Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
From reader Stephen Barnard, taken yesterday evening. (Click to enlarge.)
Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) are found only in western North America: here are two photographs, of a male and female respectively, from Wikipedia.
Yesterday was Richard Dawkins’s book “talk” at Northwestern University in Evanston (just north of Chicago). Actually, it wasn’t a talk, but 45 minutes of conversation between him and me, followed by an equal amount of time devoted to Q&A with the audience. This was part of a tour promoting his new autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder, which I’m told is now #11 on the New York Times bestseller list.
The moderator, who introduced both of us and kept the questions flowing, was Hemant Mehta (“The friendly atheist”), who did a terrific job.
I decided that because we had to leave for the venue at 4 p.m. (three hours before the event!), I’d go downtown early and treat myself to a nice late lunch before meeting Richard at his hotel. (There was no opportunity for dinner thereafter.)
After due deliberation, I selected The Purple Pig, a Mediterranean restaurant which specializes in meat and charcuterie. It was on Michigan avenue, close to the hotel. And, of course, because this was a treat, I made no attempt to eat “healthy.”
The main course was turkey leg confit (I’ve eaten many a duck confit in France, but never turkey), served with crispy lentils, endive, and “agrodolce,” something I’d never heard of. Wikipedia tells me that it’s a traditional Italian sweet-and-sour sauce, and this one had added ingredients of unknown provenance. It was terrific, and a lot of food. I washed it down with an Italian beer, “Moretti la Rosa Doppio Malto,” another beer new to me, but which is apparently brewed by Birra Moretti in Italy. Its heaviness and sweetness went well with the turkey:
Feeling expansive, I decided to have dessert: a bread pudding with whipped cream. After this, and a beer that contained 7.2% alcohol, I was ready to face anything.
A random photo from the restaurant, since I had my camera out:
After meeting Richard and his “handler,” the amiable Aisha Goss, the Deputy Director of the Secular Coalition for America (they’re merging with the Richard Dawkins Foundation), we drove to the venue, about 45 minutes away. As we had tons of time to kill (why do they make us get there so early?), Richard and I went for a walk along Lake Michigan. This was a good thing to do, not only because the weather was lovely but because it gave us a chance to talk about this and that, and discuss questions for the evening to come.
Richard was much taken by the rocks along the shore, painted by Northwestern students. Many of them are romantic, and include not a few marriage proposals, which I imagine have stunned many a woman getting betrothed before a painted rock. Richard was fascinated by one religiously-painted rock, and photographed it (it’s the gray one lying flat before him). You can make out a few words, which I later found came from Isaiah 25:1: “O LORD, You are my God; I will exalt You, I will give thanks to Your name; For You have worked wonders, Plans formed long ago, with perfect faithfulness.”
We were introduced by Hemant, and Richard got a tremendous ovation—the audience was clearly going to be friendly. The venue, an auditorium seating about 900, was sold out. (The photo below, and the succeeding one, were taken by reader daveau.)
I was a bit nervous about our conversation, but I think it went well. I’ve known Richard for a longish while, and so we were pretty well acquainted with each other’s views. I assumed I’d just ask questions, but Richard wanted more of a give-and-take, so I compromised, occasionally interjecting some of my own views. Some of the questions I asked, by the way, were suggested by you readers when I asked for suggestions a while back.
Here are some of my questions and, as far as I remember, Richard’s answers:
My first question was “Richard: briefs or boxers?”, but I didn’t let him answer. That was just to loosen things up with a bit of humor (I’m sure he’s never been asked that before!), and at any rate I’m not sure they use those terms in England. My impression is that over the pond men’s underwear is simply called “pants.”
Richard did a great job, and anyone who calls him “humorless” simply hasn’t been to one of these events. Much of the time he had the audience in stitches, something I don’t think Karen Armstrong does very often! It was a lot of fun, and we covered a lot of ground, including his book, atheism, religion, evolution, the compatibility of science and faith, and some personal stuff.
My favorite question was this: “I know you wouldn’t disabuse your grandmother of her faith on her deathbed, but do you think religious belief, although false, can indeed provide comfort for some people? That is, in your discussions of religion you always emphasize its falsity, but why must truth always trump comfort?” I added that it did for me, too, though I couldn’t quite explain why—perhaps because, as a scientist, that’s the way I’m trained.
Richard agreed that he wouldn’t hector his dying grandmother, but did say that it was hard for him to see how one could gain comfort from something false. He added that a lot of religious dogma, like that of hell, didn’t bring comfort at all, and he learned that, in hospices, it was the Catholics who most feared dying. What I wanted to ask, though, was for those people who really are comforted by religion, and don’t engage in any malicious activity, why would you want to dispel their faith?” We didn’t get to that, and although I have my own answer, I’ll let the readers chew it over.
I asked Richard why wrote an autobiography—a new genre for him (A: “My publisher asked me to”), and why he wrote The God Delusion (A: “I wanted to write it after 9/11, but my editor thought it wasn’t yet time. And then Bush became president, and it was time.”)
Book question: “In your book you note that ‘And insofar as anything was the making of me, Oxford was.’ Could you explain that?” Richard talked about the advantages he reaped from Oxford’s tutorial system, involving one-one-one meetings with professors and weekly essays, which, he said, were much better than conventional lectures and tests on which you’d have to regurgitate facts. When I noted that this rarified method would be difficult in a mass educational system like the U.S. , Richard suggested that one could have graduate students do the tutoring.
Accommodationism: “Do you think being a vociferous atheist makes it harder to sell evolution, because you turn off religious people?” He gave the same answer I would, which you should know if you’re a regular here, and it’s really too long to reproduce. The gist of it was that he was unable to lie just to bring people to evolution, and that there wasn’t much evidence that such accommodationism worked anyway (that was my addition). In the Q&A someone asked him why he saw religion and science as incompatible, and he gave a marvelous answer. It was along the lines that the essence of evolution, and of naturalism—and the wonder of it all—was that all of life, including human intelligence, was a product of a simple and naturalistic process. To sneak in intelligence at the very beginning, in the form of a creator or as a guider of evolution, simply “pulled the rug out from under the whole business.”
Sadly, they didn’t tape the event, as I’d like the readers to be able to hear his answers—and his humor. That video would forever silence those who accuse the man of being humorless.
On The Selfish Gene: “That book has been your best-selling work. But do you see it as your best book?” Richard said no, that he considered The Extended Phenotype as his best book, largely because of the original thought in it, which made it more than just a popularization of the ideas of others. (My favorite, for the sheer beauty of its writing and its expository clarity, is The Blind Watchmaker.)
Our conversation: two scientists on two chairs:
We talked a bit about immortality, and Richard adamantly maintained that he’d rather be dead than immortal, even in Heaven, adding that his preferred fate was simply to be anesthetized forever, which is in fact the way it is. I pointed out Hitchens’s own regret at mortality, famously encapsulated in Christopher’s quote that what’s worse than being tapped on the shoulder at a party and being told you had to leave (i.e., die) is the idea that you not only have to leave, but that the party would continue. Richard noted, though, that Hitchens had added more: “But the party would go on forever.” Richard said the idea of an infinitely long life simply didn’t appeal to him. I disagreed, saying that there would always be wine to drink and good food to eat, even if, after a while, you’d have drunk every wine and read every book. And besides, you’d presumably get to see what happened on Earth.
Finally, I asked Richard what he was proudest of in his life. He answered, “Having written The Extended Phenotype,” but I clarified my question, saying that I wasn’t asking about a book, but about what he had accomplished in general. His answer was touching: he noted that at book signings, like the one that followed the Q&A, people would often come up to him and tell him that he’d changed their lives for the better.
He wasn’t comfortable answering that question, but it was a good and honest answer and, in truth, that’s what I’d be proudest of, too.
Here’s Richard at the Q&A. The questions were pretty damn good—better than the usual run one encounters, probably because the audience was smart and many had read his books. And his answers were eloquent, even when one person asked him whether he thought that the energy of the body lived on as some kind of “mind” after the body died, and why he didn’t accept that. I knew Richard was going to come down on him when he started his answer with, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I don’t think you understand what the concept of energy is.” His answer was very polite, but devastating in content.
It was a delightful evening, marred by only one thing: the organizers screwed up and forgot to order my book, as I was supposed to be signing copies as well. I don’t regret the loss of income, which would have been trivial, but I much regret the lost opportunity to meet people and chat with them (Richard, with hundreds of people in line, has little time to exchange words with his fans.)
Reader Su even made me a poster for my nonexistent book-signing table. Here it is, with a drawing of Professor Ceiling Cat, and you can see my expression of profound regret that I didn’t get to use it.
I did sign books for some people who brought them, but I apologize to readers who expected a more formal signing, as well as a sale.
Richard is having more events like this on the west coast, with discussion and Q&A; you can see the schedule here. I think that many of them are sold out, but if you can get into one, you’re in for a treat.
Come to think of it, I should have brought my copy of The God Delusion for signing. And to the Dawkins Foundation: how about sending me an autographed version of the autobiography instead of the tattered draft copy I have, just as a reward for my hard work?
Cryptic Hili is cryptic
Hili: Do you see me?A: I do.
Hili: Pity. I thought I was a master of camouflage.
Hili: Widzisz mnie?
Ja: Widzę.
Hili: Szkoda, myślałam, że jestem mistrzynią kamuflażu.
by Greg Mayer
Paul Waldman, writing about the perennial attempts to keep science out of Texas schools, perceptively asks, “What about the textbook companies?”
…how can the people who work at a publisher in good conscience agree to write a biology textbook that treats evolution as a wild, unsupported idea? What if the Texas Board of Education demanded that their books discuss the “controversy” about whether the Earth travels around the sun or vice-versa, or the “controversy” about whether earthquakes happen because the turtle on whose back the world sits is scratching an itch, or the “controversy” about whether stars are actually faeries winking at us from up in the sky?
…surely there’s some level of deception aimed at children that the textbook publishers wouldn’t be able to live with themselves for propagating. I wonder where it is.
It’s an excellent question. I wonder where it is, too.
h/t Andrew Sullivan
~
I consider this a historic post, for it’s surely the first time that Richard Dawkins, often criticized by atheist-bashers for lacking a sense of humor (e.g., here), has contributed a LOLcat to any website. I’m positive that neither William Lane Craig, Karen Armstrong, nor Terry Eagleton have ever done anything like that.
The contribution (along with the photo):
http://www.perfectlytimedpics.com/cat-dumps-the-water-out-of-the-vase/
Lots of other nice pictures in the “Perfectly Timed” series.
Indeed. Check out the one with the seagull and the ice cream cone.
The Washington Post‘s business section gives a map and description of what has happened since the Republicans threw their idiotic tantrum in Congress:
The government shutdown jeopardizes the paychecks of more than 800,000 federal workers who were sent home. The federal government has almost 2 million employees. Civilians who remain on the job will be entitled to their salaries, but might not be paid on time. President Obama has signed a bill that ensures that certain members of the U.S. military and U.S. Coast Guard will be paid during the shutdown.
And if that’s not all, here’s a story that is going the rounds, and it’s not fiction. As you may know, the government shutdown includes both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (as well as many other agencies), putting a stop to the flow of research funds. This has some dire consequences. As reported in RT (and many other places):
Patients seeking to enroll for treatment in research studies at the National Institutes of Health’s Maryland hospital are out of luck due to the government shutdown.
For every week the shutdown lasts, the agency’s research-only hospital will turn away approximately 200 patients – 30 of them children – who often seek participation in experimental studies after more traditional methods have failed, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins told AP.
Though prospective NIH patients are usually eligible for studies at other hospitals around the country, “this is the place where people have wanted to come when all else has failed,” Collins said. “It’s heartbreaking.”
A child with a life-threatening illness is likely the only exception, Collins said, and existing patients will continue to receive care at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda.
In addition, he said that all experimental studies are on hold as long as Congress cannot settle on a budget deal.
“If you expected new treatments for cancer or a new universal influenza vaccine or discovering the causes of autism were going to move forward at the maximum it could, that will not be the case,” Collins said. “This is a profoundly discouraging day.”
To put it bluntly, the Republican shenanigans could result in the loss of life. Children with life-threatening illnesses may be exempt, but screw those sick adults. You’d think that the Republicans could make an exception for medical research, but what do they care? They’re all sitting pretty with their health insurance and big paychecks, which of course will still be issued during the shutdown.
Of course we look ridiculous to the rest of the world, but that’s not nearly as worrisome as imagining the people who could die because of Republican stupidity.
h/t: Skip, Grania
Hello, I must be going. I cannot stay; I came to say I must be going. Tonight is l’affaire Dawkins, so posting today will be light.
One item for your delectation: the final exchange (the third) between Steven Pinker and Leon Wieseltier. Pinker, as you recall, wrote an article in The New Republic about the follies of the scientism, “Science is not your enemy.” That was published August 6. On September 3, Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of TNR, wrote a critique of Pinker called “Crimes against humanities.” Wieseltier also put up a 3.5 minute video, “No, science doesn’t have all the answers,” which, although not referring to Pinker, was clearly directed at Steve’s ideas.
Finally, we have the denouement: “Science vs. the Humanities, Round III.” The match is how over, and the referee holds Pinker’s glove to the ceiling.
You should read it for yourself (in fact, the whole exchange will give you a good take on where “scientism” is at), but here are a few points from this last piece. Pinker avers once again that he’s not calling for a takeover of the humanities by science—merely a beneficial infusion of science into some of the humanities, including lit-crit, art, and history (note the language, very strong for Pinker):
The very possibility of a synthetic understanding of human affairs, in which knowledge from the sciences can contribute to the humanities without taking them over, is inconceivable to Wieseltier. Beginning with its tasteless title, his article steadily escalates the paranoia, tilting at the position I explicitly disavow, namely that science is “all there is,” that it is “a sufficient approach to … the human universe,” that the humanities must “submit to the sciences, and be subsumed by them,” that they must be the “handmaiden of the sciences, and dependent upon the sciences for their advance and even their survival,” that a “a scientific explanation, will expose the underlying sameness” and “absorb all the realms into a single realm, into their realm.” If you are a scholar in the humanities, and fear that my essay advocates any of these lunatic positions, I am here to tell you: relax. As I wrote, and firmly believe, “the promise of science is to enrich and diversify the intellectual tools of humanistic scholarship, not to obliterate them.”
Steve also gives examples from his own research of when the reverse has happened: sciences have been helped by ideas from humanities. (In my view, the benefit is, however, largely in the other direction.) The tone of Steve’s piece is stronger than I’ve ever seen in anything he’s written; he clearly feels deeply about the issue of scientism.
There’s more, but I wanted to note how Steve responds to Wieseltier’s previous claim about religion: “Only a small minority of believers in any of the scriptural religions, for example, have ever taken scripture literally.” Anybody who knows how religion is practiced, in either the U.S. or elsewhere, knows that this claim is ludicrous. Almost every believer takes some scriptural claims literally (for Christians, the non-negotiables are the divinity and resurrection of Jesus), and many take large dollops seriously.
Here’s Steve:
In defending religion, Wieseltier writes, “Only a small minority of believers in any of the scriptural religions, for example, have ever taken scripture literally.” Really? How does he know? Wieseltier writes as if his say-so is all we need to move on to the next step of his argument. Let’s put aside the astonishing “have ever” part of the claim, and confine ourselves to the present. Recent polls show that between 30 percent (Gallup) to 60 percent (Rasmussen) of Americans believe that the Bible is “the actual word of God to be taken literally, word for word”—hardly “a small minority.” Figures for believers in the world’s other scriptural religions are even higher: According to a recent Pew survey, between 54 and 93 percent of Muslims in the countries surveyed believe that the Quran should be read “literally, word for word.” The point is not that Wieseltier is factually mistaken in this assertion. The point is that a more scientific mindset would recognize that an empirical proposition demands empirical verification. The era in which an essayist can get away with ex cathedra pronouncements on factual questions in social science is coming to an end.
Wieseltier’s response seems almost sheepish (for him), and I sense he knows he got the worst of this exchange. He calls for a “two magisteria” solution, with science and humanities kept separate, but with “porous boundaries.” But that is exactly what Pinker called for, too! Wieseltier claims that Pinker and other advocates of scientism advocate “totalistic aspirations,” i.e., the complete takeover of humanities by the sciences (“unified field theories,” Wieseltier calls them), but Pinker explicitly said that he wasn’t calling for that. So Wieseltier mischaracterizes Pinker completely (and Steve doesn’t get to respond) when Leon says (with a bit of snark):
But the belief that science is supreme in all the contexts, or that it has the last word on all the contexts, or that all the contexts await the attentions of science to be properly understood—that is an idolatry of science, or scientism. Pinker is wrong: I am not censoring scientists. They can say anything they want. But everything they say may not be met with grateful jubilation. So let the scientists in—they are already swarming in—to the humanities, but not as saviors or as superiors. And those swaggering scientists about whose intentions Pinker wants humanists to “relax”: they had better prepare themselves for a mixed reception over here, because over here the gold they bring may be dross.
As you can see above, Steve never argued that science is, or should be, supreme in all the contexts. Indeed, in his earlier piece he noted that art and literature, while they might be informed in some ways by science, nevertheless have benefits independent of science. To me, those benefits include affirming our common humanity, being moved by the plight of others, even if fictional, and luxuriating in the sheer beauty of music, words, or painting. (Note, though, that one day science might at least explain why we apprehend that beauty.)
Finally, Leon, who hasn’t a leg to stand on with his “sophisticated religion” claim, responds to that with obfuscation:
And a word about religion: Pinker is right to point out that most religion is folk religion. Intellectually sophisticated religious views are not held by most of the people who hold religious views, just as intellectually sophisticated scientific views are not held by most of the people who hold scientific views. The reputation of science should not be held hostage to folk science. Of course Pinker denies that there can be intellectually sophisticated religious views: “a more scientific mindset would recognize that an empirical proposition demands empirical verification.” So it would—but a less scientific, and more capacious, mindset would recognize that religious faith is not just a set of empirical propositions, and that it is not inconsistent, when intelligently interpreted, with empirical verifications. There remains the question of why one would wish to interpret intelligently texts that seem in some ways unintelligent—but that is a much larger discussion and a much deeper disagreement, which Pinker and I can pursue when we meet at the Consilience Café, where I will insist that we split the check.
Note here that Wieseltier backhandedly admits that his earlier claim was wrong. But he manages to get in a dig at science as well, arguing that “folk science” (which I take to me the average person’s understanding of science) is not intellectually sophisticated, either. But this avoids the issue. Even sophisticated believers (the equivalent of professional scientists) hold fundamentalist and superstitious views. Francis Collins, for instance, accepts both the resurrection and the divinity of Jesus. And what about William Lane Craig and his divine command theory, or John Haught and his Argument From Hot Beverages?
As I’ve said repeatedly, nearly all believers are fundamentalist in some ways, and that fundamentalism involves a combination of faith and the acceptance of propositions that are both empirical and wrong—so Wieseltier is wrong on that count, too. Let me note that the dangers of faith come precisely from its empirical content, not from the weekly forgathering of believers to sing, quaff wine, and smell the incense. It’s the combination of absolutism as expressed in faith, and the notion that you have a handle on what God wants, that causes all the evils of religion in this world.
As for religious faith being “not inconsistent, when intelligently interpreted, with empirical verifications,” well, that’s just wrong. If Leon has empirical evidence for God or his will, let him give it to us immediately. (By the way, the “not inconsistent” usage simply expresses Wieseltier’s residual doubt. He could have said “consistent,” but that sounds too strong. It reminds me of Orwell’s advice to avoid the “not un-” and “not in-” usage, giving as an example, “The not unblack dog ran over the not ungreen grass.”)
Hili ponders her noms à la Rodin:
A: Hili, what would you like for dinner?
Hili: I’m thinking still.
Ja: Hili, co byś zjadła na obiad?
Hili: Właśnie się zastanawiam.