Posted just an hour ago is a longish New York Times profile of Richard Dawkins, including a five-minute video interview. Readers here will be familiar with much of it, but perhaps not with these tidbits:
- Professor Dawkins often declines to talk in San Francisco and New York; these cities are too gloriously godless, as far as he is concerned. “As an atheistic lecturer, you are rather wasting your time,” he says. He prefers the Bible Belt, where controversy is raw.He insists he frets before each lecture. This is difficult to imagine. He is characteristically English in his fluid command of words written and spoken. (Perhaps this is an evolutionary adaptation — all those cold, clammy English days firing an adjectival and syntactical genius?)
- Professor Dawkins feels more than a tinge of regret that he and Professor Gould did not appreciate each other more. “Gould wanted to downgrade the conceit that it all progressed towards us, towards humans, and I fully approved of that,” he says now, even as he makes sure to add, “But evolution most certainly is progressive.”There is a final cosmic joke to be had here.The two men quarreled about everything save their shared atheism. But Professor Dawkins’s closest intellectual ally on progressive evolution and convergence is Simon Conway Morris, the renowned Cambridge evolutionary paleontologist.
And Professor Morris, as it happens, is an Anglican and a fervent believer in a personal God. He sees convergence as hinting at a teleology, or intelligent architecture, in the universe. [JAC: I told you so! Also note that convergence doesn’t necessarily say anything about progressivism, for many convergences, as in parasites, involve parallel loss of structures.]
Ask Professor Dawkins about his intellectual bedfellow, and his smile thins. “Yes, well, Simon and I have converged on the science,” he says. “I should think in the world there are not two evolutionary scientists who could rival each other in their enthusiasm for convergence.”
As to Professor Morris’s religious faith? “I just don’t get it.”
- Critics grow impatient with Professor Dawkins’s atheism. They accuse him of avoiding the great theological debates that enrich religion and philosophy, and so simplifying the complex. He concocts “vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince,” wrote Terry Eagleton, regarded as one of Britain’s foremost literary critics. “What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus?”Put that charge to Professor Dawkins and he more or less pleads guilty. To suggest he study theology seems akin to suggesting he study fairies. Nor is he convinced that the ecumenical Anglican, the moderate imam, the Catholic priest with the well-developed sense of irony, is religion’s truest representative.“I’ve had perfectly wonderful conversations with Anglican bishops, and I rather suspect if you asked in a candid moment, they’d say they don’t believe in the virgin birth,” he says. “But for every one of them, four others would tell a child she’ll rot in hell for doubting.”
I also don’t “get it” but neither do the bishops and priests who say one thing from the pulpit to their followers and quite another privately. Perhaps they should read Sam Harris’ new book, “Lying.” It couldn’t hurt…much.
“What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus?”
Who cares? If no gods exist, then the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus are entirely irrelevant.
Yup. ‘Tis the Courtier’s Reply, no more and no less.
Cheers,
b&
I once read an account of a lecture given by Karl Popper to the Aristotelian Society in London in the late 1950s. The thrust of his talk was to suggest that there is only one practicable way in which the stock of human knowledge can be expanded. He outlined the method in detail, adding that this method was not actually new and really began with the pre-Socratic philosophers. The most important point was that Popper’s thesis effectively denied that all knowledge begins with experience, a fairly radical idea. The audience consisted mainly of philosophers, including some of the major figures of the time in the field of empiricism.
When it came to Q&A, instead of subjecting the thesis to rigorous and potentially devastating examination as might have been expected to occur with such an audience, the only questions that were raised were whether or not Popper had correctly represented the views of various pre-Socratic philosophers, and not whether the ideas he expressed were valid in themselves. The writer of the account compared the audience to passengers on the Titanic rearranging the deckchairs as the ship was sinking. I think the same could be said of many of the anal-yses (sic) of Dawkins’ work.
What, one wonders, are Eagleton’s views on the captaining differences between Captains Kirk and Picard?
Yes. And I actually think the Kirk versus Picard question is far more interesting.
Well to give Eagleton his due, Scotus and Aquinus really existed. It’s more like asking what Dawkins’ views are of the contrapuntal difference between Bruckner and Mahler. (Though Kirk vs Picard is funnier. How about E.T.A.Hoffmann vs Englebert Humperdinck? Englebert Humperdinck is intrinsically funny, as Arnold Dorsey noticed)
Sorry, it was the fairyology connection I was trying for, but I now realise Humperdinck didn’t actually write any fairy stories. He did write the music to “Hansel and Gretel” (based on the Grimm brothers’ story).
Though Kirk vs Picard is funnier
exactly.
perfect analogy.
I suspect, actually, that Dawkins, like many of us, has indeed read Aquinas along with many other philosophers.
the problem arises in that none of what they had to say was particularly unique, nor was it often founded on reasonable assumptions.
once you see the same range of apologetics offered repeatedly, with little variation except in the terminology used, and with little or even NO regard to examining critically the underlying assumptions involved, it indeed becomes a tiresome bore to hear someone claim that somehow these philosophers are the epitome of human thought.
they are not.
it indeed, in the end, boils down to not being terribly interested in hearing about the latest rationalizations regarding the existence of fairies, or leprechauns, or what have you.
Those who make the Courtier’s reply, as Eagleton is so fond of, are simply ignorant of the limitations inherent in their own philosophies, and that most of us have run them by ages upon ages ago.
The Courtier’s Reply would be valid if there existed independent objective verifiable evidence supporting the basic claims.
For example, it is reasonable to suggest to an evolution denier that reading WEIT or The Greatest Show on Earth. If the denier balks, claiming that’s the Courtier’s Reply, one should then directly cite the evidence contained in those books, such as by offering a link to a Web page with pictures of the evolution of hominid fossils or by explaining radioisotope dating. And, if even that fails to satisfy, one can suggest that the denier should examine the fossils in person (any decent museum of natural history in any major Western metropolitan area should have a good exhibit) or should order a sample of a radioisotope and a geiger counter and independently re-confirm the logarithmic decay of various elements (a typical college undergraduate-level physics experiment).
With theology, there is no such option to examine the evidence for one’s self. The closest one can get is ancient fragments of papyri, but it’s obvious that such is no more evidence of one particular pantheon than another ancient fragment of papyrus is evidence for another pantheon.
Even in math, one can independently re-confirm everything. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you what an arc-cosine is, but that doesn’t stop me from performing basic trigonometry by remembering the basic principles of relationships and proportions.
But what experiment or calculation can I perform that will confirm the existence of an all-loving overmind? Oh, wait…all I have to do is look for a perfect absence of evil…but since there is evil, no such entity exists. And we’re supposed to take seriously a theologian who can’t logic himself out of a wet paper bag, even with the assistance of an angry kitten trapped inside with him?
Cheers,
b&
Indeed, my thoughts exactly. It would appear that theologians love to talk amongst themselves, they marvel at how “sophisticated” they are and revel in the knowledge that they are the only real and true sources of what the gods have to say. But they fail to acknowledge that science, with its methods of evidence gathering, increasingly shows that gods are highly unlikely to exist and have no more validity than invisible dragons. Perhaps they really do know the validity of science and are worried about becoming unemployed…
“He is characteristically English in his fluid command of words written and spoken” – He does have fluid command of words, but it is overly-flattering to the rest of us to say that is ‘characteristically English’, unfortunately.
It’s just that many Americans seem vulgar even to other Americans. There, now the cat’s out of the bag.
Fuck that shit!
Cheers,
b&
But if you said that with a British accent, I would just fawn over it.
What makes y’all think I didn’t?
b&
Because I would at least expect to hear the word “shite”, if not “fornicate that fecal matter”. And don’t act all innocent with that “y’all” stuff…
faecal.
Nope, he didn’t end it with “your majesty.”
Oh… intercourse the penguin!
That rather dates you, eh Mrs. Nigger-baiter?
A child of the fifties is my guess.
Oh, and Aquinas was a deceitful, lying prat; in it for what he could get out of it, like all of the theological parasites from time immemorial.
For some inexplicable reason, I almost always imagine a Dawkins-esque British accent when I read.
I am not, nor have I ever been, British.
Yes, but what about your membership in the Communist Party?
b&
Are you trying to get me blacklisted at right-wing online fora?
Is there anything else you could do to help out in this way?
😉
How ’bout accusing you of having a triple-digit IQ?
b&
A triple digit IQ in base 2?
Sadly, even that counts as “intellectual” amongst Tea Partiers these days. I’ve got some shredded cabbage in the ‘fridge that’s smarter than Bachmann, Palin, and Perry combined.
Cheers,
b&
Hey!
I’m fairly certain my IQ’s higher than 7.
Somewhat certain.
60 percent?
Congratulations! You’re smarter than the coleslaw at a Tea Party rally to keep government out of Medicare.
Cheers,
b&
If you can use base 2, then you’re already smarter than anyone in the Tea Party. It’s a safe bet that they don’t get math humor.
Ben! Wash your mouth out with soap and water! I like some American accents – for example Paul Robeson. Particularly like the southern accents & the Scandinavian influenced Wisconsin/etc (once amazed an American tourist by identifying her state from her accent purely because of her ‘Jah’ for ‘yeah’, but for anyone who has studied in Scandinavia & knows about the emmigration thence or has seen Fargo, it was a cinch). I hate some British accents, e.g. phony Tony Blair with his glottal catches.
Oh dear – emigration! Lying in bed to type…
Rather than soap and water, how ’bout some diluted ethanol? It’s a far more effective antiseptic and a much better solvent, you know….
b&
Aaahhh. That ‘splains it.
Really?!
I am both Scandinavian and Mid-western. I try very hard to avoid sounding like it. Yuck.
Me too. In fact, my cousins from upstate MN didn’t quite get the movie Fargo the same way the rest of us did. Oh, yah!
travel story:
When I fist spent time hiking around the South Island in New Zealand, I often attracted German tourists like flies; they would ask if they could follow along with me wherever I was going, and often asked if they could practice their english speaking skills. It was quite odd, even though there were probably more German tourists than Kiwis on the South Island during the height of tourist season.
Eventually, after this happened to me several times, I asked one of them why it was that I seemed so popular with the German tourist set.
He replied: “Oh, that’s because you speak english with an accent we can understand. The Kiwis are nice folk, but we can hardly understand a word they say.”
Turns out, to most people it sounds like Kiwis have replaced all vowels with “u”.
Fish and Chips -> Fush un Chups
I should probably have mentioned I came from California.
“Sux puckuts of fush un chups.” Also, anybody called “Chris” sounds like “Chrus”.
RD – for whom I have increased affection each time I hear one of my chums say that he (& I) are ‘religious in our disbelief’ (I deny the sense of that), was in fact born in East Africa – Nairobi – & lived the first eight years of his life in Humanity’s Home! You would have to ask him what the effect of the grey skies I love had on a child used to the azure of the tropics must have had, but I bet it was a culture shock!
Apologies, I am altogether too fond of using ‘!’ when a ‘.’ should do… 🙁
I always try to remember to go back and delete at least half of my !’s, too…
“…say that he (& I) are ‘religious in our disbelief’…”
There is no god and Richard Dawkins is his prophet.
LOL!
Agree. It is not a characteristic of the English to have a fluid command of words, innit?
I am fluent in English, & effluent in several other languages.
Judging from American TV, I’d say many of the most affluent are quite impotent….
(What’s a letter here and there amongst friends?)
Cheers,
b&
“He concocts “vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince,””
How many theists the world over are actually first-year theology students?
Dawkins’ audience isn’t theology students or anyone else who otherwise is in the sophist[icated] field of theology. It’s everyone else.
I’m probably the only person in my office who would be anywhere near close to being considered a theology student (and I’m pretty hardcore non-theist); Dawkins’ “caricature” is no caricature for the average Joe The Plumber theist.
And, as Jerry has been demonstrating of late, even the “sophisticated” theology, say of Aquinas, is nothing more than obscurantist illogic dressed up in language so dense as to make a pomo philosopher blush.
Cheers,
b&
He is married to a lady (Lalla Ward) who played one of Dr. Who’s assistants!? Can this man get any cooler? Didn’t know that either.
She is the daughter of a viscount, albeit a modern one (18th C Irish peerage I think).
Even cooler: Douglas Adams introduced them.
Yeah, but she wasn’t the coolest of Dr Who’s assistants 🙂
Ahem! One of the Doctor’s assistants. It is only the programme that is Doctor Who (& never “Dr.”).
/@
I agree with Gould on evolution not being progressive, but evolution is progressive.
wat
what he means is that both he and Gould agreed that the progression of evolution wasn’t towards humans being some sort of “end goal”, but that evolution does progress within each species, and it will indeed be interesting to see where we as a species go from here.
hint:
don’t think ladders, think bushes.
We are all actors in a story where we have bit parts and never get to stay to see the end.
I can’t believe that no one here seems terribly perturbed by the fact that someone of Prof. Morris’s stature would believe in a personal God, which to me is the most noteworthy item in the entire piece.
maybe because its already been done to death, and this is a thread about Dawkins, not Morris?
Progressive Evolution?
“There are endless progressions in evolution,” he says. “When the ancestors of the cheetah first began pursuing the ancestors of the gazelle, neither of them could run as fast as they can today. “What you are looking at is the progressive evolutionary product of an arms race.”
I am not sure about this. Evolution means refinements, cheetah becomes faster because the gazelle is faster, and vice versa. Arms race. Is this “progressive”? This smells “somewhat-directed”, doesn’t it ?
Hope Richard Dawkins well ..
It’s progressive in the sense of going somewhere, of having more whatever in the future than in the past – in this case, gazelle and cheetah speed.
If it smells somewhat directed, it’s from the ambiguity of ‘direction’. It’s got direction in that it’s going that-a-way – it hasn’t got direction in the sense of anything directing, making plans, ushering things along. There’s nothing in the gazelle genome that “wants” to make faster gazelles – it’s just that the genes that do make for faster gazelles spread when fast cheetahs are around, and the same on the cheetah side regarding gazelle speeds.
I don’t know. We are clearly smarter than australopithecus in the same sense cheetahs are faster than their ancestors, but I don’t think I could manage as well as one of them if I woke up in the past one day. Is there an objective, global environment-independent criterion to measure who’s better?
“Who’s better” might be a tricky thing to show. But I think you’d find it difficult to manage if you “suddenly woke up in the past one day” because you wouldn’t have had the benefit of growing up in that environment and learning how to manage in it. All else being equal, don’t you think your modern brain would be a decided advantage?
Another way to look at it: who’d do better, a modern rural third-world family of farmers transported back four million years ago, or a family of australopithecus dumped in the middle of Manhattan? How well would the modern farmers do in Manhattan?
How well would a Manhattanite do, if not dropped naked into the past but instead given a multimillion-dollar budget for supplies and equipment? How well would the australopithecus do if granted unlimited resources from any era between then and now?
It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out the answers.
Cheers,
b&
This is about complexity rather than progress isn’t it? Evolution tends to build pyramids – the bulk of small comparatively simple creatures, increasing complexity coming with time, while most life remains small scale.