Salient: Richard Dawkins

Showing posts with label Richard Dawkins. Show all posts

The Atheism Tapes

Jonathan Miller interviewed scientists, philosophers, writers, and historians for Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief.

The full interviews are available as The Atheism Tapes.

Here's Miller interviewing Richard Dawkins:

atheism, audiovisual, biological evolution, creationism, intelligent design, Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Miller

Suffer the Little Children

Pariahjane on Information Paradox provides a link to a poll of opinions among 16 to 29-yr olds, conducted by a religiously affiliated special-interest group.

The good news is that young people are more skeptical than older people about the respectability of Christianity. And rightly so, I might add. Eventually, fundamentalists of any faith almost invariably earn their religion a bad name.

However, this poll was not conducted to offer hope of a more sanely secular society in the future, it was undoubtedly intended as a prompt to increase child-oriented evangelical efforts. "THE ENEMY HAS PLANS FOR YOUR CHILDREN— DO YOU?" It's amusing that they shout at one another in caps too. Perhaps they fear that readers will only consider something True if it is Capitalized.

The enemy has plans for your children? What, a good, rational education? Encouragement to think for oneself? Recognition of human rights? No wonder all creationists have hitched their wagon to the IDiocy campaign. At the heart of all fundamentalisms is fear, which is hardly surprising because fear-mongering is at the heart of what Dawkins decries as religionist child abuse.

I want to comment on this section:

"The study explored twenty specific images related to Christianity, including ten favorable and ten unfavorable perceptions. Among young non-Christians, nine out of the top 12 perceptions were negative. Common negative perceptions include that present-day Christianity is judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%), and too involved in politics (75%) - representing large proportions of young outsiders who attach these negative labels to Christians. The most common favorable perceptions were that Christianity teaches the same basic ideas as other religions (82%), has good values and principles (76%), is friendly (71%), and is a faith they respect (55%)."

Let's look at a segment of the above:

"The most common favorable perceptions were that Christianity teaches the same basic ideas as other religions (82%)"

I would not actually consider that a positive! Presumably the designation of "positive" for this question was pre-assigned by the pollsters. Those interviewed were probably best acquainted with the Abrahamic religions, which make similar claims of beneficence, but which ultimately all derive from the same original OT patent of rule-by-divine-terror.

Recent studies have shown that most practicing Christians know little about the tenets of their own faith (not tenants, as so many Christians miswrite). Obviously, this suggests that they probably know even less about the history of Christianity and still less about the tenets of other faiths. So, particularly considering the age group polled, this 82% can hardly be assumed to reflect educated opinion. (This would cause no worry to the participants or the pollsters, American religionist society has been raised to believe that all opinion, no matter how ill-informed, matters.)

The poll invites a philosophical tension alert:

It's interesting that positives and negatives contradict one another, rather than being proportionally inverse. How can people simultaneously think that Christianity is judgmental (87%) and hypocritical (85%), yet has good values and principles (76%), is friendly (71%), and is a faith they respect (55%)?

In view of the post-Scopes resurgance of fundamentalist political-power ploys, I think that the negatives probably relate to the in-your-face-bigotry of fundamentalists. The positives probably reflect the claims that religious devotees make for Christianity, but which the church increasingly fails to deliver. Let's be generous to the intelligence of those polled, though. The apparent discrepancy may also reflect awareness of the huge, hypocritical disparities across Christian denominations. Some denominations actually do preach tolerance and love.

bigotry, child abuse, Christianity, fundamentalism, intelligent design, religion, Richard Dawkins,

Battle of the Ts

This post is not a paid advertisement.

Message t-shirts square off – red-letter atheists versus modifications upon the IDiocy whiners of Expelled infamy (click to see official, inaccurate versions).

See if you can spot the modifications (the prize is free viewing of this, or any other open-access blog).

He Can't Be Serious

Well, I hope not!

The 'he' in question is an agnostic blogger named Mark Vernon who has written a pseudo-Freudian psychoanalysis of Richard Dawkins' motivations as revealed in The God Delusion. Viewed as satirical writing, the piece is hilarious; viewed as a serious attempt by someone undoubtedly not qualified as a psychiatrist, let alone a psychoanalyst, the post is trite and . . . lamentable.

Freudian psychoanalysis is the very last tool to use when trying to understand anything about human psychology. Think in terms of Freud's description of psychological defence mechanisms where those are appropriate, but forget the ridiculous 'Oedipal' and 'Electra' concepts. Perhaps the Oedipal complex tells us something of Freud's psyche, but the potential insights stop right there. I don't think that it is particularly difficult to understand Dawkins’ motivations—he says himself that he values truth, life, and humanity.

Drawing Vernon's argument that atheism is substitution of one father for another to its logical, tongue-in-cheek conclusion, one would have to assume that agnostics such as Vernon are simply uncertain of their paternity.

I won't analyze the 'psychoanalysis' because the post has been dissected elsewhere in Never mind what he did say and in Atheism as grand oedipal symbolic act. The salient point is that Freud's Oedipal and Electra complexes are entertaining but meaningless.

atheism, psychoanalysis, psychology, Richard Dawkins, Sigmund Freud, The God Delusion

Fecolithology

A fecolith is an ossified 'dropping', so fecolithology is the study of such offerings.

I found this first offering of histrionic boocr*p by Lee Siegel in the LA Times online. It is over-imaginatively titled Militant atheists are wrong: A flurry of literary attacks on God may also be closing the book on imagination.

Nor would anyone know from reading the latest rash of anti-God books that promiscuous sex and polymorphous sexuality are taken for granted in modern-day America (let's see a conservative Supreme Court try to roll that back);

Judging by Siegel's remarks, I'd have to assume that the New Atheists are promoting rampant sexual expression. This implication might boost book sales. I am currently reading The God Delusion by Dawkins and I have yet to come across Dawkins' exciting comments on promiscuous sex and polymorphous sexuality. I can hardly wait! If Richard disappoints on this score, I shall have to trust to Hitchens for titillation.

After all, in a nation where over 90% of the population claims to be religious, the scurrilous antics of "Paris Hilton, HBO, Internet porn and flip-flops" must, judging by Siegel's innuendo, be solely the result of atheistic influences from that so-influential less than 10%. If this were not the case, then why would Siegel be concerned about arguments for rationality and scientific understanding?

But they make me concerned nevertheless, because I think they strike a blow against something more important (at least to me) than belief in God. In their contempt for any belief that cannot be scientifically or empirically proved, the anti-God books are attacking our inborn capacity to create value and meaning for ourselves.

What utter boocr*p! Siegel, probably for the sake of getting his name in print, is jousting with an invisible straw man. This is not mere distortion of an argument made by the 'militant atheists', but it is something that they are not saying at all*. In fact, Dawkins quite clearly says the opposite of this in TV interviews and in the sections that I have already read of The God Delusion. Siegel is either deficient in understanding or has read theistic reviews rather than the books he is thus libeling. Judging by comments around the blogosphere that Siegel denigrated, the explanation lies largely in the former interpretation.

But that campaign against religious faith and superstition triumphed long ago in the West, where we now live in a technological, irreligious age beyond the wildest Enlightenment hopes.

Technology has definitely advanced in those 200 years, but the Founding Fathers, never mind Voltaire, would probably be horrified at the rampant fundamentalist religiosity that, amongst its other dubious manifestations, put Dubaya into power.

Even Siegel appears not to be impressed by Dubaya's administration when he complains, "For instance, Bush and his gang preach Christian values while lying us into a slaughterhouse overseas, ransacking our public coffers and ignoring social inequities and iniquities at home -- and so our heroic anti-religionists attack . . . Christian values."

Look again, Siegel, many religionists continue to approve of Dubaya, while liberals and atheists were among the first to declare horror at the damage to . . . human values. It strikes me as odd that a Jewish writer should be worring about 'Christian' values.

When our anti-religionists attack the mechanism of religious faith by demanding that our beliefs be underpinned by science, statistics and cold logic, they are, in effect, attacking our right to believe in unseen, unprovable things at all. Their assault on religious faith amounts to an attack on the human imagination.

Oh, go read The Sorrows of Young Werther if you want Romantic fantasy, Siegel! You are clearly unaware that science opens up the wonders of the universe to the imagination, whereas the God of the Gaps explains absolutely nothing and religious zealotry kills. Siegel is obviously unaware, or uncaring, that scientific investigation requires creative thinking on the part of hypothesizers and designers of experiments.

Because the existence of God is undemonstrable, unverifiable and the object of an impractical leap of faith, religion, it seems to me, is one of imagination's last strongholds.

Religion is indeed a product of fervent imaginations, but this comment is otherwise utterly and completely unjustified because, as exemplified by the wonders revealed by science and by the creative outpourings of atheists, imagination is not the sole property of religion. Boocr*p yes, creativity and wonder no. Siegel is probably incapable of discerning the difference.

*Mark Hoofnagle sums up the 'militant atheist' position admirably:

Dawkins et al., are not making the argument that we should become robots, tied to cold logic and unable to do anything new because rationality isn't prepared for the unknown. They are making the argument that we should free our minds from dogmatism and illogic which hampers our creativity, our compassion for our fellow men and women, and locks us into patterns of behavior prescribed by ancient texts that are contradictory, bigoted, and irrelevant in our modern age.

Siegel's arguments are absurd, and irrelevant. But then, so is Siegel.

PZ Myers never disappoints:

I love that admission. I wish more theists would make it. It's saying that the value of religion lies in its awesome idiocy — that no rational, reasonable person could possibly believe in that load of tripe, therefore, because so many people do believe in it, it must be valuable (and they so blithely overlook the possibility that the reason so many accept it is that they are irrational and unreasonable). A willingness to believe does not make a fact out of fantasy — it makes you a believer in nonsense, nothing more.

Pharyngulist comments are often worth repeating:

I am amazed that Siegel has never heard of George Carlin, Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Terry Pratchett, Salman Rushdie, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Woody Allen, David Cross, David Gilmour, Billy Joel, and, one of my personal favorites, H.P. Lovecraft. That list does not [even] include agnostics. So either Siegel is staggeringly ignorant of the contributions of non-theists to the arts or he does not consider the works of these people significant or he is aware and considers them important, but is being completely dishonest. Considering his past episode of sock-puppetry, I'm going with the last one. _ Atheotatous_

Websites: Washington Monthly :
Blogosphere: Play whack-a-mole with Lee Siegel : No Imagination Without Religion? Lee Seigel is an idiot. : Militant atheists are wrong - Los Angeles Times : Lee Siegel could try to be open-minded about reading secularist tomes, & : I Can Has The God? : T Bogg

Hardly surprising that rather than criticizing the rampant illogic of Siegel's piece (aside from the acknowledgement that religion requires 'an impractical leap of faith') religionist sites are merely providing links to the rubbish.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

More discussion surrounding the gross misrepresentations of atheist arguments and arguments for appeasement by atheistic scientists is to be found here in response to Mary Midgley argues that opponents of intelligent design are driving people to accept it. In response to Midgley's preposterous contention that, "scientific atheism and Darwinism which are pernicious moral doctrines", PZ Myers provides an amusing argument from ridicule.

Mary Midgley appears not to have read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and yet has critiqued things that Dawkins never said in the first place.

On his own website, Dawkins clarifies:

1. I have never said that there are no positions available except for my own and creatonism.
2. I have frequently said that natural selection is NOT the only source of evolution. I have written enthusiastically about Kimura's neutral theory of evolution.
3. I have frequently emphasized that natural selection favours cooperation and 'using something that others are not'.
4. I have repeatedly repudiated the worship of Thatcherite competition.
5. I have never said that religion MAKES people do appalling things, only that it frequently IS used to justify doing appalling things, just as ideologies such as Marxism are.
6. Far from being angry with anyone who says there are mysteries, I frequently and passionately invoke mystery as an inspiration for science, and I frequently state that science cannot answer some questions.

More : M. Midgley, ‘Gene-juggling’, Philosophy 54 (October 1979). : In Defence of Selfish Genes by Richard Dawkins : Read the goddamn book!!! : Dawkins needs to read some theology (as though that would convince Dawkins!) :

Haidt Hype

In an article entitled Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion, Jonathan Haidt demonstrates a misunderstanding of New Atheism and, in my opinion, of what should determine moral behavior.

Haidt’s description of moral psychology blurs the distinction between personal emotionality and moral philosophy. Haidt dismisses rational moral systems as too slow, in comparison to gut reactions, to determine behaviour: “Reasoning by its very nature is slow, playing out in seconds.”

Haidt appears to be conveniently ignoring the fact that seconds rank as fast enough to override emotional responses so that our behaviour can be governed by our cognition rather than by every passing emotion. Most people regard this ability as associated with socialization, emotional maturity, and self-control.

Haidt’s description of studies performed for his dissertation demonstrate self-fulfilling experimental bias: “I told people short stories in which a person does something disgusting or disrespectful that was perfectly harmless (for example, a family cooks and eats its dog, after the dog was killed by a car). I was trying to pit the emotion of disgust against reasoning about harm and individual rights.” Needless to say, Haidt found what he was looking for: “I found that disgust won in nearly all groups I studied.”

We Westerners are accustomed to viewing dogs as beloved pets and would react with disgust to this story—after all, the story was designed to disgust. Substitute “pig” or “lamb” for “dog” and the semi-cannibalistic element of the moral story diminishes considerably. In Asia, dogs are considered a food group, so I’d predict that Vietnamese Americans might not have reacted with disgust to this practical, harm-no-animal, meal. In essence, emotive reactions are culturally governed and even though emotion might kick in more quickly than cognitive assessment of this story, the cognition— that dogs are family members—was established by custom before the aversive reaction could occur.

Haidt classifies the criteria for assessing morality: the classically recognized parameters of harm/care and fairness/justice, plus Haidt’s s proposed additional parameter of ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.

The inclusion of these additional parameters, which seem to govern conservative moralizing attitudes, lead Haidt to the mistaken conclusion that morality is equated with religion. Yes, the Abrahamic religious systems include moralistic rules, and, yes, the Abrahamic religions have flourished by emphasizing community, but this does not mean that religion is the only route to moral behaviour or community involvement.

Conservative insistence on giving primacy to the moral codes of ancient Israel too often runs counter to harm/care and fairness/justice to truly represent moral attitudes. Too often, conservatives clearly act solely under the dictates of emotional reactivity or inculcated absolutes without any regard for potential harm or injustice. Even Haidt would probably not argue that killing others in the name of fundamentalist religious dogma hardly qualifies as moral behavior. Loyalty, respect, and sanctity are not necessarily good guides to moral behavior because those who claim to have moral authority may be manipulating believers to serve the claimants personal economic or political ends.

Haidt focuses on the group survival advantage of religious belief to criticize Dawkins’ New Atheist position. I have not yet read Dawkins, but PZ Myers states that Dawkins did not summarily dismiss group selection, as Haidt would have us believe. I shall have to read Dawkins and judge for myself. Regardless of what Dawkins actually said, it strikes me that in large, post-agricultural societies religion probably best served rulers and priests rather than the society’s individuals. Some South American religious superstitions, which involved ever increasing human sacrifice during times of stress, could hardly be said to have ensured group survival.

Elsewhere : PZ Myers Hmmm...I found the moral philosophy of chimps more convincing :

Video : Haidt's presentation at Enlightenment 2.0, where he explains his research into moral thinking and makes a good argument as to why liberals need to borrow the conservative lesson regarding in-group solidarity to defeat the enemy,

Dawkins

I have been taking a closer look at Richard Dawkins because of a discussion that I recently read between an theist and a theist who contends that Dawkins is a cult figure. Judging by the ad hominem attacks on Dawkins and illogical attacks on his message, his campaign for-science-against-religion is successful.

Dawkins on Hitchens : The Times Literary Supplement features (September 05, 2007) an interesting review by Richard Dawkins of Christopher Hitchens' "God is not great". . . more.

Theistic Fallacies : A variety of illogical attacks against atheism are misdirected toward Richard Dawkins and the New Atheist spokespeople. . . more.

Audiovisual:
Atheist Call to Arms .
Dawkins: CNN interview .
Dawkins: God Delusion and Beyond .
Dawkins on Scripture .
Creationist Distortions: the faked video that so delighted science-ignorant creationists . Creationist Hoax Exposed: how the Australian creationists faked a video in an attempt to discredit Richard Dawkins.

atheism

A War on Science

Here's a BBC Horizon examination of the culmination of the Scopes 1925 Monkey Trial in the Kitzmiller vs Dover School Board case. Well worth watching if you can understand those with a Scottish accent.

Lawyer and born-again Christian fundamentalist Phillip E. Johnson reveals his motivation in the power conferred by teaching of the selected creation mythology. Stephen Meyer, a CSC lackey, reveals the search for stooges for IDiocy, including irreducibly deceptive Michael Behe and 'filter' mathematician William Dembski. These perfidious, creationist associations resulted in the reworking of Paley's Blind Watchmaker argument that has been repackaged as the sleight of mind dubbed 'intelligent design'. Dawkins correctly states that IDiocy is only finding a place amongst those "who don't know anything."

audiovisual, biological evolution, creationism, intelligent design, science, David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins, Kenneth Miller, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Phillip Johnson, Stephen Meyer, BBC,

Audiovisual INDEX

AVs are slow to load, so use this menu to choose the presentation that interests you:

Atheism:
□ Atheism in Canada :
□ Atheist Call to Arms :

□ Atheism 101 :

□ Atheism: Debunking Sociopolitical and Biblical Misrepresentation :

□ A War on Science : BBC Horizon examines 'intelligent design'.
□ Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the AAIC :

□ Creationist Distortions : the faked video that so delighted science-ignorant creationists
□ Creationist Hoax Exposed : how the Australian creationists faked a video in an attempt to discredit Richard Dawkins

□ Dan Dennett at AAIC '07

□ David Attenborough on Atheism :

□ BBC Profile of Richard Dawkins :

□ Dawkins: CNN interview :

□ Dawkins: God Delusion and Beyond :
□ Dawkins: Enemies of Reason