I used to be a huge fan of Richard Dawkins. His masterpiece, The Selfish Gene, was massively significant in my life. When I read it in 1986 I recognised a man who was able to express in clear, concise and scientific terms, beliefs that I had nurtured for some years. Almost everything he wrote thereafter was eagerly consumed by me. He struck me as being a brilliant, gentle and humourous man who simply wanted to tell the truth without pushing any personal cause. So strong was my admiration for him that I would sometimes say in conversations about him, “Dawkins is wrong to say there is no God. Dawkins is God!” Childish perhaps; designed to provoke, probably; sincere, certainly. So when a friend of mine who had met him described him as a self-satisfied prick, I felt personally insulted.
When the God Delusion came along, I almost did not bother to read it. Surely I knew what he was going to say and surely I was going to share the same views. Was there any point in reading it? In the year or two following its publication I watched and heard various television and radio interviews and programs in which he argued his case. That he was being increasingly treated as some sort of superstar by the good guys and a pariah by the baddies did not overly concern me. As far as I was concerned he spoke well and with clear and precise logic. And, he was right. The man continued to be my hero. He was the guest who would be in the seat of honour at my fantasy dinner party.
It was only by chance that I eventually came to pick up the book. It happened while staying with friends. My host, who lent it to me, was somewhat disparaging about it and that piqued my interest. The first half of The God Delusion lived up to my expectations as Dawkins skilfully dissected the argument behind theism. He ruthlessly tore apart the absurdity behind the theory of those man-made gods that had so determined the fates of various civilizations for millennia. I had little to argue with him on that point. But then he moved on to religion, as distinct from theism, and attacked it with a violent fervour that reeked of self interest. Here was a man who had an agenda; a liberal one at that.
Dawkins has introduced to the world several wonderful concepts. One is the idea of the ‘Second Big Bang”. This essentially deals with the idea of self-replication. Without it, the universe, following its creation would have remained relatively inert. Sure stars would changed from dwarves to giants emitting huge amounts of energy, but until that moment when a collection of proteins somehow managed to split into two identical halves, the universe remained a pretty dull sort of place. With replication came evolution and with evolution came mankind. Now we had something to talk about.
Another of his great ideas was the concept of, ‘memes’. This is some of what Wikipedia says about them. “A meme (rhyming with “cream”) is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures. The British scientist Richard Dawkins coined (or adapted) the word “meme” in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, beliefs (notably religious beliefs), clothing fashion, and the technology of building arches.”
What a wonderful idea. Just as every journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step so the most sophisticated of scientific disciplines and philosophies start with an idea. One and one make two, eventually evolves into the greatest of all sciences, mathematics.
So why should I take such umbrage at the fact that my hero has attacked religion? If there is no god, how can there be any rational justification for codifying ‘his’ rules? On the surface of things, there would not appear to be. But Dawkins does not just attack the logic behind religion – there is no god so how can there be rules – he attacks the very existence of religion. He makes it out to be evil and damaging to mankind. And this is where I believe Dawkins falls apart. If there is no God (change of case is deliberate), then man is just another animal. Scratch that, man is just another collection of self-replicating cells. But he quite obviously believes that man is more than that. Man is superior. Man has a conscience and a social obligation that goes beyond a selfish desire for survival at any cost.
So where does religion come from? If as Dawkins says there is no God, and with that I agree, then it must surely come from man. And if man has created it and it still exists today, it must certainly have served some useful purpose that has enabled man to prosper. Remember under the rules of Big Bang 2, prospering does not mean being healthy, wealthy and wise, it means having lots of little ones who will themselves reproduce ad infinitum. That is the very essence of the Selfish Gene Theory. Attacking religion is like attacking the fact that we have hair on our heads; or at least some of us do. We have hair for a reason. Either it makes us attractive to the opposite sex, or it helps us survive. Either way it serves to help us reproduce, thus passing on our genes.
Religion exists because some bright spark had the idea that there was a supernatural power, mightier than any earthly entity, who could control the heavens and the earth. Once that idea caught on, it was inevitable, under Dawkins’s own rules, that the idea would evolve into something more complex. If it had proved itself to be a worthless idea, it would have fizzled out and would not have been adopted on such a wide scale. But it did. Bear in mind that every civilization that we know of has had, at its heart, some or other form of theistic worship. Scientifically, religion may have as much validity as alchemy, but until it is empirically disproven, it is likely to continue to prosper and evolve in its various forms.
For Dawkins, a scientist and evolutionist, to attack religion, is akin to one of the Dimbelbys taking sides on a political discussion that he is chairing. What they think in private is one thing, what they say in public is another. We depend on them to be practically neutral. Dawkins has taken sides, publically. It is not up to him to say that religion is evil. Given his stance on genes and memes, that religion exists is a fact. It can only have been GOOD thus far for mankind, since we are what we are because of it. Had mankind not developed religion, society would be very, very different. There is certainly no guarantee that it would have been better; it might well have been worse. But, one can guarantee that none of us, not even Dawkins would be around if religion had never existed and had never been fundamental to modern civilization.
Today’s press tells us that Dawkins intends to arrest the Pope when he visits the UK later this year upon the basis of crimes against humanity. Notice, it is the Pope, he is out to get, not Robert Mugabe or George Bush. Dawkins is attacking religion because he believes its practitioners are detrimental to mankind. He might just as well attack snakes and cockroaches. He is attaching a political agenda to a scientific one.
What adds to my irritation of the man is that he contradicts his own theories in other areas as well. He will justify the behaviour of a parasitic wasp that lays its larvae in a living host so they can feed on it while it is still alive. He justifies the behaviour of troops of chimpanzees, or prides of lions and their brutal ways of dealing with competitors. But he denies the rights of humans to take the same kind of actions. Racism, sexism, homophobia etc are all immoral. But wait, where does morality fit into all this? According to Dawkins we share the same ancestors as apes. According to Dawkins, those traits are not just immoral, they are illogical too. He says there is no scientific logic behind racism. How can we be mere replicating machines on one hand, the result of a long evolutionary process, but on the other, be somehow superior to other plants and animals? If I am an animal let me behave like one. My purpose is driven by my genes and that purpose is to replicate and pass on as many genes as I can. That is evolutionary theory. If there is another purpose, what is it and from whom, where or what does it originate?
I believe that Richard Dawkins has sold out to popularism. He has been corrupted by the liberatti (© Sipu). Humility and humour have been overcome by hubris.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Even Newton, the greatest genius of all, practised the science of alchemy.
Interesting post, Sipu. I read and enjoyed The Selfish Gene in the seventies but haven’t read any of Dawkins’ others. However, I’ve often had long pub arguments with his devotees (which for some reason I can’t remember).
Your point here, if I understand it correctly, is that according to Dawkins we (like all other life) exist to propagate our genes, and everything else is beside the point. Therefore Dawkins ought not to be judgemental and moralistic … genes don’t care about that sort of stuff, but only about survival and reproduction.
I once bought a biography of Newton called The Last Alchemist and was disappointed to find nothing about alchemy in it … a bit of a swizz, I thought. As I understand it, the transmutation of metals was an allegory for the transmutation of the self … a point that is often missed. Jung had interesting things to say about it.
Probably ‘liberati’, by analogy with ‘literati’ … nice coinage. Also ‘publicly’, if you will forgive me.
Brendano, since you managed to plough your way through the whole thing (???), you are certainally 😉 forgiven for your suggestions, indeed they are welcomed. Yes your second para sums up the gist of what I am saying. He is melding science into philosophy and is thereby making the same mistakes as those he chooses to denigrate.
Sipu … yes, I did read the whole thing. 🙂 I wonder if he has tried to justify the deployment of concepts such as morality and the general good in his books post-TSG, or are we still ‘just’ gene-cases?
The God Delusion is the only one of Dawkins’ books that I have read. The further into it I got, the less convincing he became. And he attacks his caricature of Christianity with such savagery that it looks as if he has never attempted to understand it properly. His crowning reason for not believing in a god seems to be that he “can’t imagine an infinite, all-poweerful being.” So reality is limited by what Richard Dawkins can imagine in his own individual mind?
I haven’t read the book Sipu, but looking at your interpretation, and that of Brendano, it would seem to be flawed.
Once humans ceased to be nomadic, they settled in groups, which evolved into complex societies which involved co-operation, which is also arguably essential to the survival of humanity and requires regulation in the form of a system of ethics, most of which are based on some form of religion.
Interesting you should say that. I remember admiring his diplomacy, if that is the right word, in steering clear of any mention of human behaviour in TSG. It was not necessary to his argument and would have created a moral repulsion in some people. I think it is only recently when he became a ‘born again atheist’ with charismatic tendencies and took on the parallel characteristics of a southern evangelist (am I labouring the metaphor?) that he took on the moral cause. Interestingly, he does make a point in “The Greatest Show on Earth” that racial superiority could be achieved artificially, but does not occur naturally. I find that very dishonest. Perhaps he has taken that route because the alternative would be to justify genocide, which from a purely selfish point of view is entirely legitimate method of ensuring survival, (well, not in Hitler’s case, but you see what I mean). And that would have been a step too far. Personally, I think he should have just steered clear of the God debate and stuck to animals. Let the philosophers worry about the rest.
While on the subject, it was while reading Of Human Bondage that I first became aware that my ideas were not unique, not that I expected them to be. A conversation Philip Carey has with the drunken philosopher, whose name I have forgotten, in a Parisian cafe, showed me that it is possible to argue that all human behaviour, while apparently altruistic is in fact ultimately selfish.
Gwen and Araminta, I think you have both summed it up well. I am just hugely disappointed by the man. What I am afraid of is that his current outlook will lessen the high standing of his earlier work which I believe to be groundbreaking and hugely important.
Never read anything of his, quite deliberately. Always struck me as a total arsehole. Seemingly time has proved that to be a correct assessment.
I do think so many people do try to make life as confusing as possible whereas it really is simplicity itself. Of course they make good profit from their reader’s confusion!
Most philosophers/literati/charlatans should go out and get a proper job, the world would be a lot better off without their blether. A waste of good trees to print their crap, one good thing about computers they can be despatched at the flick of the finger without killing trees!
Hubris? As it happens I’ve just finished the Greatest Show on Earth and I enjoyed the science very much. Much of it I’d read before elswewhere, but Dawkins does an excellent job of putting it all together. Ome of my blogs touched on the evolution of social behaviour, in fact.
http://bravo22c.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/life-is-a-materialist-process/
There is plenty of work done in this field and it is fairly easy to see how such development could have occurred without any need at all for the intervention of mythical beings of any kind. As for the rest of the Dawkins circus, it amuses me greatly to see how the superstitious are pricked by him in particular. If they could burn him, they would.
Well, CO as strident as ever. But one has to have some thoughts and theories about life the universe and everything. 42 only gets one so far and conversing with plants, while it probably has its good points, would, I imagine, get a trifle boring after a while. I stand by my original opinion that Dawkins’s theory of the Selfish Gene is valid, well thought through, well explained and simply brilliant. What came later, once success had gone to his head, is another story.
Bravo, if I am included amongst the ‘superstitious’, I think you have misunderstood me. What I liked and admired about Dawkins was the science. What offends me about him is not his attack on the existence of God – I get it, there is no God – but rather his attack on a philosophy that has proven itself to have been of evolutionary value. Religion as a philosophy is as valid as the concept of human rights, or democracy. They are all man made ideas by which our society has evolved. He is confusing God with religion and his contradicting his own meme theory which is an extension of genetic theory. The man has sold out or has simply lost the plot. I have only browsed the Greatest Show on Earth, but I imagine the science side of it is pretty convincing. But if he wanders into the realms of trying to damn religion then I am sure he will continue to irritate.
Sipu, I include amongst the superstitious onky those who are superstitious.
If I may be so bold as to remark, your combination of statements is somewhat fatuous especially when juxtaposed to my question. Perhaps you should include somewhere the phrase “those whom I believe to be”
The only Dawkins’ Book I’ve read is the ‘God Delusion’. I was extremely disappointed. It seemed to me that his ‘proof’ of the non-existence of God relied solely on the debunking and ridiculing the dogma of established religions.
It told me nothing I hadn’t thought before. I reached the conclusion years ago that established religions were simply a means of men gaining control, power and money and if there were an omnipotent being it would be incapable of doing much for laughing at the antics of its so-called followers. To quote Bravo elsewhere:
Can you imagine anything more laughable than an omnipotent being caring a tuppeny fig about whether the lady at number 19 has bare arms or not?
I have no problem with Dawkins debunking the dogma and directives of established religions, especially those that are causing so many problems in the world today. We really do not need more and more people standing on their rights to behave in ways that they think their God requires.
But, as far as I’m concerned “The God Delusion’ left me exactly where I was before I read the book – an agnostic.
Sipu, it would seem that ‘the superstitious’ is defined as ‘those who see the world differently to me’.
Then again, I have a litre of strong cider inside me.
Bravo might consider releasing a new version of the old Smokey Robinson & the Miracles hit ‘I Second that Emotion’ … it could be entitled ‘I Verify that Datum’. 🙂
Boadicea, its a pity that you read that book first. It will probably put you off reading his earlier work which I believe to be seminal.
This is a debate for another day, but while I acknowledge the fallacies of religion, I really cannot see a stable and sustainable alternative. I would love to know what sort of Utopian ideal you envisage would exist in a society, nay, a world that had completely abandoned religion. I do not see it being any better than what we have now. But this is not the post for it.
Brendano, you are being mischievous.
Sipu: You’re right it has deterred me from reading any of his other stuff. And you’re also correct – that’s another debate!
Another debate perhaps worth having having though, Sipu.
Sipu, this looks fascinating but I want to digest properly, so I’m going to bookmark it for later on tonight!
CO; spotted you comment in there – you make me laugh though! Fay Weldon – literati, feminist, ya know, navel gazer type – once actually said something similar in Letters to Alice, a sort of apologia for Jane AUsten, aimed at teenagers.
In it, she said that Jane Austen had to cope with constant interruptions and hassle at home, like most female writers of her day. But then she thought this was the most healthy way to be as a writer, because writing is not solitary, but derived from the realities and mundanities of life.
Sorry, off on a tangent again. But I think your words make sense from a literary perspective as well as a common sense one, actually 😉
I was talking about your last paragraph, Christina ;
Yes, Ara, but I am not going to start it. I rather hope that someone else will.
Yes Claire it is. 🙂 I will expect a 500 word commentary in the morning and no excuses.
Yes, definitely. No harm in that, I hope. It’s been the first sunny weekend of the year here and I am feeling rather elated, if a little intoxicated.
Sipu, those who believe in superstition, that is, ghosties, ghoulies, gods and other mythical beings. My apologies for the lack of clarity.
Since it’s not my blog I’ll ignore Brendano’s reversion to type.
saw him in a televised debate with John Lennox about the existence of god. What struck me was how poorly Dawkins expressed himself and how arrogantly he came across.
I have not read Dawkins.
I have, however, read Sipu, who, inter alia asserts that religion is –
What nonsense! History suggests exactly the opposite. Religion has prospered because of the value, in money, power and control, that it has brought to its leaders. Billy Graham, L Ron Hubbard and the evil pope in his cloth of gold, to name but three amongst hundreds of others, have grown rich and powerful whilst their cowed and brainwashed followers died of AIDS or in poverty, depressed and frightened of the terrors of the after-life.
Again, Sipu asserts –
What? You cannot be serious! [apologies to John McEnroe] That is foundationless piffle. Nobody can guarantee anything of the sort.
And to conceive of ‘religion’ without a ‘god’ is a semantic null – a big fat zero, a contradiction in terms.
Debate for debate’s sake is fine, if you enjoy that sort of thing, but there must be at least a modicum of fact, or a foundation of reason in the proposition. I find none in this post, which plucks fluff from thin air in order to excoriate some obscure scribbler.
I can see I shall have to read Dawkins in order to discover how he can arouse such fervent enmity.
Bearsy, start with ‘The God Delusion.’
One of the DT superstition correspondants wrote recently, that there would be no christianity without the (catholic, i think,) church. he’s quite right, of course – they’re making it up as they go along, as do all of the organised superstitions.
Bravo, you are being childish and illogical and therefore there is little point in debating this with you.
Sipu. Logical is my middle name. It’s all made up – in christianity starting with Paul of Tarsus, and through the Council of Nicea onwards. Islam is nobbut the ‘Aryan Heresy’ in Arabic.
Bearsy, your prejudice towards religion is so strong that you do not seem to be able to hold a rational conversation on the subject. Ironical, given yours and Bravo’s mighty words on Araminta’s ”So, let us have a debate’ post about seeing the other point of view and about not assuming things. What nonsense you both talk.
You do not have to be a bloody genius to recognise that had the Holy Roman Empire not existed, Europe would have been a very different place. It might have been better, it might not have been. There is a very good chance that we would still be living in the dark ages. (If you read Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, you will get a better understanding of evolution and how it applies to the origins of society as much as the origins of species.)In any event, it would almost certainly have been replaced by one or more powers that almost certainly would have practised some other form of religion. And that is the point which people of your ilk do not seem to be able to grasp. Religion has been essential to society. Every single society that I am aware of, and I dare say that applies to you too, has found it necessary to employ the use of a religion in some form or other. Your argument that because religion has caused death and suffering and should therefor be banned is like saying that because exploration resulted in colonialism and slavery and the suffering associated with it, it should have been banned as well.
I suggested it to Boadicea, but I challenge you to describe a history of society in which no religion exists and explain to me just how much better it would be than it is today. Do you think there would be no war? Do you think there would be no fammine, crime, disease, poverty? Do you think there would peace and happiness every where? Get real.
Religion may be of less significance in a modern democratic society but it was essential to hold together primitive ones and believe it or not all societies were primitive at one point, but they evolved and religion helped them do it.
You accuse me of spouting ‘foundationless piffle’ which no doubt gave you a lot of pleasure, but if you think about it, or rather, if you are capable of thinking about it, you will recognise that while I can state with some certainty state that we are where we are today because of religion (as I said earlier we would be somewhere else with out it) you cannot possibly make any accurate assessment of where we would be had religion never existed. I would have thought even the most basic of scientific learning would have taught you that much. You, my friend, are the one talking piffle.
You really need to think a little bit more before you start committing your fingers to the keyboard.
Bravo, well, I will try and give you another chance. Good grief you are obtuse sometimes. I effing well understand that Christianity was man made. How many sodding times do I have to tell you? That does not mean that this man-made code has not served a useful purpose and that it does not continue to serve a useful purpose as far as the development of society and the growth of numbers are concerned. That is the whole point of evolution. Muslims are reproducing faster than atheists just as Christians reproduced very rapidly. That is what it is about, getting the numbers up. As I have already said, the selfish gene does not care whether we have comfortable, happy and fulfilled lives, it only cares that it is able to replicate ad infinitum. Religion, for all its faults, helps that to happen.
Sipu, for goodness sake stop ranting, stop attempting to criticise your betters and grow up, there’s a good boy. As your comment reveals, you can’t hold a logical thread while the red haze is on you. You must learn to accept that others hold different views to you, and will criticise your ideas when they are in error.
Play the ball, not the man, sweetie-pie.
And you Bearsy are a pathetic old man who is passed his sell-by date. Get used to it.
Interesting debate, if somewhat at cross-purposes. One side pointing out that religion can’t really be criticized in evolutionary terms, given that six billion of us, and our genes, occupy the planet, and all have essentially sprung from religion-based societies.
The other blaming religion for war, famine, pestilence and Arsenal’s failure to qualify for the Champions League semifinals (or something like that).
The anti-religion people seem to take a ‘humanistic’ view. May I ask how they square this with their belief in the ‘selfish gene’ and reductionist views of consciousness as emanating from a ‘box of wires’? Why do people deserve any respect at all if they are just walking clumps of competitive DNA and automatically firing synapses?
Please note that I am not criticizing or advocating either a religious or a humanistic worldview as such … merely pointing to what I see as possible contradictions in some people’s position.
No, Sipu, I’m just an actor who inhabits the cyberworld for your amusement and edification, with no real personality or existence. Clever program, innit? 😆
Hey Brendano, that’s a pretty good comment. A little extreme, but I guess you should be allowed some poetic licence (e.g. who or what are ‘Arsenal’?). I might manage to respond when I’ve worked out exactly what it means, but it’s probably beyond me. Must go now, nurse has brought my medication. 😉
Exactly, and when I switch away from this post, you will cease to exist. A new post equals a new episode in the soap opera of the blogosphere and no doubt the characters will respond according to their scripts. It would be nice though if occasionally some of them behaved remotely rationally.
Brendano you will be extremely fortunate if you are able to get a rational response from those two or three.
… by the way, Brendano, south Dublin. But that was via daughter, via Boadicea, so I don’t have the exact location. I will see him Thursday, so I’ll get the full details then.
Thanks, Bearsy. I know some parts of south Dublin very well. 🙂
Dublin is stereotypically middle-class in the south and working-class in the north, although there are enclaves that contradict that. In reality it’s more of a west-east divide, with the middle class having hogged the coast.
Brendano – John, for such is his name, comes from a family that were “working the hot asphalt”, a trade he still initially followed after emigrating here. So definitely not from a middle class area. He was quite a footballer as a young man, both in Dublin and here, until he “did his back”. A large proportion of his large family also came to Brisbane, some before, some later, and they are still all very close. His eldest sister is married to a board member of Cricket Australia.
He’s a software consultant now, of course! 🙂
There are explanations as to how these things came about – the reference ot one of my blogs touches on them generally. Group behaviours can be more than adequately explained by local rules acting locally.
The benefits of co-operative behaviour can be demonstrated to be significantly better than those of unrestricted competition, and none of it requires superstition. There are others here more qualified to answer than I, but I think you’ll find that religion came after society, not the other way around.
Respect is just another evolved behaviour, it wasn’t ‘invented.’ Nor, for that matter, did respect for a person figure much in the development of religion, abasement, yes, respect, not much.
And I’ve screwed up the quote. Apologies all round.
Fixed!
Interesting, Bearsy. Australia .. the land of opportunity. 🙂
Should have gone myself. 😦
That is fairly obvious. You need at least two people to have an organisation. Once you have two people, you can establish a common set of beliefs. But the same applies to our legal system. You can’t have laws until you have a society and I am pretty sure that you are not saying that our legal system has been detrimental to society. So, I am afraid, that argument holds no water.
The origins and necessity of religion is so bleeding obvious, I can’t understand how people can even question it. But they do, so lets make this as simple as possible. That people do have different beliefs is quite apparent. There are plenty of individuals who have been raised in agnostic or atheistic societies who do not subscribe to any particular organised religion but believe passionately in their own spiritual identity. The less educated they are the more likely they are to ascribe their existence to a supernatural entity. How does an ignorant cave man fathom out what causes a solar eclipse, or an earthquake, or a lightning strike or any other apparently inexplicable physical phenomena? None of his social network is able provide a satisfactory natural explanation so he looks for a supernatural one. Thus he creates a god. In order to prevent disaster happening, this god needs to be appeased. Of course it would not matter too much if all the cavemen kept their thoughts and superstitions to themselves. But they do not. They argue and fight over their various gods causing all sorts of trouble and strife within the community. Which god is responsible for which element and when and how should he be recognised. The community will not prosper to its full capacity until a leader comes along and codifies all the different beliefs thereby establishing a set of dogmas. ‘Woden is our head god. Thor is the god of thunder; Freyr is the god of fertility etc. This is when we will make sacrifices to them and this is what we will do to keep them happy. If you upset the gods, you damage the society and you will be punished for it.”
So after a generation or two everybody is unison following the same beliefs so there is no more in fighting and the community prospers. The more beneficial to a society the religious rules are, the more that society will thrive. One that insists on regular human sacrifice is not likely to be as revered as one that allows the sacrifice of animals.
Constantine recognised the benefits of Christianity over the traditional Roman pantheon and so he made the Empire switch. The seeds of the Holy Roman Empire were sewn.
To say that religion is invalid as an integral part of human society is nonsense. It is as valid as any set of rules and customs. Many primitive societies have no concept of land ownership. They do not understand property rights. To them owning the land is as sensible as owning the wind or the rain. What logical right does any person have to claim ownership of a piece of land that was there billions of years before he came along and will be there billions of years after he has departed? But modern man has recognised that property rights benefit society. For example, they guarantee a steady supply of food to the community. Religion has served its purpose too.
Sipu, buy this book. http://www.godpart.com/html/the_premise.html
Bravo, I said: “The anti-religion people seem to take a ‘humanistic’ view. May I ask how they square this with their belief in the ’selfish gene’ and reductionist views of consciousness as emanating from a ‘box of wires’? Why do people deserve any respect at all if they are just walking clumps of competitive DNA and automatically firing synapses?”
Your response – ‘Respect is just another evolved behaviour’ etc. – isn’t terribly illuminating and seems flawed to me. Why is there so much lack of respect among people if respect is an ‘evolved behaviour’? Shouldn’t we be ‘hard-wired’ to show it? The same questions could be asked regarding morality.
According to the ‘selfish gene’ idea, everything we do is to propagate our genes. One can see that altruism in the ingroup can be accounted for by this theory, but not more general notions of treating our fellow human beings well, which would tend to benefit our genes’ competitors.
Anyway, setting evolution aside … you believe, here and now, that people are no more than mechanisms. You have said so. So why do you feel that they deserve more respect than, say, a wristwatch?
Or why, to put it another way, do you get annoyed when, for example, some mechanisms in Afghanistan treat some other mechanisms in Afghanistan disrespectfully?
Your genes don’t care. Aren’t you supposed to be representing them?
Alternatively, if your genes do care … why?
Bravo, thank you, I may do. But this review amused me.
“The best thing about this book is Alper’s explanation of why the United States is an outlier among first world countries in terms of religious belief. His thesis is that religion has a genetic basis, the U.S. was founded by religious fanatics, and about 40% of the current population is descended from those fanatics.”
Is it fair to draw a parallel with Australia, a nation founded by criminals? I think Bearsy should tell us.
Oh dear, I was just off to bed.
Absolutely, Sipu, that’s the main reason why our economy’s doing so well. We’re proud of it.
Nighty-night, all. 🙂
I tried to get my head around your post Sipu, and agree when you say Richard Dawkins comes across like an self obsessed person. I recently saw him on a Q and A panel, where he looked disinterested and bored when the question was not addressed to him. I understand your point that religion has had a great benefit with our development and therefore should not be totaly disregarded. But to my feeling, and I am agnostic, this had nothing to do with God worshipping, rather with the moral code religion provides. A set of rules, not necessarily to live by, but to live together by, in an organized society.
Whether you like the idea of religion or not, to me that was and is its main purpose.
But I feel the time has come for something new, a philosophy that centres on humans as part of this planet, not some Godly creature.
Rainer, hello. Utopia means different things for different people. A functioning society needs to be hierarchical. Somebody has to chair the meetings has somebody has to clean the bog. Who elects whom and what gives them the right. Why should numbers matter more than ability. Why is Bill Gates with all his billions not worth more to society than 100 unemployed druggies on the side of the street who contribute nothing to society? To some he is, to others he is not. Who is going to be the arbiter of this? Do we give the responsibility to man or to God who is more powerful and more righteous than anyone?
Just some idle thoughts. The mountain is calling.