Gene Expression » The New Atheism

The New Atheism

Posted by JP on October 23, 2006; This entry is filed under Uncategorized.

Via Hit and Run, a Wired article: Battle of the New Atheism. The author talks with Dawkins and Dennett.

57 Comments

Michael Blowhard October 23rd, 2006 at 10:45 pm

Did y’all see this Terry Eagleton pan of Dawkins’ new book? I thought it was pretty great.
Michael Blowhard October 23rd, 2006 at 10:54 pm

Nice passage:

“Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that. For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have always played an integral role in belief. (Where, given that he invites us at one point to question everything, is DawkinsÂ’s own critique of science, objectivity, liberalism, atheism and the like?) Reason, to be sure, doesnÂ’t go all the way down for believers, but it doesnÂ’t for most sensitive, civilised non-religious types either. Even Richard Dawkins lives more by faith than by reason. We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain. Only positivists think that Â‘rationalÂ’ means Â‘scientificÂ’.”
razib October 23rd, 2006 at 11:26 pm

Nice passage:

“Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that. For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have always played an integral role in belief.

nice passage, except it’s totally false :)

1) the vast majority of believers have little familiarity with the niceties of theology, so dawkins’ characterizations of their superstitions are totally spot on

2) the church did not react well to radical cartesian doubt, now did it? anglican rationalism is a strand of christianity, but a rather marginal one in a quantitative sense. the history of christianity is soaked with “reason, argument and honest doubt” if islam today is a religion of peace

i find that reviews of dawkins’ newest book make him to be far more ignorant of theology than he clearly is, and terry eagleton’s pan left me rather unimpressed (duns scotus is the man whose scholastic meanderings inspired the term dunce! should i be impressed at the reference?). i was frankly surprised at dawkins’ familiarity with the ground he covers. my main issue with him is that he does not allow what he knows to inform an acceptance of religion as a fact of the universe which we unbelievers had to grapple with. but, that does not mean i don’t share dawkins’ profound skepticism of theology and all the other dark arts. i’m not impressed with sneering because someone else might not be familiar with the state of the art in 14th century neo-aristotelian philosophy.
Cineris October 24th, 2006 at 4:51 am

I am pretty disappointed to see Dawkins using thinking ripped directly from the Fark comments section (id est, Flying Spaghetti Monster).

Michael, thanks for the link to Eagleton’s review. I’m no fan of Eagleton grinding his Marxist axe, as he does in the review, but in between rolling my eyes at Eagleton I saw much to agree with. Unlike Razib, I didn’t get the sense that Eagleton was making an overly academic argument with obscure references nor attempting to make theological arguments that don’t hold in daily practice.

Riffing off of Eagleton, I agree that the general point that should be made is that fanaticism is by-and-large bad, but that Dawkins seems to have gotten caught up in his own fanaticism. What rankles me worse than Dawkins’ fanaticism though is the utopian idealism that seems apparent in the way he is conducting his little crusade against religion. I’m a little skeptical of attempts to reform human beings after the last couple similar social engineering projects ended in complete catastrophe.
j mct October 24th, 2006 at 6:38 am

Per Razib:

Point 1)

1) the vast majority of believers have little familiarity with the niceties of theology, so dawkins’ characterizations of their superstitions are totally spot on

Absolutely right, with one little extra. It’s true about atheists too, Dawkins himself being a perfect example. From my non comprehensive familiarity with Dawkins, it’s extremely clear that he doesn’t get or understand any of the religions he opines about, but the one religion he misunderstands most totally is, … atheism! An atheist who calls himself a ‘rationalist’ especially one who’s into evolution, pretty much by definition is an atheist who’s definition of his religion is pretty much ridiculous.

Razib’s 2nd point)

2) the church did not react well to radical cartesian doubt, now did it? anglican rationalism is a strand of christianity, but a rather marginal one in a quantitative sense. the history of christianity is soaked with “reason, argument and honest doubt” if islam today is a religion of peace

The Church may not have reacted well to everything Descartes said, but his ‘doubt’ isn’t one of them. Descartes’ doubt is doubt about the reality of what one thinks is real because it enters into his awareness through his senses, his evil demon who’s deceiving him. Descartes never doubts his mind’s ability to get to the bottom of things. The doubt you’re talking about is Humean doubt, which is doubt about whether the human mind is such a thing as to anyone sane would care where it necessarily went had anything to do with reality at all. If one is an ‘Darwinian Fundamentalist’, to use the current term, only a fool would care as to what a creature that comes out of a Darwinian process thought was ‘behind’ the Big Bang, though I’m sure an evo psych guy could come up with a theory about the EEA that posited some sort of selection pressure for acquiring such a trait.

Humean doubt is also quite ancient anyway, it has existed since the first Greek (if one were to award the prize for thinking this notion up to one guy, I suppose it would be Pythagoras), thought one could get to bottom of things using one’s mind. One might criticize the Church’s dealing with this sort of doubt, but saying they never dealt with it seriously is just not correct. It was a huge topic during the Scholastic period, Occam was a Humean doubter long before Hume.

An intelligent torpedoing of any metaphysical arguement for God say is just to say “Okay, you’ve proved that if we follow our reason to wherever it leads, let the chips fall where they may, we get God, but how can one prove that human reason has anything to do with “what’s really going on” at all? You have to prove that first. Since you haven’t you haven’t proved when a human being uses his reason to get to the bottom of things he isn’t trying to bang in a nail with a screwdriver your proof fails”.
Reale October 24th, 2006 at 8:06 am

Instead of repeating my much-scorned comments from last time, I simply refer to Dawkins. He’s saying pretty much everything I said then and sometimes he goes even further. Programmatic nonsense deserves no tolerance.
Kevembuangga October 24th, 2006 at 8:33 am

I think this needs no more than John McCarthy’s statement:

An atheist doesn’t have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can’t be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question.

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/
Luke Lea October 24th, 2006 at 9:05 am

The religious instinct, like the instinct for music and art, is capable of a wide range of human expression. To come to a judgment about the possible “truth value” of such an instinct on the basis of its most common expression is a little unfair in my opinion. It is like judging the potential power of musical and artistic expression on the basis of the talent manifested by the average man on the street.

As to the place of doubts about the truth of religion, one finds them from the very beginning in our Western tradition. Jacob wrestled with God, Job was sorely tested in his faith, Paul cried out, “I believe, God help my unbelief” and, most famously, Jesus had his moment of doubt on the cross.

As for the possibility of unseen realities in the universe that correspond to our religious instincts and to which they refer, Shakespeare’s admonition is to the point: “There are more things in heaven and earth, dear Horation, than were ever dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Certainly this has proven true in the objective realm — think of the Standard Model in physics, or modern molecular biology — and it may be equally true in the subjective realm of human experience.

We still don’t understand, and may never understand, how these two realms of the subjective and the objective co-exist and interact. Those who fervently argue as Dawkins does that the objective realm is necessarily primary and the subjective realm secondary are making an unwarranted assumption, a hunch about how things really are that is no more rationally justified than the hunch of others that there may be supernatural forces, some with real moral consequences, existing within and interacting causally with the natural world.

Provided such interactions do not violate the laws of nature — and remember all physical laws are probabilistic in principle, allowing for highly unlikely coincidences — it is only a matter of personal preference whether one terms such coincidences, especially those with great moral import, supernatural events or something else (supra natural events?).

It is hard to deny that atheism and theism are both speculative cosmologies, with some people having a natural (or perhaps conditioned) preference for one or the other. The two are in many ways symmetrical, so maybe the most honest position is to seriously entertain both possibilities without giving preference to one over the other.

None of this is science of course, anymore than our faith in causality (as Hume showed) or our belief that other people’s minds are like our own is science. Indeed the very existence of consciousness itself is not a scientific fact, by definition, and never will be, as hard as it is for some philosophical naturalists to accept. The difference is that these things everyone believes with a high degree of certainty whereas religious beliefs must, for all rational persons, always carry a very significant degree uncertainty.

–
Luke Lea
razib October 24th, 2006 at 9:46 am

I am pretty disappointed to see Dawkins using thinking ripped directly from the Fark comments section (id est, Flying Spaghetti Monster).

these are arguments that makes on the colbert report, they certainly aren’t as prominent in the book.

I’m a little skeptical of attempts to reform human beings after the last couple similar social engineering projects ended in complete catastrophe.

i agree, but

a) dawkins isn’t really promoting any realistic program besides moral suasion (unless i missed something in the fine print

b) as you and i agree any attempt at mass reform sans an ideology which co-opts some of the same passions as religion (e.g., communism?) is bound to fail

c) so, i am not totally unconvinced that dawkins ‘strategy’ is actually a tactic, that he is staking out an extreme position in the interests of shifting the range of the debate. dawkins is a source of grief for theistic evolutionists, for example, but, he is also an opportunity to triangulate

One might criticize the Church’s dealing with this sort of doubt, but saying they never dealt with it seriously is just not correct. It was a huge topic during the Scholastic period, Occam was a Humean doubter long before Hume.

good point about occam…and i did consider that , but i guess it depends on what you mean by ‘honest doubt.’ i don’t see that occam ever doubted the existence of god (through reveleation and faith). my point is that eagleton seems to imply that a presuppositionalist strand is not central to christianity, but from what i can see even aquinas makes copious reference to the opinions of church fathers and scripture.

The religious instinct, like the instinct for music and art, is capable of a wide range of human expression.

music and art have been aids to killing other human beings (through battle music and propoganda), but not the reasoned justification for killing others as some religions have. so i think the analogy works on some levels, but the primary ‘problem’ with religion is that some do not wish to render to it its own space but demand it be the ground of being.

As to the place of doubts about the truth of religion, one finds them from the very beginning in our Western tradition. Jacob wrestled with God, Job was sorely tested in his faith, Paul cried out, “I believe, God help my unbelief” and, most famously, Jesus had his moment of doubt on the cross.

this doesn’t seem to be the doubt that most secularists are speaking of. jacob after all had empirical proof about the supernatural world when he wrestled with god (or his emenation, or the angel). jesus was a miracle worker. that sort of doubt is a different beast than the doubt of which i suspect that eagleton is referring to and i am conceiving of.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, dear Horation, than were ever dreamt of in your philosophy.”

replace “your philosophy” with “your religion.” the gods of men are small things and feeble fumblings in the context of the drama of the universe.

It is hard to deny that atheism and theism are both speculative cosmologies, with some people having a natural (or perhaps conditioned) preference for one or the other. The two are in many ways symmetrical, so maybe the most honest position is to seriously entertain both possibilities without giving preference to one over the other.

it all depends on what you define as ‘theism.’
Martin October 24th, 2006 at 9:54 am

This endless debate can be relegated where it belongs by simply assuming God is malevolent.
j mct October 24th, 2006 at 11:16 am

Razib:

I suppose ‘honest doubt’ depends on what one means by ‘honest’, or more correctly ‘honorable’ doubt, honest and honorable coming from the same root.

Getting back to Descartes, he gets to his “I think therefore I am’ stuff by claiming that his own existence is undoubtable, not something he doesn’t doubt but something that noone can doubt, Descartes doesn’t claim to believe he exists, he claims to know, he will ‘honor’ no disagreement, i.e. doubt, on this score.

One can cherrypick lines from various Christians on this score, but Christianity calls itself ‘the Faith’, not ‘the Knowledge’, which says that you can doubt it if you like. No Christian has ever claimed Christianity cannot be doubted, unlike Descartes’ “Cognito ergo sum’, which he claims cannot be doubted. Aquinas, Occam, and the Pope pretty much say that Christianity is true, but doubtable. I don’t think Christianity has ever hid the necessity of an act of faith, which I think would absolve it from not ‘honoring’, i.e. taking into account, doubt.

Can one say the same about Dawkins? Does Dawkins claim to know what he obviously just believes? Is his surety on this score make him a challenging thinker, or dismissable as an obvious nitwit who is harming the atheist ’cause’ amongst at least highbrows?
razib October 24th, 2006 at 12:48 pm

I don’t think Christianity has ever hid the necessity of an act of faith, which I think would absolve it from not ‘honoring’, i.e. taking into account, doubt.

Can one say the same about Dawkins? Does Dawkins claim to know what he obviously just believes? Is his surety on this score make him a challenging thinker, or dismissable as an obvious nitwit who is harming the atheist ’cause’ amongst at least highbrows?

and what do you believe he believes? it isn’t like an atheist catechism exists, it is after all a negative assertion which must always joust with the positive contentions of a full range of religionists. dawkins’ firmness (and my own) about atheism is conditioned in part on the modal nature of religiosity, i.e., i am not a tillich atheist because it is rather difficult for me to even comprehend what the man was trying to say half the time, but the convential beliefs espoused by the convential believer i can assert that i reject for a variety of a priori and empirical reasons.

i think most of the reviews of dawkins’ book mischaracterize it insofar as he the first half does show an understanding of the nuance of religion. the problem is not his ignorance (in my opinion), but that the second half is a brief that seems to behave as if the first half was irrelevant. and that what gets to me about reviews like eagleton’s, dawkins isn’t ignorant. his sin isn’t that of a village atheist, it is that he doesn’t extend the varied logic of the axioms which he puts forward in the first half of the book.
Reale October 24th, 2006 at 1:16 pm

Razib: it isn’t like an atheist catechism exists,

That’s it! We need an atheist catechism! Everyone should learn the right way and go through the arguments, sure, but we still need a good resumÃ©. For the sake of convenience and for the sake of brevity. A program statement. A manifesto. A battle cry.
Jacqueline October 24th, 2006 at 1:53 pm

I also think we should go door-to-door with literature. It can be tri-folded blank pieces of paper. “Hi, we’re atheists, and we’re here to share with you about the void.”
Chip Smith October 24th, 2006 at 2:19 pm

…my main issue with him is that he does not allow what he knows to inform an acceptance of religion as a fact of the universe which we unbelievers had to grapple with.

Yes. And I find this especially curious given Dawkins’ seminal role in popularizing memetics. Inasumuch as it can be understood as robust memeplex, religion would seem to present such a great opportunity for more disinterested study.
JP October 24th, 2006 at 2:54 pm

we still need a good resumÃ©. For the sake of convenience and for the sake of brevity. A program statement. A manifesto. A battle cry

god is dead
Joseph W. October 24th, 2006 at 3:51 pm

There may not be an atheists’ catechism, but Bertrand Russell had an “Atheists’ Creed” that he enjoyed reciting (quoted in Paul Johnson’s The Intellectuals in the chapter on Russell) – a quick Google didn’t turn it up, but I do remember, “We do not believe in life after death, but we believe in immortality through good deeds…”
j mct October 24th, 2006 at 4:25 pm

Not true about the non existence of the atheist catechism.

The “God of the Philosophers”, which an atheist must reject, goes by the name of ‘the Absolute Truth’, the Absolute Truth, the thing that is not because it happens to be, but need not be, but what MUST be. The Absolute Truth is not a statement about God or morality, it IS God. You always hear about ‘there is no absolute truth, all truth is relative’, which is always tied up with atheism somehow, the retort always being, I’ve seen this in a comic strip, ‘if all truths are relative, then you think that there is an absolute truth, it’s just that all truths of relative is the absolute truth’. This is a version of the liar’s paradox. In math, if your assumptions lead one to the liar’s paradox that is considered proof that one’s assumptions are wrong, like in Godel’s theorem. If you’re an atheist, this doesn’t phase you, when the French existentialists talked about ‘embracing the absurd’ they were saying atheism is logically impossible, but pay that no mind, don’t be bothered by the absurd, embrace the absurd. Nietzche pretty much says the same thing, as does any atheist who understands his ‘religion’.

This is not to say that all atheists understand their catechism, they generally don’t, just like most religious believers don’t understand their’s.

Put another way in order to be an atheist, not an agnostic like say Bertrand Russell always said he was, it is necessary that you accept a bluntly dogmatic statement as true, and not just doubt the efficacy of reason and logic, but explicity deny the efficacy of them, given that atheism is logically impossible. Sound like a ‘rationalist’ to you? Not to me.

A guy like Hume had no problem with that. Atheism leads to paradox? Only means reason doesn’t work on the problem, and what after all is reason but the slave of the passions, just like my opposable thumb, no biggie.

The Humean way is exactly what a ‘blind natural forces’ Darwinian must take too. Unless one is willing to believe that ‘blind natural forces’ spit out a creature whose thoughts can have anything to do with ‘why is there anything at all’, one must remain silent about any attempt to answer such a question. To think the debate is worth entering, the ‘blind natural forces’ Darwinist has to make a leap of faith regarding his ‘blind natural forces’ that makes the Pope look like a piker. Do such people remain silent? Do they realize they actually have made a blind leap of faith? They seem pretty noisy to me. Should anyone pay them any mind?
razib October 24th, 2006 at 4:41 pm

The “God of the Philosophers”, which an atheist must reject, goes by the name of ‘the Absolute Truth’, the Absolute Truth, the thing that is not because it happens to be, but need not be, but what MUST be. The Absolute Truth is not a statement about God or morality, it IS God. You always hear about ‘there is no absolute truth, all truth is relative’, which is always tied up with atheism somehow, the retort always being,

no on many counts. i’m an atheist i dispute your characterization of my beliefs. perhaps i’m not an atheist by your counts (i don’t hold the beliefs you characterize as symptomatic of atheism), but then it comes down to semantics. a correlation between belief x and belief y does not necessitate a necessary causal relationship.

Put another way in order to be an atheist, not an agnostic like say Bertrand Russell always said he was, it is necessary that you accept a bluntly dogmatic statement as true, and not just doubt the efficacy of reason and logic, but explicity deny the efficacy of them, given that atheism is logically impossible. Sound like a ‘rationalist’ to you? Not to me.

1) being an atheist and an agnostic are not contradictory, i am both

2) you’ve gone through this route before, and suffice to say that some (including dawkins, read the book) would dispute that you ‘accept a bluntly dogmatic statement as true.’ this clearly isn’t so when you make the assertion that the god of the philosophers is logically incoherent. or when you reject a particular conception of ‘god’ as empirically falsified (e.g., ‘god men’).

fundamentally we’ve gone over this ground before, and i think axiomatic chasm is too big to agree. i simply don’t concede your presuppositions. philosophy is not cognate with mathematics and ontology is not plumbed by words alone.
Cineris October 24th, 2006 at 6:18 pm

a) dawkins isn’t really promoting any realistic program besides moral suasion (unless i missed something in the fine print)

Dawkins doesn’t seem to be advocating any specific program per-se, but from the Wired article (and, granted, I haven’t read Dawkins’ book & Wired is a bit sensationalistic) it’s not difficult to extrapolate a trajectory beyond Dawkins. Attitudes to the extent of calling religion “evil,” being openly intolerant towards it, and analogies of atheists as some benighted minority (e.g. jews, gays) might currently be nothing more than rudeness by a cadre of high IQ individuals. But these beliefs are so caustic that I am very wary about what happens when a critical mass of people (including those of moderate and low IQ) pick up on them and/or carry them into political institutions. The distinction between “I find this belief intolerable, so I will attack it where I may find it” and “This belief cannot be tolerated and must be stopped, by force if necessary” is one that I think is lost on most people and it is only a matter of time before one morphs into the other.

If Dawkins himself can be said to be advocating a particular programme, it is in child rearing. And while I don’t fundamentally disagree with the idea of not indoctrinating children… Nothing Dawkins says gives me confidence in his child rearing capability over any other fundamentalist zealot. I was surprised to learn Dawkins had a child at all, though who knows to what degree he participated in raising the child (the pair divorced). Were it not for the high-IQ genetic endowment that people like Dawkins give their children, I expect they would be putting their children at a distinct disadvantage, since (in my opinion) moral atheism is a superrational position, whereas moral theism is merely a rational position. It seems to me that constructing and justifying a moral framework from a position of atheism or agnosticism requires a higher cost than doing so from a position of theism, and so only high IQ individuals can be reliably expected to dedicate the effort into creating such a construct.
JP October 24th, 2006 at 6:39 pm

It seems to me that constructing and justifying a moral framework…

that’s the problem in your argument. few few people (theist and atheist), if any, construct and justify a moral framework a priori. the construction and justification is done afterwords. you overestimate the influence parents have on how their children act.
Levi T October 24th, 2006 at 6:45 pm

Cineris
It seems to me that constructing and justifying a moral framework from a position of atheism or agnosticism requires a higher cost than doing so from a position of theism, and so only high IQ individuals can be reliably expected to dedicate the effort into creating such a construct.What, saying “x is wrong because my parents say x is wrong” does not work equally as well for the atheist children? Sure, when the theist child replaces “parents” with “father” they may have a slightly different meaning (Father vs. father), but otherwise no problem.

I also find your claim about morality being justified by theism is easier to handle than atheism to only work when the individual you are trying to convince has a groundwork for theism. I doubt that Bertrand Russell’s children found it very easy at all to accept the proposition “God exists” and therefore making it quite difficult to ground their morality by religion. Hell, a Hindu would find it hard to justify their morality by the word of God in the Bible. This mental justification is circular.

Reale
That’s it! We need an atheist catechism! Everyone should learn the right way and go through the arguments, sure, but we still need a good resumÃ©. For the sake of convenience and for the sake of brevity. A program statement. A manifesto. A battle cry.I disagree. Awareness is much more important. Finding out that the lunch-lady at your Elementary school is an atheist, and that’s okay is perfectly fine for me. Too often fundamentalists denegrate atheism by saying only “educated” professors of philosophy are atheists, or murders like Stalin or Pol-Pot. For the general population, this knowledge that plenty of people around them are atheists and those people opperate just like them is a big step in the process that stops America’s distrust of atheists (link to a study on self-reports about distrust of various minority groups done around 2005-6, although a small sample size (2000)).
martin October 24th, 2006 at 6:50 pm

Quite right Cineris. As a letter to the editor of that staid British magazine Spectator put it: of course Dawkins’ iconoclasm is correct but gentlemen simply don’t discuss these things in public.
gh October 24th, 2006 at 7:04 pm

Razib: I am rellay surprised by the number of “belivers” at this blog – and should I say dissapointed. Ever thought about doing a mini vote re theism versus atheism amongst regulars at this blog?
razib October 24th, 2006 at 8:02 pm

But these beliefs are so caustic that I am very wary about what happens when a critical mass of people (including those of moderate and low IQ) pick up on them and/or carry them into political institutions.

this simply can’t happen by the nature of religiosity. let us distinguish between narrow and broad sense secularism:

1) the narrow sense is an attack on a specific and demarcated religious organization, institution or set of beliefs

2) the latter is an espousal of a thorough and deep naturalistic conception of the world around us

the latter is fundamentally likely impossible to spread as a ‘meme-complex’ because of the nature of the modal human mind. #1 can manifest when various religions attack each other, or when anti-clericalism becomes popular because of corruption in religious institutions. this my fundamental issue with dawkins, he lays out the groundwork in the first half of his book for why supernaturalism is a permenant fixture of our universe unless drastic (totalitarian) measures are taken. and yet in the second half of the book he espouses #2 without any (from what i can tell) totalitarian program which could allow the spread of naturalism. i suspect that’s because dawkins does not favor totalitarianism, but he seems unable to admit that logically that implies that supernaturalism is an indelible part of the social universe we inhabit.

now, my problem with most of the reviews of dawkins’ work in god delusion hinges on the assumption made that he is a village atheist. i myself assumed this when i began reading the book, but the literature references in the first half of the book make it clear to me that he’s not. much of the rest of the animus seems to be due to his tone and persona. so be it. the reality is that there is a problem insofar as unbelievers tend to be shy about being open in american society. i myself and not hesitant to express my disbelief in god if someone implicitly assumes i’m a believer, but i’ve talked to many people who feel uncomfortable at expressing their unbelief because it is an affront to the cherished ideals of others. but the reality is that a substantial minority of americans believes that unbelievers are going to burn in hell for eternity. this doesn’t bother me, so i expect them not to be bothered that i think their beliefs are silly. a larger number of americans think that atheists are crude and unfeeling, that they are ‘missing something,’ and often i have encountered nominal believers who perceive themselves more moral simply by virtue of their belief in a divine power. what harm does it do to tell them that i believe their beliefs are fairy tales and they’re quite gullible?

as i’ve said, if religious people don’t push their beliefs at me i’m rather ok with live and let live. but we don’t live in that sort of world, and we’ll always be outnumbered by the nature of the game.

I am rellay surprised by the number of “belivers” at this blog – and should I say dissapointed. Ever thought about doing a mini vote re theism versus atheism amongst regulars at this blog

i’ve done it. a substantial minority of readers are theists. and some of the contributors on the blog are theists as well. just because i think theism is somewhat of a silly belief doesn’t mean i don’t respect and like many theists, and so long as their belief is private, or elucidated in a rational manner which allows me to learn i don’t particularly mind. no doubt theists believe i am wrong-headed, but what of it? wrong belief does not irk me so long as it does not concern me or engages me.
Mencius October 24th, 2006 at 8:34 pm

Pretty much all the readers on the blog, however, are nationalists.

Which is funny, because the worship of imaginary ethereal entities, be they gods, fairies, or water elementals, has not exactly been the primary focus of human reverence for the past 200 years.

How this has escaped Dawkins, I’m not certain. Perhaps it got past his memetic immune system. Which is apparently programmed to look for a flashing pink neon sign that reads “VIRUS,” then focus all available attention on it.

Obviously, this is an optimal defense strategy against memetic parasites. These beasties have never been known to mutate or exchange alleles. They are required to clearly identify themselves by attaching one of a small set of well-known exogenous proteins. These are always easy to recognize – the challenge is not in finding them, but in suppressing them.

Fortunately, our memetic immune system does a pretty good job of that, although there are occasional nasty outbreaks. But most intelligent people in the 21st century are more or less free of these self-propagating distortions of reality. People such as teachers and reporters, who as vectors are especially at risk, are obviously independent and their behavior does not show mass coordination patterns, or any other signs of customs or practices which may be structured to encourage the propagation of distortionary memes or discourage countermemes.

In summary, these can’t possibly be the droids you’re looking for. I think they went thataways. But – what was I saying? Oh, yes. Religion, it’s very bad, I agree. A devastating threat to our intellectual freedom.
martin October 25th, 2006 at 5:47 am

Hardcore theist here.

Atheists don’t concern me at all.

It’s the Bush style Republicans that drive me crazy-talk about stupid beliefs.
Chip Smith October 25th, 2006 at 7:00 am

In the Wired article, Dawkins is quoted as saying “The probability of God… while not zero, is vanishingly small,” which strikes me, perhaps wrongly, as an unjustified empirical concession. If the crux of the God question hinges on the rational failure of supernatural appeal (as Dawkins seems to suggest at times), isn’t the business of “proving” God rendered theoretically moot by the epistemological foundations of rationalism?

I note that Steve Sailer is fond of pointing out that astro-physicists are more cautious about ultimate questions than life sciece types, which may or may not be true; but where knowledge is limited, it seems to me the only way to entertain the possibility of “God” to fill in the gaps is through the deliberate suspension of the rules of naturalistic/rational inquiry, in which sense the probablility of God, by epistemological default, has to be zero. No? The only way I know out of this trap would be to posit a theory of God that is somehow apprehensible through rational/empirical means, but at that point, doesn’t the explanandum lose it’s defining supernatural qualities and cease to be God?

Forgive me if I’m missing some crucial distinction, but this has always struck me as a sort of inescapable conclusion. Is there some theoretical order of evidence (as Dawkins implicitly suggests) that could convince a commited naturalist otherwise? And if so, how could the (seeming) contradictions be reconciled?
Michael Blowhard October 25th, 2006 at 9:26 am

Here’s one hyper-fuctionalist way of looking at the “God” question.

There’s much that we know. There’s also a huge amount that we don’t know (in a scientific sense). We may or may eventually know it all. (Unlikely, sez I, but what the heck.) And then there’s probably more than all that too. And us in the midst of it all, of course.

Take that whole bundle — including what’s known; we/us ourselves; what we don’t know; what we don’t even know we don’t know, etc etc. Why not give that bundle a name? Why not … call it “God”? I mean, you don’t have to. But why not? Got a better name for it?

OK, now let’s discuss the topic — the Infinite Currently Unknowable Vastness Of It All, of which we’re only a small part. After all, just about everyone has some sense of wonder and fear in the face of it, and many people even have a few intuitions or flashes of maybe-insight about it, or maybe just a feeling of connection to it. Maybe you feel it — ie., it’s real to you — when you fiddle with math, or look through a microscope, or have sex, or someone near to you dies … But it’s something nearly everyone has feelings and thoughts and intuitions and theories about. Sometimes people even dare to try to talk about these things.

Now let’s give that discussion a name. Why not call it “religion”? Again, you don’t have to. But why not?
razib October 25th, 2006 at 10:02 am

Take that whole bundle — including what’s known; we/us ourselves; what we don’t know; what we don’t even know we don’t know, etc etc. Why not give that bundle a name? Why not … call it “God”? I mean, you don’t have to. But why not? Got a better name for it?

most people would say you are trivializing god. just like people made fun of spinoza’s pantheism by saying the commode is god.
Mencius October 25th, 2006 at 10:25 am

Michael,

The sense of mystery and awe you describe is a fundamental aspect of human nature. But I think most people, such as myself, for whom nontheism is not a personal discovery but a matter of upbringing, reserve it for strictly political concepts. Such as humanity, democracy, freedom, etc.

You might be interested by the Wikipedia entries on political religion and civic religion.

Of course there is no objectively discernible difference between civic (good) and political (bad). And of course the term “political religion” is absurd. All religions are political. That is, they imply a function which informs the votary whether some form of government is righteous or wrongtious. (I know this isn’t a word, but I love it anyway.)

A better term might be “nontheistic religion.” This would leave us with the conclusion that there are three classes of religion: polytheistic, monotheistic, and nontheistic. Of course, immune defences such as the First Amendment provide absolutely no protection against a class 3 religion.

For example, Nazism and Marxism are the most commonly stated examples of “political religion.” Defining them as nontheistic religions would put them in the same category with Buddhism, Confucianism, Legalism (a la Qin Shi Huang), etc.

A better question is: why does this classification matter? Why is theism a useful tool for categorizing religions? Would Nazism, as a phenomenon in the real world, have been different at all if it had acclaimed Hitler as divine, or if it had worshiped, say, Thor?

One obvious reason it might matter is because theism itself is so significant in the Western public mind, which still ascribes great importance to Christianity or ethical systems derived from it.

One might even be forced to conclude that religions should not be analyzed by their doctrinal elements, which are constantly shifting and often intentionally confusing, but by the organizational structures they create in the real world.

But why care about all this? We’re talking about God, after all. We now return you to your regularly scheduled theology.
Michael Blowhard October 25th, 2006 at 10:57 am

Razib — Calling the beyond-knowable, beyond-imaginable, vasty-everythingness-of-it-all God would trivialize the concept of God? Wow, some people are ‘way better than I am at imagining the beyond-imaginable!

Mencius — What’s that old saying? Deny people their traditional religion and they’ll believe in something else religiously instead? That certainly seems to me to be the case.

More musings here.
Fly October 25th, 2006 at 1:34 pm

Michael Blowhard: ?Take that whole bundle — including what’s known; we/us ourselves; what we don’t know; what we don’t even know we don’t know, etc etc. Why not give that bundle a name? Why not … call it “God”? I mean, you don’t have to. But why not? Got a better name for it??

Call what we don?t know ?the unknown?.

The name ?God? has connotations and historical baggage. It has prophets, priests, and shamans. It has rules and commandments. It is connected to false histories and bad models of reality. It is used to support magical thinking such as prayer or divine retribution.

Michael Blowhard: ?Why not call it “religion”??

Because historically religions are based on faith, not evidence. Evidence based theories can be evaluated and compared. With better tools and more evidence they can be improved. Beliefs based on faith or feelings don?t have peaceful mechanisms to resolve disputes and improve understanding.
Cineris October 25th, 2006 at 1:50 pm

Fly: Because historically religions are based on faith…

If you’re to trust scholars of religion, most religions are based on orthopraxis, not orthodoxy. While a case can be made for belief being an element in practice, I’d volunteer that it is much more about behaving in civil and “civic-minded” ways.
Michael Blowhard October 25th, 2006 at 2:01 pm

Fly — “The unknown” works for me. Well … Actually not quite, since the “thing” I’m looking for a name for also includes the known, as well as the knower/unknower, as well as that which we don’t know we know and don’t yet know we don’t know. But close!

You write: “Because historically religions are based on faith, not evidence.” So you think that African and Amazonian tribes couldn’t point to lots of evidence for their beliefs? Religions are to one extent or another attempts to make sense of life as it’s encountered and experienced — to set it in some kind of Larger Context. A religion isn’t just a random cartoon fantasy that people, for some completely bizarre reason, have signed up to “believe in.” It emerges from the lives, thoughts, feelings, dreams, and experiences of people who are attempting to deal with all that evidence in some way that makes some kind of satisfying sense to them.
razib October 25th, 2006 at 4:32 pm

If you’re to trust scholars of religion, most religions are based on orthopraxis, not orthodoxy. While a case can be made for belief being an element in practice, I’d volunteer that it is much more about behaving in civil and “civic-minded” ways.

orthopraxy does not mean civil and “civic-minded” aside from conformity. one can, i suppose, derive a moral from not mixing milk and meat, or not taking water from low caste individuals, or not stepping into a mosque with one’s left foot first, but this isn’t exactly ‘the golden rule.’
gene berman October 25th, 2006 at 5:15 pm

right on, zeeb!
ken October 25th, 2006 at 7:03 pm

Penn Jillette interviews Dawkins
Cineris October 26th, 2006 at 2:31 am

Haloscan seems to have eaten my earlier reply:

Razib: this simply can’t happen by the nature of religiosity.

I find this statement so patently absurd, both in your justification and in the statement itself, that it’s clear there must be a misunderstanding occurring here. Nothing I said requires any appeal to “religiousity” whatsoever, and the claim that it “can’t happen” is only true if you conflate an anti-supernaturalist movement with “a thorough and deep naturalistic conception of the world.” That the two are not synonymous is easily provable both via logic and through immediate experience.

Though “a thorough and deep naturalistic conception of the world” is aligned with an anti-supernaturalist perspective, that really says nothing about alignment with an anti-supernaturalist movement. It hardly takes “ATDNCOTW” to be a doctrinaire mouthpiece for rhetoric saying that some other group is evil, degenerate, and diseased. In this I expect the framing of the issue as being “supernaturalists” and “anti-supernaturalists” to be about as meaningful as political party affiliation or sports team preference.
Mencius October 26th, 2006 at 2:47 am

Anon,

Actually, our state religion (ie, what is taught in public schools and mainstream universities) is not too different from the traditional one.

It might best be described as “state Unitarianism,” as an analogy to the Japanese nationalist religion of state Shinto, now thankfully more or less exterminated. Its egalitarian and humanistic notes are recognizably Christian. In fact, you might simply call it a form of Christianity that follows the apparent philosophy of Jesus, while discarding most of the weirder magical and institutional overtones that built up over time. It’s really the logical endpoint of the Protestant tradition.

State Unitarianism is basically what you get if you listen to NPR, for example. I grew up on NPR and can do a note-perfect John Hockenberry impression, and the devotional character of this sect, its replacement of pulpit with reporter, is pretty unmistakable in my opinion. (But maybe it’s changed. Wake me up when they interview the War Nerd.)
dobeln October 26th, 2006 at 3:00 am

Dawkins certainly is capable of extremely dangerous stupidity:

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html#dawkins

Quotes with my comments:

“Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it.”

Dawkins appears to have fallen victim to a flawed analogy. Computers do not respond to retribution, or threat of retribution because they are not social entities hardcoded to take retribution into account when determining their behavior. Humans, on the other hand do – according to a large empirical body of evidence.

“? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals”

Because we dislike child murder and vandalism. By creating a social atmosphere where such acts are greeted by mass hatred and contempt, as well as retribution, we get less child murder and vandalism. And that’s good.

“when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing?”

We do – but through evolutionary mechanisms tailored to be both simple, instinctive and effective.

“Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution.”

Erm, and all that positive selection shows that the concepts are useless? Or something? I thought Dawkins was a Darwinist?

“Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live.”

Eh, yes – we have a fully functional system for analysing social behavior that is both innate, easy to pick up and rather effective. But let’s ditch that because we could get a few more degrees of precision in unusual cases if we instead strain our capacity for abstraction to the max. Yay!

“My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.”

Why indeed – let’s hope that we all “grow out of” notions of personal responsibility and replace them with… fatalism? That will certainly make society much more liveable. Dangerous indeed.

Let’s all pray that this stuff doesn’t reach the lower reaches of society more than it has already done – it’s pure poison.
Michael Blowhard October 26th, 2006 at 9:09 am

His reading of how we react to Basil Fawlty beating his car is revealing too. My guess is that most people don’t laugh at Fawlty because he’s being overly-irrational-and-shouldn’t-be (and should be more like a totally rational robot), but because they recognize themselves and others in his behavior, however exaggereated it is. (Or maybe even thanks to the exaggeration.) In other words, the laughter doesn’t convey “People are stupid, they ought to be reformed.” It’s more like “That’s what it’s like to be human!” But I suspect Dawkins doesn’t know much about that.
razib October 26th, 2006 at 9:15 am

It hardly takes “ATDNCOTW” to be a doctrinaire mouthpiece for rhetoric saying that some other group is evil, degenerate, and diseased.

this has no particular relevance to the dawkins issue. dawkins’ own viewpoints are far less cognitively appealing than fundamentalists who regularly speak of others as evil, degenerate and diseased. in the great chain of concerns for social anomie dawkins is pretty much small fry.
razib October 26th, 2006 at 9:20 am

Why indeed – let’s hope that we all “grow out of” notions of personal responsibility and replace them with… fatalism? That will certainly make society much more liveable. Dangerous indeed.

Let’s all pray that this stuff doesn’t reach the lower reaches of society more than it has already done – it’s pure poison.

eh, have you heard about justification by faith alone? i mean, you are raised in a quasi-lutheran society so i’m sure you have. or predestination?

the point isn’t that these two ideas sanction amorality, theologians have always had clever ways to logically avoid those pitfalls. rather, these are abstract ideas which people would kill each other over (or elites would organize around because they needed some distinctive markers), but no one really behaves as if works don’t have any relevance, or as if free will doesn’t exist.
Fly October 26th, 2006 at 9:42 am

Dobeln, my interpretation of Dawkin?s Edge statements is a different.

In some religions, all men are believed to have free will and are accountable for their actions. Even mentally insane people would be viewed as evil and retribution would be warranted.

From Dawkin?s perspective evil people are defective machines. Society should try to fix the machine rather than punish it.

Without effective treatments then society ?fixes? and prevents bad behavior by social taboos and punishment. In a world where brain function is much better understood and biological modification of behavior is possible then it might be preferable to fix brains rather than punish people. Both the old evolved social methods and the new biotech methods would satisfy the need to prevent bad actions, but the new methods should be more effective.

I believe such technology will be available in the coming decades. The early applications won?t be controversial. Who could argue against curing schizophrenia or severe autism or pedophilia? From there things get murkier. Should a nasty temper be fixed? Who is responsible for the state of one?s own brain? Should the government determine the acceptable variations of individual personality? I have no idea where such technology will lead but I have no doubt that it will be disruptive.
razib October 26th, 2006 at 10:01 am

In some religions, all men are believed to have free will and are accountable for their actions.

religions are as confused on these issues as scientists. i think doeblin’s reaction to dawkins’ assertions are understandable, but he isn’t expressing concern that most northern europeans were traditionally adherents of religious ideologies that rejected free will as the primary agent of salvation (and that roman catholics regularly made accusations of fatalism against them). similarly, just because the church can offer absolution for sins via confession doesn’t mean that catholic societies are amoral.

and of course the ‘self-help’ movement has been saying nutty things for decades, and i think we can agree that these gurus are a lot less influential in the Zeitgeist than they would have us think. where it is important is where they influence macrosocial policy (e.g., unlimited welfare payments). i see no reason that an acerbic atheist like dawkins will have such influence (as opposed to someone who is quite about their secularism). one shouldn’t let the frank and arrogant presentation of his secularism confuse us as to his social impact.
henry evans October 26th, 2006 at 10:22 am

The idea that retributive justice is incompatible with a scientific view of human behavior seems mistaken. It could be that a scientific view of human behavior would find that human communities that seek to “fix” rather than “punish” wrongful actions are inherently defective in promoting widespread human happiness and flourishing. So even what some would view as an impoverished consequentialism, Dawkins is misguided.
razib October 26th, 2006 at 11:08 am

So even what some would view as an impoverished consequentialism, Dawkins is misguided.

he’s posing. he talked about tit-for-tat in the selfish gene.
dobeln October 26th, 2006 at 12:07 pm

“eh, have you heard about justification by faith alone? i mean, you are raised in a quasi-lutheran society so i’m sure you have. or predestination?”

Not very good at theology, but aye, I know what you mean. Still, that “quasi” is a very much justified qualifier – I’ve been an atheist all my life, and lutheranism is very much on its last legs in these parts.

“the point isn’t that these two ideas sanction amorality, theologians have always had clever ways to logically avoid those pitfalls.”

The question is if Dawkins can match these clever rationalizations. Clearly, he goes beyond empiricism here – he (claims) to want to somehow replace the most fundamental moral impulses of mankind with some sort of semi-defined “new morality”, which will (naturally, but arbitrarily)
conform to Dawkinsian norms. (“Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour” – that’s pretty arrogant stuff!)

“rather, these are abstract ideas which people would kill each other over (or elites would organize around because they needed some distinctive markers), but no one really behaves as if works don’t have any relevance, or as if free will doesn’t exist.”

All true – to a degree. After all, these notions of agency, though impossible to supress completely, can be muddled and made less effective as a matter of degree. People appear (empirically) to be very happy indeed to latch onto various vulgo-sociological-fatalistic justifications for their own behavior or condition.

“Society made me do it” is today a very popular self-justification for bad behavior – and that is not independent of trends in sociology, politics and religion. This in turn weakens self-repression where it really doesn’t need weakening.
dobeln October 26th, 2006 at 12:18 pm

“Dobeln, my interpretation of Dawkin?s Edge statements is a different.

In some religions, all men are believed to have free will and are accountable for their actions. Even mentally insane people would be viewed as evil and retribution would be warranted.”

True – but Dawkins isn’t talking about modifying the application of morality on the margins, as far as I can tell – he is talking wholesale redesign.

“From Dawkin?s perspective evil people are defective machines. Society should try to fix the machine rather than punish it.”

As you point out yourself, punishment is usually a matter of “fixing the machine”. That it is done unthinkingly for the most part, due to our innate, evolved preference for retribution, is not an argument against it – on the contrary, it is proof of its long record of success!

Hell, it makes the case for retribution even easier to make (I can see the article now: “The hedonistic case for retribution”)

“Without effective treatments then society ?fixes? and prevents bad behavior by social taboos and punishment.”

Yes. But according to Dawkins, that course of action is a non-starter for scientifically-minded people. After all, “Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour”. Not in the genetically modified future (he doesn’t mention any radical genetic makeover of humanity), but here, today. And that’s just bullshit.
Michael Blowhard October 26th, 2006 at 12:48 pm

Am I wrong in suspecting that a lot of what Dawkins is saying (in elaborate, disguised form) is “I’m smart, I know what it is to be smart, people who believe in religions are demonstrably dumb, and people like me — smart, un-fooled, rational — ought to be in charge”? That we have here the usual fantasy of the super-smart — that life would be better if only they were in charge instead of the morons, the believers, and the political people?
dobeln October 26th, 2006 at 1:26 pm

“Am I wrong in suspecting that a lot of what Dawkins is saying (in elaborate, disguised form) is “I’m smart, I know what it is to be smart, people who believe in religions are demonstrably dumb, and people like me — smart, un-fooled, rational — ought to be in charge”? “

Probably some of that in there, but that wouldn’t really matter much if his thinking was on the money.
Oh, and my guess his take on religion is empirically accurate for the most part, which he deserves credit for. It’s just the other stuff I believe is sub-standard.

Much big thinking contains at least a part of self-serving stuff, but that’s just the way things are.
pconroy October 26th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

Michael,
I don’t think that’s he’s message, but I think that very smart people do often get very impatient with more average people, as they view them as actors who don’t seem to realize that the things they do or think are so dumb… of course to the average person, much of what Dawkins is emphasizing seems dumb to them…
Many thinkers throughout the ages have felt if only more people were like them, the world would be a better place… I for one disagree, as I feel that a mix of people and attitudes and abilities is optimal.
George Weinberg October 26th, 2006 at 5:59 pm

From Dawkin?s perspective evil people are defective machines. Society should try to fix the machine rather than punish it.

This is a very strange attitude for the author of Blind Watchmaker to have. I got the impression the thesis was that living things are not created for any external purpose. Evil people are harmful to those around them. That doesn’t necessarily imply any sort of defect from their own perspective.

I wonder if Dawkins is fully aware where this machine metaphor leads. After al, most machines don’t have to be all that severely damaged before it makes sense to junk them rather than attempting to repair them.
Fly October 26th, 2006 at 10:09 pm

George,

Dobeln was quoting me. The words were only my interpretation of Dawkins’ statements. I claim no special insight into Dawkins’ thinking. Clearly Dawkins isn’t responsible for something I wrote.
dobeln October 26th, 2006 at 11:44 pm

“Dobeln was quoting me. The words were only my interpretation of Dawkins’ statements.”

Given that this is a direct Dawkins quote, you were probably not far off:

“Isn’t the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?”
Jason Malloy October 28th, 2006 at 7:37 am

Dawkins appears to have fallen victim to a flawed analogy. Computers do not respond to retribution, or threat of retribution because they are not social entities hardcoded to take retribution into account when determining their behavior. Humans, on the other hand do – according to a large empirical body of evidence.

No. Dawkins essay is not saying that punishment is antiquated by mechanism, but the idea of retribution. Killing a murderer because he “deserves to suffer”, is different than killing a murderer only to drain the incentives to others presented with future opportunities to murder.

Peter Singer and Steve Pinker both support capital punishment under this mechanistic rationale. Dawkins may too, since the Edge blurb does not suggest what you are reading.

The New Atheism

57 Comments

Archives

Recent Comments

Jason’s Delicious

Categories

The New Atheism

57 Comments

Archives

Recent Comments

Jason’s Delicious

Tags

Categories