Nevertheless, from time to time Dennett gets things right. One of those times was in the New York Review of Books last month where he took on Allen Orr [letter from Daniel Dennett].
You might recall the kerfuffle over Orr's review of The God Delusion. Orr claimed that Dawkins had ignored all the more sophisticated arguments for the existence of God. Here's part of Dennett's reply,
H. Allen Orr, in "A Mission to Convert" [NYR, January 11], his review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and other recent books on science and religion, says that Dawkins is an amateur, not professional, atheist, and has failed to come to grips with "religious thought" with its "meticulous reasoning" in any serious way. He notes that the book is "defiantly middlebrow," and I wonder just which highbrow thinkers about religion Orr believes Dawkins should have grappled with. I myself have looked over large piles of recent religious thought in the last few years in the course of researching my own book on these topics, and I have found almost all of it to be so dreadful that ignoring it entirely seemed both the most charitable and most constructive policy. (I devote a scant six pages of Breaking the Spell to the arguments for and against the existence of God, while Dawkins devotes roughly a hundred, laying out the standard arguments with admirable clarity and fairness, and skewering them efficiently.) There are indeed recherché versions of these traditional arguments that perhaps have not yet been exhaustively eviscerated by scholars, but Dawkins ignores them (as do I) and says why: his book is a consciousness-raiser aimed at the general religious public, not an attempt to contribute to the academic microdiscipline of philosophical theology. The arguments Dawkins exposes and rebuts are the arguments that waft from thousands of pulpits every week and reach millions of television viewers every day, and neither the televangelists nor the authors of best-selling spiritual books pay the slightest heed to the subtleties of the theologians either.
Who does Orr favor? Polkinghorne, Peacocke, Plantinga, or some more recondite thinkers? Orr brandishes the names of two philosophers, William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and cites C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, a fairly nauseating example of middle-brow homiletic in roughly the same league on the undergraduate hit parade as Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ (1998) and transparently evasive when it comes to "meticulous reasoning." If it were a book in biology—Orr's discipline—I daresay he'd pounce on it like a pit bull, but like many others he adopts a double standard when the topic is religion....
[Hat Tip: [RichardDawkins.net]
14 comments :
I'm reading Breaking the Spell, and I'm impressed so far. It isn't high scholarship, but it's a well crafted work, even if Dennett does make too much of memes in his account of religion.
NYRB ran a similarly crap review of Breaking the Spell, by Freeman Dyson (an equally odd choice) who, quite ridiculously given the way Dennnet bends over backwards to give a fair hearing to the claimed utility of religion, accused the book of virulent hostility to religion. It would appear there is an editorial blind spot on matters religious.
Breaking the Spell is indeed a good book. It really doesn't pretend to be original scholarship; it does a good job of reviewing such scholarship on the subject as currently exists. Its main burden is an urgent call for a lot more work to be done in this area, and for breaking the taboos that have made it difficult to do objectively and unflinchingly.
I haven't read Breaking the Spell and I don't intend to. I don't like memes and, like PZ, I'm very suspicious of the just-so stories that claim to have discovered an evolutionary basis of religion.
If there is a religion gene, then PZ and I must be recessive homozygote mutants. I suspect John is heterozygous like most other agnostics.
Well, I'm another homozygous recessive, myself. But I rate Dennett's book much higher than PZ does; it's much more (appropriately) cautious about just-so stories than the irritatingly simpleminded DDI.
But I have to say that I truly do suspect there is something inherently, biologically wrong with (most) people to make them so universally susceptible to religious nonsense. And I have to agree with what I take to be Denneett's main point, that a lot more and better research on just what that "something wrong" is would be a really good idea. (Though he's too polite to insist on the "wrongness", which is what irritated PZ.)
I devote a scant six pages of Breaking the Spell to the arguments for and against the existence of God, while Dawkins devotes roughly a hundred, laying out the standard arguments with admirable clarity and fairness, and skewering them efficiently.
What a lunkhead; like a monkey wielding a razor Dawkins succeeded only in slitting his own throat with his sophomoric counterarguments.
While I didn't wind up disliking Breaking the Spell as much as I thought I would, I was amazed that a philosopher of science would actually say (p. 26) that theists should not object to treating religion as a natural phenomenon unless they prove the negative by showing that science was utterly unable to account for theists' claims of the supernatural. He actually calls that "the scientific method".
Last time I looked, science would never accept even an "utter" (whatever that might be) lack of evidence for a naturalistic explanation as a demonstration of anything, precisely because methodological naturalism is a philosophical assumption, not a scientific result. If he wants theists to adopt methodological naturalism, fine ... but don't pretend that it has anything to do with "showing" anything.
Per Larry Moran:
"... and, like PZ, I'm very suspicious of the just-so stories that claim to have discovered an evolutionary basis of religion.
If there is a religion gene, then PZ and I must be recessive homozygote mutants. I suspect John is heterozygous like most other agnostics."
Larry, this post, and the comments from both you and PZ, have helped me understand somewhat your attitude toward religion. I too wish there were no such thing, but we may have to deal with religion from an evolutionary perspective whether we like it or not. There's no need to posit a "religion gene"; it may have been selection in our cultural evolution over the last 80,000 years that gave rise to its dominance in human societies. Of course the psychological/social construct of religion is not perfect, and can cause problems, but how is that different from anything in the history of life on earth?
And I'm surprised that PZ Myers (along with Larry an outstanding writer) would consider research on the biological/evolutionary basis of religion as "premature and presumptuous". Isn't it just as presumptuous to assume there is no such evolutionary basis?
"But I have to say that I truly do suspect there is something inherently, biologically wrong with (most) people to make them so universally susceptible to religious nonsense."
I'm not a fan of obedience to authority or peer pressure either, and those things exist without being biologically "wrong". But morally, well that is another story.
"There's no need to posit a "religion gene"; it may have been selection in our cultural evolution over the last 80,000 years that gave rise to its dominance in human societies."
Yes. Incidentally that would fit the meme concept, as I understand it. I have no problem with having a vague 'inheritance' of concepts - but I am concerned about any predictivity.
PS. What is up with the RO'Bot? He attacked Dawkins instead of PZ. I fear for his insanity. DS
jj andesron says,
And I'm surprised that PZ Myers [and Larry] would consider research on the biological/evolutionary basis of religion as "premature and presumptuous". Isn't it just as presumptuous to assume there is no such evolutionary basis?
The basic argument of the evolutionary psychologists is that most human behaviors have a direct genetic component. They claim that much of what we do is more like "instinct" than rational thought.
The argument for a religion gene is based on the fact that humans have been religious for most of their history. Only now are we beginning to abandon superstition. If you're into adaptationism this very fact cries out for an adaptionist just-so story and that's exactly what you get. There's a bevy of just-so stories that "explain" religion as genetic determinism. It's not their fault that they believe in silly superstitions 'cause it's in their genes.
If that's the main argument then we must have genes for racism, male chauvinism, homophobia, and astrology, since those have also been characteristic behaviors of humans over the past 100,000 years.
I don't think we have specific genes for any of those things so I wouldn't waste my time on a religion gene and I wouldn't fund any research that proposes to look for such a gene.
100 years from now I'm hoping we have a society that is non-religious, and also not sexist, racist, or homophobic. I think we can get there without genetic engineering.
You had better read both Allen Orr's review and his reply to Dennett. Orr wrote a balanced review, and Dennett clearly misrepresents what he said. Orr said as conclusion ".... that The God Delusion is not itself a work of either evolutionary biology in particular or science in general. None of Dawkins's loud pronouncements on God follows from any experiment or piece of data. It's just Dawkins talking." Why should an atheist evolutionary biologist not be allowed to call an atheist book middle brow?
"Why should an atheist evolutionary biologist not be allowed to call an atheist book middle brow?" Unfortunately he wasn't content to leave it at that, but felt called upon to make specious arguments such as the whine that Dawkins attacked crude religion but not the sophisticated stuff and that the value of the book is therefore vitiated- an "argument" to which Dennett provided the approprate reply.
BTW Dennet's book, to the extent I recall its contents accurately weeks after a fairly cursory reading, contains little or no naive stuff about a "religion gene" and is at least as much about (possible) cultural as about (possible) biological explanations for the origin and staying power of religion.
P.S. Unlike Dennett's book, Dawkins's (which frankly bored me since, of course, everything in it is very much old hat to athesis) is quite obviously INTENDED to be a middlebrow book that can reach the masses many of whom, difficult though this may be for sophisticates to grasp, have never heard anything like its arguments before. It's a feature, not a bug! And the sales figures suggest that he hit the target squarely.
What is up with the RO'Bot? Bork, bork, bork.
Torbjörn
I do not limit my criticisms to Peezee's blog offal.
"Bork, bork, bork."
Sorry, does not compute. :-)
"I do not limit my criticisms to Peezee's blog"
Exactly the change of behavior I noted.
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