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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: The Dawkins Delusion
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
For the above, Dawkins doesn't claim he has proof that there is no God.
A perfect example of the Courtier's Reply. When critics point out that Dawkins has no proof that there is no god, do his defenders try to provide such a proof? No. They try to change the subject to arguments about invisible teapots or whatever. But we no more need to know what Dawkins is really arguing than critics need to know what colours the Emperor is really claiming his clothes to be. Until the Emperor's courtiers have a proof that the clothes are real we aren't interested in what the Emperor has to say about them. Until Dawkins' defenders have a proof that there is no God we have no interest in what Dawkins has to say about there being no God.
Warning: this post contains irony.
[ 27. August 2010, 23:28: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
Yes, Sir! You have obviously appointed yourself to a role of determining appropriate debating behaviour on this thread, so I will judge myself to be suitably admonished by such a superior being.
However, if you looked at the context of my original comment you would see that it has an underlying point. It is not unusual for religious shipmates to claim that if an atheist is on the Ship it indicates that they actually have a closet yearning for god (although it hasn't yet been said on this thread). But the gander obviously gets touchy if the sauce is applied to him.
Oh, you can debate however you like. Just so long as I can say it's rubbish.
And the context you've now added... First of all, I can't read your mind to know that this was what you were impliyng because you didn't say anything like that. Second, you've just acknowledged that no-one has said that on this thread.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Orlando098
Shipmate
# 14930
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There is also Dawkins' charming contention that liberal religious believers do nothing except make the fundamentalists more plausible.
For what it's worth, fundamentalism is not more true to the internal logic of the Christian religion than liberal religion. The internal logic does not favour Biblical literalism; nor does it think of God as the kind of causal agent that intelligent design needs God to be.
(Those of us who aren't fundamentalists find the unthinking statement otherwise offensive, although whether it's offensive is a bit beside the point.) [/QB]
I think the argument that liberals help give credibility to fundamentalists is more associated with Sam Harris than Dawkins, generally.
I personally do tend to think that fundamentalism is more internally consistent, even if I identify more with liberals - for example a belief that God created us and everything else with intention, rather than that things came about by chance and impersonal laws of nature, seems to me more consistent with the way his character is described in the Bible. Ditto for a God that intervenes and that listens to prayers and is a "person" etc as opposed to one that is some underlying ground of being. Also, Saint Paul clearly believed in a literal Adam when he said sin came into the world via one man and another man (Jesus) came to take it away. Believing in a literal Adam and Eve who literally sinned makes the idea of Jesus having to incarnate to deal with this more straightforward than the idea that at some point humans who evolved over billions of years came to be in a state of sin that was barring from from proper communion with God (so at which stage, in that interpretation, did they possess the proper relationship with him prior to the fall?). A literal belief in Jesus rising from the dead and ascending to Heaven and in the second Coming and resurrection of the dead etc are more consistent with what the New Testament says than are liberal, metaphorical interpretations. etc.
I certainly don't think however that it is pointless to try to come to new ways of living a faith based on the Christian tradition if you can't intellectually accept some of the traditional ideas, but I do think there is a more straightforward logic to taking the traditional ideas at face value.
Of course definitions of "fundamentalist" and "liberal" are not hard and fast anyway, and there are degrees of each. Most Christians fall somewhere in-between extremes of eg. the Answers in Genesis people or Bishop Spong.
Posts: 1019 | From: Nice, France | Registered: Jul 2009
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Orlando098
Shipmate
# 14930
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Orlando098:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There is also Dawkins' charming contention that liberal religious believers do nothing except make the fundamentalists more plausible.
For what it's worth, fundamentalism is not more true to the internal logic of the Christian religion than liberal religion. The internal logic does not favour Biblical literalism; nor does it think of God as the kind of causal agent that intelligent design needs God to be.
(Those of us who aren't fundamentalists find the unthinking statement otherwise offensive, although whether it's offensive is a bit beside the point.)
I think the argument that liberals help give credibility to fundamentalists is more associated with Sam Harris than Dawkins, generally.
I personally do tend to think that fundamentalism is more internally consistent, even if I identify more with liberals - for example a belief that God created us and everything else with intention, rather than that things came about by chance and impersonal laws of nature, seems to me more consistent with the way his character is described in the Bible. Ditto for a God that intervenes and that listens to prayers and is a "person" etc as opposed to one that is some underlying ground of being. Also, Saint Paul clearly believed in a literal Adam when he said sin came into the world via one man and another man (Jesus) came to take it away. Believing in a literal Adam and Eve who literally sinned makes the idea of Jesus having to incarnate to deal with this more straightforward than the idea that at some point humans who evolved over billions of years came to be in a state of sin that was barring from from proper communion with God (so at which stage, in that interpretation, did they possess the proper relationship with him prior to the fall?). A literal belief in Jesus rising from the dead and ascending to Heaven and in the second Coming and resurrection of the dead etc are more consistent with what the New Testament says than are liberal, metaphorical interpretations. etc.
I certainly don't think however that it is pointless to try to come to new ways of living a faith based on the Christian tradition if you can't intellectually accept some of the traditional ideas, but I do think there is a more straightforward internal logic to taking the traditional ideas at face value (if you can manage to turn off the skeptical side of your brain and accept them all).
Of course definitions of "fundamentalist" and "liberal" are not hard and fast anyway, and there are degrees of each. Most Christians fall somewhere in-between extremes of eg. the Answers in Genesis people or Bishop Spong. [/QB]
Posts: 1019 | From: Nice, France | Registered: Jul 2009
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Justinian:
quote:
Whatever he is or isn't, he's certainly wrong. And producing textbook creationist garbage. If he isn't a creationist, he's a Useful Idiot. Or, more probably a smart garden variety troll.
1) So you've read the book now?
2) Are you saying that everyone who offers a critique of the - what are we actually talking about here? - the Selfish Gene, or the cultural influence of an evolutionary sociobiology reinforced by a scientism that won't brook challenge (what I'm talking about) or whatever - is either a covert creationist, a troll or a useful idiot?
Well that might actually further discussion on this thread, because, however smooth his presentation at times, I think that that's actually Dawkins' default position. And apparently yours.
Or do you have a specific animus in this area against Pichot? In which case I say again: substantiate it. And again: have you read the book?
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He is offering a critique of the cultural ramifications of an uncritical application of Darwinian evolutionary theory to fields unrelated to the biological.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bollocks! At best he's offering a critique of the theft of evolutionary biology by sociological idiots who didn't understand it. And then trying to twist it back to blame the biologists.
It's actually a lot more than that. Read the book. Actually, your arrogance in critiquing the content and argumentation of a book you haven't read is breathtaking!
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You know nothing of my competence in any of the fields you cite, because I haven't expressed myself sufficiently for you to be able to gauge my competence. You impute views and positions to me, and for that matter to Pichot, which are not held. You are ranting in a vacuum, against straw men.
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quote:
OK. Do you have any credentials?
Excuse me? I forbear to answer that, because this is still the Ship of Fools. We are allowed to debate here, and the question itself is offensive. But entirely typical. Just out of interest, what credentials do you think people should have before they should arrogantly claim the privilege of debating with you?
A thought strikes! That, too, is very Dawkinsesk, at least, it's reminiscent of his worst excesses.
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And do you take back the idiocy I've exposed at the top of the top of page 3?
I've just looked through your posts, and can't find what you are talking about. Restate it, and I'll address it.
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But better to trash the person than read and engage with the ideas.
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Fine. Go engage with every biblical literalist out there. Come back when you get fed up of seeing the same case for the 70th time. And then I'll criticise you for not engaging with the ideas. His ideas are not new. It's just that you are seeing them for the first time. This is standard Creationist playbook (I don't know whether he himself is one, whether he's reading from it, whether he's trolling, or whether he's just mistaken. But it's a textbook play done well).
Would a fair translation of this be "I know what these people think, they're all the same, anyone who disagrees with me is either a creationist, a fellow traveller, or a stooge/dupe, and they all bloody hack me off, and won't oblige me by shutting the hell up, after announcking their conversion to my position and, annoyingly, they won't acknowledge the complete and crushing adequacy of my bog-standard rebuttal. But they're all the same anyway, so I have to say something every time one of them appears on my radar, so thank God - oops, unintentional irony! - that I don't actually have to find out what the irrelevant fine distinctions among them - like being conservative, creationist, liberal, enthusiastic but critical endorsers of a dialogue between science and religion, etc. etc. are.
"These people are all alike..."
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It's just that you are seeing them for the first time.
Unbelievable! You really think that? More importantly, you really think that you have the right to make that assertion? Most of the elements in Pichot's book I have known for ages. Their assembly and articulation is new to me because, er... oh yes! I read Pichot's book! I felt I had to, you know, with not being omniscient and that.
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Just in case you actually do have the inclination to assess Pichot in terms other than his CV, however, here's The New Humanist (long a bastion of crackpot creationism, I would imagine) review.
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Hey, you are the one that brought up his CV. And when I pointed out it was crap, you mysteriously don't try to defend it - you're trying to now in a piece of sleight of hand claim it as irrelevant. As for The Lancet, depends on the reviewer. They let Dr Wakefield publish. And I never said he wasn't extremely good and plausible. (Even peer review is flawed, although the alternatives are worse. Book reviews - he just needs to catch the right person to get a good review.)
I note that you are answering me very selectively. Nothing on when the New Humanist became a fan of creationism, for example! Oh - and how about this. No actual critique of the Lancet review, no engagement with it - just a slur on the Lancet as publishing crap reviews and bad science from time to time, and the observation that peer review is dodgy occasionally also. Why? Well, apparently because it lets through stuff you disagree with... (And yes, I do know something about the fallibility of peer review from time to time, and it's not that.)
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Your post is somewhere between guesswork and fabrication in most its assertions and overall a piece of downright intellectual dishonesty. That's what happens when you start believing that you can critique people's thinking without bothering to examine what they actually think, say or believe.
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Given that it's crap to start with (confusing evolution with eugenics)...
Ah, I confuse evolution with eugenics. Actually, I don't; my original post was about the influence of scientism on Victorian and early twentieth-century receptions of evolution. But it's interesting that you actually got that suggestion from an observation made in one of the reviews I cite about Pichot's book. So you do read some things. Albeit that you then deploy them somewhat mechanically and irrelevantly.
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...it's a crap premise secondly (science is responsible for the distortions it is used for) and it's a commonly used line then there's no point.
I know from just your comments and the reviews a number of places he's plain wrong. I know what line he's taking. I've seen it about a dozen times before. Yes, this iteration sounds like a skilled one. And might be worth reading to see his examples and that argument run well. But it doesn't make it other than fundamentally wrong. And wrong in a well known way that I have no desire to read for a 25th time.
Yeah, right.
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
Missed edit window.
Read: Your post is somewhere between guesswork and fabrication in most of its assertions about me, and overall a piece of downright intellectual dishonesty.
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Would you care to demonstrate that? Demonstrate one place where I am being dishonest? Because you've made a set of allegations with absolutely no supporting evidence that you will not stand by.
Precisely where? Specify! I said I'd read a book which I thought was an interesting contribution to a debate on the claims of a particular understanding of science - not evolutionary biology, which I accept as a valid, indeed the only valid, scientific approach to its field - to social influence. I suggested that Dawkins naively mirrors this assumption that science has a particular kind of purchase on truth such that it disables all other approaches, and proclaims their invalidity. I differentiated between such a set of beliefs, which I labelled scientism, and the practice of science itself, which I unhesitatingly endorse. I further suggested that Pichot's book fleshed out my position inasmuch as it (1) pointed up the uncontrolled expansion of Darwinian evolutionary thinking into other fields, and the generation in the biological community of a scientistic mindset, and (2) points up the continuing danger of out-of-control biological scientism and sociobiology to present and future societies.
I noted that Pichot isn't a creationist - I have no reason to think that he's a theist - and that that much of what he says (with appropriate caveats about his maybe overstating his case) is commended by humanist, secularist and even marxist reviewers.
You want to turn him into a creationist stooge, me into a covert creationalist, and everyone who disagrees with you into a mob who tiresomely, say the same thing over and over again, and arrogantly expect you to engage with the speciifics of what they say, rather than just shut up at the self-proclaiming correctness of what you say - based of course on your scientific pedigree and training. WHich, by the way, is a pretty good definition of scientism.
I think that is hugely intellectually dishonest, and it's there in your posts.
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And you are dancing every time a point of yours is disproved
You wish!
But again, that's a standard Dawkinsite response. You won't stand still and let me punch you! You don't understand that nuance and qualification are just manifestations of the One True Scotsman fallacy.
Indeed here it all is again:
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without ever defending much except that we should read a book that contains a case I've seen two dozen times before.
Or are insinuations, direct accusations of intellectual dishonesty, and appeals to irrelevant authority all you have? Well, that and recycled Creationist arguments that you are presenting as (a) new, and (b) interesting when in practice they aren't even first year undergraduate stuff.
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I've pointed out a fundamental historical flaw in the case (Hitler despised the theory of Darwinian evolution - complete with a link containing quotes). I've pointed out a fundamental history of science flaw (Eugenics does not have its roots in Biology. It has them in Statistics.) I've pointed out a fundamental scientific flaw. (If you actually look at what evolutionary biology has to say then it points out that the result of eugenics is going to be massive inbreeding, limited genetic diversity, and the whole host of problems and lack of adaptability associated with this). I've pointed out a fundamental sociological floor (that people have always misappropriated whatever authority they can for their own ends - see the Prosperity Gospel or the Divine Right of Kings for examples). Bullfrog has just pointed out a fundamental epistemological flaw ("No True Scientist would ever uncritically apply anything." It moves it outside the realm of science.)
Any of the above are enough to leave the case on the scrapheap. All of them together make it look more like a swiss cheese than a theory. And while I have no doubt that when you put the wax on the outside of the cheese it looks nice and pretty, the best thing to do with it is make fondue.
So why are you even posting here? Why are you not, like Aristotle's God, just luxuriating in the contemplation of your own perfections, and waiting for the cosmos to be drawn towards you by that eros against which "resistance is futile"?
Not, surely, because you love trashing people, hate it when they respond, but need them in order to trash them? Or is that Richard Dawkins?
[ 28. August 2010, 07:16: Message edited by: Psyduck ]
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I never suggested otherwise. However, you need evidence before you can have proof. If all evidence is going to be summarily dismissed because "there's no proof", then we have a circular argument on our hands ...
I said proof because the person I was replying to said proof and I quoted and replied to him on the terms he was using. Now you are coming in and objecting that I am not using your standards for communication when I was directly and explicitely replying to someone else.
No, I agree that Evensong is wrong as well, but not for the reason you provided. And I found your argument to be symptomatic of a flaw in Dawkins.
quote:
What Dawkins does is says "Here are the roots of what people are seeing in the window" - he's a bit didactic. But he's a scientist. Rather than just saying "but it's really strange" and giving up, he tries to work out what's actually in the window and why people would be seeing such different things. And then tell everyone else.
No, he provides a possible explanation, and then says that because it's possible it must also be correct. It may be correct, but he still needs to show why his explanation should be favoured over any other.
For the record I would use the same sort of reasoning in reverse against Christians who are too quick to see miracles in everything. "Yes it could be a miracle, but why favour the miraculous explanation over any other possibility?"
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Arrietty
Ship's borrower
# 45
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
All that's necessary to say by way of rebuttal is that Pichot isn't a creationist.
[SLIGHT TANGENT]
The latest debating tool I've observed being used by those who seem to rely on 'prethought' arguments to attack faith is that anyone who believes God had anything to do with creation is 'a creationist'. When I challenged this - on the basis that I am not a creationist in the generally understood meaning of the word - the person I was talking to said he meant 'a creationist in the sense of believing God was involved in creation.'
Since the rest of the discussion - with a highly intelligent person who is quite capable of thinking for himself in most situations - was scattered liberally with the usual assertions about flying spaghetti monsters, sky pixies and even what a puddle would think about how it had got there if it could think, I assumed this also came from Dawkins Central.
It's a good trick if they can pull it off because that makes almost anyone from any Christian viewpoint a creationist & therefore a fundamentalist who shares the views and characteristic of the people Dawkins presents as typical mainstream Christians.
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i-church
Online Mission and Ministry
Posts: 6634 | From: Coventry, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Darwin != Social Darwinism.
True, but utterly irrelevant to anything that Psyduck is actually saying.
I think this is instructive really.
Social Darwinism is the illegitimate use of tags culled from popularised versions of Darwinian evolution to justify right-wing economic laissez faire ideology. The right-wing economic laissez fairism would be around despite Darwin, but it co-opts and misappropriates Darwinian language to give itself an air of scientific rigour.
As you yourself say:
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And people love taking whatever justification they can to feel superior and grab a bigger slice of the pie for themselves - science, religion, whatever is to hand.
You seem not to realise that this is not a refutation of Psyduck. It's Psyduck's point.
The question isn't Darwin. It's the misappropriation of Darwin to justify social ideologies.
And Darwin ! = Dawkins.
Take Dawkins' friend Matt Ridley. ('The Origins of Virtue' is the Volume Two I would have written'). I see that he has just written a book subtitled How Prosperity Evolves, which is a defence of right-wing laissez-faire free-market economics. (With, I suppose, some small justification for his role in the fall of Northern Rock and why the failings of the banking system don't really matter.) And I see from his wikipedia page that he's actually written an article extolling the benefits to humanity of the nineteenth-century robber barons for whom the term 'social darwinism' was coined.
But of course this is all irrelevant, because Darwin != social darwinism. And of course Dawkins and Ridley are firmly on the side of Darwin so even if they say exactly the same things as social darwinism it's not social darwinism.
Am I smearing Dawkins by association? After all, he might be a friend of Ridley, and he might have written endorsements of Ridley's books, but he didn't actually write them himself. But then Dawkins is so dreadfully easy to smear by association. Careless of him.
By the way, couldn't you find some better quotes to drag up to justify the claim that Hitler was a creationist? I mean, if those quotes were the best that could be found - they're none of them exactly Answers from Genesis, are they? What did someone say? ...ah yes:
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And people love taking whatever justification they can to feel superior and grab a bigger slice of the pie for themselves - science, religion, whatever is to hand.
By the way, since you brought up Terry Eagleton's review... maybe you'd actually like to say what's wrong with it? Other than Terry Eagleton misunderstands Dawkins because he doesn't realise it's ok for Dawkins to misunderstand religion while it's wrong for Terry Eagleton to "misunderstand" Dawkins. Or maybe you'd like to say why the phrase 'courtier's reply' is not in fact the most contemptible sophistry in Dawkins' history of contemptible sophistries?
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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cor ad cor loquitur
Shipmate
# 11816
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Posted
I met Dawkins at Oxford in the late 1990s. He struck me as articulate but glib; in conversation he never really engaged anyone who disagreed with him but used irony and various forms of deflection (changing the terms of debate, begging the question etc.) to rubbish an opposing point of view. He was a superficially impressive public speaker, but without a great deal of substance. He had some good jokes. For me it was mildly painful that Dawkins, who was lecturing on ‘memes’, had followed a very distinguished American scientist, a speaker who had far more profundity but less facility in speaking. Within the audience, the former public school boys who had read arts subjects at Oxbridge and ended up in the City felt that Dawkins had been the greater intellectual. Style trumped substance.
I pretty much ignored Dawkins’s work and his anti-religion antics until recently, when this thread appeared and when, as it happened, two of my children watched his recent programme attacking faith schools. So I went back and watched the faith schools programme and also his two earlier anti-religion programmes, “Eclipse of Reason” and “The Root of all Evil”.
Two things impressed me. The first was his continuing turn to the eristic. Again and again he would begin a segment with “I want to understand …”; he would then interview various believers – a rabbi, a fundamentalist preacher, an imam – and invariably end up attacking them, rubbishing their points of view, denouncing them as stupid. His style, over about a dozen interviews, resembled nothing so much as the tone of some of our rather dogmatic shipmates, including some of my co-religionists. He asked one or two questions, but there was little intent to understand. His main focus was on mocking and discrediting non-atheists
The second was his romantic view of Science – you have to hear this word pronounced as only Dawkins can, in a breathless RP – which, he explains, draws only on reason, facts, evidence (a favourite Dawkins word), to move relentlessly toward Truth (another favourite word, which he equates with Science). If Dawkins hadn’t spent decades at Oxford, you might think he was blissfully ignorant of the academic politics, fads and orthodoxies that pervade academic science. But he has, and I don’t think that Dawkins is stupid, so it’s hard to conclude that he isn’t being disingenuous.
His strictly academic career is curious. Again and again he says, in the programmes, “I am a Scientist” (it’s important, in Dawkins-speak, always to capitalise the word). He boasts of the rigour of science, of the importance of peer review. But in fact his record in peer-reviewed journals is rather thin; his fame came not from groundbreaking research but from non-peer-reviewed trade publications, books like The Selfish Gene.
Dawkins’s appointment at Oxford created controversy because Dawkins himself played a big role in acquiring funding for the chair he held; this is normally forbidden both in academic custom and statute. The Hebdomadal Council arranged for the normal peer review process to be bypassed for Dawkins, the first holder of the chair. The Council referred to the appointment as “a post” rather than “a professorship”; the subsequent holder, the mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, did have to go through peer review; this wouldn’t have been a problem for him because his peer-reviewed publication record, unlike Dawkins’s, is truly distinctive.
In any event, Dawkins’s Oxford chair, his Faraday award from the Royal Society and his FRS all seem to be less about his contributions to research than his accomplishments in the communication of science to the public. All good and honourable. But there is little honour in Dawkins’s subsequent use of his positions to attack other scientists for violating his orthodoxy on atheism, or to push for the dismissal of the Royal Society’s education director, Prof Michael Reiss. Reiss, a PhD in evolutionary biology from Cambridge, is also a Church of England clergyman. He had suggested that teachers risks alienating children who believed in creationism by dismissing it out of hand; Reiss said that teachers “should take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis.” But this wasn’t good enough for Dawkins, who shouted: “A clergyman in charge of education for the country's leading scientific organisation - it's a Monty Python sketch” and forced Reiss’s dismissal.
He’s a good communicator, in my view, but an intellectual lightweight; in this regard not unlike some of the fundamentalist preachers he trashes in his books and television programmes.
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Quam vos veritatem interpretationis, hanc eruditi κακοζηλίαν nuncupant … si ad verbum interpretor, absurde resonant. (St Jerome, Ep. 57 to Pammachius)
Posts: 1332 | From: London | Registered: Sep 2006
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Arrietty
Ship's borrower
# 45
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cor ad cor loquitur:
His strictly academic career is curious.
Dawkins' professorship was not as a professor of science but a professor of 'public understanding of science'. It appears that he was not assessed as scientist to evaluate his suitability for this post but as a communicator.
In fact, according to the biography on his website, he holds an MPhil rather than a PhD - so he has never completed a doctorate. It's not unheard of for someone without a PhD to become a professor, but increasingly unusual.
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i-church
Online Mission and Ministry
Posts: 6634 | From: Coventry, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:
2) Are you saying that everyone who offers a critique of the - what are we actually talking about here? - the Selfish Gene, or the cultural influence of an evolutionary sociobiology reinforced by a scientism that won't brook challenge (what I'm talking about) or whatever - is either a covert creationist, a troll or a useful idiot?
I'm saying that if he's offering exactly that critique, then yes.
For that matter, "Scientism" itself is one of these words that openly has an axe to grind - like Darwinism. The knowledge obtainable from science is strictly circumscribed. An empiricist scientific mindset is far less overreaching than any except the most wooly religious one. And I've demonstrated how "Scientism" is in direct contradiction to the experiments and findings of science (the Uncertainty Principle and Chaos Theory alone make it a non-starter). It therefore has almost nothing to do with science - related to it in exactly the way the Prosperity Gospel relates to Christianity.
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Well that might actually further discussion on this thread, because, however smooth his presentation at times, I think that that's actually Dawkins' default position. And apparently yours.
Good. There are some beliefs where the only answer to debate is "Go away and read up on things and come back when you know what you are talking about." Aliens built the pyramids because humans couldn't possibly have. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are true. The world was created in six days. The "Books of Moses" were writen by Moses himself. Vaccinations cause Autism. The Theory of Evolution lead directly to Hitler.
You've come into the debate with known slanders that are almost exactly in contradiction of recorded history and epistemology. And you've breached Godwin's Law by the very title of the book.
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Or do you have a specific animus in this area against Pichot? In which case I say again: substantiate it. And again: have you read the book?
No. And I don't need to any more than I need to read Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Or another book by Erich von Daniken or one of his successors.
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Excuse me? I forbear to answer that, because this is still the Ship of Fools. We are allowed to debate here, and the question itself is offensive. But entirely typical. Just out of interest, what credentials do you think people should have before they should arrogantly claim the privilege of debating with you?
None. Unless they want to make credentials an issue - and you said you might have some, so I asked. You are demonstrably ignorant about the subjects you are prattling on about. But you brought up the idea of credentials. If you hadn't, I wouldn't have asked - preferring to just treat you as an ordinary person who demonstrates his knowledge through what he says. Which on theology is generally a lot. Here, it's screamingly obvious you are out of your depth. When you claimed you might have credentials, that was the only relevant shred of a defence you had ever offered, so I asked about it. Now your case is "I might have credentials. But I'm not prepared to say what they are. I'm just saying I might have them."
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I've just looked through your posts, and can't find what you are talking about. Restate it, and I'll address it.
You mean the part about evolutionary biology colonising the sciences? Hint: It was Francis Galton who came up with Eugenics - Galton was a brilliant statistician (arguably the greatest who ever lived), not a biologist (and therefore someone who wanted to put people in boxes rather than one who wanted to get at the details). And the soft sciences love taking statistics, and often misusing them. And people love taking whatever justification they can to feel superior and grab a bigger slice of the pie for themselves - science, religion, whatever is to hand.
Or did you mean the part about the morality from "evolutionary biologism"? The evolutionary biology that says that diversity is extremely good for a population? The evolutionary biology that says that we all came from the same stock and are therefore extremely similar? The "evolutionary biologism" that provides the best examples anywhere of the stones that the builders rejected, and of things having non-obvious uses? For that matter, the evolutionary biological answer to the idea of eugenics is to point at pedigree dogs and other incestuous groups and all the problems they have.
Or do you mean the part about human faliability being possible to eliminate through science? Another pile of nonsense - Science is empirical and just gets best approximates. You never have a scientific proof - just a scientific theory. (And throw in late 20th Century science and you discover that even if you could perfect humans you still wouldn't have a perfect understanding; the Uncertainty Principle says that there's a limit to the detail you can know the universe in - and Chaos Theory says that if you don't know your details perfectly it's all going to spin out of control.) Now if you want to try and eliminate human faliability, do what just about everyone has done in history. Claim divine revelation to back up your half-baked hypotheses. People have done that for millenia, and the whole thing fits a lot better than claiming science.
And the point about the scientific truth finding apparatus is that I may be in posession of it but so are you. And the highest level of truth I can find is a Theory - something that explains all the facts available and is not contradicted by any of them. If you want me to revise, it's quite simple. Provide me a testable fact that contradicts my theory and it ceases to be a theory.
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Would a fair translation of this be "I know what these people think, they're all the same, anyone who disagrees with me is either a creationist, a fellow traveller, or a stooge/dupe, and they all bloody hack me off, and won't oblige me by shutting the hell up, after announcking their conversion to my position and, annoyingly, they won't acknowledge the complete and crushing adequacy of my bog-standard rebuttal. But they're all the same anyway, so I have to say something every time one of them appears on my radar, so thank God - oops, unintentional irony! - that I don't actually have to find out what the irrelevant fine distinctions among them - like being conservative, creationist, liberal, enthusiastic but critical endorsers of a dialogue between science and religion, etc. etc. are.
"These people are all alike..."
It depends what you mean by "These people". If you spend any time discussing the merits of Global Warming, you run into the same dozen arguments against it happening restated over and over again in five dozen ways. And the trick is always to work out which of the four or five possible deceptions (ranging from simple misunderstandings to deception about words ("Theory" being the favourite) to outright lies) they have made to get to that point. If you deal with creationism, likewise - it's the same dozen or so false arguments .
Darwin's theory of Evolution lead to Hitler's eugenic policies is such a classic Creationist canard that it has its own talk.origins page. Which, amongst other things, points out that official Nazi guidelines were to ban from public libraries "Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel). (Die Bücherei 1935, 279)"
Yeah, there's a real appreciation of Darwin if they are banning him from public libraries.
The contribution of a book that tries to draw that link is neither new nor interesting. It's an attempt to Godwin, and a case that has been made a thousand times before. Either that or it's a damn idiot trying to stir up a reception for his book with a controversial title, knowing that the title's complete crap.
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Unbelievable! You really think that? More importantly, you really think that you have the right to make that assertion?
No. I was putting the best possible light on it. I do not have thge right to give you the benefit of the doubt. The alternatives are that you are more ignorant than you know and have been taken in by this line of crap before (worse than it being a new line of crap) and that you are a willing accomplice.
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Most of the elements in Pichot's book I have known for ages. Their assembly and articulation is new to me because, er... oh yes! I read Pichot's book! I felt I had to, you know, with not being omniscient and that.
Most of the elements in von Daniken's book I have known for ages. Their assembly and articulation is new to me because, er... oh yes! I read von Daniken's book! I felt I had to, you know, with not being omniscient and that.
Doesn't mean I learned anything from von Daniken other than a new assembling of crap.
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I note that you are answering me very selectively. Nothing on when the New Humanist became a fan of creationism, for example! Oh - and how about this. No actual critique of the Lancet review, no engagement with it - just a slur on the Lancet as publishing crap reviews and bad science from time to time, and the observation that peer review is dodgy occasionally also. Why? Well, apparently because it lets through stuff you disagree with... (And yes, I do know something about the fallibility of peer review from time to time, and it's not that.)
I have never denied that he put his arguments in a particularly compelling way. And that you can get that past intelligent people (of which you are one - if you weren't I wouldn't be bothering with this much of a reply). It's dogwhistle stuff - if the reviewer has spent no time at all anywhere near talk.origins or other evolution/creationism debates he wouldn't recognise all the dog whistles buried in there.
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Ah, I confuse evolution with eugenics. Actually, I don't; my original post was about the influence of scientism on Victorian and early twentieth-century receptions of evolution.
Interesting. Because you didn't mention so-called "scientism" before this post. What you were claiming was that what he was talking about was "what happens when evolutionary biology gets above itself and starts colonizing sociology".
And that's almost the exact reverse of what happened. Sociology (and in particular clever fools with a poor understanding even of sociology, never mind evolutionary biology) claimed evolutionary biology for their own and used their misunderstandings and out of context thefts of the terms to provide justification to allow them to do exactly what they wanted to. It's exactly like blaming Jesus of Nazareth or Paul of Tarsus for the application of the Prosperity Gospel here.
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But it's interesting that you actually got that suggestion from an observation made in one of the reviews I cite about Pichot's book. So you do read some things. Albeit that you then deploy them somewhat mechanically and irrelevantly.
Of course I read it. I'd read it even before you linked it - not that it told me anything I didn't expect. For that matter, I'd [url= http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&q=%22The+Pure+Society%3A+Fr om+Darwin+To+Hitler%22+review&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=]googled reviews of it[/url]. First review - deserved castigation. Second review - yours. Third review: Creation.com (creationist). Fourth review: yours again. Amazon I don't trust for reviews. And none of hte reviews told me anything unexpected.
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Precisely where? Specify! I said I'd read a book which I thought was an interesting contribution to a debate on the claims of a particular understanding of science - not evolutionary biology, which I accept as a valid, indeed the only valid, scientific approach to its field - to social influence.
And then you sought to blame evolutionary biology for the influence it supposedly had and say that it had got too big.
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I suggested that Dawkins naively mirrors this assumption that science has a particular kind of purchase on truth such that it disables all other approaches, and proclaims their invalidity.
Which given that the approach was the reverse of the one you claim is irrelevant.
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I differentiated between such a set of beliefs, which I labelled scientism, and the practice of science itself, which I unhesitatingly endorse.
You mentioned "Scientism" a total of once on the previous page. And that was in a reply to Croesus. And as I have pointed out your "Scientism" is the opposite approach to that of good science. Science can not have all the answers. And the best you can do from science is a Theory. And you start from a position of scepticism.
As I say, bringing in claims about "Scientism" when the scientific method is almost precisely the opposite is akin to bringing in the Prosperity Gospel to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. People claim the one provides support for the other when in fact it does the exact opposite. And if Dawkins were to claim the Prosperity Gospel as mainstream Christianity, I'd conclude he didn't know what he was talking about.
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I noted that Pichot isn't a creationist - I have no reason to think that he's a theist - and that that much of what he says (with appropriate caveats about his maybe overstating his case) is commended by humanist, secularist and even marxist reviewers.
Actually, it's mostly ignored in the English speaking world. The TES review is the highest ranked review on Google.
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You want to turn him into a creationist stooge, me into a covert creationalist,
He is. Or a troll. Or ignorant. You're in the latter category.
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and everyone who disagrees with you into a mob who tiresomely, say the same thing over and over again,
If you say something I haven't read a variation of before, I'll let you know. There are some arguments you see again and again and are really annoying. And this is one of them. You're more articulate than most - and I'm not assuming bad faith (which I probably would after this long dealing with an actual creationist).
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and arrogantly expect you to engage with the speciifics of what they say, rather than just shut up at the self-proclaiming correctness of what you say - based of course on your scientific pedigree and training.[/qb]
*eyeroll*
You seem utterly incapable of engaging with the specifics I have pointed out. Ones like Hitler being a creationist who utterly abhorred the Theory of Evolution. Ones like the actual principles that can be extracted from evolutionary biology that lead to moral principles rather than the set you claim. Ones like the relationship between Science and your "Scientism" being that between the teachings of Jesus and the Prosperity Gospel.
Instead you have one refrain and one only. "Read the book". Because apparently that replaces thought for you. It Is Written.
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WHich, by the way, is a pretty good definition of scientism.
You mean "Scientism" is a religion? Surely not.
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I think that is hugely intellectually dishonest, and it's there in your posts.
And what I'm reading from you is utterly intellectually vapid.
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And you are dancing every time a point of yours is disproved
You wish!
But again, that's a standard Dawkinsite response. You won't stand still and let me punch you! You don't understand that nuance and qualification are just manifestations of the One True Scotsman fallacy.
So your attempt at qualification is to list potential objections - and when I point out how irrelevant and unconvincing they are to drop them like a hot potatoe and then blame me for having the sheer cheek to point out how irrelevant they are?
The Dawkinsite response is "Either say something testable and that you believe or stop expecting me to take what you have to say seriously. After all, you can't express it, won't defend it, and when I've asked about impact it apparently has none. Therefore, why shouldn't I treat it as being about as serious as which football team you support?"
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So why are you even posting here? Why are you not, like Aristotle's God, just luxuriating in the contemplation of your own perfections, and waiting for the cosmos to be drawn towards you by that eros against which "resistance is futile"?
http://xkcd.com/386/ And because I thought better of you.
[/quote]Not, surely, because you love trashing people, hate it when they respond, but need them in order to trash them? Or is that Richard Dawkins? [/QUOTE]
I do not hate it when people respond. I hate it when they put up an argument with all the backbone of a rasberry blancmange and that reeks of skunk.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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cor ad cor loquitur
Shipmate
# 11816
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Posted
Arietty, both Wikipedia and one of Dawkins's own pages say that he holds a DPhil.
I don't doubt that Dawkins has genuine scientific credentials. He has published several papers in Nature, which is no small accomplishment. I don't think that his peer-reviewed research on its own would have won him a professorship, let alone an FRS, but I may be mis-reading the record.
I do think it's rather cheeky to parade himself as 'a Scientist' when most of his renown and all of his current work is as a popular writer. To me it implies that Dawkins's statement "I am a Scientist" is more like saying "I am a Methodist" than "I am a dentist": a statement of faith rather than profession. And faith, in Dawkins's language, is a dirty word.
[ 28. August 2010, 14:41: Message edited by: cor ad cor loquitur ]
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Quam vos veritatem interpretationis, hanc eruditi κακοζηλίαν nuncupant … si ad verbum interpretor, absurde resonant. (St Jerome, Ep. 57 to Pammachius)
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Arrietty
Ship's borrower
# 45
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Posted
Ah, misread that - though I don't think that was the page I was looking at. I'm sure I couldn't get either an MPhil or a PhD so I'm not in any case having a go at his intelligence - just commenting on what I thought would be an unusual feature of his career. My bad.
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i-church
Online Mission and Ministry
Posts: 6634 | From: Coventry, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Arrietty
Ship's borrower
# 45
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cor ad cor loquitur:
I don't think that his peer-reviewed research on its own would have won him a professorship, let alone an FRS, but I may be mis-reading the record.
The distinction between a professor of science and a professor for the public understanding of science was in fact pointed out to me by an academic scientist who is a Christian and objects to Dawkins making out that the only conclusion an academic scientist could draw from the evidence about religious faith is to be against it.
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i-church
Online Mission and Ministry
Posts: 6634 | From: Coventry, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Justinian; life's too short, and this isn't worth the effort. But briefly, it was, because it confirmed that a Dawkinsite perspective is at best what cor ad cor loquitur said he found it to be, and at worst, just unpleasant, instinctively traducing, overbearing, pontifical and, beyond its undeniable - and never denied - expert grasp of scientific procedure, intellectually vacant.
If there had been less mudslinging and misrepresentation, it might have been fun - but it turns out that the mudslinging and misrepresentation are actually the point, because that's all you've got. I had briefly cultivated a certain enjoyment of your articulated positions, even despite the unintentionally-ironically papal style, but I've seen all that's there; the interesting astringency soon vanishes with a challenge, and the dregs are just sour. Assertions, wilful misrepresentations, infatuation with True Scotsmen, and infantile rage when contradicted.
Given that I'm as keen as the next person that religions be stripped of all special privileges and simply be allowed to speak and be heard in the Public Square, I've never understood why anyone would want to spend time and effort being a Militant Atheist. It took Dawkins to help me to understand; it's a religion, deeply intolerant, highly dangerous and as worthy of suspicion as any bad religion, including its Christian variants.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Orlando098:
I think the argument that liberals help give credibility to fundamentalists is more associated with Sam Harris than Dawkins, generally.
It may be more associated with Bomber Harris, but Dawkins is certainly not above it. (See Justinian's first post on this thread IIRC.)
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I personally do tend to think that fundamentalism is more internally consistent, even if I identify more with liberals - for example a belief that God created us and everything else with intention, rather than that things came about by chance and impersonal laws of nature, seems to me more consistent with the way his character is described in the Bible. Ditto for a God that intervenes and that listens to prayers and is a "person" etc as opposed to one that is some underlying ground of being.
Yes, but why interpret the Bible in that way? Or why refuse to think about the Bible beyond a certain point in that way? If you think about how you would apply the terms 'person' or 'intention' to God as described in the Bible, what it could actually mean to say that God has an intention, it rapidly becomes clear that the dichotomy between the God as described in the Bible and the Ground of Being is not nearly as firm as you think it is.
The Bible is not a book that displays its inner logic. It's not that kind of book.
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Also, Saint Paul clearly believed in a literal Adam when he said sin came into the world via one man and another man (Jesus) came to take it away. Believing in a literal Adam and Eve who literally sinned makes the idea of Jesus having to incarnate to deal with this more straightforward than the idea that at some point humans who evolved over billions of years came to be in a state of sin that was barring from from proper communion with God (so at which stage, in that interpretation, did they possess the proper relationship with him prior to the fall?).
Admittedly that is a problem for any orthodox Christianity that takes on board the fact of evolution. But it's not as if there aren't solutions floated. Contrariwise, the idea that Adam by committing one act of disobedience condemned all his descendants to sin is not itself rationally watertight without some additional explanation of its own, is it? It's a bit odd to commend fundamentalism for its logical consistency on what is really its weakest point. Fundamentalists can try to justify it, but any justification will take them closer to the less fundamentalist solutions.
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A literal belief in Jesus rising from the dead and ascending to Heaven and in the second Coming and resurrection of the dead etc are more consistent with what the New Testament says than are liberal, metaphorical interpretations. etc.
I'd agree that the New Testament testifies to the claim that Jesus physically appeared to the disciples after his death. It's difficult to see why the New Testament would have been written otherwise.
The scheme about ascending to Heaven and the second coming: have you tried reading what the New Testament actually says about all that? Attempting to build a literal train of events for the Second Coming from the New Testament results in a scheme of Byzantine complexity that tortures several passages of the Bible into saying things that they just don't say. Just because these fundamentalist schemes claim to be drawing on the Bible doesn't mean you should take them at their word.
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I do think there is a more straightforward logic to taking the traditional ideas at face value.
If you'll insist on taking an idea like 'at face value' at face value - a kind of bluff ham-and-eggs common sense assertion that words mean what they mean, dammit, and none of that clever nonsense - then you might rule in favour of fundamentalism. But that's not a position with any kind of logic. That's a rejection of logic. Taking anything at face value is a complicated operation that begs a whole load of questions in order to do so.
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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