I didn't get to finish my reading of Alister McGrath's treatise on Richard Dawkins. Here we go. McGrath characterizes Dawkins' reaction to the widespread belief in God thus:
Since faith in God, for Dawkins, is utterly irrational, it remains to be explained why so many people share such a faith. The answer lies in the `meme', which Dawkins defines as an intellectual replicator. People do not believe in God because the intellectual case for such belief is compelling. They do so because their minds have been infested with a highly contagious and highly adapted `God-meme'
As McGrath correctly points out, there is no concrete thing such as a 'meme.' Unlike a gene, one cannot identify a meme. It is like quantifying a thought—"I like ice cream." Aside from the declarative statement, there is no way to prove that what I said is true. McGrath continues:
Not only is there a total absence of any observational evidence that ideas are like viruses, or spread like viruses - a decisive consideration that Dawkins glosses over with alarming ease. It is meaningless to talk about one kind of virus being `good' and another `evil'. In the case of the host-parasite relationship, this is simply an example of Darwinian evolution at work. It's neither good nor bad. It's just the way things are.
This is a remarkably frank, evolutionary way to look at it and yet cuts to the heart of the weakness of Dawkins' position. His idea that religion is bad and evil, like a virus is simply not logical and, worse, is non-Darwinian in explication. McGrath closes by pointing out another irregularity in the writings of Dr. Dawkins:
But there is another issue here which we need to note. Dawkins is quite clear that science cannot determine what is right and what is wrong. What about evidence that religion is bad for you? And what criteria might one use to determine what was `bad'? Dawkins himself is quite clear: `science has no methods for deciding what is ethical.
Quite simply, if religion is bad, then that decision is not based on science but rather on an emotional response to one's experiences, which in the case of Dawkins, have been bad. I have often thought that if polled, most scientists would say that whether or not they believe in God has very little to do with the practice of science but rather much more to do with their sociocultural upbringing and experiences. It seems that Richard Dawkins is just one such person. Read the whole piece.
Quite simply, if religion is bad, then that decision is not based on science but rather on an emotional response to one's experiences, which in the case of Dawkins, have been bad.
ReplyDeleteThat's a false dichotomy. There are additional alternatives.
And that's a particularly silly remark about Dawkins' alleged experiences. He has spoken of his religious upbringing in the C of E, and there's nothing in his description of that experience to support your inference.
How is it a false dichotomy? If Dawkins has determined that science cannot say what is right and what is wrong and yet he claims religion is bad, how is that not an emotional response? It isn't grounded in science. I retract my statement about Dawkins' upbringing, since he regards it as a "mild Anglican upbringing," but it is clear that since that upbringing, he has become virulently opposed to anything Christian.
ReplyDeleteHow is it a false dichotomy? If Dawkins has determined that science cannot say what is right and what is wrong and yet he claims religion is bad, how is that not an emotional response?
ReplyDeleteThe false dichotomy is the claim that a moral/ethical system must be based on either science or emotion, and nothing else.
But there are defensible grounds for a system for making moral/value judgments that is not purely emotional, but which is grounded in rational thought and at least some empirical evidence. For example, one can build a system for making value judgments based on a reciprocity principle. Sure, there's an emotional component, but it's not the sole basis.
What science can give us is information about the origins, operation, and likely outcomes of behaviors. And that's indispensable to making moral judgments. For example, the best available empirical evidence informs us that abstinence-only sex education has the main effect of increasing the likelihood of unprotected sex in teen-agers. It does not tell us whether that's a morally desirable outcome. In fact some people think it is a desirable outcome. In their view (and I actually know people who claims this) STDs resulting from unprotected sex are a just and appropriate punishment for teen-agers fooling around. But that judgment is made on grounds other than the empirical facts. The people I know base that judgment on their fundamentalist religious beliefs. I think they're wrong, but that's neither a scientific nor an emotional judgment.
Larry Arnhart is a conservative philosopher who argues that a system of ethics can be derived from Darwinian biology. See, for example, his Darwinian Natural Right, and read his blog at Darwinian Conservatism.
I concede that many, if not most cultures work by means of many different reciprocity principles. Those sorts of principles inform a lot of the things we do and are largely empirically-based. I do not doubt, nor do I have trouble with an ethical system based on Darwinian principles. That was not my point. My point was that Dawkins believes that science ought to consider all ethical systems equally valid and he, himself, clearly does not. He thinks that religiously-based systems are inferior and dangerous. He has publicly stated that people who give their children a religious upbringing should have those children removed from their homes--a statement I find offensive to say the least. Now one might reasonably argue whether or not science should consider all systems of ethics equally valid, but that is not Dawkins' point.
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