Review of Richard Dawkins: A Devil's Chaplain

[Socrates]

A Passion for Evolution
By H. Allen Orr
Richard Dawkins
(click for larger image)
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
by Richard Dawkins
Houghton Mifflin, 263 pp., $24.00
New York Review of Books
www.nybooks.com/articles/16920

[Note: "I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate." -- Just shows how leading popularizers of evolutionary "science" can get away with rank antitheistic bigotry -- :soc:]

....

Dawkins's passion for evolution is perhaps matched only by his hatred of religion. Indeed Dawkins has railed so often against religion that his reputation as a God-basher may now nearly rival his reputation as a science-booster. A Devil's Chaplain leaves little doubt that the reputation is well deserved. Arguing that those who have masked their contempt for religion must speak out, Dawkins lets loose. He announces that religion is a "dangerous collective delusion" and a "malignant infection." Acknowledging that this position may seem "contemptuous or even hostile," he insists that "it is both." Asked why he is so hostile to organized religion, he answers that he's not particularly fond of disorganized religion either. Indeed:

"I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate."

I suspect most readers will remember A Devil's Chaplain more for its broadsides against religion than for its defenses of Darwinism. What readers may not realize is that Dawkins's position on religion reflects another of his long-running disagreements with Stephen Jay Gould. Gould believed that science—in its frequent excursions into ethics and its vague denunciations of religion—had overstepped its proper bounds. He also believed that religion—in its sporadic pronouncements on empirical matters— had overstepped its bounds. Gould's solution, which he championed at book length, was simple: we must distinguish the legitimate sphere of science (the physical universe) from the legitimate sphere of religion (meaning, value, and ethics) and we must ensure that neither intrudes on the other.

I must admit that I didn't find Gould's defense of religion entirely convincing. To my surprise, though, I find Dawkins's attacks on it even less so. The problem is not that Dawkins's conclusion is necessarily wrong; the problem is that the arguments that lead him there are surprisingly shaky.

His first argument is that religion is just plain false. The events spoken of in sacred texts—six days of Creation and three days to Resurrection—did not occur. So why then do so many people believe them? Dawkins thinks he knows the answer: religious beliefs are viruses. Religious ideas, like all ideas, are memes; but religious memes, unlike many, are useless "mind parasites." Religious beliefs exploit the fact that children's minds are machines that copy—and believe—anything they're told. So just as desktop computers can be infected by computer viruses, young human minds can be infected by religion viruses.

But if religious ideas are viruses, then why aren't scientific ideas? After all, we foist all manner of scientific ideas onto young minds and they soak them up with astonishing efficiency. But Dawkins insists that scientific ideas are not viruses. They are more like mental adaptations:

Scientific ideas, like all memes, are subject to a kind of natural selection, and this might look superficially virus-like. But the selective forces that scrutinize scientific ideas are not arbitrary or capricious. They are exacting, well-honed rules, and they do not favor pointless self-serving behavior. They favor all the virtues laid out in textbooks of standard methodology: testability, evidential support, precision, quantifiability, consistency, intersubjectivity, repeat-ability, universality, progressiveness, independence of cultural milieu, and so on.

I confess that I find this argument astonishing. Why in the world should conformity to scientific criteria decide what counts as a "good, useful" meme? Why aren't good, useful memes the ones that make you happy, or give you a sense of belonging, or increase the odds of having cooperative friends about? If anything, these criteria would seem more natural than Dawkins's. But the deeper point is that there are no natural criteria. The whole point of memes is that a good meme is one that increases in frequency, period. Now we, as armchair memeticists, are free to partition successful memes into those that are "useful" vs. those that aren't, but someone has to decide: useful for what? For describing nature? Science is a useful meme. For building community? Religion is a useful meme. In the end, Dawkins's religion-is-a-virus argument comes perilously close to tautology.

Dawkins's second problem with religion is that it's the root of much evil. A Devil's Chaplain is run through with the murder and mayhem that follows on the heels of religion, and the Crusades never seem far from his mind.[6] But Dawkins's history seems curiously Victorian. In his drive to show that religion is the source of so much evil, he must obviously confront the awkward fact that the twentieth century was largely a chronicle of secular evil. Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were atheists and Hitler wasn't particularly pious. Dawkins deals with the problem in an especially simple way: he ignores it. Except for a mention of Hitler, he sidesteps what is arguably the key lesson of the twentieth century—that secular ideologies, including atheist ones, can inspire atrocity and genocide as readily as any religious creed. And Dawkins's treatment of Hitler is remarkable: arguing "please don't trot out Hitler as a counter-example," he notes that Hitler never renounced his Roman Catholicism and quotes from an obscure speech in which the future Führer emphasized that he was a good Christian boy. Dawkins's normally robust skepticism seems to fail him here and he's silent on the obvious interpretation—that Hitler knew how to manipulate a Catholic crowd.

The point is not that religious views don't sometimes lead, directly or indirectly, to evil. Of course they do. The point is that they have no monopoly: nationalist views (Italian fascism), economic views (child labor), and even scientific views (eugenics) have all had horrid consequences. Now in the last case Dawkins would surely argue that it was the abuse of science that led to acts of evil (forced sterilization, racist immigration policies). And I would agree. But if you allow this kind of move for science, it's a bit unclear why you don't allow it for religion too: Did Jesus really intend the Crusades?

Though he's less explicit about it, Dawkins's third problem with religion seems to be that it's been a thorn in the side of science; it has stood in the way of truth. He's fond, for instance, of pointing to the Galileo affair and he never tires of ridiculing Rome's late reconciliation with Darwin. But these jabs are potentially misleading. The popular impression of long warfare between Church and science—in which an ignorant institution fought to keep a fledgling science from escaping the Dark Ages—is nonsense, little more than Victorian propaganda. The truth, which emerged only from the last century of scholarship, is almost entirely unknown among scientists: the medieval Church was a leading patron of science; most theologians studied "natural philosophy"; and the medieval curriculum was perhaps the most scientific in Western history.[7] There were of course some skirmishes between Church and science (the Condemnations of 1270 and 1277, the Galileo affair) and the Church made a number of stupid decisions, but it's not entirely clear that these were more egregious than those made by secular institutions (e.g., Lysenko's suppression of Mendelian genetics).

....

[bandecoot]

I am always skeptical of cut and pastes of the reviews of other people in matters like this, especially when the reviewer is someone of the stature of Orr.
It seems my natural skepticism has, yet again, been borne out by the wonderfully selective quoting by our esteemed Socrates.

Those who have read the review must have noticed that the selection comes from nearly two thirds of the way through the text, but, I am also certain that the gentle reader was as baffled as I, as to why our esteemed Socrates left out the last five paragraphs, including a very tasty Dawkins quote about Religion and science that surely was as damning from his perspective as the ones in his...post.

Then I read the last paragraph and it became a touch clearer. I present a quote from Orr himself. Which, whilst not an endorsement of the Book "A Devils Chaplain", is certainly not an endorsement of Socrates Veiws and would certainly have spoiled the delicate fiction of Orr agreeing with Him had Socrates posted it.

In the end, Dawkins's refusal to grapple seriously with the different-dimensions view is perhaps the least satisfying aspect of his treatment of religion. For one thing, it's unclear why a scientist (as a scientist) should be bothered by those who surrender all pretense of describing the physical world. (Conversely, it is clear why he should be bothered by idiotic creationists or by those who merely feign such surrender.)

Bold emphasis mine, Words by an eminent Biologist, that Socrates chose to, extensively,yet selectively, quote in an attempt to make a collection of essays seem like "The Joy of Food" signed personally by Hannibal Lector.

I trust that those gentle readers of TWeb who may have been operating under the misapprehesion that Socrates knows what he is talking about have had their minds cleared of such.

I remain your most respectful servant
The Bandecoot

[EvoUK]

I never quite made my mind up about Dawkins with respect to his thoughts on religion. I agree with him in some parts- and not in others. Unlike him, I feel that religion has its uses (however limited).

However, i would not agree with Soc about this:

shows how leading popularizers of evolutionary "science" can get away with rank antitheistic bigotry

He can get away with it mainly because his thoughts and feelings about religion are a seperate issue to evolution itself (whether or not he thinks so is ultimately irrelevent) so he doesn't need to be admonished on a professional level by his fellow scientists, although I have little doubt it has caused some friction privately.

[truthman]

Bandecoot,

Regardless of how Socrates chose to quote the review......

did Dawkins say what he said or not?

Socrates is not out to support, destroy or 'make friends' with the reviewer. Rather, he is pulling the stinkiest stink out of both the review and the book for all to see this textual atrocity for what it is.

truthman

[burgy]

A Passion for Evolution
By H. Allen Orr
Richard Dawkins
(click for larger image)
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
by Richard Dawkins
Houghton Mifflin, 263 pp., $24.00
New York Review of Books
www.nybooks.com/articles/16920

[Note: [B]"I think a case ....

Thanks for the review, Soc.

I'm about 1/2 way through reading the book at this time.

Like you, I don't agree much with Gould, but I do respect his writings, his person, his attitude towards theists. I find no such acceptance of dawkins.

You and I disagree -- sometimes bitterly -- on the YEC ideas; we can be in agreement on this guy. His BLIND WATCHMAKER, which I read last year, was a magnificent "just so" story - in the rich tradition of Kipling. But Kipling knew that what he wrote was fiction.

I'm keeping your eview in my notebook.

[bandecoot]

Gentle reader, If you wish to willingly perpetuate a false and egregious attempt to misquote Orr, then it is not within my purview to drive you towards Good Taste and Honesty with an Axe, rather to provide guidance and a reasoned view.

Bandecoot,

Regardless of how Socrates chose to quote the review......

did Dawkins say what he said or not?

I, having read the whole review, have no doubt that Dawkins wrote what Orr quoted.

"I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate."

But that, Gentle reader, was not my point, My point was that our fellow poster made the error of not allowing, in his quote, the very thing that negated his point. I cannot believe that Socrates would miss such a thing by poor reading or Scholarship, thus, it grieves me to say, it falls upon me to correct His dishonesty, for such it appears to be.

Socrates is not out to support, destroy or 'make friends' with the reviewer. Rather, he is pulling the stinkiest stink out of both the review and the book for all to see this textual atrocity for what it is.

truthman

Surely, Gentle reader, you are capable of reading a review in it's entireity and formulating your own reasoned opinion? Is that not the purpose of these boards? I refuse to believe you require your information spoonfed you in such an underhand manner, or in fact in any manner at all. I made no defense of Dawkins, but pointed out that Orr's own words dismissed the fiction that His position in any way coincided with Socrates. I believe the words "Idiotic Creationists" were used but as the URL of the review appears at the bottom of the post you can check my veracity at your leisure.

To that end, I give you my word that at no time will I attempt to selectively quote. I will undertake to post what is my opinion, and a URL. Leaving you, the Gentle reader, to form your opinions. Whether or not they coincide with mine.

I remain your most humble servant
The Bandecoot

The New York Review of books:A Passion for Evolution. The correct title of the review
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16920

[Socrates]

I, having read the whole review, have no doubt that Dawkins wrote what Orr quoted.

Good. So stop whinging!

But that, Gentle reader, was not my point, My point was that our fellow poster made the error of not allowing, in his quote, the very thing that negated his point. I cannot believe that Socrates would miss such a thing by poor reading or Scholarship, thus, it grieves me to say, it falls upon me to correct His dishonesty, for such it appears to be.

:shoot: Total crap! I was perfectly aware that the reviewer was not a creationist and never hinted otherwise. That's the whole point! This is a review of Dawkins by a hostile (to creationists) witness, so it makes the case even stronger.

[bandecoot]

Good. So stop whinging!

Whinging? I was not whinging dear Socrates, I was simply pointing out to our readers that you had made an egregious error.

:shoot: Total crap! I was perfectly aware that the reviewer was not a creationist and never hinted otherwise. That's the whole point! This is a review of Dawkins by a hostile (to creationists) witness, so it makes the case even stronger.

Yet it would seem that you left out a vital portion of the review that called you and your ilk a bad name, did you not read the whole thing, or did you purposely omit that section? • Edited by a Moderator •


Which is it?

I remain your humble servant
The Bandecoot

[Patroclus]

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Contact the forum moderator or an administrator in Private Message or email instead. If you feel you must publically complain or whine, please take it to the Psychotherapy Room unless told otherwise.

[brother vinny]

This is a friendly reminder that the Library is not 1) a debate forum or 2) a location to post animadversions against fellow members. Any complaint or suggestion against a fellow member should be directed to the administration or reserved for the locker room.

I would like to personally thank Patroclus for teaching me a new word ("animadversions"). Had to look it up.