Dawkins and Morality
by MikeGeneReligion may be nonsense, but isn't it harmless nonsense, like astrology and crystal balls? Why be so hostile? (Scientists have a particular reason to be hostile to any systematically organized effort to teach children to reject evidence in favour of faith, revelation, authority and tradition. Religion teaches people to be satisfied with petty, small-minded non-explanations or mysteries, and this is a tragedy, given that the true explanations are so enthralling. Moreover, such hostility as I have is limited to words. I am not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers, just because of a theological disagreement).
Yet the hostility to religion has not always been limited to words.
One only needs to count up the dead bodies that accumulated throughout the 20th century at the hands of communist regimes. The thorny problem is that much of this death was sparked by hostile words that laid the ground work, as the anti-religious activity of the communists did not simply poof into existence - it had a cause.
As for Dawkins' words, consider how Andrew Brown skewers them:
One might argue that a professor of the public understanding of science has no need to concern himself with trivialities outside his field like the French revolution, the Spanish civil war or Stalin's purges when he knows that history is on his side. "With notable exceptions, such as the Afghan Taliban and the American Christian equivalent, most people play lip service to the same broad liberal consensus of ethical principles." Really? "The majority of us don't cause needless suffering; we believe in free speech and protect it even if we disagree with what is being said." Do the Chinese believe in free speech? Does Dawkins think that pious Catholics or Muslims are allowed to? Does he believe in it himself? He quotes later in the book approvingly and at length a speech by his friend Nicholas Humphrey which argued that, "We should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children's teeth out." But of course, it's not interfering with free speech when atheists do it.
This last point raises an interesting question about Dawkins' "consciousness-raising." If raising a child to believe in the literal truth of the Bible is like physically abusing the child by knocking his teeth out, isn't the Moral Atheist obligated to remove that child from the house of such parents? If you lived next to someone who knocked the teeth out of their child on a weekly basis, would you simply "write" essays about it? What kind of morality is that? It's Dawkins' Morality.
Given that it is against the law to physically abuse children, Dawkins poses a difficult choice for those who share in his thinking; a choice necessitated by the inconsistent message that our society is sending. Should we treat child abuse as we treat religion and allow people the right to physically abuse their own children? Or should we treat religion the way we treat child abuse, and take children away from parents who attempt to raise their children in a religious setting?
October 28th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Dawkins is way ahead of you. From Gary Wolf's article:
Comment by Krauze — October 28, 2006 @ 3:51 pm
October 30th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
All of the these rants of RD's are getting tiresome. He hates religion. He hates the idea of a God that might actually exist. He hates Christianity.
What RD doesn't have is a coherent argument that could pass muster in a first year logic class. He can rant and froth at the mouth to his hearts content. None of it adds up to an actual argument. And when he's confronted with his own bad arguments he cleverly tries to sweep the issues under the rug crying "I'm not interested in that!" or "That's not important", or "that doesn't have anything important to do with 'X' (where 'X' is the topic under discussion.
There's a phrase for folks like RD: intellectually dishonest. His arrogance knows no bounds. He's been hired to play the role of the village atheist at Oxford and in that regard, he's earning his keep. But none of that magically transforms his fallacious arguments to good ones, no matter how hard he tries. I'm thinking of introducing a new figure of speech…something like "faster than Richard Dawkins can make a fallacious argument" or "as easy as refuting Richard Dawkins".
Comment by DonaldM — October 30, 2006 @ 4:48 pm
October 30th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
[...] Dawkins on morality. I am no fan of traditional religions, but the dilemma here is that the 'religion' of Darwinism is grotesquely worse, and totally unable to rightly account for issues of morality and ethics. The question of altruism, one of Dawkins' starting points via Trivers, thence the whole absurdity of its phoney account of ethical evolution, is too much for Darwinists. On this basis Dawkins gets into his indignant snit about the place of ethics in religion. [...]
Pingback by Darwiniana » Dawkins’ cheap shot syndrome — October 30, 2006 @ 9:20 pm
October 31st, 2006 at 8:22 am
You do have to take into account that in the country that Dawkins lives in "raising children to believe in the literal truth of the Bible" is extreme religion indeed, it's not the common occurance it is in the US.
Having said that, I too strongly dislike Dawkins' tendency to conflate extreme religion with moderate religion. Dawkins' painting of all religious people with one brush is a deliberate tactic, and not one I happen to agree with. The vast majority of religious people are also "not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers, just because of a theological disagreement".
Comment by Odd Digit — October 31, 2006 @ 8:22 am
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:00 am
Dawkins is hellbent on religious elitism. ID's end game? Nope. Will National Guard troops be fixed at schools to monitor the teaching of …Orgels "The information content of a structure is the minimum number of instructions needed to specify the structure." Nope, all the smart kids will equip both mom and dad's cars with bumper stickers reading "MY DAUGHTER KNOWS WHO TREVORS AND ABEL ARE, YOUR'S DOESN'T"
Comment by platolives — November 3, 2006 @ 2:00 am
November 21st, 2006 at 7:14 pm
I think Dawkins holds all religion to be a sort of "sin against truth" which pollutes/infects the sponge-like minds of young people with a superstitous world view. He would prefer that the children be encouraged to think for themselves as opposed to most of them simply inheriting the religion they are exposed to most by their family. I expect most religous people who fit this pattern would not recognise that this is probably why they follow their particular religion and not another.
Maybe you think that this is a good thing for children and leads them to have better lives. Dawkins thinks, on balance, it would be better if people stopped quoting speculative bronze age mythogy as history/cosmology/moral ideals and were honest to children about what we know and what we dont know about the universe.
It's not that he thinks liberal christians (or fundies) are bad people, it's that he objects to their perpetuation of bad ideas on intellectual grounds.
On the debate I think he could have put forward a physicalist interpretation of what we call free will but to begin to touch on that would have taken more time than all the rest of the quoted text. It was obviously hard for him to refute the 20 points the other guy made every time he spoke.
Comment by genemachine — November 21, 2006 @ 7:14 pm
December 24th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Hello genemachine,
Sure, that's why he wants to make such "dishonesty" illegal. Okay, what should be done to the parents who will not be "honest to children about what we know and what we dont know about the universe?" Take the children away from them?
Comment by MikeGene — December 24, 2006 @ 11:57 am
December 24th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Genemachine, does honesty encompass telling older children we do not know of pathways leading to an initial genome?
Comment by Bradford — December 24, 2006 @ 12:15 pm