
Richard Dawkins: A Knack for Bashing Orthodoxy - dctoedt
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/science/20dawkins.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
======
xavoy
I'm not a Christian, Muslim or Jew. I don't believe in God. I find it slightly
unnerving that there's still religious fundamentalists out there that flatly
refuse to accept scientific evidence of evolution and more, and yet...

I can't stand Richard Dawkins.

I know that there's some dangerous ideas put out there by fundamentalists, but
for the most part, if they stick to themselves and are generally good people
who don't interfere with others then I don't really care what they believe.

Not necessarily this article, but generally, and especially listening to him
talk live (radio, conferences etc) Richard Dawkins is arrogant and pig headed.
It's kind of ironic that by dedicating his life to setting them straight,
Dawkins has become as much of a fundamentalist evangelist as the religious
fundamentalists he spends his time mocking.

~~~
jamesbritt
_I know that there's some dangerous ideas put out there by fundamentalists,
but for the most part, if they stick to themselves and are generally good
people who don't interfere with others ..._

If only.

When Dawkins et al get their own worldwide television networks and suitably
sized fund-raising and political infrastructure then I'll entertain the idea
that atheist advocates are anywhere near like that of the fundamentalists.

~~~
robertk
I agree. Here's why that will never happen (and I'm sure you know this):

Only the mistaken need proclaim their philosophy with grandiloquence. It is
painful for atheists to proselytize with the only effective mechanism--
propaganda--as it is a cognitive dissonance. The psychological truth is that
the young mind is highly pliable and choice of religion is an axiom--unlike a
formal system, the human mind has no need for internal logical consistency.
For some large percentage of people, the only effective method is propaganda
and indoctrination--an unfortunate irony.

------
tzs
As an atheist, I am uncomfortable with Dawkins' brand of atheism. It can get
too close to the Thought Police for my liking. See this article of his:
<http://boingboing.net/2011/01/24/should-employers-be.html>

If a scientist is producing good research that is getting published in peer
reviewed journals and is generally acknowledged to be contributing to the
advancement of the field, I don't care how weird his personal beliefs are.

~~~
tallanvor
I think the concern Dawkins tries to show in that article is that it is very
difficult to trust people with religious beliefs in certain fields because
those beliefs necessarily introduce a bias.

~~~
xavoy
Everyone is bias. Even if you are an Atheist you are bias. You have a cultural
bias, a sexual bias, etc etc. Your everyday experiences condition you to react
to particular situations in particular ways.

Obviously sometimes people have a vested interest in the results of a study,
but that's something different, and doesn't only apply to people of faith.

------
fecklessyouth
Isn't the idea that the human race is progressing intellectually a remnant of
Enlightenment philosophy? Espousing that is hardly bashing orthodoxy.

~~~
barry-cotter
No, the idea that the human race is progressing _morally_ is a highly
contentious bit of Enlightenment philosophy. The fact that we can have this
conversation over the freaking internet is ample proof that humanity is
progressing intellectually, given that it requires an insane amount of
distributed knowledge and capabilities that didn't exist when the
Enlightenment was beginning.

------
davesims
Dawkins doesn't bother me any more than any other atheist I've read. The fact
that he lives and is popular in my time makes him no more threatening to my
faith than Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Lucretius, A.J. Ayer or Bertrand Russell. I
know where my faith fits in the history of ideas, and I'm comfortable in the
capacious intellectual house it affords me. Dawkins is amusing at best,
annoying at worst. As a philosophical atheistic thinker I find he's small beer
indeed and I'd rather read Nietzsche.

In my own intellectual journey (not necessarily the same as my journey of
faith), I find no attraction to reductionism of any kind. It's always seemed
to me a truncated worldview, artificial and strained, ignoring the real
content of our deepest intuitions of meaning, beauty, love and justice. I side
with Plato and Cicero contra Lucretius, Aquinas contra Bacon, etc. (yes, Bacon
was a Christian, I disagree with his metaphysics). I believe the Scientific
Revolution was a necessary reform on the excesses of Aristotelian Physics, but
in many ways we through the baby out with the bathwater when we chucked Formal
and Final causes out by fiat. But that's another discussion...

I write that preface to provide some context on what my real concern is with
regards to Dawkins and the legions of young enthusiastic atheists that I run
into, in person and on the web: the absolute philosophical illiteracy of so
many naively confident advocates of reductionist science and the silly
caricatures of faith they hold to. Mostly what I find in this generation of
non-believer is not reflective, self-conscious atheism but rather an
inherited, brittle and angry atheism that assumes the final triumph of
reductionist materialist science has been accomplished. For these dogmatics
the mere existence of faith or religion of any kind is really appalling and a
cause for anger and aggression. There's simply no difference between, say,
Wendell Berry and Pat Robertson, C.S. Lewis and Jerry Falwell, Dostoevsky and
Fred Phelps.

It's just flat strange and saddening to me, to know that there are those who
truly think that the Santa Clause analogy would have been devastating to St.
Augustine or Tolstoy or Tolkien. That the existence of reflective intellectual
Christians like Annie Dilliard, Flannery O' Connor or Walker Percy so long
after Darwin is merely an anomaly to be ignored.

This kind of naivety makes not only for fruitless engagement across the
theistic/atheistic boundaries, but for increasing hostility and social
disintegration. When I read Dawkins and those that find his simplistic
reductions of religion intellectually appealing, I'm not offended as a
believer, I'm not threatened intellectually, but I am discouraged about the
future of community. If the main participants in the the great God Debate
(which is really no more acute now than at any other time in history, and
probably a good bit less than late 19th Century Britain at least) don't have
the intellectual resources or emotional charity required for deep engagement
of such a weighty matter, then we not only have more anger, hostility and
misunderstanding, but we become more impoverished in our self-understanding on
both sides.

~~~
burgerbrain
_"Santa Clause analogy"_

 _"It's just flat strange and saddening to me"_

This is why the analogy is used.

Not this: _"would have been devastating to St. Augustine or Tolstoy or
Tolkien."_

It's simplistic. And as an argument against specific dogma and teachings, it
is quite effective. It's not meant to make a profound philosophical statement,
it's meant to elicit exactly your response. Atheists are subjected to
seemingly endless shitstorms (see: banana argument, peanut-butter argument,
etc), it feels good to return the favor. Most of us know that we're never
going to get through, so we might as well have fun.

~~~
davesims
Not sure I follow you. Are you saying its content is simplistic (meaning an
argument that oversimplifies an issue by ignoring complexities) but
rhetorically useful to get a rise out of your opponent? How is that
productive? This was the point I was making: all too often the specific brand
atheism that Dawkins' writing seems to inspire is more interested in tweaking
fundamentalists than engaging faith as such. Hell, I love to tweak
fundamentalists as much as the next guy, but where does that get us? Might as
well go cow-tipping...

~~~
burgerbrain
_"Are you saying its content is simplistic (meaning an argument that
oversimplifies an issue by ignoring complexities) but rhetorically useful to
get a rise out of your opponent?"_

Yes. _Exactly_.

 _"How is that productive?"_

It's not, nor is it meant to be. It's entertainment for atheists, nothing
more. You should not attempt to determine the philosophical sophistication of
anyone who uses it from the fact that they are using it.

There are _tons_ of atheists who will be willing to have level headed and
informed philosophical conversations with you. I however, and many others, are
not interested in such things. Dawkin's is often appreciated by _both_ groups.

------
jorangreef
The argument often centers on evolution vs creationism.

Yet Atheists and Christians would do well to pay more attention to Christ's
resurrection, did it happen in history? Are there primary and secondary
sources? How many of these sources are independent of each other and to what
degree are they coherent, neutral, biased or opposed? How soon after the event
were they written? Have they survived intact?

As the apostles themselves declared:

"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your
faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for
we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead." - 1
Corinthians 15:14-15

------
cappsjulian1
"You're not a whole person unless you read enough science...to understand why
you exist in the first place."

------
abredow
Ha, I did not know that he had a forthcoming children's book! This should be
good.

------
FD3SA
I must preface this comment with a personal note: Dr. Dawkins is the reason I
understand biology, evolution, and all living things. I have read all of his
books on evolution, including The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, and
many others.

This being said, I have always been appalled by Dawkins' deeply ironic crusade
against religion. The simplest explanation for the widespread phenomenon of
organized religion is best described by none other than Dawkins himself:
Religion is a vestigial extended phenotype.

Dawkins popularized the idea of an extended phenotype. This theory postulates
that the phenotypic effects of genes are not restricted to a single organism.
In effect, certain gene expressions could result in behaviours which affected
the said gene's rate of survival. This is a profound theory, because it posits
a very strong evolutionary foundation for human socialization and behaviour.
As discussed in Robert Wright's "A Moral Animal", and Matt Ridley's "The Red
Queen", among many other works, recent evidence has made Dawkins' extended
phenotype theory extremely plausible.

Thus, if we are to analyse religion from the view that it is a set of
behaviours which maximizes a set of genes' reproductive success, everything
begins making a great deal of sense. Paradoxically, if Dawkins used his his
own theories to explain the phenotypic phenomenon that is organized religion,
he'd have the vast support network of evolutionary scientists around the globe
who would provide endless empirical examples[1] to validate his theory. Yet,
Dawkins continues to treat religion as a philosophy, and attempts to tackle it
philosophically. As many philosophers have pointed out, this is not Dawkins'
strong point and he comes off sounding like an extremely misinformed amateur
at best, and an inflammatory pundit at worst.

Furthermore, it is the scientific explanation of religion which is likely to
be the most useful and profound, and as Ridley, Wright, and many others have
demonstrated, what we can learn from these insights are far more pertinent to
the human condition than Dawkins' misplaced philosophical crusade.

I sincerely hope Dr. Dawkins sees the unbelievable irony in his approach, and
addresses it promptly. As one of the most popular scientists in media today,
he could reverse a great deal of enmity that various religious groups have
developed towards scientists and the scientific community. Scientific
illiteracy is the greatest enemy of our time, and I do believe Dawkins is
making the issue much worse by inflaming the public with his misinformed
rhetoric.

Science has explained every natural phenomena known to man, and its
explanatory power is only growing as we gather new empirical evidence. There
is a growing body of research which demonstrates that all human behaviour is
guided by a deep evolutionary purpose. This is especially true of religious
behaviours which are widespread and have severe fitness costs. Religious
behaviours are thus best understood as a vestigial extended phenotype, and not
as an ontological philosophy.

[1]. <http://evolution-of-religion.com/publications/>

~~~
robertk
Dawkins is perfectly aware of this. In fact, he gives arguments of your flavor
in The God Delusion. See also

[http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-
mind...](http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html)

He is aware that his approach is not optimal in terms of changing people's
minds, but I'm not so sure he cares.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_2xGIwQfik>

~~~
FD3SA
If Dawkins is aware of my points, his approach does not seem logical. The God
Delusion approaches religion as a broken philosophy or a disease of the mind,
not as an evolutionary phenomenon.

He does not quote any of the plethora of papers written on this subject, such
as can be found here:

<http://evolution-of-religion.com/publications/>

A scientific approach to religious behaviour would not invoke philosophical
arguments such as NOMA, or dismissive arguments such as labelling behaviours
practised by the majority of the human species as a "mass delusion".

~~~
robertk
It isn't. In terms of Eliezer-style rationality, a much more effective
approach would be to study marketing and psychology techniques and take a more
calculated approach to changing minds. But I think Dawkins is disinterested in
this because of its artificial (albeit highly effective) nature, and would
rather speak raw truth. For him, the goal is to get the scientific viewpoint
out to as many people as possible, not change their minds. He would ideally
like for them to realize on their own that the scientific viewpoint is more
cogent. He knows there are more effective means, but perhaps it offends his
notion of purity. I suppose that is ironic.

------
shithead
Would this "bashing" be tolerated against any group other than Christians?

The 'intellectual fight' for 'enlightenment' is the thin veneer the
anticlerical Jacobins lay on their murderous ideology. Loot the Church, rape
the nuns, kill the christians - started here,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e>, repeated too many times
in many places over the last couple of centuries.

And when their legitimate heirs Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot murder a few
score million people, these Jacobins start talking about the "crimes of the
Inquisition".

Good going.

~~~
freemarketteddy
> Would this "bashing" be tolerated against any group other than Christians?

Yes..A lot of groups are more tolerant than Christians(on average)...but if
you assume that the only 'groups' that exist are Abrahamic religions only then
your hypothesis would be true.

------
jorangreef
Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China: all examples of states who
have exemplified Dawkin's anti-religious secularization and education in the
utmost extreme. Thought-policing and religious intolerance have always lead to
the massacre of countless thousands.

~~~
ceejayoz
Stalin, Hitler, and Mao replaced (or in Hitler's case, supplemented) religion
with cults of personality that might as well be called religion.

This is a far cry from what Dawkins advocates - free thought.

------
TheRevoltingX
This isn't reddit, this isn't related to programming or even computers. Yes,
I'm Christian and I find this guy annoying. As a programmer though, I couldn't
care less about him.

~~~
davesims
Hacker is a state of mind, a kind of deep curiosity about how things work and
what I can do about it. This topic, therefore, is about the ultimate
hack...why are we here, how does the world work and what can I do about it?

