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And now for something partially different
Feb. 2nd, 2007 05:00 pmFrom the most overrated books of 2006, according to Prospect magazine: "Bollywood, Mihir Rose (Tempus Publishing). Contains the line "he was so nervous that he was a bundle of nerves", which, when I read it on the train, made me laugh so much that people got impatient."
Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion was listed as both over- and under-rated. Before you panic, it's obvious there's nothing further for me to contribute to discussion of the book until I've given the thing a proper read, so I shall lay off grinding my teeth for now. (The crucial question will be how much Dawkins' righteous wrath has loosened his grip on facts and logic; being an arsehole is no guarantee you're wrong.) Before I clam up, though, I did want to show you the cover of The Selfish Gene which creeped me out as a kid, which I recently rediscovered thanks to Wikipedia. For many years I assumed it must have been an Yves Tanguy painting. I thought the blobby creatures the cover represents actually lived inside us and drove us about like alien possessors. Aieee!
Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion was listed as both over- and under-rated. Before you panic, it's obvious there's nothing further for me to contribute to discussion of the book until I've given the thing a proper read, so I shall lay off grinding my teeth for now. (The crucial question will be how much Dawkins' righteous wrath has loosened his grip on facts and logic; being an arsehole is no guarantee you're wrong.) Before I clam up, though, I did want to show you the cover of The Selfish Gene which creeped me out as a kid, which I recently rediscovered thanks to Wikipedia. For many years I assumed it must have been an Yves Tanguy painting. I thought the blobby creatures the cover represents actually lived inside us and drove us about like alien possessors. Aieee!
Oh, Richard *slaps forehead*
Jan. 6th, 2007 09:15 pmI dug up a Sunday Times (24/1/07) interview with Richard Dawkins re The God Delusion, from which I quote:
But if religion only amounts to coffee mornings and more upbeat passages from the New Testament, why the pressing need to turn its followers atheist? "I don't exactly want to turn people, I suppose." That's what you say you want to do in your book. "Well, I think they're missing something. The scientific world-view is so exciting, so breathtakingly enthralling when you think of what we now understand. Here we are sitting on a planet that may possibly be the only planet in the entire universe which has anything like life. We don't have it for long. What a shame to spend your few decades grizzling and grumbling about your lot when you could be revelling in the fact you exist at all." And religion is the barrier to such pleasures? "I think so, yes."
To a Neo-Pagan (or indeed a Zen Buddhist), whose religion is rooted in nature, this is the most bizarre nonsense - although frankly, I'm unsure that Dawkins realises there are religions other than the Abrahamic trio. More to the point, the idea that a scientific worldview is mutually exclusive with religious faith is also bunkum. According to National Geographic, a 1997 survey revealed that 40% of US scientists believe in a God who answers prayers. NG points out that an even larger proportion may believe in some kind of deity, and quotes physicist Brian Greene: "The universe is incredibly wondrous, incredibly beautiful, and it fills me with a sense that there is some underlying explanation that we have yet to fully understand," he said. "If someone wants to place the word God on those collections of words, it's OK with me."
But if religion only amounts to coffee mornings and more upbeat passages from the New Testament, why the pressing need to turn its followers atheist? "I don't exactly want to turn people, I suppose." That's what you say you want to do in your book. "Well, I think they're missing something. The scientific world-view is so exciting, so breathtakingly enthralling when you think of what we now understand. Here we are sitting on a planet that may possibly be the only planet in the entire universe which has anything like life. We don't have it for long. What a shame to spend your few decades grizzling and grumbling about your lot when you could be revelling in the fact you exist at all." And religion is the barrier to such pleasures? "I think so, yes."
To a Neo-Pagan (or indeed a Zen Buddhist), whose religion is rooted in nature, this is the most bizarre nonsense - although frankly, I'm unsure that Dawkins realises there are religions other than the Abrahamic trio. More to the point, the idea that a scientific worldview is mutually exclusive with religious faith is also bunkum. According to National Geographic, a 1997 survey revealed that 40% of US scientists believe in a God who answers prayers. NG points out that an even larger proportion may believe in some kind of deity, and quotes physicist Brian Greene: "The universe is incredibly wondrous, incredibly beautiful, and it fills me with a sense that there is some underlying explanation that we have yet to fully understand," he said. "If someone wants to place the word God on those collections of words, it's OK with me."
The latest New Scientist (16/12/06) reports on a change in tactics by proponents of Intelligent Design. One reason they've been thrashed in court for promoting religion as science is that they've done no scientific research. Funded by organisations such as the Discovery Institute, a handful of scientists are doing research with a view to its use in promoting ID, probably in the courtroom.
This is a clever move. Pointing out that ID is "not science" sounds like an insult, rather than a fact crucial in a First Amendment court challenge. (It's not poetry, either.) If ID proponents can get some papers published, they have a chance of giving their religion the cachet of "science" - perhaps even of convincing judges.
( Read more... )
I also wanted to mention that, according to Discover, a curious Richard Dawkins had the God Spot in his brain stimulated and was disappointed he didn't have a mystical experience. This adds fuel to my personal theory that some people have the gene and the neural structures for religion, and some don't, and wonder what on earth the rest of us are on about. :-)
This is a clever move. Pointing out that ID is "not science" sounds like an insult, rather than a fact crucial in a First Amendment court challenge. (It's not poetry, either.) If ID proponents can get some papers published, they have a chance of giving their religion the cachet of "science" - perhaps even of convincing judges.
( Read more... )
I also wanted to mention that, according to Discover, a curious Richard Dawkins had the God Spot in his brain stimulated and was disappointed he didn't have a mystical experience. This adds fuel to my personal theory that some people have the gene and the neural structures for religion, and some don't, and wonder what on earth the rest of us are on about. :-)
The Gawd Delusion redux
Dec. 13th, 2006 11:34 amAlso online is the New York Times review of The God Delusion, which deals at some length with Dawkin's insistence that God must be more complex than His creation. This appears to be another strawman, but it struck me as particularly odd given how many scientific examples there are of the simple giving birth to limitless complexity. Natural selection; the equation of the Mandelbrot Set; the low-entropy initial state of the universe. (Interestingly, mythology is full of simple initial creations which were succeeded by complexity - the inert, homogenous oceans of Mesopotamian and Egyptian religion are examples.)
The review also states (my emphasis): "Dawkins’s gullible-child proposal is, as he concedes, just one of many Darwinian hypotheses that have been speculatively put forward to account for religion. (Another is that religion is a byproduct of our genetically programmed tendency to fall in love.)" omg, that's a delightful idea! I must track it down!
( Now with additional grumbling )
The review also states (my emphasis): "Dawkins’s gullible-child proposal is, as he concedes, just one of many Darwinian hypotheses that have been speculatively put forward to account for religion. (Another is that religion is a byproduct of our genetically programmed tendency to fall in love.)" omg, that's a delightful idea! I must track it down!
( Now with additional grumbling )
The Gawd Delusion
Dec. 13th, 2006 11:10 amYesterday I read the Harpers review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I am still flinching from reading the book, but if the review is accurate, Dawkins has made some embarrassingly basic cockups of fact and logic, some of which even I could have pointed out. I commented recently on how infuriating it is to be derided, or to see someone derided, on the basis of strawmen. I think I'd better wait to read the book until the dentist has made me that appliance to stop me grinding my teeth.
Certain credal propositions
Oct. 21st, 2006 05:29 pmI read a great New Scientist article (30 July 2005) in which Karen Armstrong reviews Michael Ruse's book The Evolution-Creation Struggle. She remarks:
"There is a widespread, popular conviction that science and religion are diametrically opposed, and that science has rendered most religious truth frankly incredible. But this conviction is based on an erroneous assumption; that faith is synonymous with belief, and that to be religious, people must accept certain credal propositions. This is a relatively recent development, one that has arisen since the Enlightenment, and then only in the west... Even Martin Luther... did not define faith by belief; he had in fact very little time for dogma and creeds. Faith was a heroic cultivation of trust in the idea that, against all the evidence to the contrary, life had some ultimate, though ineffable, meaning and value."
Now this follows on from an outline of Richard Dawkins' opposition to religion on the grounds that faith is "belief that isn't based on evidence". In one of those odd leaps my mind makes, I suddenly thought of how Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon were often attacked for their criticism of "pornography" by people who used the word in a vague, general sense, not in the extremely specific way Dworkin and Mackinnon defined it. Similarly, Dawkins has made a strawman version of religion by creating his own definition, then attacking that definition, with little reference to the actual thinking of religious people.
"There is a widespread, popular conviction that science and religion are diametrically opposed, and that science has rendered most religious truth frankly incredible. But this conviction is based on an erroneous assumption; that faith is synonymous with belief, and that to be religious, people must accept certain credal propositions. This is a relatively recent development, one that has arisen since the Enlightenment, and then only in the west... Even Martin Luther... did not define faith by belief; he had in fact very little time for dogma and creeds. Faith was a heroic cultivation of trust in the idea that, against all the evidence to the contrary, life had some ultimate, though ineffable, meaning and value."
Now this follows on from an outline of Richard Dawkins' opposition to religion on the grounds that faith is "belief that isn't based on evidence". In one of those odd leaps my mind makes, I suddenly thought of how Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon were often attacked for their criticism of "pornography" by people who used the word in a vague, general sense, not in the extremely specific way Dworkin and Mackinnon defined it. Similarly, Dawkins has made a strawman version of religion by creating his own definition, then attacking that definition, with little reference to the actual thinking of religious people.
Serious question
Oct. 19th, 2006 09:36 amHow does the number of articles in peer-reviewed science journals about memes compare with the number of articles in peer-reviewed science journals about intelligent design?
ETA: prompted by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cheesygirl's search, I'm rummaging around in EBSCOHost myself - a huge database of journal articles. There are journal articles discussing memes, but I can't find any actual research articles. As one article in the Journal of Psychology and Theology puts it, "memetics is rife with conceptual problems and utterly lacking in empirical support". In terms of research, that puts memes on a par with intelligent design - without the excuse of being scientifically untestable.
ETA: prompted by
cheesygirl's search, I'm rummaging around in EBSCOHost myself - a huge database of journal articles. There are journal articles discussing memes, but I can't find any actual research articles. As one article in the Journal of Psychology and Theology puts it, "memetics is rife with conceptual problems and utterly lacking in empirical support". In terms of research, that puts memes on a par with intelligent design - without the excuse of being scientifically untestable.(no subject)
Oct. 11th, 2006 10:18 amOh help. Richard Dawkins has written a book called The God Delusion.
(I immediately thought of Dean Stockwell's character from BSG. Sometimes I think my brain is just randomly wired.)
(I immediately thought of Dean Stockwell's character from BSG. Sometimes I think my brain is just randomly wired.)
*lightbulb*
Feb. 21st, 2006 04:20 pmOf course Dawkins explains religion as a meme - that is, a sort of cultural virus. If it isn't an external, infectious agent, then from his perspective, it must have evolved - meaning it must grant some survival advantage.
(no subject)
Nov. 16th, 2005 07:25 pmI read the science mags at the library this evening. I'm not the only science fan* who flinches at Dawkins: Discovery magazine ran an article describing him as "Darwin's Rottweiler", which prompted several letters, including one expressing the same worry I mentioned in my posting about Scott Adams - you can't win people over with hostility and scorn. One reader feels understandably besieged by Intelligent Design, and welcomes Dawkin's anger; but it's not the weapon with which to win this fight. Facts and logic are those weapons.
There was also a terrific letter in New Scientist the content of which, in my fatigue, I've forgotten. Balls.
___
* I'm stumped for the right term for myself who accepts the evidence for evolution. "Scientist" is simple, but then, Michael Behe is a scientist. "Evolutionist" sounds like a religion, and "evolution proponent" is no better. "ID critic" is too narrow. "Darwinist" is too narrow (and a Creationist label). I'm not bright enough to be a "Bright", and I long ago quit the Skeptics. "Science fan" will have to do for now. Suggestions welcome.
There was also a terrific letter in New Scientist the content of which, in my fatigue, I've forgotten. Balls.
___
* I'm stumped for the right term for myself who accepts the evidence for evolution. "Scientist" is simple, but then, Michael Behe is a scientist. "Evolutionist" sounds like a religion, and "evolution proponent" is no better. "ID critic" is too narrow. "Darwinist" is too narrow (and a Creationist label). I'm not bright enough to be a "Bright", and I long ago quit the Skeptics. "Science fan" will have to do for now. Suggestions welcome.
(no subject)
Nov. 3rd, 2005 09:24 pmLittle Dawkins footnote. The book which he relies on for his knowledge of academic feminism - and how it supposedly rejects science, math, and logic as hopelessly sexist - Professing Feminism - is based on thirty anonymous interviews, which were then generalised to the entire field. The book, just one of numerous successful backlash publications in the nineties, became a handy tool for attacking all women's studies and all feminism based on the disgruntlings of a few.
(no subject)
Nov. 2nd, 2005 03:23 pmSomething I should have made clear in yesterday's posting about brights, and which a couple of commenters have reminded me about, is that the bright movement isn't representative of atheists et al. Many have reacted negatively. The Skeptic Society's email newsletter solicited responses from readers which were overwhelmingly against the term - a copy of their report is archived here. Chris Mooney of CSICOP described how the movement backfired.
OTOH, it is a movement: The Bright's Net, a non-profit organisation, claims a potential twenty-nine million members, although they're not forthcoming about the actual number of brights who've registered with them. (They claim over 3800 responded to a recent poll of members.) Nor has the movement been marginalised by the non-religious community: the Web site BrightRights.org describes itself as "a project of the American Humanist Society".
OTOH, it is a movement: The Bright's Net, a non-profit organisation, claims a potential twenty-nine million members, although they're not forthcoming about the actual number of brights who've registered with them. (They claim over 3800 responded to a recent poll of members.) Nor has the movement been marginalised by the non-religious community: the Web site BrightRights.org describes itself as "a project of the American Humanist Society".
Rummaging around the net for stuff on the Bright movement, an effort to have atheists call themselves "brights", in order to make everyone like them. As one commentator put it, "Are atheists and agnostics smarter than everyone else? A group of them have managed to assert that idea and disprove it in one swift marketing gambit."
That article, by Steve Waldman of BeliefNet, goes on to question the implied insult - that those who don't share the brights' views are dim. "Let's put aside the questionable intelligence of trying to improve your image by choosing a title that makes everyone hate you. They might as well have chosen the smugs or the smarty-pants... In fact, two surveys earlier this year... indicate that even supernatural religious beliefs are held not only by most Americans, but by the majority of well-educated Americans." Of those with postgrad degrees, about half believed in hell and the Devil; 60% accept the Virgin birth, 64% the Resurrection, 72% believe in miracles, and 78% believe the soul survives death. As Waldman points out, these are intelligent people who've been trained to weight evidence.
Waldman suggests that those people have found a kind of proof for their beliefs - not an empirical proof which can easily be demonstrated to another, but something nonetheless compelling enough to convince them. (The sort of thing I know and value as "non-rational knowledge".)
Dawkins reckons we're just brainwashed into religious belief by our parents - it's a meme, or a bunch of mutually supporting memes. In other words, it's wholly cultural (although taking advantage of our brain's ability to rapidly absorb culture in childhood). Now, there are matriarchal and rape-free societies on Earth, so we know that neither male dominance nor sexual violence are automatically programmed into us.. But has anyone ever found a "bright" society? A study of twins this year found evidence of a hereditary effect on peoples' religiosity, at least as adults. We are wired for this stuff. Why? Putting aside the temptingly simple answer that God put it there, is there some evolutionary advantage to spirituality? The study's authors suggest some possibilities.
In the meantime, I'm going to adopt a term from the SF story Star Bright by Mark Clifton, which I read as a child. A father struggles to keep up with his impossibly brilliant mutant daughter. She explains that she is a Bright, and he is a Tween - not a Bright, but not a Stupid either. Since I value empiricism, but know its limits, I guess I'm a Tween.
That article, by Steve Waldman of BeliefNet, goes on to question the implied insult - that those who don't share the brights' views are dim. "Let's put aside the questionable intelligence of trying to improve your image by choosing a title that makes everyone hate you. They might as well have chosen the smugs or the smarty-pants... In fact, two surveys earlier this year... indicate that even supernatural religious beliefs are held not only by most Americans, but by the majority of well-educated Americans." Of those with postgrad degrees, about half believed in hell and the Devil; 60% accept the Virgin birth, 64% the Resurrection, 72% believe in miracles, and 78% believe the soul survives death. As Waldman points out, these are intelligent people who've been trained to weight evidence.
Waldman suggests that those people have found a kind of proof for their beliefs - not an empirical proof which can easily be demonstrated to another, but something nonetheless compelling enough to convince them. (The sort of thing I know and value as "non-rational knowledge".)
Dawkins reckons we're just brainwashed into religious belief by our parents - it's a meme, or a bunch of mutually supporting memes. In other words, it's wholly cultural (although taking advantage of our brain's ability to rapidly absorb culture in childhood). Now, there are matriarchal and rape-free societies on Earth, so we know that neither male dominance nor sexual violence are automatically programmed into us.. But has anyone ever found a "bright" society? A study of twins this year found evidence of a hereditary effect on peoples' religiosity, at least as adults. We are wired for this stuff. Why? Putting aside the temptingly simple answer that God put it there, is there some evolutionary advantage to spirituality? The study's authors suggest some possibilities.
In the meantime, I'm going to adopt a term from the SF story Star Bright by Mark Clifton, which I read as a child. A father struggles to keep up with his impossibly brilliant mutant daughter. She explains that she is a Bright, and he is a Tween - not a Bright, but not a Stupid either. Since I value empiricism, but know its limits, I guess I'm a Tween.
Chapeau d'ass
Oct. 31st, 2005 09:47 amStill reading the essay collection A Devil's Chaplain. After the spine-tingling (no exaggeration) scientific explanations of The "Information Challenge", Dawkins is back to flouting his unhealthy combination of loathing and ignorance in Viruses of the Mind. Religions are merely mental parasites, you see, on a level with a jingle you just can't get out of your head. There's no need to address their cultural or biological origins, or indeed to find out anything about them beyond the detail you can get from a newspaper. Not when you already know you're right. How is it possible than an intelligent, educated essayist can rant about Transubstantiation, and still know less about it than I do, for heaven's sakes!
In a following essay, The Great Convergence, Dawkins indulges in the infuriating false dichotomy which atheists and fundamentalists share: that we can choose only between one or the other. Religion is by Dawkin's definition belief in things it's stupid to believe in - the stupider the better. When he recognises the same awe at nature in a religious writer as the same as his own atheist awe, he insists she is misusing the term "religion", because she doesn't believe in a "supreme being" or "life after death". The word "religion", he insists, should mean what it meant to Darwin or Newton - never mind the massive changes in the religious world which took place in the twentieth century.
Dawkins gives Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all a bucketing, but doesn't seem to have anything to say about Buddhism, perhaps because it's a major world religion which doesn't match his definition of "religion". He also doesn't seem to have anything to say about the strange workings of the mind and brain which produce religious or spiritual experiences - not hallucinations, but (for example) feelings of oneness with the universe. This may be because admitting that religion is somehow built into the brain would mean admitting it might have some evolutionary reason to be there. (Plus he couldn't write about religion as being examples of his pet memes.)
Come to think of it, I don't believe in a "supreme" being, and my ideas on "life after death", largely derived from Zen, probably wouldn't be acceptable to Dawkins as "religion". He'd find my changeable, developing, culturally promiscuous faith to be incomprehensible "pseudoreligion". He'd be puzzled by the Buddhist, Wiccan idea that religion is about practice rather than belief - like science. The word missing from his vocabulary is spirituality.
In a following essay, The Great Convergence, Dawkins indulges in the infuriating false dichotomy which atheists and fundamentalists share: that we can choose only between one or the other. Religion is by Dawkin's definition belief in things it's stupid to believe in - the stupider the better. When he recognises the same awe at nature in a religious writer as the same as his own atheist awe, he insists she is misusing the term "religion", because she doesn't believe in a "supreme being" or "life after death". The word "religion", he insists, should mean what it meant to Darwin or Newton - never mind the massive changes in the religious world which took place in the twentieth century.
Dawkins gives Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all a bucketing, but doesn't seem to have anything to say about Buddhism, perhaps because it's a major world religion which doesn't match his definition of "religion". He also doesn't seem to have anything to say about the strange workings of the mind and brain which produce religious or spiritual experiences - not hallucinations, but (for example) feelings of oneness with the universe. This may be because admitting that religion is somehow built into the brain would mean admitting it might have some evolutionary reason to be there. (Plus he couldn't write about religion as being examples of his pet memes.)
Come to think of it, I don't believe in a "supreme" being, and my ideas on "life after death", largely derived from Zen, probably wouldn't be acceptable to Dawkins as "religion". He'd find my changeable, developing, culturally promiscuous faith to be incomprehensible "pseudoreligion". He'd be puzzled by the Buddhist, Wiccan idea that religion is about practice rather than belief - like science. The word missing from his vocabulary is spirituality.
