Right, 'cause none of these things have anything to do with capitalism, yeah?
Dawkins' Atheist Bus
- Thread starter IdleRich
- Start date
Right, 'cause none of these things have anything to do with capitalism, yeah?
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
To be honest, I'm unable to comprehend how someone saying "there is no higher purpose to evolution" is taking a teleological view of evolution. Sorry to stupefy you further...
And "stop worrying (about trying to satisfy the demands of an invisible superhero) and enjoy your life" translates as "keep quiet and unquestioningly accept your capitalist masters" now?
bassnation
the abyss
in other words, he doesn't agree with you.
Consider again the paragraph Idlerich selected from that webpage linked to earlier, below (which it should be added and in fairness is hardly a comprehensive statement of Dawkin's understanding of biological purpose, but which is sufficient to highlight the problem here):
"If you read The Selfish Gene, you will find that the purpose of life certainly has NOTHING to do with the survival of the species. If anything, it is the passing on of genes (which is a very different matter), but in any case the language of purpose can mislead -- as it has misled you. Really there is NO purpose. It is simply that those genes that DO survive are the ones that we see, and whose manifestations we see, in the life that we see. That is all there is to it. There is no higher purpose to evolution. The only higher purposes in the universe are to be found in evolved brains, such as our own when we have a conscious purpose to achieve some goal. And our brains are so accustomed to this that they falsely -- as in your case -- ascribe purpose where it doesn't belong."
Briefly, Dawkin's use of 'purpose' above is, at least ostensibly, inherently inconsistent and incoherent. Nevertheless, what he appears to be claiming is that Purpose (of life, in the universe) does indeed exist, but for him it is selective, exclusivist and hierarchical, with 'our own' at the top of his positivist, anthropomorphic heap: "the purpose of life ... if anything, it is the passing on of genes", he says, but the ultimate 'higher' purpose resides in humans ('evolved brains', especially Dawkin's, presumably!!), the end point of mere evolving evolution. This, then, is the Meaning of evolution (and the 'purpose' of the universe) for Dawkins (there is also, needless to say, a political unconscious at work here, an ideology that is the support for Dawkin's desire, involving as it does his present crusade to berate all those billions of 'irrational' and 'unscientific' humans who refuse to genuflect before his 'self-actualized' evolved brain). He is NOT saying, in the paragraph above, that there is no purpose; he is specifying where he believes such purpose ought to belong and 'where it doesn't belong.' A 'humanistic' teleology.
IdleRich
IdleRich
That's simply not true, I don't know whether you are too dishonest to see it or merely too stupid to grasp it. Based on the rest of what you've said I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt so I'll explain it to you again.
Dawkins is saying that purpose is a human construct and only exists in the mind of humans - he is not saying that there is a purpose to evolution, in fact he quite clearly and categorically denies it as I'm sure you would be able to admit if it wasn't in direct contradiction of your faith position. What he is saying is that a human can have a purpose - eg here IdleRich's purpose is pointing out the paucity and inconsistency of Waffle's waffle - but it is only in that kind of situation that it is worth talking about purpose - this does not imply that there is any direction to evolution and to project this idea on to it would be a gross error.
Really, why is it so important to you to believe that Dawkins is saying the exact opposite of what he's saying? Wouldn't you get further in general if you looked at how things were and saw what they seemed to imply rather than choosing what you wanted them to imply and then pretending/insisting the world fitted with your view?
Last edited:
That'd be a bit sciencey though wouldn't it?
Does seem to be a bit much grasping on to the interpretation of one sentence of Dawkins, when in the other corner we have...the Bible. What could possibly be taken the wrong way from that?
I remember being involved in some rather long believer vs non-believer argument on the Guardian talk pages (think it was at 10,000 posts the last I'd seen), and beyond subjective experience (which can be explained away in innumerable ways), and old texts of highly questionable authenticity, the best explanation for "God" that I read was as the lifeforce of the universe, that is omnipotent because it is everything. I like that definition, mostly because it's something that reductionists and religoids should be able to find the same beauty in and stop squabbling.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, because the bus ad says "Capitalism is much better than religion", doesn't it?
Fucksake.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
For the love of any and all invisible sky wizards, you really are some kind of inverse genius, aren't you? Let's try and untangle some of this mess:
Which means that life exists, and that particular life-forms exist, in order to facilitate the propagation of genes. You're (perhaps deliberately?) confusing two different uses of the word 'purpose'. On one hand, a fork can be said to have the purpose of facilitating eating, because it was designed in the conscious mind of a human for this purpose. Christians and other theists would argue that humans themselves, and everything else, were designed in the conscious mind of God, just as forks were designed in the conscious minds of people. Then there's the other sense of the word: the sense in which we say "the purpose of eyes is to see". This means eyes exists because they enable vision, and that for many animals vision has turned out to offer an evolutionary advantage over blindness. But they were 'designed' by evolutionary pressures, not by any conscious mind. So it is with life itself: life exists because of the self-replicating tendencies of genes, just as eyes exists as they tend to improve the survival chances of genes that encode for eyes.
I really can't fathom what you're on about with the bizarre rant about "selective, exclusivist and hierarchical" - perhaps you'd prefer evolution to be equal-opportunities, inclusive and egalitarian? Oh well, that's the structural fascism of biology for you, I suppose.
The next bit is just ridiculous:
It's patently obvious that he's saying 'purpose', in the first sense I gave above, is found only in human minds, since it is a function of consciousness, and is a fundamentally different usage of the word from the other sense of 'purpose' he talks about with respect to life and genes. He's even spelled it out explicitly for you, yet you're either so stupid or so dogmatically blinded that you can't see it.
Which means that life exists, and that particular life-forms exist, in order to facilitate the propagation of genes. You're (perhaps deliberately?) confusing two different uses of the word 'purpose'. On one hand, a fork can be said to have the purpose of facilitating eating, because it was designed in the conscious mind of a human for this purpose. Christians and other theists would argue that humans themselves, and everything else, were designed in the conscious mind of God, just as forks were designed in the conscious minds of people. Then there's the other sense of the word: the sense in which we say "the purpose of eyes is to see". This means eyes exists because they enable vision, and that for many animals vision has turned out to offer an evolutionary advantage over blindness. But they were 'designed' by evolutionary pressures, not by any conscious mind. So it is with life itself: life exists because of the self-replicating tendencies of genes, just as eyes exists as they tend to improve the survival chances of genes that encode for eyes.
I really can't fathom what you're on about with the bizarre rant about "selective, exclusivist and hierarchical" - perhaps you'd prefer evolution to be equal-opportunities, inclusive and egalitarian? Oh well, that's the structural fascism of biology for you, I suppose.
The next bit is just ridiculous:
It's patently obvious that he's saying 'purpose', in the first sense I gave above, is found only in human minds, since it is a function of consciousness, and is a fundamentally different usage of the word from the other sense of 'purpose' he talks about with respect to life and genes. He's even spelled it out explicitly for you, yet you're either so stupid or so dogmatically blinded that you can't see it.
3 Body No Problem
Well-known member
That's true. I'm not saying that the 2LoT somehow violates the 2LoT. I'm also not saying that my sketch of a definition of what "teleology" might mean does cover all cases. It's a difficult problem.
Waffle said:
On the contrary. [Everything is always 'simple' for you, isn't it? You like to keep your world 'simple', anything a bit challenging therefore being 'simply not true'].
More demented abuse. If you can't grasp the quite elementary points being made above, there's nothing more I can do for you. I would just suggest you go back and read the earlier posts on this thread, which, to judge from all your intolerant and belligerent tortured-monkey-in-hell responses here you have clearly not read, much less understood.
How generous of you.
I don't think you quite realise the implications of making such a claim, already considered in a previous post [for instance, that the theory of evolution, or any other theory, requires conceptual formatting, is also 'a human construct and only exists in the human mind', something which you and, interestingly, Dawkins, fail to assert]. What is this 'mind', and why would humans want to construct such a purpose, including Dawkin's? You're conveniently psychologizing away the world, spiriting away the real of social and political power.
Whatever are you saying? Faith position? Yes, Dawkins has a 'faith position' in evolution. He's devoted his whole career to it. If you're referring to me, then you clearly haven't read anything I've written in this thread, so I suggest once again you do so before pouring forth with yet more rage; it should be pretty obvious that I'm a materialist, but then, I'm certain you don't even know what that means or entails. Again, to repeat, "Dawkins is asserting above that the ultimate 'higher' purpose resides in humans ('evolved brains', especially Dawkin's, presumably!!), the end point of mere evolving evolution. This, then, is the Meaning of evolution (and the 'purpose' of the universe) for Dawkins (there is also, needless to say, a political unconscious at work here, an ideology that is the support for Dawkin's desire, involving as it does his present crusade to berate all those billions of 'irrational' and 'unscientific' humans who refuse to genuflect before his 'self-actualized' evolved brain)."
Actually, you haven't pointed out anything on this thread, you haven't even properly read it, only revealed that you don't understand what is being argued here, only ratted off simple-minded 'commonsensical' dogma. (BTW, have you considered YOUR inconsistency above? You're claiming now that Dawkins is 'saying that a human being can have a purpose' [indeed, Dawkins believes this to be the 'higher purpose of the universe'!!] despite having earlier asserted that all purpose can be attributed to mere interiorized delusion, with no Outside. So which is it?)
But that is precisely what Dawkins is doing. He does it ALL THE TIME, in all his works, TV programmes, interviews, accepting the tenets of evolutionary psychology without even blinking.
I am attempting to EXPLAIN what he is ACTUALLY saying.
This is what you urgently need to do on this thread.
hucks
Your Message Here
Good to have you back, lifetimes.
.
jambo
slip inside my schlafsack
This has probably been said here but if you are the sort of person that feels they have to make an ostentatious show of being an 'atheist', or even to go so far as to evangelise for atheism then there is perhaps an issue there. A libidinal attraction if you will. And the wording is also kind of revealing inasmuch as it rather strongly implies the belief that it is (mainly) ideas about 'god' that lead to worry and unhappiness.
This discussion partly stems out of K-Punk's gnomic little post on the subject though doesn't it? I guess he was mostly wryly amused at how blatantly the content of the advert mirrored those Lacanian contentions about the postmodern super-ego and it's persistant injunctions and what have you. It's not entirely without significance in that sense IMO.
This discussion partly stems out of K-Punk's gnomic little post on the subject though doesn't it? I guess he was mostly wryly amused at how blatantly the content of the advert mirrored those Lacanian contentions about the postmodern super-ego and it's persistant injunctions and what have you. It's not entirely without significance in that sense IMO.
IdleRich
IdleRich
No, you're trying and failing to make him have said what you want him to have said.
No, you misunderstand (for the hundredmillionth time). Your faith position is that Dawkins must be a theist. From this (for you) it follows that he must assert the overarching plan of evolution and you are unable to accept the overwhelming evidence that he doesn't do this, basically meaning that you have sunk to the level of sticking your fingers in your ears and spraying out badly spelled insults as per usual.
Why the new persona by the way, you were only banned temporarily? I guess it's sort of commendable that you want to distance yourself from the sexism and the utter stupidity of the last one but you're not exactly off to a good start with your new creation.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
How mean.
And when you've been so polite and respectful to the people who disagree with you, too....
No, it is Dawkins who is explicitly (falsely) arguing that evolution has meaning. Again, try a make a rudimentary effort to actually read the previous posts, where this is crystal clear to all except the most insular of bigots.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
One difference, I believe, is that divine theism makes sense as a concept (although it's clearly tautological), whereas humanist theism makes no sense since it is an oxymoron, and appears to have been invented by you in an attempt to hold up your logically untenable arguments.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Look, I'll make this as simple as possible so that you (Waffle) might have a chance of understanding it.
You said this
Can you see that? Can you read it? Can you understand it? At which of these stages is it going wrong for you?
Why no answer to my other question by the way?
You said this
However Dawkins in fact said (and this is a direct quote)
Which is exactly and explicity the opposite of what you claim Dawkins is saying.
Can you see that? Can you read it? Can you understand it? At which of these stages is it going wrong for you?
Why no answer to my other question by the way?
crackerjack
Well-known member
It's been fascinating watching HMLT/Waffle slowly unmasking himself over this thread. At first it was the odd word hinting (ontological is always a good'un), now we've got the full-pelt screamathon.
Was this always his intention, I wonder, or is he just congenitally incapable of sustaining debate without reverting to type?
Was this always his intention, I wonder, or is he just congenitally incapable of sustaining debate without reverting to type?
vimothy
yurp
I admit to not finding this debate very interesting. However, I am intrigued as to why the PoMo echo chamber is so fixated on Dawkin's atheism. What's the deal? I guess for K-Punk, as a Christian (?), he's engaged in some kind of automatic/reflexive defense of religion, but why is everyone else so worked up? If Dawkin's thinks evolution has a 'purpose' (despite saying otherwise), big deal -- it seems that everyone else here agrees that it doesn't. I'm struggling to understand why anyone would bother to undertake this quasi-psychoanalytical exegesis/close reading.
The xenoeconomics thread is well more fun.