I appeared Monday on the Riz Khan show on Al-Jazeera with Richard Dawkins, and guess what? We had a civilized three-way dialog. No one erupted into Hitler-type yells. The Gestapo didn't show up, nor the Inquisition police, to drag Richard Dawkins from the studio. Host Riz Khan interviewed me for the first half of the show on the compatibility of Darwinism and religion, and on the issue of how to teach evolution in the schools. Then Khan interviewed Dawkins for the second half, mainly on why he encounters resistance to evolution and also why he rejects arguments for God as the creator of the universe.
Unfortunately Al-Jazeera hasn't yet posted the show on the web, so I'll withhold comment on Dawkins's central argument until I can link to it. But I do think that there is something on which everyone who sees the show can agree. Dawkins's excuses for not debating me (Dinesh is a "creationist" or Dinesh uses Hitler-style "yells and shrieks") are utterly absurd. Why won't Dawkins simply admit he's afraid? I don't really mind a coward as long as he's an honest coward.
I'm not the only one befuddled by Dawkins. So is evolutionary biologist and atheist David Sloan Wilson. Several months ago Wilson wrote a savage review of Dawkins's The God Delusion for Michael Shermer's magazine Skeptic. Basically Wilson said that Dawkins is supposed to be an expert about evolution but his book fails to examine religion from an evolutionary perspective. Rather, Dawkins insists on faulting religion based on claims--theological, philosophical, historical--that lie entirely outside his area of knowledge. No wonder that Dawkins's one-paragraph "refutations" of the likes of Aquinas have an amateurish, even juvenile, quality.
Wilson argues that a true scientist would develop a hypothesis about religion and then test it to see how it holds up. For instance, against Dawkins's and view that religion is a kind of destructive virus, a culturally transmitted epidemic that may benefit its parasitic carriers (the preachers) but certainly not those who succumb to the infection, Wilson offers a rival hypothesis. Wilson's view is that "religious groups are products of cultural group selection....A given religion adapts its members to their local environment, enabling them to achieve by collective action what they cannot achieve alone or even together in the absence of religion. Even though elements of religion often appear bizarre, irrational, and downright dysfunctional to believers, when examined closely most of them will make sense."
In his book Darwin's Cathedral, Wilson offers the case study of the Calvinists in sixteenth-century Geneva. At a time when factionalism and internecine conflict was rending the social fabric of the city, Calvin and his deputies introduced the Ecclesiastical Ordinances. Wow, do they sound harsh! Fines for dancing and jail for gambling are only the beginning. Yet Wilson surveys a wide body of historical scholarship that concludes that "there is little doubt that Calvinism was instrumental in solving the problem of factionalism and helping the city of Geneva survive as a social entity."
How? Basically Wilson found that morals are the key to restoring social morale. (The two terms "moral" and "morale" are connected by more than the similarity of their sounds.) Wilson writes, "I was especially impressed by how the mechanisms for preventing cheating extended to the leaders in addition to the rank and file. The head of the church was not a single individual but a group of pastors who made decisions by consensus. Calvin shared all the duties of a pastor, despite his enormous additional workload as primary architect of the religion. Double accounting methods were used to prevent the inappropriate use of charitable funds. The egalitarian spirit of Calvinism is perhaps best illustrated by the duty of caring for dying plague victims. This life-threatening task was decided by lottery."
Wilson concludes, based upon this data, that at least in this one important case, the Dawkins view is wrong and his hypothesis is vindicated. The Calvinist leaders were not out to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else. It is simply wrong to say that they got ahead while everyone else suffered. Rather, the opposite is true. Calvinism's dour doctirnes of original sin and predestination contributed to an unprecedented identification of leaders and followers and caused the introduction of checks and balances to curb the suspect tendencies in human nature. To put it in blunt evolutionary terms, Calvinism was socially adaptive.
So what does Dawkins have to say about all this? The short answer is: nothing. Dawkins wrote a lame response to Skeptic, noting that he didn't purport in his book to be using an evolutionary understanding of religion. This would be like a doctor saying, "Well, I wasn't claiming to be giving a medical opinion." I suppose Dawkins considers it normal for an evolutionist to ignore his own field and dispense folk prescriptions based on a cursory persusal of other disciplines. I hope that Wilson does not invite Dawkins to debate this issue. What excuse will inventive Richard come up with this time?
Reader Comments ( Page 4 of 20)
46. Shannie: "Our self destructive tendencies were there from the beginning."
I guess I agree with that, but where I disagree is that they were not "self destructive" in primitive society.
Ryan Anderson at 11:32AM on Jul 23rd 2008
47. What about the people who murder their kids, families, or friends because "they were possessed by the devil" or "Jesus/God told me to do it". People do strange things in the name of religion.
Would an athiest nutcase say "Not God told me to do it"?
CaptainCack at 11:51AM on Jul 23rd 2008
48. Most conflict in history has been about competition over resources. War tends to be over who controls the water source, who gets a particular piece of real estate, whos food gets eaten etc. This, in the past, was not really self-destructive but about survival. Those competitive tendencies continue today even when it is not really about survival anymore. Since these conflicts are often not about survival anymore it can be viewed as self-destructive.
a born atheist at 11:56AM on Jul 23rd 2008
49. Evolution is ultimately about efficiency of survival. The more efficient the tools of survival, be they claws or keener ears or more effective digestion, the more likely that particular genome is to thrive and persist.
When discussing the evolution of religion, one is wandering a bit from the reaches of hard science. Sociology is difficult to get hard data from, and even more so when we get to historical speculation. But the principle is the same: more efficient societies persist. Less efficient societies fade away.
To study the evolution of religion is a facinating proposition. It is no less facinating than studying the evolution of warfare, or the evolution of economics. It helps us not only to understand how we got where we are today, but lends us an idea of where to go in the future. And using demographics it would be interesting to see just how religion affects the efficiency of varying societies.
But there's one catch: it disproves God.
If there is one supreme being who desires only one form of veneration then evolution would be rendered moot. The efficiency of said religion would be supplemented by this supposed being. If God existed and prefered aztecs, would it be possible for all aztec practicioners to go extinct? All religions purport themselves as true. With such an advantage, it would be impossible for said religion to ever be challenged or threatened by another. It would be like finding fossils of rabbits amid ancient trilobites all the way through fossil records to the modern day.
To put simply, Dinesh has agreed that religions are societal creations, not divine ones. And as society alters and changes, so too do the religions that are a part of our societies. Independant of Gods and the other supernatural agencies that these faiths rely upon. If God were somehow guiding this phenomenon we would see exceptions to the rules of the larger culture. The Catholic church stopped hanging witches publicly in the early 19th century. Why? Did God suddenly decide there weren't any more witches and told the Pope to knock it off? Or is it that society at large had evolved to the point where they would no longer accept murder according to the dictations of this institution?
I don't see the idea of religious evolution being popular with the faithful. After all, it sucks to think that your 'all loving and supreme parental figure' might allow your faith to go extinct.
Somber at 12:03PM on Jul 23rd 2008
50. Religion in primitive man no doubt provided a common bond and added cohesiveness to the social structure. It also probably made them more efficient at exterminating the competetion.
"Water people no believe in sky god, so we go kill all water people now and then they believe! You with us, Grok? If not we kill you too!"
Godless Heathen Brian at 12:15PM on Jul 23rd 2008
51. Religion in primitive people no doubt served to dehumanize their enemies to the point where they didn't mind killing them off... Which is after all an evolutionary plus factor. For the particular faith involved. Not for the enemies, obviously.
Godless Heathen Brian at 12:20PM on Jul 23rd 2008
52. Here's a scary thought. I got it I think from the movie "Idiocracy."
Religion is having an evolutionary plus effect on it's adherents *right now.* After all, who's having the most babies today? An intellectual boston couple who both teach in the university, or an illiterate christian couple in the mountains of tennessee?
Of course, the "plus" effect is also a "minus" effect on our average IQ...
Godless Heathen Brian at 12:27PM on Jul 23rd 2008
53. We have only been around after all in our present form for about 100000 years; a proverbial drop in the bucket in the scheme of things." - eric
With or without myth, the killing will continue. The question is: which society/culture has less murderous behavior; the myth or the mythless.
Monty at 10:51AM on Jul 23rd 2008
xxxx
and eric said that our time is presently a drop in the bucket with respect to what religion may or may not do to H. sapiens and he's exactly right. It is even feasible that religion would drive the first wedge of genetic drift into species differentiation.
There are no mythless cultures yet, so far as I know. This one's festering with them.
After reading gonesh's last hurl, I can see why no scientist would want to waste time on him. I doubt too many posters here would either. He's not clever enough to engage anyone on merit so he tries to insult them into engagement?
It's not working much for mcsame lately, either - just make you look like what you are - petty.
Clif Kuplen at 12:47PM on Jul 23rd 2008
54. If you can't beat them (atheists and objective reality based scientists), join them!>>>
What a hoot! "Objective reality based science" is an atheist worst enemy. That's why you clowns spend your days debunking bible stories like some adeled schoolboy, and NEVER make a cogent atheist argument. You're a wanabee atheist that spews out deist and theist thought, apparently unaware that your problem is with the existence of God not organized religion. Clearly, stupid is an atheist.
Thomas J Gassett at 1:00PM on Jul 23rd 2008
55. Here's the trick. Give one or to references to philosophy and or accuse your 'opponent of the day' of having a philosophical position.
e.g.
"No wonder that Dawkins's one-paragraph "refutations" of the likes of Aquinas have an amateurish, even juvenile, quality."
This opens the door for Renzo/D'Souza to chide any commenter or 'opponent of the day' that they just 'don't get it', they need to study religious philosophy for a few years then come back and carefully word their comments to avoid Renzo's criticism or perhaps the criticism of ANY philosopher down* through the ages!
Or in Jesse's case, C.S.Lewis!
not-pboyfloyd at 1:03PM on Jul 23rd 2008
56. Religion in primitive people no doubt served to dehumanize their enemies to the point where they didn't mind killing them off... Which is after all an evolutionary plus factor. For the particular faith involved. Not for the enemies, obviously. >>>
Leave it to the Godless to get it exactly backwards, and then laugh at how 'obvious' it is to him. LMAO.
Clue: Before religion there was only the primal struggle between the weak and the strong. Religion humanized our enemies and made it harder to kill them, not easier. You really are one ass backwards clown, Godless
Thomas J Gassett at 1:14PM on Jul 23rd 2008
57. Tom; the point of debunking bible stories is not to disprove god (which so far cannot be proven or disproven) but to show how full of crap the folks who say "Hey, since there might possibly be a god, then he's gotta be exactly like the one in our book... obey us... obey us... die heretic" are.
Ryan Anderson at 1:21PM on Jul 23rd 2008
58. More like you're both wrong. Humans have always killed other humans. And for all kinds of reasons. Survival. Mating advantage. Resources. Ideology, both religious and non. We kill and have rules about killing that help to make survival more efficient.
(incidently, using religion in a blanket statement is pretty dumb. Religions vary far afield and the religions of the Aztecs were far different from the religions of the Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, or Chinese.)
What religion does offer is an easy and convienient social behavior. Why cut out the heart of your enemy and burn it on coals? The easy explaination is because the Jaguar God demands it. It's far eaiser to understand that then for primitive people to grasp psychological warfare, social control, reinforcement of hierarchy, and captured population control. And since the Jaguar God doesn't exist and demanding to see it will merit death or exile, it's an easy fix.
As societies have become more sophisticated, the old religous standbys have become less and less effective. The religious authority now required the permission of secular rulers. Kings and governments permitted religous morality rather than simply being forced to accept it. Religion turned rhetorical and persuasive. And with the advent of mass media, persuasiveness eventually became more important that rhetoric.
Never use religion as a blanket statement unless you're going to be very specific. Otherwise you're not going to do well.
Somber at 1:31PM on Jul 23rd 2008
59. Religion humanized our enemies and made it harder to kill them, not easier. You really are one ass backwards clown, Godless
Thomas J Gassett at 1:14PM on Jul 23rd 20
-------------------------------
Not your religion. It didn't humanize, it demonized. The knights templar, the gnostics, the cathars, the "witches," the protestants, the moslems during the crusades, the native americans... Your faith is a bloodbath, and you can ignore it how again exactly? But hey, it was good for catholics, huh? At the expense of millions upon millions of lives...
Godless Heathen Brian at 1:41PM on Jul 23rd 2008
60. Tom; the point of debunking bible stories is not to disprove god (which so far cannot be proven or disproven) but to show how full of crap the folks who say "Hey, since there might possibly be a god, then he's gotta be exactly like the one in our book... obey us... obey us... die heretic" are.
Ryan
>>>>
Clearly, your arugment is with religion not God. Psst ... you're not an atheist.
If you want the word of God and not the bullshit of man, look to what all religions have in common, not the differnces between religions. One is man based and one is God's word. Can you tell the difference?
BTW shooting down allegorical bible stories with reason is mixing apples and oranges, and it's sad that you don't see it.
Thomas J Gassett at 1:43PM on Jul 23rd 2008