The link. (You will need to be a subscriber or use the “day pass.”)
Two quick points before I analyze snippets of the interview:
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I believe in evolution and do not believe in a monotheistic “God” (I’m a pantheist).
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I know that Dawkins can speak and read in a very intelligent, sophisticated manner, and hence I was diheartened by his manner in this interview, which seems no better than one with J. Randi or someone of a similar intellectual caliber.
I’ve added “Q” and “A” in here. Obviously, the “A” is Dawkins.
I question the “again” of the interrogatory. Dawkins goes right into a weak point over whether evidence is “direct” or not; from what I’ve read, creationists mainly argue that evidence is lacking.
In any case, the interview is not about whether evolution is real or not but about how bad religion is. Dawkins’ first response–both on the tonal (pissy and disdainful) and rhetorical (favoring strawy or non-sequitury men) levels–sets the stage for the interview as a whole.
Dear me, this is truly cliched skeptical rhetoric; if only he had said “little pink unicorn” it had been perfect."
More, importantly, however, this is botched philosophy. Whether God exists or not is clearly not a matter of probability but rather concerns the foundation of Reality itself. Further, God is not “just another” entity that can be proposed but instead is a concept that concers how we can conceive of any entity at all. Any philosophy or, for that matter, rational inquiry, has had to deal with notions of Ultimate Reality. If someone as smart as Dawkins can speak so ignorantly, I wonder just what our Science (i.e., “Natural Philosophy”) of today is really worth.
I sense that, by calling agnosticism a “weak” position, Dawkins is saying that he prefers aetheism for political or aesthetic reasons (“I take my non-belief straight with no chaser”).
“Nothing to stop it” is hyperbole but is also flat-out incorrect. Dawkins’ response overall, however, is not to the point–which is pretty much how the whole interview goes. He may be right about how a child’s mind works, but where is his concept of memes competing and the adaptive among them surviving? Are we to believe that everything a child is told will be passed on and down forever? I don’t think Dawkins himself believes this; he’s just talking really sloppily.
In any case, if we buy into Dawkins’ own meme idea, we may conclude that religious belief has been highly adaptive for the species, and that is why it continues.
Such poor thinking. In addition to ignoring the possibility of adaptivity (I’m not saying that Dawkins always ignores that point, but he does so in this interview), Dawkins continues to fudge his reasoning. In these few sentences there are many layers of error to explore. First, one can have a philosophical belief in God that has nothing to do with empirical “evidence,” and many intelligent people since antiquity have had such a belief. They may be incorrect, but they are not deluded. Second, people believe many things without the kind of “evidence” Dawkinds means here: things like historical facts. And many people have (wrongly, I grant) believed in God simply because they were told stories about Him and took these for facts. One can be said to be “misled” in such cases but not “deluded.” In fact, the connotation of the word “deluded” is pretty specific and implies that someone believes something that completely defies common sense or even obvious matters of fact (eg, believing that one is Napoleon). Nor do we apply the term to relgion, since religion is a phenomenon seen historically in every society around the world. Hence, Dawkins commits what I call the “fallacy of the borrowed connotation,” a pernicious and extremely common error in reasoning. Dawkins chooses this word to belittle those who possess religious belief.
I know that this was oral and in such cases mistakes are made, but even by such a standard Dawkins’ comments are replete with slop. Violence is “inevitable” in “extreme cases”–an ill formulation. The fact is that the vast majority of time religion has only been a surface reason to fight, not the essential reason, and Dawkins explicitly admits this later in the interview.
The idea of scientists and philosophers not fighting is stupidly irrelevent. Scientists invented nuclear weapons. They fought in their own way. Religious people don’t fight either, do they? No, soldiers do. What, Mohammed fought? So did Marcus Aurelius. Etc.
Later in his response, Dawkins equates Bush and Bin Laden, indicating just how clueless he is.
But this “trend toward enlightenment” in certain parts of the world is his own delusion (a real one). Even if we grant that all of Europe no longer accepts Christianity, that belief wasn’t in the past and isn’t now being replaced with what Dawkins would consider an enlightened atheism. People always turn to some sort of cause be it a less dogmatic religion (New Age, Wicca) or a secular religion like Bolshevism, National Socialism, or PETA membership (seriously, that’s what it is). I think it’s also true that hardcore atheism/materialism/skepticism is also a secular religion in the forms it often takes. Further, the relgions of belief have a much better historical track record than the religions of unbelief. Compare the Inquisition to Maoism for overall destructiveness.
Again, my point is that people always have some sort of belief system, and you can’t just unplug the religion module and be “enlightened.” In fact, one of the healthiest things about almost all religions is that they teach that man is not the supreme intelligence and he is bound by laws above him and not conceived by him. Atheistic belief systems (even if they were correct in stating that God does not exist) have led people to believe that right and wrong are arbitrary concepts and that the good is equivalent to that which is held to be correct politically. The result has been the worst mass murders in history.
A little further Dawkins makes the admission I mentioned above:
There is no doubt about it, but cause and effect are muddled here. Dawkins in effect is admitting that religion was just an “excuse” to fight in India. Of course, people really felt that religion really mattered, and to some extent it did. But we know from experience that taking away religion makes any two arbitrary groups like each other or be more peaceful. That’s like saying, “If we just got rid of politics, everything would be peaceful and hunky-dory.” It is to suppose that we can alter human nature.
Here Dawkins isn’t even speaking in scientific terminology; in fact, he’s speaking in outright mistaken ways.
Natural selection isn’t a “force”; it’s a mechanism. Further, to speak of evolution as “random” may not be correct, but Dawkins is avoiding what the question really means. There certainly is a huge chance factor is how evolution works, and that’s what the interviewer supposes might bother people. For example, it’s a matter of chance whether a huge meteorite crashes into the Earth making most species extinct and forcing the survivors to adapt to new conditions. Mutations can be chance events (as Dawkins admits a few sentences down). It’s not God forming the species from clay with a clear plan in mind.
This too is all verbal politics. “God” is what those deluded believers believe in, not we enlightened scientists. Stick to the talking points!
I would say that people (scientists or otherwise) choose the term “God” precisely because of the connotation of that word and specifically because they believe what they feel is not merely an “emotional response.”
Dear me, we have our rhetoric again: “die forever.” I did an OP on that old saw not too long ago.
What could “almost transcendental” mean in this context? People say that such a worldview makes life seem meaningless to them for reasons I suspect are beyond understanding. However factually correct it may be, it just doesn’t satisfy.
I’ve only quoted a portion of the interview (fair use and all that), but there is a lot more prattle in the rest. I was disappointed to hear Dawkins talk like any other media skeptic. Even having read the interview, I think he’s above that level.
