Playboy magazine, which has had some famous interviews over the years, has published a four-page discussion with Richard Dawkins. (Warning: a half-dressed woman flanks the interview, so this is probably NSFW.) Because Richard is peripatetic, the interviewer (Chip Rowe) had to follow him to Las Vegas, New York, and Washington D.C.
Because I’m so familiar with Richard’s views, I didn’t find much new, nor did Rowe seem to ask very informed questions. But I suspect that many Playboy readers may not be familiar with either New Atheism or evolution, so in the main I think it was a very good interview for that moiety of America that actually reads Playboy for more than the pictures. A few snippets:
PLAYBOY: It sounds like the argument made by Bertrand Russell, who said that while he could claim a teapot orbited the sun between Earth and Mars, he couldn’t expect anyone to believe him just because they couldn’t prove him wrong.
DAWKINS: It’s the same idea. It’s a little unfair to say it’s like the tooth fairy. I think a particular god like Zeus or Jehovah is as unlikely as the tooth fairy, but the idea of some kind of creative intelligence is not quite so ridiculous.
I was a bit surprised at this: while the idea of a creative intelligence is indeed more likely than the existence of one of the thousands of specific gods posited over history, there’s still no evidence for any “creative intelligence,” and I worry that this statement will allow some to claim that Dawkins allows for the possibility of God. (Well, he is a 6.9 on the 7-point scale of theistic probability.)
Re his scatological appearance on South Park, he brings up recent schisms in atheism:
DAWKINS: Transsexual, okay. That isn’t satire because it has nothing to do with what I stand for. And the scatological part, where they had somebody throwing shit, which stuck to my forehead—that’s not even funny. I don’t understand why they couldn’t go straight to the atheists fighting each other, which has a certain amount of truth in it. It reminded me of the bit from Monty Python’s Life of Brian with the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea.
Dawkins gets Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA) idea right, though he doesn’t add that Gould made another error beyond imputing morality to religion alone: he didn’t consider any religions that made claims about the real world—that is, all theistic religions—as “real faiths.” In that way Gould eliminated much of the conflict by definition.
PLAYBOY: The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould viewed science and religion as——
DAWKINS: Non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA.
PLAYBOY: Completely separate.
DAWKINS: That’s pure politics. Gould was trying to win battles in the creation-evolution debate by saying to religious people, “You don’t have to worry. Evolution is religion-friendly.” And the only way he could think to do that was to say they occupy separate domains. But he overgenerously handed the domains of morals and fundamental questions to religion, which is the last thing you should do. Science cannot at present—maybe never—answer the deep questions about existence and the origins of the fundamental laws of nature. But what on earth makes you think religion can? If science can’t provide an answer, nothing can.
PLAYBOY: Some scientists say that you should stop talking about atheism because it muddies the waters in the debate over evolution.
DAWKINS: If what you’re trying to do is win the tactical battle in U.S. schools, you’re better off lying and saying evolution is religion-friendly. I don’t wish to condemn people who lie for tactical reasons, but I don’t want to do that. For me, this is only a skirmish in the larger war against irrationality.
The last bit is right on: “lying for tactical reasons”. And I claim some precedence here, for 6 years ago in Playboy (Letters, p. 15, Aug. 2006), I wrote in response to a piece by Michael Ruse that “[Ruse] makes some good points but fails to grasp the real nature of the conflict. It’s not just evolution vs. creationism. It’s rationalism vs. superstitition. . . To many of us, then, a mind that accepts both science and religion is a mind in conflict.”
There’s a soupçon of humor:
PLAYBOY: What will happen when you die?
DAWKINS: Well, I shall either be buried or be cremated.
And he states the case for skepticism concisely:
PLAYBOY: All the atheists we met at the skeptics convention in Las Vegas seemed to have a story about being kicked out of Sunday school.
DAWKINS: Yes, that’s terribly funny. What a Sunday school teacher should say is “Let’s look at the evidence.” Instead they get cross. And the reason they get cross is that there isn’t any evidence.
PLAYBOY: They get cross with you as well. You are asking a religious person to change his or her worldview.
DAWKINS: I want people to change their worldview such that they demand evidence for something they’re going to believe. It’s not a good reason to believe because “our people have always believed that.” If you’d been born in Afghanistan or India, you’d believe something else. Another lousy reason is because you have an inner feeling it must be true, or you’ve been told by a priest it’s true.
The last part of the interview includes quite a lot about evolution and, as usual, Dawkins shines here:
PLAYBOY: What about this one, another favorite of creationists: If modern animals such as monkeys evolved from frogs, why haven’t we found any fossils from a transitional creature such as a fronkey?
DAWKINS: The fallacy is thinking of modern animals as descended from other modern animals. If you take that seriously, there should be not just fronkey fossils but crocoduck or octocow fossils. Why on earth would you expect you could take any pair of animals and look for a combination of them? We’re looking at the tips of the twigs of the tree. The ancestors are buried deep in the middle, in the crown of the tree. There are no fronkeys because the common ancestor of a frog and a monkey would be some kind of fishy, salamandery thing that looks like neither a frog nor a monkey.
I doubt that I could provide such an eloquent response on the spot!
By the way, isn’t it time for Dawkins to be knighted? His contributions to rationality and the public understanding of science certainly warrant adding “Sir,” to his name, but there’s fat chance of that in Anglican England!
Dawkins mentions the possibility of something “grand and incomprehensible” in his discussion with Francis Collins in Time (2006?) but he also points out that this is extremely unlikely to be anything that current or past humans believe or have believe in.
Sure, the media and the fundie/woo crowd might pick up on this, but remember that Dawkins won’t do the “tactical lie”. 🙂
Link:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555132,00.html
That’s a little disappointing to read Dawkins expressing it like that.
I am a Dawkins admirer. Inevitably this will make me sound judgmental about him doing an interview with Playboy, which I’m not, but perhaps there is a bit of a quantity/quality problem arising out of his commitments at the moment.
I recall once seeing Dawkins interview Hawking. At the end of the interview, Dawkins asked Hawking whether he would like to ask him something. Reading this dialogue reminds me of the question Hawking ended up asking. It struck me then, and it strikes a little more now.
so you only buy it for the interviews…..?
You don’t have to buy the magazine to read the interview; the interview is online.
If only I could block those pictures of naked women.
“so you only buy it for the interviews…..?”
Veronica… did you miss the very old joke here? Pre-internet, and thirty to fifty years ago, fathers would use this reason for having a Playboy magazine when a wife or son would find their cache and ask about it. The male would use the high quality articles and interviews as their purchasing rationale! The centerfold was always incidental.
However, this scenario never came up on “Leave it to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best”… too risqué for B&W network television.
In 1985, the Wall Street Journal proclaimed that the 80s was the first decade that if someone claimed they were buying Playboy for the articles, they were probably telling the truth.
Dr. C: This is off-topic; but I had a question on an earlier post that I hoped you would reply to:
——–
Can you please explain why SWA is your favorite AL?
For me, they have never had a convenient schedule/routing and just watching the boarding process from another gate area made me wonder about the experience … The whole no-boarding pass, first in line gets the choose the best seat thing seemed herd-like to me. Please enlighten me.
——–
Thanks!
Yeah, it’s off topic, but I’ll give a few reasons
1. For $10 you can purchase an “early bird” boarding pass that gives you pretty much your choice of seats.
2. Bags (up to two) fly free
3. You can often get incredibly cheap deals
4. Nice frequent flier program that accumulates free flights rapidly
5. FREE SNACKS
6. Good customer service and lots of humor and good will on board.
7. They fly out of Midway rather than O’Hare in Chicago, and Midway is a lot closer to me; also a smaller and more congenial airport.
Thank you very much sir! All excellent reasons, especially the Midway v. ORD thing.
Also (still off topic), about the
“The whole no-boarding pass, first in line gets the choose the best seat thing…”
You DO get a boarding pass. (You won’t get on board without one).
You can print it out yourself at home up to 24 hours before departure. There’s a number associated with it: it’s not a seat number, but your number in that line you described. The sooner you print your boarding pass, the better a number you get. Once you get on the plane, you can pick any available seat you like.
Personally I think it’s a brilliant system.
I also print out ~24 hours ahead of time.
But I can choose my seats (typically) 90 days ahead of time, ensuring things like group together (I normally travel (on my own dime) with a family group), aisle seats, etc. (I’m one of those people that REALLY needs an aisle seat — on some airlines, my knees are an interference fit with the back of the seat in front of me.)
Some seats may not be available; but I have never lost my seat assignment(s). I generally print the BPs about 24 hours ahead, which ensures the seats short of being asked to voluntarily give them up to someone else.
I’ve never had any issues with the existing system on the airlines I primarily use (e.g. DAL, ICE, BAW, EIN, KLM).
But, as noted, I have never flown on SWA.
There’s an eensy problem with the whole early-bird check-in thing, though.
You can be a soccer team, all flying as a group, and the coach only has to buy one early-bird check-in for the entire group–all she has to do is save any seats she wants once she gets on board. Reason I know this is that a soccer coach actually did that on a flight I was on, and the person I was flying with, who’d paid for early check-in for two people, both directions, lost her marbles with the flight attendants over it.
I don’t think anyone has a right to save any seats in that system. One early-bird ticket gives you ONE place in line. I would definitely raise a ruckus and sit where I wanted if I were you!
A ruckus was raised. Flight attendants shrugged and said they didn’t have a policy forbidding it, and that we should “settle down”.
Southwest Airlines has their corporate headquarters at Dallas Love Field (DAL) — another small and congenial airport, although the modernization program will still be a mess for the next year and a half. I could learn to like DAL as an alternative to DFW.
Southwest’s terminal at DAL is 4 miles from where Jean Kazez will talk at Feminine Faces of Freethought, Saturday September 15th. I’ll fly down for it if I have the time.
Terrific segue–say hello if you make it!
Dawkins has a beautiful mind. I love to hear him in debate. Interview is even better.
The one answer that surprised me is Dawkins’ praise for the person/people who wrote the Gospels:
“PLAYBOY: What is your view of Jesus?
DAWKINS: The evidence he existed is surprisingly shaky. The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It’s almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren’t that interested in whether Jesus was real. Even if he’s fictional, whoever wrote his lines was ahead of his time in terms of moral philosophy.”
Some Bible scholar, say Robert Price (just one among many equally qualified on the subject), has at hand any quote attributed to Jesus that contains moral philosophy superior to others. I’m not sure what supposed Jesus said of revolutionary import that is not found already, in some form or another, somewhere in the Old Testament, and that places those words ahead of times in moral philosophy. Much of the words put in the mouth of the Jesus character do not move moral philosophy in a sound direction at all.
Epicurus moral philosophy, Lucretius’ ‘On The Nature of Things’, and the common sense extremely well defined in writings attributed to the Buddha (many originating in Hinduism), are obvious examples (Confucius, the Tao — there are others, too) that come to mind of ancient philosophy containing many concepts superior to, and far more well articulated, than anything contained in the New Testament. The best contained in these works remains relevant to human morality, and it is hard to imagine what circumstances will ever alter these truths about right behavior, right actions, right thinking.
I hope Dawkins soon revisits his comments about the moral philosophy of Jesus being ahead of its era.
Perhaps he means that some of what supposed Jesus says about interpersonal relationships is humane when compared to the philosophy of treatment of fellow human beings exemplified in the ruthlessly barbaric practices of Rome and other nations, particularly toward conquered peoples.
There is validity to that point of view. In his time, supposed Jesus advocates many humane policies toward the most humble of believers in his divinity, but he is rather more harsh when it comes to others.
In relative terms, supposed Jesus moral philosophy is well behind (non-woo additions to) practical Buddhism; well ahead of, say, Caligula; and about even with the contemporary American Christian Right.
In my first para, I wrote ‘moral philosophy superior to others’, which of course is not Dawkins claim. ‘… ahead of his time philosophically’ is what Dawkins writes, and that is what I attempt to dispute in the rest of my comments.
On the Point interview with Carrol, Shermer and Falzon, the latter claims (if I heard correctly) that the “golden rule” equivalent surfaced with Pericles in the west and Confucius in the east. I haven’t heard Falzon before but he claims he is now researching a book on atheist quotes.
Confucious is, as all religious founders before the Enlightenment, best predicted by a construct and indeed there is no historical evidence. Pericles is a historical person, and he predates Epicurus.
This may or may not have relevance, since greek syncretic paganism seems to have originated the post-semitic jew/christian social complex and the latter is not evidenced archaeologically until earliest 300-200 BC. (With the uncertain datings of the Dead Sea scrolls.) By that time the Hellenistic Conquest, which likely originated the new religion in the conquered and war striven area, had taken place.
That doesn’t mean Epicurus and his school couldn’t have influenced the jew/christian morals before the religious split, but interestingly it seems unlikely seeing the putative datings and the definitive form of morals described with the early finds.
I haven’t read any history of these religions, so this is of course tenuous. But it isn’t as you can get to it by descriptions in encyclopedias, “christian history” is painted over the actual historical finds.
In any case, and not knowing the basis for Falzon’s claim, it is an interesting turn of events if it was a practicing statesman that originated the concept. If there was a philosophical influence it would most likely be his tutor and friend, the for impiety charged Anaxagoras.
I forgot to add in the context of the discussion (rather than interview), that I have to change my dated take on Shermer. He now explicitly claims he is not an agnostic and he doesn’t sound like one.
Compare Paul’s dictums about the place of woman in the family and society (and the church) with the declaration of Seneca, in his letter to his mother, that women should be educated at the same level men are.
Dawkins is wron when he says that Jesus’s lines were ahead of his time.
Thank you RWO and armandoortega for your replies. I suspected but could not support my suspicion that Jesus’ lines were not ahead of his time in terms of moral philosophy.
The 7 epistles attributed authentically to Paul are quite egalitarian towards women as is the earliest Gospel (Mark) with the exception of Corinthians which has suspected interpolations. The other six epistles attributed to Paul (widely regarded as spurious) are much more condescending to women.
I think a particular god like Zeus or Jehovah is as unlikely as the tooth fairy, but the idea of some kind of creative intelligence is not quite so ridiculous.
This isn’t so surprising as Prof. Coyne opines. Dawkins has said in the past that he believes in Einstein’s god and Einstein allowed as how there might be some sort of intelligence at work in the universe (Einstein also said that he believed in Spinoza’s god.
Spinoza’s god was simply nature (and Einstein’s reference to it was a political way of avoiding saying straight out that he was an atheist). And, yes, Dawkins does believe that nature exists.
If you have a quote that suggests that Einstein believed in an intelligence behind the universe (and was not just using such language metaphorically), can you give it?
If there is a god its going to be something like Spinoza’s god, and this hands off panentheistic god is basically nature plus some unknown. One thing’s certain this deity isn’t the traditional theistic interventionist god and this deity sure isn’t worried about your rituals or praises.
With spinoza he believed that “god” could not intervene, to chance anything would show that he made a mistake.
I can understand Einstein of that day and age. Dawkins, with his scale of theistic probability, is harder to understand.
As long as you don’t quantify the likelihood for gods, it is all well and dandy to claim that you have reasonable doubt or, less dandy, a ‘reasonable’ gap-of-the-gods. But as soon as you start to quantify, even on a subjective scale, you shouldn’t single out religion for some sort of special treatment or pleading.
If you can decide that 6.9/7 or ~ 99.7 % seen as a one-sided confidence interval is your “theistic” probability, then you are better than 3 sigma certain of your hypothesis.
In Dawkins case, subjectively certain, but as long as he presents bayesian update style likelihoods, does it matter? They are used, at least pre-testing, in phylogenies.
As Dawkins clearly knows his Monty Python, it’d been hilarious if he’d given a third choice of what happens after he’s dead (“I think we’ve got an eater!”)…
I think I like anyone who likes and can remember Python. A clear indication of where ones priorities lie.
“I’ll get the oven on.”
I’ve somehow missed that episode. Hilarious text!
It wasn’t an episode he was referring to, it was a movie.
That sounds more “Stranger in A Strange Land” than Pythonesque to me. Which is perfectly acceptable.
sub
“But I suspect that many Playboy readers may not be familiar with either New Atheism or evolution, so in the main I think it was a very good interview for that moiety of America that actually reads Playboy for more than the pictures.”
Yeah, right. That’s why the PB variant sans pictures has been such a historically popular periodical.
You’ve a mistake in the first paragraph after the first quoted section: “I was a bit surprised at this: while the idea of a creative intelligence is indeed less likely than the existence . . .”
You actually probably meen “more likely” or “less unlikely” else the sentence makes no sense as phrased given the context of the quote.
FYI
Karl
I confess I had to look up peripatetic. Was confusing it with priapic – thought it might be something to do with the ‘half-dressed woman’.
“Lying for tactical reasons” is a tough one. It would be nice to see evidence on this strategy.
Certainly it is successful, since all ideologies and many “successful” ideological professionals do it for a living. Most businesses do it as well.
By definition ideology is basically lying for a living since there is no evidence for most statements and easily available contrary evidence.
But I suspect tactical lying is a corrosive tactic for evidence-based folks. Our foundational premise is evidence. Tactics that violate your central principals don’t work, long-term. It’s also hypocritical.
Ideologues, magical thinkers, liars and crooks always justify the lies as serving the greater good. That’s a lie too but most people fall for it.
Would suggest it’s not really superstition that is the evil but magical thinking – the central principal is mind over matter. Seems an important distinction.
Bingo. I say we save time, and start calling him “Sir Richard” now.
peripatetic. itinerant. frequent traveller.
Dawkins is too condescendent with stupid believers. Hitchens was better at dealing with them.
Was Collins who said: “There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.” NO, IT WAS DAWKINS!!
As to the interview it is a lot better the one Playboy did to Madalyn Murray O’Hair which I have in a multi-interview volume published about 15 years ago.
I’m a little perplexed by Dawkins’ claim to be a “tooth-fairy” agnostic, rather than an atheist, in that “he can’t disprove God but thinks God is about as likely as the tooth fairy.” If he treats the question rationally in this way, I would think he would reach a comfort level with the uncertainty, as we often do in science. As James Randi pointed out, one doesn’t have to drop a large sample of reindeer from tall buildings to be certain that they can’t fly, even though there is an outside chance that a reindeer hidden away at the North Pole really can.
I think from Dawkins point of view atheist and ‘tooth fairy’ agnostic are pretty much the same thing. I don’t think he’s ever said he _isn’t_ an atheist (I’ll stand corrected if he has…)
I doubt there are many atheists who would claim to *know* there is no sort of god (since that’s essentially unprovable), so I’d guess most atheists are ‘tooth fairy agnostics’ (or FSM or invisible pink unicorn or Russell’s teapot agnostics).
You’re probably right. And here’s an explanation from Paula Kirby in the Washington Post (2/29/12) that makes sense to me:
“How can an atheist also be an agnostic? The answer is simple. It is the simple acknowledgment that it is possible to be mistaken. An agnostic atheist recognizes that it is impossible to prove the non-existence of deities (agnostic), while also finding arguments for their existence utterly unconvincing (atheist). Likewise, if you are a Christian who finds arguments for God convincing but recognizes that his existence is impossible to prove and that it is at least possible you could be mistaken, then you are an agnostic theist. I strongly suspect that the Archbishop of Canterbury himself would be the first to acknowledge there can be no absolute certainty either way and, if I am right, this would make him an agnostic to precisely the same degree as Richard – yet I doubt anyone would claim this means he is no longer a Christian!”
Paula Kirby writes that if ‘you are a Christian who finds arguments for God unconvincing … Archbishop of Canterbury himself … an agnostic to precisely the same degree as Richard – yet I doubt anyone would claims this means he is no longer a Christian.”
I think she is wrong on two counts.
I can acknowledge that it is impossible to say with absolute certainty that a supernatural deity is impossible, yet say with absolute certainty that I do not believe in the existence of a supernatural deity.
A theist can acknowledge that it is impossible to prove God’s existence, but if he admits that this fact limits his faith in his belief, he is more agnostic than I am and plenty of Christians will judge that his lack of absolute faith puts into question whether he is truly Christian or not, or even actually believes in God.
If a god becomes established, indisputable fact one second from now, then I have at least one new fact that informs my understanding of what is. It is not required, and simply silly waste, to place any emotional value assessment on this information. It simply exists, and requires the same assessment as any other information, and I must adapt to any demands this information requires to my comprehension and understanding and, as/if necessary, to my behavior practices.
Christians and other faith believer adherents, on the other hand, are required to accommodate their beliefs (if necessary) to the nature and attributes of this revealed/discovered entity presence. I predict a tougher transition for some of the disappointed. Some of them will probably want to fight to the death over it, just like now.
Maybe the Archbishop of Canterbury will transition as easily to acceptance of an actual deity as atheists and non-theist self-described agnostics will, but I would not bet my personal safety that anywhere close to all present theists will be so sanguine.
It is interesting to think about being an “Atheist”. By its nature this is a “belief”, in itself, as someone believes that there is no God.
Being an “Ignostic” (and this is not a typo), is someone who says that they do not believe that there is no God, because there is no god, and therefore that is not a belief, as belief is open to doubt, but fact is not open to doubt.
Try this: http://www.galacticpublishers.net/details.php?prod=32&tn=pid
Cheers.
The Godfather.
Are you saying an ‘Ignostic’ claims ‘there is no God’ is a fact? I would just say that is a belief of theirs.
It is surely possible to believe in something that is a true, established fact. I think you’re confusing two shades of the meaning ‘belief’: one is just a flat statement of ones views, without any implication as to their correctness; the other carries an implication that these views must be unsubstantiated.
I quite disagree with the ‘Ignostic’ interpretation as you’ve described it (that ‘no God’ = ‘fact’); to my mind that’s more of an unprovable belief than the average Atheist holds.
Also, Dawkins was wearing an ‘A’ for Atheist pin…
True that.
Full disclosure: not a biologist, only an enthusiastic end-user of biology.
RE: the “Where are the transitional species?” canard:
Isn’t it fair to assume that all species that we are presently aware of are, or may be, transitional species? Obviously we have no way to know what the biological landscape is going to look like in 50,000,000 years, but surely evolution hasn’t ended. It seems to be, as I understand it, an inevitable process.
Therefore, we are surrounded by, and very likely are ourselves, transitional species. Some are, no doubt, deadenders, but without perfect foresight, who can know? As Dawkins says, we are looking at the tips of the branches, but those tips may, in some distant future, branch again.
All individuals of all species are transitional … between the genomes of their parents and the genomes of their offspring. (In the case of those like me who will not have offspring, then I suppose that logically we’re half dead already. If I see a reason to care about that, I’ll give you a call.)
Those assemblages of future (and past) individuals will assemble into collections whose members are capable of successful inter-breeding to produce fertile offspring – what is popularly known as “species.” It therefore follows that all species are intermediate between the species that their grandparents were members of and the species that their offspring (might) be members of.
In Science vs. Religion I just can’t stand people who claim to be Liars for Science. I see no reason at all to lie, nor has anyone demonstrated that Lying for Science is effective. Well, in general I can’t stand any acolyte of Irving Kristol. Lying for Science is self-defeating – how does the use of tactics inimical to science help science? Promote bullshit to fight bullshit? Bullshit.
Speaking of Dawkins: Jerry, when you have a chance I’d love to hear your take on Atheism+. Not a homework assignment, per se, just a hopeful suggestion 🙂
It looks as if Richard Carrier (http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2207/) has already managed to blow up the Atheism+ movement from the inside.
“We stand for integrity, reasonableness and compassion and everyone who is not with us is an evil scumbag who should be kicked into the sewers.” (This is a fair paraphrase of Carrier’s manifesto, I think.)
When I pointed out that his creed was self-contradictory and made him sound like a religious or maoist maniac, Carrier suggested that I was being irrational. I suppose I should be grateful that he didn’t call me, as he did call other commenters, a doucheb@g or retarded*.
*He has since grudgingly conceded that ‘retarded’ is not an appropriate insult.
I think Richard could be a bit better with his tone but I agree with him in principle. I think there is great value in having a subset of the Atheist movement comprised of people who unapologetically renounce bigotry, misogyny etc. Greta Christina and Jen McCreight both do a better job as A+ spokespeople. Check out some of their less-inflamatory posts on the subject.
Carrier “could be a bit better with his tone”? Get real. His manifesto sounds like a Stalinist purge.
As for Jen McCreight, she wrote this:
Not exactly free of bigotry, if you ask me.
Carrier has now partly rewritten his manifesto and toned down some of the most rabid statements. While he does not make a secret of this, it is not readily apparent that the original post was altered and in which way. This is probably a sign of poor version management rather than an attempt to rewrite history, but it gives an appropriate Orwellian touch to the whole affair.
For example, this:
now reads:
This:
now reads:
It seems that even Carrier now agrees that people who objected to his harangue were not being irrational after all.
I don’t doubt that some people are “lying for tactical reasons” but I don’t think Ken Miller and Francis Collins are lying (knowingly). I think most NOMA advocates truly believe that religion and science are compatible. Interestingly, you could make the same argument about intelligent design. Is ID just a tactic (although a poor one) to get creationism taught in schools? That may be true for some or most creationists, but there are some folks (notably the Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder) who seem to believe it.
The humor about being kicked out of Sunday school for questioning too much is interesting. My secular parents never sent me to Sunday school, but I often feel that seem sort of uneasiness with my ‘liberal’ friends who have irrational fears about GMOs, nuclear power, or vaccinations.
The situation of an intelligent Christian like Collins addressing evolution is different from when atheists do so in public, though.
For Collins, I imagine he quietly disregards all those claims in the Bible that are contradicted by scientific evidence and revises his version of Christianity accordingly. There is no problem with that but it would be deceptive to say that there are not sincere Christians who disagree with Collins and find evolution by natural selection a direct challenge to their deeply held beliefs. They aren’t a challenge to Collins but that’s because Collins’ erudite Christianity is probably very different from the Christianity of, say, William Lane Craig.
The real point is that it isn’t the job of secular scientists to be Sunday school teachers and try to find ways of squaring religious teachings with the findings of science. If some believers think they have managed to square all this, bully for them but then scientists get drawn into being theologians if they start opining on which versions of Christianity are false and which are scientifically approved. Ironically, what the whole NOMA concept is supposed to prevent.
Depending on the religion, evolutionary thinking is either religion-hostile or religion-neutral. But it really isn’t ever religion-friendly.
Of course, some religious folk may choose to try to be science-friendly. However, in at least some cases (such as the Templeton foundation) some individual scientists accept the Friend request and others don’t.
“there’s still no evidence for any “creative intelligence,”
That is funny because you are using it a lot and it it is all around you…
Excellent interview, I thought. Covered all the points of interest, and I thought the questions were well-phrased (for example the question on Einstein and Hawkings’ ‘god’). The interviewer had obviously done his homework (because it takes quite a lot of background knowledge to ask an intelligent question).
“DAWKINS: It’s the same idea. It’s a little unfair to say it’s like the tooth fairy. I think a particular god like Zeus or Jehovah is as unlikely as the tooth fairy, but the idea of some kind of creative intelligence is not quite so ridiculous.”
JAC:” and I worry that this statement will allow some to claim that Dawkins allows for the possibility of God. (Well, he is a 6.9 on the 7-point scale of theistic probability.)”
I don’t worry as much as Dr. Coyne, over Dawkins’ statement. The operative phrase is “is not quite so ridiculous”. This is a clever way of putting it. IT’s still closer to the realm of the ridiculous than the realm of possibility.
re: sunday school
i remember having to attend this when i’d visit my aunt in Wrens, GA. i remember specifically asking the sunday school teacher who created God, only to get the “God just ‘is'” bit. i didn’t offer a rebuttal but, i did realize at that moment that i couldn’t accept that answer as reasonable. i never went back.
You don’t think he’s knighted because England is officially an Anglican country? Come on, this is a country with Darwin on the £10 note. He’s not a sir because he doesn’t have friends in the right places. See other famed knighted atheists such as Sir Salman Rushdie or Sir Terry Pratchett.