of this blog: When was the last time Dawkins had an original idea in biology? I don’t mean an idea that works. Hey, I’m not that fussy. I just mean an original idea. Why is he always writing trash about religion now?

Oh, and here is Dawkins’ own comment on his book.

Plus (!) here is further comment from Andrew Brown:

I have just finished reviewing Richard Dawkins’ new book on God for someone else and spent a sleepless night wondering if I should really have been so cruel about it. It’s rubbish, of course; but why say so? What is it about the jeering, smug atheism so well represented on the internet, as well as in Dawkins’ books, that makes me so very angry? Perhaps this is a rage at heresy, since in lots of ways I think he’s right, and our disagreements ought to be quite trivial. But the more I think of them, the more serious they become.

Brown – to his credit – realizes that a book is a bomb if he feels forced to say nice things about it.

Comments
Carlos, Likewise, assertions that belong to our best contemporary cosmological theories are assertions in which matter arose through a process in which God played no significant role. They have no idea where anything came from, how such a process could come from nothing, or be self caused, or exist eternally. They simply do not address it. They are pretending. And assertions that affirm the reality and power of God are statements that belong to some of our religious traditions. They too, had better be more than fantasy. What I resist is the thought that cosmological theories and religious traditions must be rendered consistent with each other. Of course they must be consistent - if they are true! If they are fantasy, why then anything goes. Look, I think you have a problem understanding that while we humans may not be able to pin down the truth, that it does exist. The extent to which they do not coincide is the extent to which they have ERROR. But again, religious traditions - that involves a lot of stories and tales. I'm talking about bare spiritual truths. Any theistic evolutionist worth his or her salt would be able to respond that what looks like randomness to us would not necessarily be randomness from the divine perspective. I've heard it before. Yet why the frequent insistence that the whole point to understand about evolution is that it is a goal-less process? And if you concede that the process only looks random but is divinely guided then we may as well all shake hands and go find some other topic to spend time on. I’m not entirely comfortable with the theology of divine plan — it’s too controlling, The choice need not be between total predictability and total chaos. I don’t see a need to reconcile sacred history with cosmic history. I regard that need as the result of the Thomistic marriage-of-convenience betwween Scripture and Aristotle — but that marriage has been, from the perspective informed not only by 21st century science but the rest of 21st-century culture, annulled. What Tom? Hopefully not Aquinas. I have no respect for his opinions. But how has it been annulled? Carlos, how did the universe get here and why was it suitable for life forms to evolve? And if there is redemption, what gets redeemed? And if it is a soul that gets redeemed, then what is a soul? Was God surprised by the results of evolution? If he was awaiting the arisal of a worthy creature somewhere, can we really be talking about random, undirected processes? But even that story, the emergence of the idea of sacred history, belongs to the cultural evolution of the species, not its biological evolution. How odd! How very odd! How can we have evolved culture and language without our biology? It is all built upon the physical foundations of our brains, nervous systems, and, for that matter, our larynx and pharynx. I think you should read Denton. What do you mean by discontinuities? I wanted to speak of “wholeness” here because the whole is incomprehensible. It encompasses without being encompassable. The notion of infinitiy uses to carry the weight of the same thought, but that was before Dedekind and Cantor. They showed us to conceive of infinite sets very precisely; the notion of infinity can no longer carry the sense of the incomprehensible. I'm not familiar with them. I'd like to know what they said. But you do get the idea I tried to convey. This may seem to remove God from the world altogether, but I have no trouble with that. It is part of the Jewish tradition that God is not part of the world. The Biblical narrative is the narrative of God’s increasing distance from humanity. This is utterly different from all the truth I have discovered. It is the real source of your worldview versus mine. In my view, redemption consists of nothing other than the increasing realization of the presence of God, the reality of God. Wouldn't Spinoza agree with me? I feel things are close to needing to relocate, perhaps to Alan's blog, altho I couldn't find it via google. As to God's increasing distance, I am intrigued by Zecharia Sitchin's thesis re the aliens who made us in their genetic image and who ruled the world and all its early civilizations for thousands of years, eventually intermarrying and producing demigods to whom they handed over kingship. All of them had the same marriages with half-sisters, as did Abraham, to try to preserve the 'divine' lineage, and regarded their kings as being divine or half-divine, and having divine rights to kingship - all of which was completely literal. This was not confusing to people at the time, but with increased distance of time has confused humanity by interfering with our true spiritual understanding. It has left us with an anthropomorphised version of a rather petty and human-like God and all the many gods of the ancients, none of whom were the true God of the universe. The reason there were such unlikely face-to-face conversations and interest in particular battles and so forth is because those beings -whether in the Old Testament or the Greek myths, were beings rather like us and not anything like the God of this universe. Those things just don't happen any more because the gods have gone. In the early 21st century I find it hard not to feel that God is very remote from the world. God never goes anywhere. It is all about awareness. It is our awareness that is remote from sensing God. The distance we need to travel is infinitesimal - as far as a change of heart. The new Dark Age will not be the end of sacred history, but it could be a very long interruption. Yet many people think we are on the brink of an awakening. It seems to me that I see a lot of disturbing trends, but I also see many positive ones, so it looks like the good and the evil are both increasing - toward what conclusion I don't know! Last week I found a courageous book written by a woman Muslim calling for reformation. I have almost enough faith to believe that even now that situation can change, and it could lie within the capacity of human beings to change it, if we had the courage. I do not mean to say that human will alone could usher in the messianc age, but that we could begin to create a world in which our children or children’s children would be worthy of the messiah, and so worthy of redemption, and in that redemption, we too would be redeemed. There is one hope, one messiah and one redemption - that is the Holy Spirit, which is compatible with all religions. But a person could be an oracle, too. In looking back over this post, I see that it begins with an intellectual/philosophical voice and that by the end, it has shifted to more heartfelt, more personal voice. Perhaps this reflects a deep divide within me, but it is not a divide that I am interested in overcoming. That divide is part of what makes me who I am. By all means, you are divided enough, no need to increase it.avocationist
September 27, 2006
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But the Enlightenment had its dark side from which Fascist and Communist dictatorships were to arise
Before I go off on a tear, I have to ask: do you really believe that fascist and communist dictatorships were caused by the Enlightenment?Carl Sachs
September 27, 2006
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But Carl, that a statement is ambiguous apart from its larger context as an analogy for demarcationism . . . clever . . . but it’s apparent that the real crux of your heartfelt prose is Darwinism. If I thought (as you do) that there were good scientific grounds for accepting Darwinism then I too would be seeking a new “Guide for the Perplexed” and complex philosophical reasons not to chuck a 3500 year old Covenant. There are, of course, Orthodox Jews who reject Darwin, but sadly the bulk of the Tribe—just like Catholics—have found ways to assimilate to the new religion. Here I think the historic reason is quite different for the Roman Church (deeply embarrassed by Galileo) and the people so long ghettoized and persecuted by the Supersessionist Church. The latter found liberation in the secular Enlightenment, and the ingrained fear of a return to Christian dominance is still real and justified (see predition by Jonathan Tobinhttp://www.jewishworldreview.com/0906/tobin092606.php3). But the Enlightenment had its dark side from which Fascist and Communist dictatorships were to arise, and which Herzl foresaw, and whose efforts a fringe of Christendom supported (see David Broghttp://www.amazon.com/Standing-Israel-David-Brog/dp/1591859069/sr=8-1/qid=1159376322/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4948383-5464867?ie=UTF8&s=books). What we don’t need are Jews converting to Christianity—far better would be recovering their own heritage and thence speak truth to power—to the secular power whose “universal acid” threatens us all.Rude
September 27, 2006
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In response to 44 and 45: I'm not a "determinist" about physical systems, if determinism implies predictability. Complex systems can be intelligible without being predictable. Determinism was a metaphysical fantasy induced by overdoses of the mechanistic world-picture. What I'm defending is a differrent critter altogether.
no number of induced mutations has been shown to cause creative evolution of novel species, cell types, tissue types, organs, or body plans.
Really? What about Hox genes?
Intelligent agency, even if not demonstrated as a requirement, is at least as worthy of considered possibility as the undemonstrated chance hypothesis offered by NDE.
Not so fast. This loosens the restrictions on what scientists should entertain to an unreasonable degree. By this standard, the Norse myths and the sci-fi Progenitors should be considered legitimate hypotheses as well. As is the possibility that the entire universe was sneezed out of the right nostril of Hassilfasseilgorm, the transdimensional unicorn. The FSM was just the beginning of "considered possibilities"; it's open season! On the other hand, if you want to consider what is more probable, then one has to sit down and think about probabilities.Carl Sachs
September 27, 2006
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NDE explanation of creative evolution: an unknown number of unpredictable mutations caused life to first emerge then diversify into everything from bacteria to babboons. ID explanation of creative evolution: because life is so complex even at the simplest observed level, knowledge of said complexity lacking when NDE was constructed, we cannot accept the continued axiomatic extrapolation of micro to macro evolution as settled science. Intelligent agency, even if not demonstrated as a requirement, is at least as worthy of considered possibility as the undemonstrated chance hypothesis offered by NDE. In other words, ID of the gaps is at least on an equal footing with Darwin of the gaps, and should not therefore be legally or scientifically excluded from any discussion anywhere regarding the causes of creative evolution.DaveScot
September 27, 2006
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Carl Random means no more or less than "unpredictable" . To say more requires knowledge that the universe is not deterministic which is knowledge we don't have. Everything in physics above the quantum level tells us that the universe is deterministic and even if the quantum level is causally connected to the macroscopic QM interpretations of uncertainty are not settled science. Therefore, truth in advertising demands that Random Mutation + Natural Selection be recoined as Unpredictable Mutation + Natural Selection. The notion that natural selection can work to sort beneficial unpredictable mutations from the unbeneficial is a testable hypothesis. We can induce any number of unpredictable mutations by various means including insertion of randomly modified genes, mutagenic chemicals, and mutagenic radiation. We can then observe the percentage of unpredictable mutations which cause a beneficial change in a natural environment. Further compounding this problem of determining natural selection's ability to drive evolutionary change is that no number of induced mutations has been shown to cause creative evolution of novel species, cell types, tissue types, organs, or body plans. The notion that unpredicatable mutations filtered by natural selection can cause creative (macro) evolution is huge and evidence-deficient extrapolation from tiny changes to large changes. A similar extrapolation would be saying that because we can pile of rocks hundreds of meters into the air we can pile them all the way to the moon. Some extrapolations are simply not credible and demand demonstration before they can be believed. One can attack the argument that you can't pile rocks all the way to the moon as an argument from incredulity but that doesn't make the argument wrong. Incredible hypotheses demand demonstration.DaveScot
September 27, 2006
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I used to support the aquatic ape theory myself, but it was more plausible before we found hominid skeletal fragments from before 3.5 million years ago in prehistoric savannah environments. Still, one has to give the aquatic ape people credit for not letting a few inconvenient facts get in the way of a good theory.
if there is a God then matter comes from God and is not therefore a separate domain. If there is a God then consciousness is greater than matter, in the sense of being more primal. If there is a God the deck is stacked. If there is a God and we find amazing success of the universe, the two are not unrelated.
Now that some of my thoughts are on the table, I'm more comfortable addressing this problem explicitly. Consider these two sentences: "Hamlet did not exist" and "Hamlet does exist." Looks like a contradiction, right? But all one need point out is that the first utterance asserts that there was no actual person who did what the literary character did. The second utterance asserts that there is such a literary character. The two utterances, put in context, are not contradictory, so much as they speak right past each other. Likewise, assertions that belong to our best contemporary cosmological theories are assertions in which matter arose through a process in which God played no significant role. And assertions that affirm the reality and power of God are statements that belong to some of our religious traditions. What I resist is the thought that cosmological theories and religious traditions must be rendered consistent with each other. And I resist that thought because I don't regard them as inconsistent with each other.
This is why I think theistic evolution is incoherent - not because there couldn’t be an evolutionary type of setup with even some randomness thrown in, but because we can never speak of random and goal-less processes.
Any theistic evolutionist worth his or her salt would be able to respond that what looks like randomness to us would not necessarily be randomness from the divine perspective. In any event, it is not clear to me that a theologian or person of faith must insist that humanity, on Earth, must have been part of the divine plan. One might only need to maintain that God required only that there be come into existence, somewhere in the universe, a creature worthy of His revealing Himself to them. That creature happend to be us, but it didn't have to be -- no more than the fusion of my father's sperm and mother's egg had to be me. I'm not entirely comfortable with the theology of divine plan -- it's too controlling, it doesn't fit with my image of God. Although I do accept that there is revelation, and that there is redemption, these are elements in "sacred history." I don't see a need to reconcile sacred history with cosmic history. I regard that need as the result of the Thomistic marriage-of-convenience betwween Scripture and Aristotle -- but that marriage has been, from the perspective informed not only by 21st century science but the rest of 21st-century culture, annulled. I know that I've come across as a theistic evolutionist, but this was a bit of deception on my part. A theistic evolutionist maintains that sacred history and cosmic history can be reconciled without giving up on "neo-Darwinian" evolution. An atheistic evolutionist sees no need for sacred history at all, and an intelligent design supporter holds that sacred history and cosmic history can be reconciled only if one gives up on "neo-Darwinian" evolution. I don't fall into any of these camps, because, while I accept the importance of both cosmic history and sacred history, and the central role of neo-Darwinian evolutionary narratives in cosmic history, I don't see any need to reconcile the two. At most I feel the pressure to show how evolutionary processes could have led to the emergence of an organism capable of conceiving of sacred history. But even that story, the emergence of the idea of sacred history, belongs to the cultural evolution of the species, not its biological evolution. So all I need to is tell a story about how a species evolved, through biological means, which was capable of a new kind of evolution, of cultural evolution. That's the kind of story which would allow us to get from the apes to the Enlightenment with the fewest discontinuities.
It is interesting that you speak of religion in terms of wholeness, since God, I think, must be infinite.
I wanted to speak of "wholeness" here because the whole is incomprehensible. It encompasses without being encompassable. The notion of infinitiy uses to carry the weight of the same thought, but that was before Dedekind and Cantor. They showed us to conceive of infinite sets very precisely; the notion of infinity can no longer carry the sense of the incomprehensible.
What did you think this means- God is One.
First and foremost, for me, it is an expression of religious identity, since it is part of the Shema. And in that context it also recalls to me of the historical vocation of the Jews. And since it is one of the few prayers in Hebrew that I know, I find the sound of it emotionally comforting. Taken as a metaphysical rather than religious utterance, I interpret "God is One" to direct one's awareness towards transcendence. The immanent world is the world of utter multiplicity -- there is no ultimate unity. Unity and transcendence belong together, as notions that point towards what is on the other side of everyday experience, and so enable a transfiguration of that experience. This may seem to remove God from the world altogether, but I have no trouble with that. It is part of the Jewish tradition that God is not part of the world. The Biblical narrative is the narrative of God's increasing distance from humanity. (Things are different in the so-called "New" Testament.) In the early 21st century I find it hard not to feel that God is very remote from the world. This is not because of Darwin, Watson and Crick, Einstein and Oppenheimer. but because of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam, and our collective refusal, or inability, to recognize that we stand on the precipice of a new Dark Age. The new Dark Age will not be the end of sacred history, but it could be a very long interruption. I have almost enough faith to believe that even now that situation can change, and it could lie within the capacity of human beings to change it, if we had the courage. I do not mean to say that human will alone could usher in the messianc age, but that we could begin to create a world in which our children or children's children would be worthy of the messiah, and so worthy of redemption, and in that redemption, we too would be redeemed. In looking back over this post, I see that it begins with an intellectual/philosophical voice and that by the end, it has shifted to more heartfelt, more personal voice. Perhaps this reflects a deep divide within me, but it is not a divide that I am interested in overcoming. That divide is part of what makes me who I am.Carl Sachs
September 27, 2006
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Carlos, Speaking of the savannah, if I did believe in evolution I would go for Elaine Morgan's aquatic ape theory. So I read about half of Gould's essay. He says, The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, But that is precisely what I disagree with. There are not two domains. And he goes on to say that Pope Pius said Catholics may believe evolution so long as they believe that God as some point infused a soul and the divine creation. But if so, we are in a completely different ball game. This is what I keep coming back to: if there is a God then matter comes from God and is not therefore a separate domain. If there is a God then consciousness is greater than matter, in the sense of being more primal. If there is a God the deck is stacked. If there is a God and we find amazing success of the universe, the two are not unrelated. This is why I think theistic evolution is incoherent - not because there couldn't be an evolutionary type of setup with even some randomness thrown in, but because we can never speak of random and goal-less processes. It is interesting that you speak of religion in terms of wholeness, since God, I think, must be infinite. The whole is made up of the parts, nether exists without the other. The particular and the whole reflect each other. What did you think this means- God is One.avocationist
September 26, 2006
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Well, please elaborate a little on the roughly Darwinian origin of the spiritual brain. And quit running from my questions. You’ve got till midnight.
How I fail to obey an ultimatum like this one? I'm not sure what to make of "the spiritual brain," so I won't use this term. Instead, I'll use my own. I'll take as my point of departure Iris Murdoch's writings on Plato. (Murdoch is among the very best at making Plato come alive; her Plato is a Plato who speaks to the concerns of demythologizing religion in the wake of Freud and Marx. I find it very curious that she does not talk about Darwin.) Murdoch shows us a Plato who is concerned for the whole, who is in love with the whole, with wholeness. But he also struggles to say what the whole is; he scorns the old myths, and has no new ones to put in its place. I find it compelling to talk about religion as a love of the whole, or of wholeness -- of one's relation to the whole. I don't know how helpful to talk of gods or God -- in fact I think it can be a terrible distraction to talk about these things, as if they were objects whose existence can be discussed as if they were ordinary objects. (Whatever an "ordinary object" is.) Religion is a mode of experience in which one's attention is re-oriented away from the local and contingent to the whole and necessary. But Murdoch is also right to say that this re-orientation occurs through a deepening of our involvement with the particular, through a deepening of our love. And this love changes us, too; it can make us better, it can make us more virtuous, and more just. Through falling in love with the particular we are pulled out of the orbit of narcisstic fantasy -- and we find ourselves standing face to face with parts of ourselves, and of others, and of the world, which had been unknown and unsuspected. At the same time, I have no trepidation about talking about how a sense of the whole, and a love for the whole, can be seen as adaptations on the part of a certain species of hominid -- of what David Pilbeam once called "a rather odd African ape" -- that is, us. When I toss a discarded wine cork around the apartment, my cats Franz and Sophie are able to track it with superb accuracy. They are able to pinpoint its location based on sighted trajectory, the sounds made when it hits the walls, and the sound it makes when it lands. In doing this, clever little beasts that they are, they are building models in their minds. The models allow them to predict the cork's location. We do the same sort of thing, but our models are massively more complicated than theirs. This is partly because each individual brain is huge, but it partly because we have a technology which allows us to coordinate the processing capacity of individual brains into a sort of "super-brain." This technology is language. And partly because of language, we can build huge models -- models that are so complicated that they not only model particular, local situations (where the caribou will graze next, which hunters will challenge the chieftain) but also models of the whole -- of everything. And these models too become more complex from one generation to the next, as storytellers and shamans learn from the previous generations and add their own wisdom. Humans are able to construct models which refer to themselves, models which are maps of the whole, that indicate where one is situated within the whole. That is the story of myth, but it is the story of metaphysics, and of religion, and of literature and art and science. It is a story that began hundreds of thousands of years ago, and that is already being begun again whenever a child learns her first words. One of the reasons why I see no conflict between science and religion -- or no serious, real conflict, though there's hype and more to spare -- is because science is an extension of ordinary, daily cognition -- cognition of the local and contingent situation. It is concerned with finding the particular solution to a particular problem. It is a more precise and constrained form of that inquiry that is at work in hunting, gathering, and farming. Religion is concerned with the whole -- and the whole cannot be conceptualized, it cannot be said literally -- but one can speak of it symbolically or allegorically, one can construct images, tell stories, and direct one to an awareness of the numinous. Whether the numinous "really exists" independent of this awareness is not a question that I find helpful to ask, because I cannot understand what sort of inquiry could help us answer it. To some extent, I'll confess, I like Gould's "NOMA" (NOnoverlapping MAgisteria). Many people of faith dislike it because it seems to grant to religion only the crumbs left behind by science, and many hard-nosed empiricists don't like it because it grants too much importance to religion. (One can't make everyone happy, alas.) I like NOMA, because it shows that science and religion answer to different needs in human life -- the need for problem-solving in specific situations, and the need for a sense of the whole. Both needs began on the Pleistocene savannah with the earliest cognitive models formed by our proto-linguistic, tool-chopping hominid ancestors, and we can see ourselves as standing at the recent link in an ancient chain. Richard Rorty wrote that being a good Darwinian means that one wants "to introduce as few discontinuities as possible into the story of how we got from the apes to the Enlightenment" (in "Is Truth a Goal of Inquiry?" in Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers Vol. 3). I am a good Darwinian in this sense, but the Platonic story that Murdoch tells is part of the Darwinian story. And that's how I fit the round peg into the square hole.Carl Sachs
September 26, 2006
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avocationist: "My own conceptual capacity gives way when I contemplate that anything exists at all. If I weren’t here, I’d never believe it!" Heh, heh, well put. That's also one on my list of Mind Jamming Koens That Don't Fit into Any Conception of Reality. The first one, of course, is consciousness itself. But Existence (of anything) is a doozy. I'm glad there are others out there like me.mike1962
September 26, 2006
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Carlos, I'm well prepared to grant animals have nearly all human experiences in more rudimentary form. I think dogs, particularly, can be seen to enter a kind of reverie. When it comes to cognitive abilities, the difference between animals and humans may be quantitative, yet the the quantity of human intelligence so far exceeds animals as to make it qualitative. I'd say there are a variety of noetic, mystical, sublime experiences. My own conceptual capacity gives way when I contemplate that anything exists at all. If I weren't here, I'd never believe it! I thiknwe are just scratching the surface now of how the brain experiences the 'spiritual' and I await further developments. Well, please elaborate a little on the roughly Darwinian origin of the spiritual brain. And quit running from my questions. You've got till midnight.avocationist
September 26, 2006
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if we assume that animals do not really have such experiences. It is one of my prejudices that the mystical experience is what Kant called "the sublime." In encountering the sublime, one experiences an unknown and unknowable something that exceeds and overwhelms all of one's cognitive powers. It is, as Otto calls it, something mysterium tremendum et fascinans. My cat, Franz, once experienced something like this. He was watching water go down the drain, and was amazed. It seemed to me -- and yes, I'm anthropomorphizing, but so what? -- that he was asking, "but where does it GO?" He was seeing something that he was unable to fully comprehend. It was overwhelming. I think of human mystical experiences as being like that -- moments of awareness in which our conceptual capacities are overwhelmed, and we stand before something that cannot be comprehended -- although it can be named. (This is why I find the Jewish name "Ha-Shem," "The Name," to be theologically powerful -- it is a way of drawing our attention to the point at which our conceptual capacities give way.) But I have no trouble holding onto this while at the same time accepting a roughly Darwinian story about the origins of those conceptual capacities. Maybe I should have trouble?Carl Sachs
September 26, 2006
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John Singleton, "I suspect Dawkins would probably say something along the lines that such transformations are common to all religions and spiritual practices, and not the unique claim of Christianity. And personally I would agree with this — just because a person’s live is transformed by a particular religious belief is not really evidence of anything, given how common this is to all of the religious traditions. Rather it points to a common psychological experience." But then the theist turns around and says, yes - it's a strange, powerful benefit of religion. It does not prove Christianity (or any other religion) true to have someone's life transformed drastically by the faith, even if it's for the better. At the same time, explaining that it's psychological doesn't do a good job of.. well, explaining it. The theist sees this as proof that our brains are 'hardwired for God', and that it's indicative of higher power that religion and faith grants people such things. The skeptic is skeptical. The difference with Dawkins is he'd rather have these 'common psychological experiences' considered insanity, possibly indicating a need for psychiatric intervention or medication. Certainly we can't allow children to grow up around such an influence.nullasalus
September 26, 2006
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Anyway, it seems unlikelythat the ability to have spiritual experienceis vestigal, rather than incipient, if we assume that animals do not really have such experiences.avocationist
September 26, 2006
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Scott said: "How does the Dawkinian Darwinist explain the radical transformation that the person of Jesus has made and continues to make in my life and the lives of countless others I know? Transformation that I could never (though I tried) muster up myself." I suspect Dawkins would probably say something along the lines that such transformations are common to all religions and spiritual practices, and not the unique claim of Christianity. And personally I would agree with this -- just because a person's live is transformed by a particular religious belief is not really evidence of anything, given how common this is to all of the religious traditions. Rather it points to a common psychological experience.John Singleton
September 26, 2006
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Oh, that 'You might be a fundie athiest if...' is wonderful. I've met people like that and even been on the wrong end of some of the arguments. My personal farorites are: 'You believe that Christianity discriminates, because you have to join their religion in order to be a member of their religion. ' and 'You're convinced that all Christians are idiots. But when you meet the "rare" Christian who's clearly intelligent, you can only conclude that he was fooled into believing...by the idiots. ' Possibly I should suggest an entry: 'When someone says to you "So you belive the Bible is untrue because there is clearly no God, and there is clearly no God because the Bible is patently false?" you say "Yeah, so?".' I actually had this happen once.StephenA
September 25, 2006
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I wonder who Dawkins would be willing to debate in public.mike1962
September 25, 2006
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Ekstasis, So we must ask the question, if voodoo does not bring results, than why do so many people around the world over so many thousands of years spend so much time doing it? Of course, as mentioned above in many places, one possibility would be that we are hard-wired through natural selection and adaptation to do something that currently yields few visible material results. Or, just maybe, people do it because it is real and it works!! People are changed, and others close to them are changed. And to pass it off as merely psychological seems a bit of a stretch.beervolcano2
September 25, 2006
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Maybe God is dealing with Dawkins. I've seen a few in my life who turned extremely hostile toward Christianity right before they turn to God.Smidlee
September 25, 2006
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How does the Dawkinian Darwinist explain the radical transformation that the person of Jesus has made and continues to make in my life and the lives of countless others I know? Transformation that I could never (though I tried) muster up myself. Oooops, did I say that out loud? So sorry. ;)Scott
September 25, 2006
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But Dawkins is good for ID because he sees religion as a harmful “meme” and has no patience with this nonsense of “theistic evolution”. Anything that embarrasses the nice folks who think they can have their Darwin and their deity too I’m all for.Rude
September 25, 2006
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I truly enjoy a lot of Dawkins' writing on science (despite problems with ME THINKS etc. analogy already being known in advance, and other issues) for his biological insights which he does have. I learned a lot of about animals and DNA-stuff I never knew before from Dawkins. With that said, however, it is the responsibility of every critical thinker to be honest and even critique, harshly, personalities in the organized skeptical movement when they themselves stray from the rational path. I think Dawkins frankly becomes lost when he ventures into the topic of religion. Putting his obvious smugness behind, via his constant criticism and viewing religion as a thing of the past, a holdover from times where we were more irrational, or focusing on some religious people doing bad things but ignoring the good things, or it being a delusion, sickness, the people wicked, crazy, etc., he constantly overlooks the possible evolutionary advantages from religion, something which is found and thriving in every culture past and present (which would hint that it is not merely vestigal!), which is very disappointing from such a great thinker. It is a fact that Dawkins (or anybody) can 'debunk' static god(s) as people have written about them on paper, but he cannot 'debunk' the *general notion* of god(s) existing anywhere/time in the universe, since he hasn't surveyed all of space and time. He can only say he is very very very very very sure, etc., of his belief. If he is claiming to be 100% sure, presenting his belief as a fact, then he'd have to survey all of space/time, and he would have to be god, thus disproving his own hypothesis. Despite his great science, when he ventures into religion, he quite possibly becomes the world's only Professor of the Public Understanding of Science and something like a Professor of the Public Misunderstanding of Religion.jzs
September 25, 2006
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A bit offtopic, here's a sometimes funny (and occasionally insightful) list: You Might be a Fundamentalist Atheist If.... It's from a Christian apologist.Jaz
September 25, 2006
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The two points of this blog entry are : to ask when Dawkins last had an original idea; to introduce Brown's review and to compare atheists to screaming toddlers. I'll come in again. :-)steveh
September 25, 2006
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"Back to Andrew Brown’s comment 'The results of intercessory prayer are indistinguishable from those of chance. '" Ekstasis, it seems that whoever did this study started off on completely the wrong foot. Prayer is not a "system for getting stuff", but as you wrote, one aspect of a relationship. And if you met someone who had only received good stuff all the time from God, and had done so through prayer, you might not recognize it in the events of their life, since God is not bound by our definition of "good stuff".russ
September 25, 2006
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Back to Andrew Brown's comment "The results of intercessory prayer are indistinguishable from those of chance. " True, the results of studies bear this out. However, this may be a case of looking for the existence of something in the wrong place, and then using the lack of results as proof or justification for concluding that the thing does not exist. For one, prayer for others normally takes place in the context of relationships. In other words, we usually pray for those we care about. Presumably, the scientific studies had individuals praying for others that they either did not know or were not close to. The reason is that prayer is not just an intellectual exercise, it involves the heart and soul (if we are allowed to discuss such things as existing). No wonder that, when reduced to a mere mental exercise, results failed to materialize. The second reason is that effectual prayer involves not changing our circumstances so much as ourselves. Taking an extreme example, wouldn't we know intuitively which of these two prayers would more likely be answered -- "help me stop being such a selfish jerk", or "help me become filthy rich so I can enjoy all the pleasures of life"? So we must ask the question, if prayer does not bring results, than why do so many people around the world over so many thousands of years spend so much time doing it? Of course, as mentioned above in many places, one possibility would be that we are hard-wired through natural selection and adaptation to do something that currently yields few visible material results. Or, just maybe, people do it because it is real and it works!! People are changed, and others close to them are changed. And to pass it off as merely psychological seems a bit of a stretch.Ekstasis
September 25, 2006
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Carlos: "Normally, we want to say, there are colors. Blue, green, red, etc. These colors appear to us as features of the objective world." I would put it differently. Colors are conscious states. The external world merely contains a chain of events that end up triggering a conscious perception. There is no blue "out there." There is only electromagnetic waves occillating at various frequencies. They hit the optic nerves which causes a chain reaction of neural processing, with a quite different nature than the external stimuli. At some frontier in the brain, a unified consciousness is presented with a highly processed trigger set, then we experience blue, or I should say, our consciousness it put into a state of blueness. (The trigger set can be internally generated, as in dreams and other hallucinations.) There is no blue "out there." Carlos: "If someone wanted to write a story about the origins of our color concepts — from marmosets to Matisse, shall we say? — that story could be a story about how we acquired the biological and conceptual capacities to detect what is there anyway." I don't see how. Any story about the experience of color would have to fully explain what consciousness is, and so far, we can't even describe it in a non-circular way, let alone explain it. To me, it (I) seem wholly other. We'll have to wait and see about that.mike1962
September 25, 2006
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Hmm . . . methodological atheism doesn’t follow from atheism . . . maybe not, but it would be hard to imagine anyone sympathetic to gods and spirits or the Hebrew God of history investing the effort in penning Boyer’s book. “And we also know that color concepts can differ significanly from culture to culture.” The work of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay on color terms and color perception can be interpreted in different ways—when the study first came out it was the universalists who were excited. The impetous behind the linguistic revolution of the mid 20th century was the search for universals—especially universals of grammar—but it was always hard to pin down just what the source of these universals might be (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_idea). It is evidently taboo outside of physics to suggest any kind of Platonic realism, but why not? Just as the post-war era sought the commonality behind the diversity in human languages, today’s post-modernist, multicultural elite seem to demand that the only thing we share is the fact that we differ. A Darwinian theory of universals of meaning would have to mean biological hard wiring, or would it? Must the Darwinists always deny the mathematical realism of the physicists? I don’t know, but neither do I know a Darwinist comfortable with any genre of Platonism.Rude
September 25, 2006
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Rude, "What’s worse, Dawkins who at least gives me the chance to be wrong or Boyer who says I have no choice in the matter?" Honestly, from my admittedly limited watching of Dawkins, it seems like the only reason he allows for some choice is because he desperately wants the right to be angry with people. As for Brown, who knows? Maybe those nicey-nice tomes allow people to reach the same basic conclusions Dawkins does but convince themselves that they're somehow different. Part of the review pointed out the hypocrisy - 'Religious people don't believe in freedom of speech!', then talking about religion as child abuse. 'Religion drives people to evil!', and then trying to excuse atheistic regimes from their crimes as not really being motivated by atheism. 'Life has no purpose and is meaningless!', only to act as if a ferocious brand of atheism is very important to humanity and must be made to spread. I think Dawkins does a service to religion at this point - he allows people with faith to point at his mentality and writings and say, 'For all the talk of being reasonable and rational, does someone of this view come across as being so?'nullasalus
September 25, 2006
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What’s worse, Dawkins who at least gives me the chance to be wrong or Boyer who says I have no choice in the matter?
I wonder about this . . . it's true that Boyer proceds with a sort of "methodological atheism" -- the existence or nonexistence of spirits and gods is irrelevant to his project. But it doesn't follow from that that there are no gods at all. Normally, we want to say, there are colors. Blue, green, red, etc. These colors appear to us as features of the objective world. But we also know that the primate visual system is only one among many. And we also know that color concepts can differ significanly from culture to culture. If someone wanted to write a story about the origins of our color concepts -- from marmosets to Matisse, shall we say? -- that story could be a story about how we acquired the biological and conceptual capacities to detect what is there anyway. (Of course one might also read this story as showing that there aren't really any colors at all -- that colors are things that we "project" onto the world -- but that's a difficult story to tell. Has been ever since Locke invented it.) Likewise, one could read the sort of stories that Boyer or Dennett tell us and interpret them as stories about how we acquired the capacities to detect what is there anyway, i.e. the divine. One could even hold onto some notion of revelation here -- where one could hold that certain neurological and conceptual capacities had to be in place before it was possible for us to receive divine revelation.Carl Sachs
September 25, 2006
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