I've moved on to the videos from
Beyond Belief 2007, Enlightenment 2.0, and this time I'm going to comment on some of them as I view them. They're hard to organize or structure via google video, but happily The Science Network sponsored and filmed the proceedings, and they've got what appears to be the entire conference on their website, with the videos sorted by speaker. The order is side to side, not in columns. Start at the top left, then top right, then next down on the left, etc, so Dan Dennet is the sixth speaker on the first day.
His presentation hits his usual themes about the evolutionary origins of morality and it's a good one, though he hits most of the same themes he does in lots of his talks. I talked about this issue and linked to a speech of his
a couple of months ago, so I won't get into it again, other than to recommend his presentation.
Another one I thought less of, but was moved to discuss, was by David Sloan Wilson, since he challenges a lot of the conventional "new-atheist" wisdom. I don't agree with him on much, but
he makes some interesting points. Sadly, he's not a very good presenter; his voice occasionally does a bit of the "havv woo vuh wing?" accent of
The Impressive Clergyman from
The Princess Bride, and when he gets into the last five minutes of his speech and starts launching (some good, some failing) attacks on the work of his colleagues, he gets little dog syndrome, and starts talking louder, faster, and in a high, shrill voice.
That aside, the meat of his criticism is that the "New Atheism," (which I'm going to abbreviate to NA) as presented by Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris, is a sort of stealth religion. Wilson says that NA portrays religion as "bad bad bad in every way." He says non-religious systems can be just as irrational and non-evidential as religions, and uses Ann Rand's objectivism as an example, though he doesn't go into his reasons, other than to say that Ann Rand died of cancer after smoking for her whole life, and that she was surprised to do so since she bought too much of her own "I am perfected" objectivism hype. He says he's got a chapter in his book on the subject though, so perhaps he makes a stronger case there.
Wilson presents four bullet points for the science vs. religion discussion:
- Is there any scientific evidence for the existence of supernatural agents?
- If not, how can we explain the phenomenon of religion in naturalistic terms?
- Are the impacts of religion on culture good or bad?
- How can we use our knowledge of religion to ameliorate its negative effects and advance the goals of secular society?
He says these are what the NA should be concentrating on, and that 2-4 are the most important, since everyone at the conference knows that the answer to #1 is no. He cites Dawkins as having said that he cares passionately about #1 and doesn't care about #2-4, a point Wilson seems to think should serve as an indictment. And no doubt it does, in Wilson's mind.
The point I think he's missing is that the four horsemen of the NA aren't preaching to the converted, who know that there's no evidence for the supernatural reality of religion. They're trying to outreach to the world at large, and especially to the huge numbers of people who are nominally religious, but not devout, and who probably have never really given that much thought to what they believe, and why (or why not). Those wavering masses are the ones ripe for de-conversion, and the NAs have concluded (rightly or wrongly) that best way to do that is to mercilessly and relentlessly point out that all the origin myths and supernatural constructs of religious mythology are demonstrably false.
Sophisticated theologians of the type who show up in debates with Dawkins and Harris and the others, aren't swayed by this since they've long since moved past the magical bits of their religion, and religion in general. They'll gladly admit that there was no Adam and Eve, that Jesus probably wasn't actually resurrected, that Noah didn't exist, that Mohammad wasn't really taken to Heaven on a winged horse (after being disemboweled by an angel and washed clean of his sins), etc. Theologians treat all those stories as metaphors and analogies, and thus immunize their arguments from being brought down by logical fallacies. They speak about the utilitarian uses of religion, and the good it does in the world, and the evils of atheistic regimes, etc. Those are interesting issues, and show up in points 2-4, and are covered in detail by all of the NA writers, but point #1 is more important in most cases, since it's the one that hits most religious people more squarely in the heart of their beliefs. I've not seen any surveys or studies, on it, but it seems that many religious people stick to their religion since it's useful and moral and gives them a sense of community, etc -- but underlying all that is their belief that it's more special and powerful than any human alternatives, since there's supernatural truth and wisdom behind it.
Jesus isn't just another philosopher; he's the son of God/God himself, and fairly obvoiusly, this gives his words greater weight. Mohammad wasn't just a caravan trader; he was taking dictation from Allah. Joseph Smith wasn't just
a convicted con artist and aspiring polygamist, he was translating the latter day writings of an arch angel (Named Moroni. No, really.) And so forth. And if you hammer home the fact that every religious claim that aspires to #1 is at best unprovable, and at worst (usually) clearly false, that does a great deal to, if not undermine unwarranted faith, at least open the minds of people who have never before seriously considered the possibility that the stories at the core of their religion are simply nonsense.
The fact that to do that you've got to be directly confrontational, is what, I think, so unsettles some of the delicate, scholarly, polite, deferential, atheistic scientists, like David Sloan Wilson. He wants the NA writers to talk about things of interest to him, i.e. points #2-4 on his list. He doesn't want to hear more about point #1, and/since it riles people up and creates controversy. Wilson probably got button-holed at a faculty dinner by some fundie from admin who demanded to know if everyone in biology dept he was an atheist like that rude Richard Dawkins, and if he was filling his science classes with rabble rousing atheism that might get back to the parents of the students, and result in a lessening of donations.
And yes, I'm engaging in complete speculation there. Very bad science.
The amusing post script to this came in
Sam Harris' riveting presentation on day three of the conference, when he mentions talking to Wilson between sessions, and finding out that Wilson hadn't read a word of his work and was just lumping him in with the others since he was on the best seller list too.
Finally, on a completely different topic,
this presentation by Gregory Clark, an economist from UC San Diego, is awesome. Nothing about religion or atheism (which is true of most of the presentations from this conference); it's all about the economic development of human civilization, and how there was essentially no growth at all, on a per capita basis, until just a couple of hundred years ago. He focused on demographic information in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, based on an analysis of thousands of wills, and found that economic gains functioned in a very Darwinian fashion, with only the well-off leaving enough heirs to increase the population. Rich men left on average four heirs, while poor men left one or none, a fact that meant that the rich, or at least prosperous business class, steadily replaced the poor in society, since there wasn't much of a population gain over that time.
It sounds like a dry subject, but it's fascinating as he presents it, with information about the unbelievably high interest rates of the time reflecting the impatience of lenders (and the odds someone would die before paying back their loan), speculation about some possible genetic predisposition for (passed down as a heritable trait) for economic success based on work ethic, the fact that Americans' incomes have increased for centuries but our leisure time to enjoy them has remained constant or shrunk, and more. It's historical info of the
Guns, Germs, and Steel type, so if you enjoy that kind of knowledge and trying to figure out what really causes societies to change and grow, you should enjoy this one.
Labels: atheism, science
