The God Delusion

I see that the third most popular NY Times article this morning is a review of Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion, in which he proves that God doesn't exist.

Dawkins says that religion is a meme that gets passed on from parent to children by taking advantage of the fact that children are biologically wired to be gullible and believe what their parents tell them. He says that religion offers no advantages at all to it's host.

I think this is a little oversimplistic, because adults do suddently find religion or change their beliefs. People have all kinds of weird superstitious beliefs that didn't come from their parents. The desire to believe in dumb stuff must be hardwired into our brains, so it must have at one time provided a survival advantage. In fact, the survival advantage still seems to be intact, because I have pointed out before that religious people have more children than non-religious.

Comments

[bbartlog]

If you like group selection theories you can make an obvious case for advantages accruing to the religious. If everyone really believes God will turn them into french fries in the afterlife if they don't follow the rules (don't steal, murder and so on) then the cost of dealing with defectors goes way down. Willingness to sacrifice yourself for your group might also be higher if you think you have a reward waiting for you after you're dead... I think Dawkins is pretty clearly overreaching if he says religion has no advantages.

[The Engineer]

Not only that, but he's pretty strident. You can see how atheists murdered 100M+ people in the 20th Century. He thinks that religion is dangerous. He should examine his own movement. "Those who forget the past, yada, yada, yada".

Anyone with the least amount of common sense can see that humans need a belief in something larger than themselves in order to be happy. Religion provides that. Other things provide it too (which is why so many other movements, like environmentalism, take on aspects of religion).

[Austrian]

"Anyone with the least amount of common sense can see that humans need a belief in something larger than themselves in order to be happy."

Believe in what way? I believe the Milky Way galaxy is bigger than mankind, and I believe it exists.

As a rapid libertarian, I also believe strongly in individual liberty, so I guess that could be my "religion". However I think it's somewhat fuzzy thinking to attribute every strongly-held stance as equivalent to a belief in supernatural entities, in that the same need is being fulfilled.

A lot of people ingest high fructose corn syrup, and most people consider food high in corn syrup to be desirable, yet that doesn't mean people need HFCS in order to have epicurean happiness.

[SFG]

No, but it helps.

I do agree that religion has strong positive selective effects in encouraging group solidarity and cooperation and that's probably why religion has survived and continues to persist. Heck, look at the natural experiment of raising people with no religion, and what do they do? They join existing ones or make their own out of environmentalism, feminism, etc. (Wicca comes to mind, having basically created whole cloth by people who wanted a more nature-centered and woman-centered spirituality.)

[Spungen]

So true, SFG. Many people who don't have religion seek spirituality through other constructs. That's one of the things that pisses me off about U2, the empty "spiritual" taste of their music. And the way some people treat Bono like Jesus.

[Jason Malloy]

You can see how atheists murdered 100M+ people in the 20th Century. He thinks that religion is dangerous. He should examine his own movement

Unless "his movement" is communism (the true true common denominator here) this argument is tired. Atheism is hardly a "movement" any more than Santa Claus nonbelief, Leprechaun nonbelief, Zeus nonbelief, and He-
Man nonbelief are all separate "movements". (just think how many murders these combined "movements" are responsible for throughout the span of history!)

Importantly, to the extent that religion is potentially dangerous, it's because of negative intrinsic qualities, such as belief without evidence (supernaturalism; divine revelation) and unconditional obedience to authority (command morality). While to the extent that atheism is potentially dangerous it's because of positive intrinsic qualities, such as belief from evidence and skepticism of authority.

Of course 'belief from evidence' can lead to bad outcomes when people are too unintelligent to sort out the best evidence/logic or the best evidence is wrong or ambiguous, etc, and belief from authority can lead to good outcomes when the authority is benevolent, correct or lucky, etc, but the former is intrinsically more compatible with human dignity, and is more efficacious to boot because it has a more efficient feed-back mechanism. (same reason why democracy works better than dictatorship)

Atheism is potentially dangerous for world politics for the same reason A-Santaism is potentially dangerous for operating a chainsaw: you just really need to know how to operate the damn chainsaw! Your simple lack of belief in an elf is not going to make you competent with this powertool. But understanding that reason and evidence are your best bet for figuring out how to use it (and not, e.g., sacrificing a virgin) is at least a first step in the right direction.

[Vic]

What about all the people killed throughout history in the name of religion? And its still going on. In fact no one is beating the war drums more than islamics are today.

[The Engineer]

>>What about all the people killed throughout history in the name of religion?

It simply pales in comparison to the numbers killed by Communism. The best numbers that we have (Black Book of Communism) show 100M+ people killed by Communists. Communists were hard core atheists, and specifically targeted religious believers for "liquidation". Even today, Communists in China target Christians and other for persecution (thankfully they've moved beyond "liquidation"). North Korea is also particularly harsh with the religious.

The parallels between the hard core atheist rhetoric (for example, that parents must be forced to refrain from indoctrinating their children with religious ideas) and Communism is a difference in degree, not substance. These hard core atheists are totalitarians, just of a different sort.

[The Engineer]

>>However I think it's somewhat fuzzy thinking to attribute every strongly-held stance as equivalent to a belief in supernatural entities, in that the same need is being fulfilled.

Did I say that? I said that movements like environmentalism take on aspects of religion. Exhibit one: Al Gore. Is he not the high priest of global warming? Is not the "scientific consensus" that global warming is real just a way for people to hold a belief without having to examine the evidence against it? How is that different than, say, the Virgin Birth?

And hard core libertarianism can be very much like a religion. That's why I'm a conservative, not a libertarian, even though I probably agree with most everything libertarians believe. It is the stridency of libertarians that I dislike.

[The Engineer]

My beef with atheism is that, without a higher power holding you to a higher standard, there is no right and wrong. I don't think that it is any coincidence that Communists were atheists. It allowed them to leave moralisy behind, and to do what they thought needed to be done to achieve liberalism in a hurry. Unfortunately for some people, that involved murduring entire classes of people.

[Half Sigma]

Communism is really a religion, it involves irrational belief in a cause.

True atheism doesn't inspire violent crusades because it is the absence of belief in stupid things.

[The Engineer]

My beef with atheism is that, without a higher power holding you to a higher standard, there is no right and wrong. I don't think that it is any coincidence that Communists were atheists. It allowed them to leave moralisy behind, and to do what they thought needed to be done to achieve liberalism in a hurry. Unfortunately for some people, that involved murduring entire classes of people.

[Austrian]

"My beef with atheism is that, without a higher power holding you to a higher standard, there is no right and wrong."

I think looking to a higher standard to decide right vs. wrong, just tries to push the "is/ought" problem up one more level. So I do this because God says so. Ok, why? Because I will be punished if I don't? I'm not sure fear of retribution is a valid basis for true morality (doing things because they are good, not because you fear the consequences).

And there are non-theistic arguments for what is 'moral' behavior; how humans should act with each other, based on human nature itself. See, for example, Alan Gewirth and his Principle of Generic Consistency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Gewirth

[The Engineer]

>>doing things because they are good, not because you fear the consequences

Look, not everyone is a high IQ demigod like you guys. Not everyone has the mental capacity to examine these issues in a detailed way. In fact, very few people have the capacity to do so.

For the vast majority of human beings over the entire history of mankind, cultural constrains like religion that impose notions of good and evil on individuals have been the best way to make society work.

When overeducated people who are enamoured of their own intelligence start questioning these cultural norms, and in fact striking them down because they don't make logical or scientific sense, it can have incredibly bad consequences for the vast majority of society.

[The Engineer]

>>True atheism doesn't inspire violent crusades because it is the absence of belief in stupid things.

My head is spinning at the arrogance and ignorance of that statement.

Do you actually know anything about Communism? Maybe you need to go back and look at what people actually thought about it in its heyday, say 1938 or so. It was "Scientific Socialism"! EVERY SINGLE MAJOR INTELLECTUAL WAS A COMMUNIST DURING THIS TIME FRAME!

Why was that? How could so many intelligent people be so wrong?

It was because of arrogance, the kind of arrogance that generated a statement like "True atheism doesn't inspire violent crusades because it is the absence of belief in stupid things."

Communism was as true to atheism as anything Dawkins has written. It is very clear from the Wired article that Dawkins has a totalitarian streak. He reminds me of Che in his total dedication to the "truth". The only difference is that Dawkins is an old man, and doesn't have the ability to achieve what Che did through violence.

Just because the Communists you now meet in, say, Tomkins Square, are nuts who obviously take it as religion does not mean that, in the past, it was not viewed as scientific as, say, genetics is today.

[Austrian]

At an individual level, I don't see any society-wide consequences for judging cultural norms based on what makes sense to you. The problem arises when a person believes what they found to be right IS what is right for everyone else, and by god they will use whatever means available (including government force) to make that a reality.

As a libertarian, I see that attitude almost everywhere, and that desire almost universal. But we can't blame turning away from God, for legislation that prevents a private business from allowing customers to smoke, for instance.

[The Engineer]

>>The problem arises when a person believes what they found to be right IS what is right for everyone else, and by god they will use whatever means available (including government force) to make that a reality.

Read the Wired article. That is EXACTLY what Dawkins is saying. He is the Dick Cheyney of atheism. He is going on a pre-emptive strike to wipe out superstition in any of its forms.

Dawkins says that superstition is a virus that needs to be wiped out by any means necessary.

[Jason Malloy]

The parallels between the hard core atheist rhetoric (for example, that parents must be forced to refrain from indoctrinating their children with religious ideas

Dawkins doesn't advocate this. Neither do any public atheists I know of. In fact since most of the major libertarians are atheists, it is more likely that atheists would be the smartest and most dynamic people to oppose any totalitarian measures. It simply doesn't work to conflate atheism and totalitarianism. Atheism is compatible with any position that has a secular rationale, and democracy and capitalism have excellent secular rationales, which is why many atheists prefer them.

Exhibit one: Al Gore. Is he not the high priest of global warming? Is not the "scientific consensus" that global warming is real just a way for people to hold a belief without having to examine the evidence against it?

Um, no. I really fail to see your point here. Gore has presented data, not simply "hid behind" consensus. And scientific consensus is indeed a fact of interest in controversial matters of science. Why shouldn't it be?

True atheism doesn't inspire violent crusades because it is the absence of belief in stupid things.

False. True atheism is a lack of belief in the supernatural. That doesn't magically bestow you with the ability to, e.g. operate a chainsaw. (see above) People can fail at logical reasoning even when committed to it. Also the best information can simply be wrong or ambiguous enough to accommodate an infinite range of horrors and bad decisions.

My beef with atheism is that, without a higher power holding you to a higher standard, there is no right and wrong.

This is elementary stuff. You need to know why the standards of your 'higher power' are indeed higher. To evaluate this you need moral judgement independent of your higher power. In other words you need exactly what you are seeking in order to get it. If, on the other hand, the "higher standards" are higher only because they are allegedly being issued by a "higher power" then they are simply arbitrary standards anyways, and are no more superior to the allegedly "arbitrary" standards of the atheist. Might does not make right. Remember Adolf Eichmann?

In reality reason is the best and most logical basis for human morality. There's no other game in town.

Look, not everyone is a high IQ demigod like you guys. Not everyone has the mental capacity to examine these issues in a detailed way. In fact, very few people have the capacity to do so.

Even low IQ people, animals and children engage in moral reasoning. There are many incentives to moral behavior besides threat of punishment after death, and no data is presented showing this belief even has an appreciable effect on pro-social behavior (which is probably mostly a consequence of good institutional policy and favorably genetic disposition). And look who's the demigod here, advocating that adults be lied to by the elites to keep them in line. You are the one advocating the cynical, controlling prescriptions for the untermenscen.

For the vast majority of human beings over the entire history of mankind, cultural constrains like religion that impose notions of good and evil on individuals have been the best way to make society work.

This is factually wrong. Hunter-gatherer morality (encompassing most of the "entire history of mankind") was based on kinship not religion. And the data does not show religion being more of a positive behavioral modifier than atheism. This is simply your extremely unconvincing assertion.

When overeducated people who are enamoured of their own intelligence start questioning these cultural norms, and in fact striking them down because they don't make logical or scientific sense, it can have incredibly bad consequences for the vast majority of society.

So things that don't make logical or scientific sense shouldn't be challenged or replaced with things that do?

Maybe you need to go back and look at what people actually thought about it in its heyday, say 1938 or so. It was "Scientific Socialism"! EVERY SINGLE MAJOR INTELLECTUAL WAS A COMMUNIST DURING THIS TIME FRAME!

This is true only if you predefine 'intellectual' as 'communist'. There was, if you remember, also capitalism, fascism and other powerful movements during that time. Even if not, I fail to see your point or how you are supporting it. Along with the Gore comment, it just seems to be insinuating that you are afraid of science (or things deemed so) because you have no serious way to fight it when it's wrong, and religion somehow "solves" this dilemma; that God belief somehow wins the battle against "scientific" atheists like communists and Al Gore. OK. Or you could just fight communism and Al Gore with better evidence and logic (if you have it). This is the atheist way.

Communism was as true to atheism as anything Dawkins has written.

See my first comment above which dealt with this 'atheist movement' nonsense. Atheism is not totalitarianism, and most of the hardcore opponents of state power are atheists as well. Atheism is compatible with a nearly infinite amount of (entirely contradictory) political systems, that simply don't involve supernatural justification. Again a lack of belief in the supernatural does not automagically give you the ability to use a chainsaw or create a functional economic/government system. Science and reason don't either, but they are the best available methods.

[SFG]

Of the three mass murders of the 20th century, two (Maoism and Stalinism) were done by atheistic regimes. Nazism is a tougher call: remember the 3K's for women? It's pretty clear that atheism can serve the role of 'justification for mass murder' well enough. Naturally many atheists are libertarians and liberals who find the whole idea of mass murder for beliefs odious, just like many Christians today would say the Crusades were a bad idea if you asked them. The West's gotten very disapproving of the idea of mass murder, probably as a result of what happened in Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

I do believe that environmentalism and many forms of liberalism have taken on aspects of religion: is the modern liberal who buys organic, eschews violence in foreign policy and on TV, and doesn't say anything nasty about oppressed groups so different neurologically or in tone from the Puritan who avoids ostentatious dress and avoids sex? The amusing thing about modern-day America is that we've got two groups of moralists, on the left and right, who each think the other is sliding toward Gomorrah.
So, yes, I think environmentalism does take on religious aspects, and I don't believe in God or the supernatural. That doesn't mean global warming isn't happening, or that corporations are OK polluting the environment.

The question is whether you need religion for morality. It could be that some societies can get away without religion and some can't.

Oh, and U2 actually was a Christian band originally, they just happen to be on the Left. I do agree that Bono's ego has reached supernatural proportions, but that's part of being a rock star. At least he uses his fame advocating for curing AIDS instead of snorting cocaine, bedding supermodels, and advertising for iPod. Ooops, scratch the last one.

[SFG]

You are correct that if right and wrong are human inventions, they don't carry the same strength. I once performed the following experiment on a fellow lefty: I asked her if there was such a thing as evil. She said she was not sure. A couple of minutes later, after we had been talking about something else, I asked her if Bush was evil. She said yes. Clearly the 'evil' module in your brain works even if you don't believe in evil in the abstract.

[The Engineer]

Jason, the quote about parents being forced to raise their children without superstition is straight from the Wired article. Are you saying that Dawkins was misquoted?

As a pretty traditional Catholic, I base my morality on both faith and reason. Reason reinforces faith. But the story of the twentieth century was that reason without faith was an utter disaster.

>>Or you could just fight communism and Al Gore with better evidence and logic (if you have it). This is the atheist way.

I don't know about that. Few people were arguing against Communism in the '30s. It was "scientific". It was "historical" (i.e. unfolding as if some law of history, much in the way a dropped ball falls due to the law of gravity).

There really was no intellectual backing for capitalism, I don't know where you get that assertion from. Hayek was out there all by himself when he wrote "The Road to Serfdom".

As for environmentalism, climate change and its adherants have an apocolyptical streak that has more to do with religious traditions than science. Science can't tell us what will happen, perhaps just the probability that something will happen (and in the case of climate change, not with any real confidence). When people like Gore focus upon the worst possible outcomes, that's the religion talking. Repent, ye sinners.

I take your point that atheism doesn't necessarily lead to mass murder, just as Christianity doesn't necessarily lead to the Inquisition, Witch Trials or the Crusades. You're absolutely right that a libertarian atheist is quite different from a Communist. I just don't think that they're as different as you think. Extremism can have a rational basis. Science and logic can't answer every question (for example, when does life begin and end). It is the gray areas that require a belief system that goes beyond the rational.

[Jason Malloy]

Jason, the quote about parents being forced to raise their children without superstition is straight from the Wired article. Are you saying that Dawkins was misquoted?

There is simply no quote in that article supporting that position. More important, even if Dawkins wrote a 700 page book about why we should kill the kulaks this would be irrelevant. It certainly wouldn't prove the existence of the supernatural, tell us what government system works, or show how morality really comes from a belief in Smurfs or hobgoblins.

As a pretty traditional Catholic, I base my morality on both faith and reason. Reason reinforces faith. But the story of the twentieth century was that reason without faith was an utter disaster.

What in the world is "faith"? Either you can articulate probabilities and facts about your values and how to enact them or you can't. Nothing about "faith" precludes totalitarian government, and there are totalitarians that justify themselves on "faith": alleged divine commands, which are simply man made ideas that protect themselves from dispute/accountability by hiding behind fraudulent authority. There is no "faith", only logic and assertion.

I don't know about that. Few people were arguing against Communism in the '30s. It was "scientific". It was "historical"

There really was no intellectual backing for capitalism, I don't know where you get that assertion from. Hayek was out there all by himself when he wrote "The Road to Serfdom".

Ridiculous. North America and Western Europe were capitalist regions with strong free market traditions. There were plenty of capitalists and Adam Smith wasn't somehow lost to them. Incidentally, most of those capitalist antitotalitarian intellectuals were atheists (or something close). Hayek specifically rejected the supernatural religionist God as hogwash:

"Hayek did not simply know what the term God is supposed to mean, but he did know very clearly what he was against in terms of God--“every anthropomorphic, personal, or animistic interpretation of the term [God],”

And again your point is irrelevant. Communism wasn't "scientific', wasn't the most rational economic system given the evidence at the time, and wasn't humane or concordant with basic liberal enlightenment ethics. Even if the best science/logic would've somehow supported ultimately murderous communism this, again, doesn't tell us how a belief in Smurfs or hobgoblins presents sound economic policy or moral governance. Science and logic can be wrong, but there is no alternative, except groundless assertion from false authority.

Science and logic can't answer every question (for example, when does life begin and end). It is the gray areas that require a belief system that goes beyond the rational.

Science and logic are the only ways humans can get at the truth. Ethics are either completely arbitrary or decided on the basis of logic and evidence - including questions of when, e.g. a fetus should be afforded certain human rights. Questions of ethics boil down to fundamentally empirical questions about human (and sentient) well-being. What doesn't help us answer these questions, in any way, is a belief in unicorns and magic pixies.

I take your point that atheism doesn't necessarily lead to mass murder, just as Christianity doesn't necessarily lead to the Inquisition, Witch Trials or the Crusades.

Actually my point was that atheism is not responsible for communism, while religion is responsible for witch trials. See my explanation above why this is. Math can't be blamed for making a nuclear bomb that kills innocent children, but a lie about Jews drinking gentile blood can be blamed for a pogrom.

[The Engineer]

>>There is simply no quote in that article supporting that position.

Come on, man. Get real.

http://www.wired.com/news/wiredmag/0,71985-1.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1

"How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents?" Dawkins asks. "It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?"

[Jason Malloy]

Uh huh, the rhetorical provocation. And the next paragraph:

Dawkins is also a believer in democracy. He understands perfectly well that there are practical constraints on controlling the spread of bad memes. If the solution to the spread of wrong ideas and contagious superstitions is a totalitarian commissariat that would silence believers, then the cure is worse than the disease. But such constraints are no excuse for the weak-minded pretense that religious viruses are trivial, much less benign. Bad ideas foisted on children are moral wrongs. We should think harder about how to stop them.

Anyway Dawkins is a red herring. Atheism has no logical relationship with totalitarianism, as you are trying to imply. (and ironically the only intellectual you think even opposed it before WWII was himself atheist) I have addressed many salient issues such as the flawed reasoning of faith and divine command morality, and the reasons atheism cannot be blamed for failed or murderous secular projects but religionism can be blamed for failed religious projects. These objections remain unchallenged.

[The Engineer]

>>Atheism has no logical relationship with totalitarianism, as you are trying to imply.

No logical relationship? Let's see. Communists are atheists. Nazis are atheists. Baathists are atheists (well, at least they were until being as Islamist became politically expediant).

Are there any other mass murdering intellectual movements from the 20th Century that AREN'T atheistic? I suppose Jihad, but as far as mass murder goes, the Jihadists aren't in the same league as the atheists.

Perhaps that is not as persuasive as your arguments, but at some point, when there is smoke, there is fire.

[The Engineer]

>>If the solution to the spread of wrong ideas and contagious superstitions is a totalitarian commissariat that would silence believers, then the cure is worse than the disease.

How convenient. And, logically, why is that?

[The Engineer]

>>I have addressed many salient issues such as the flawed reasoning of faith and divine command morality, and the reasons atheism cannot be blamed for failed or murderous secular projects but religionism can be blamed for failed religious projects. These objections remain unchallenged.

I have one word for you: Peter Singer. There is nothing illogical or beyond the realm of science to Singers writings, but that doesn't make him right.

When you say that science and logic are the only way to get to the truth, there's really no common ground to be had. I, and I might add the vest majority of people on this planet for all time, believe that science and logic are just tools. Quite frankly, there was huge human progress before science was even thought of.