Richard Dawkins

[padraig (u.s.)]

so intent on delivering the truth of what it feels like to be alive, so intuitive, in each of these eight cases, the artists learn something that the scientists don't discover until years later.

no shots at all bro but this made me hella laugh. of course non-scientists can make observations about the world that scientists haven't, but to chalk it up to their magical artistic powers of intuition + truth-living, give me a break. I mean the book might still be good but come on.

 

[baboon2004]

no shots at all bro but this made me hella laugh. of course non-scientists can make observations about the world that scientists haven't, but to chalk it up to their magical artistic powers of intuition + truth-living, give me a break. I mean the book might still be good but come on.

i didn't write the blurb! no, it is overblown, but the idea is interesting i think, reducing the divisions between science and art, which is always welcome between disciplines/groups of disciplines. just as with philosophy and science. And architecture and dancing.

 

[Bangpuss]

For a start, he says that horrific things have been done in the name of religion, yet it was Hitler's atheism that opened the floodgates for such evil. And he falls into that old nonsense that radical atheism is just like another religion, which I don't think it is. As though all atheists believe the same things spiritually/philosophically simply narrows the debate to spiritual/metaphysical thought being related to one's belief or non-belief in God.

Atheists want to move the debate away from God. I, for example, think a lot of other spiritual beliefs are horseshit, no better than religion, based on mumbo jumbo. Other atheists disagree and see great value in non-religious forms of spirituality. Atheists can also have radically different philosophies (see the debate above). Some of this could be atheistic evil, others could be more benevolent. But what links them isn't their atheism, radical, fundamental or otherwise.

 

[droid]

John Gray recently wrote a negative review of Chomsky's latest book, which was a terrible review. I remember reading it and thinking that Gray was misrepresenting Chomsky's position -- that "America is virtually the sole obstacle to peace in the world," -- and critiquing it. Now I just Googled "John Gray Chomsky" and it comes up with a letter from Noam making the same point: i.e. he has never claimed that America is the sole evil, that U.S. crimes outdo those by any other regime, etc.

His critique of Dawkins is no better.

lol, tell me about it. it was dire. Chomsky tore him to pieces.

I dont think the Dawkins piece is anywhere near as bad though, and I have some sympathy with the general thrust of the argument. See also: southpark.

 

[baboon2004]

Sure they can, but so can people with religious beliefs.

Gray just says that science can be used for good or ill. it doesn't mean it's bad per se, just as religious nutters don't mean religion is bad per se. Which would be reductive of the experience of billions of people.

But which debate is it that we are talking about moving away from God? Many people are both scientists and Christians/Muslims, for example. There are lots of facets to the experience of a human being, which is what is kind of wonderful.

I think more integration of different ways of thinking is what's needed, not a rejection of one or the other.

 

[Bangpuss]

I don't think Dawkins is advocating evil science though.

 

[comelately]

I don't think Dawkins is advocating evil science though.

No, but when you talk about evolution and how it is life affirming........do I really need to join the dots? As I mentioned, Sam Harris found out that he had a whole load of objectivist nutjobs among his fans - credit to him, he basically told them to fuck off when he realised; but I'm surprised he was surprised.

 

[Slothrop]

I don't think Dawkins is advocating evil science though.

I don't think "science" has an inherent ethical / moral component tbh. It's a bunch of statements about how things are or how things will be and guidelines for how to come up with more such statements, but it says nothing about how things should be. To get that component is to bolt your choice of morality onto it.

Whereas I think religion does have an ethical / moral component bound up in it, at least in the forms in which it's commonly recognised.

 

[comelately]

I don't think "science" has an inherent ethical / moral component tbh

Again, Sam Harris would disagree.

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/the-moral-landscape

 

[Bangpuss]

Comelately: The Moral Landscape is a book I wanted to read when it came out but never got round to it. What do you mean by "objectivist nutjobs"? And how exactly did Dawkins -- or was it Sam Harris, since it's not clear from what you say -- respond to them? If it's anything like the way Dawkins deals with hate mail, I'll be fucking impressed:

Baboon: Dawkins has never claimed that all science is intrinsically ethically good. Yet John Gray implies this is what Dawkins says, when it's nothing of the sort. I don't have the passage in front of me, but I remember Dawkins making the point that science can and has been used malevolently, e.g. Eugenics, the Phamaceutical industry recommending drugs that people don't need, etc.

 

[baboon2004]

Sure fair enough- as said tbh i dont know what dawkins has said. I just found the rest of the gray article v good.

Would like to read that sam harris book. He seems pretty sound.

 

[Mr. Tea]

For a start, he says that horrific things have been done in the name of religion, yet it was Hitler's atheism that opened the floodgates for such evil.

Some pretty obvious points that I'm sure have occurred to everyone reading this thread already, but prolly worth putting down anyway:

- the Nazis were so colossally wrapped up in their own made-up mythology that Nazism was pretty close to a religion in itself. A lot of them (Himmler especially, not Hitler himself though) enthusiastically encouraged the revival of Germanic paganism. But Hitler certainly had mystical inclinations, and as far as Nazi ideology and iconography was concerned, he practically was God. So to call the Nazi regime 'atheistic' is problematic, to say the least.

- the latent anti-Semitism the Nazis tapped into was the product of centuries of Church-mandated Jew-hating.

And he falls into that old nonsense that radical atheism is just like another religion, which I don't think it is.

The old atheism-as-just-another-religion chestnut has been debunked so hard it's been practically atomised, IMO.

 

[Mr. Tea]

No, but when you talk about evolution and how it is life affirming........do I really need to join the dots?

Oh please, what are you oh-so darkly hinting at here? Darwin, the godfather of Nazism? Care to blame Einstein for Hiroshima while you're at it? Give me a break.

 

[comelately]

I've been quite explicit about that earlier in the thread, I'm not hinting at anything.

More strawman bullshit. Charles Darwin never tried to state, as far as I'm aware, that his views were life affirming. Dawkins has tried to take his scientific views into the world of metaphysics in a way that Darwin did not.

And whilst he recognised religion as a tribal survival strategy, Darwin nonetheless found a place for God as the ultimate law-maker (i.e. meaning maker). Darwin was not a pure empiricist. Einstein explicitly rejected atheism, preferring 'an attitude of humility'.

I accept Dawkins rejects social darwinism, as Darwin rejected it. Darwin rejecting it didn't stop it coming to prominence however - so Dawkins has the benefit of history to draw upon. Does that mean he shouldn't do science? Of course not. Does that mean he shouldn't be criticised if his arrogance leads him far away from his area of expertise to the point where he's explicitly, although presumably innocently, placing people on a metaphysical path which has previously lead many to social darwinism. If we ignore the lessons of history.......

 

[vimothy]

A fundamental question seems to be: what is knowledge?

 

[IdleRich]

Yes, that's what the thread has been circling around and teetering on the edge of asking without ever quite saying it explicitly.

 

[DannyL]

What do you mean by "objectivist nutjobs"?

He means those who have bought into the cult of Ayn Rand.

 

[yyaldrin]

Don't know a lot about the man. Have recently read "The Selfish Gene" and liked it a lot! I especially fancy the way he writes down certain parts in the beginning. It's almost as if you're reading science fiction, someone should extent this concept I think. Don't you guys think someone should make a movie about this:

“Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators? They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.”

 

[DannyL]

If the thought of SF like that that turns you on you really should read Blood Music by Greg Bear.

I read "The Selfish Gene" a long time ago. I recall finding it interesting but weirdly arid, being so concerned with models of the world, rather than the complexities of real living creatures mating and mutating. This is as much my limitation as Dawkins, I think I'd rather read natural history (i.e an explanation of how evolution can be shown to have worked in real time) than this kind of theoretical work.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I don't think "science" has an inherent ethical / moral component tbh. It's a bunch of statements about how things are or how things will be and guidelines for how to come up with more such statements, but it says nothing about how things should be. To get that component is to bolt your choice of morality onto it.

Whereas I think religion does have an ethical / moral component bound up in it, at least in the forms in which it's commonly recognised.

Exactly. Science is not an ideology (whatever some philosophers might say). It is, in principle, a totally amoral way of gathering and collating information and forming theories. How science is funded, applied, commercialised, militarised - well that's a different matter.