In which Will descends to Fisking

I don’t often disagree with him, but I thought PZ overreacted a bit to this article at the Guardian. All it really seems to be saying is that Atheism is becoming a cultural phenomena in much the same way that some religions have in the last 20 years, which while so obvious as to not need saying, is actually true. As far as I can see there is no suggestion that atheism is a religion in any technical sense or that it has no more claim to rationality than one; the discussion is restricted to analysing it as sociological phenomena (or actually suggesting that such analysis should be done.) Of course atheists are a diverse, independent lot, and don’t like to be lumped together as a “movement” if they can help it (I certainly don’t consider myself to be part of one,) but it is undeniable that certain atheists (Dawkins included) are trying to get the “message” out, and in doing so, they’re bound to attract this kind of comparison with religious people doing the same thing, even though the “message” in question doesn’t bear comparison in the same way.

So while, I thought the article was fairly harmless, and even slightly interesting, the comments were a different matter. The very first one is… well, hard to describe; it’s like a brain dump of someone who’s desperate to believe in something, anything beyond the materialistic worldview, but doesn’t really understand the arguments, so he just spews out as many as he can fit in a single comment, in the hope that one of them is convincing. Needless to say, he doesn’t succeed. Normally, I try to avoid fisking because it makes me feel nit-picky; I’d rather address the substance of someone’s argument or position, than hope that knocking enough little holes in it will have the same effect. But, in this case, I honestly, don’t think there is any substance to the argument, so I’m going to just go ahead and deal with the points one by one as they were spewed out onto the page.

When you think of the great and varied minds possessed by the like of Plato, Augustine, Copernicus, Shakespeare, Newton, Picasso, Einstein, and then you compare them with the shrill and ‘aggressive’ voice of Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion you cant help thinking of a poor man’s Mr Spock: the cold absence of intuition; the dictatorship of a crude intellect over the greater arts of consciousness.

Ah - the old ad-hominem attack; “I don’t like his tone of voice, therefore he must be wrong. Or at least unenlightened. Or, well, somehow inferior to actual clever people.” And then a criticism of Dawkin’s use of reason to answer hard questions. What’s so wrong with the absence of intuition? Why on earth would we expect intuition to be of any use at all in determining the nature of the universe. People can’t even accurately predict the trajectory of projectiles with intuition alone, so let’s not pretend that it’s some sort of panacea to our understanding of the Universe. Oh, and “the greater arts of consciousness”? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Really? Because if you’re suggesting that there’s a better way to understand how the universe functions than rational thought and scientific exploration, then you’d better have more to back it up than some fancy, arm-wavy turn of phrase.

The intuitive genius contained in the like of the Inuit, Kalahari Bushmen, the Cogi of South America - the great Native American elder Fools Crow (now sadly deceased). If Richard Dawkins were to look with more scientific neutrality at this phenomena, and not approach received religion with his pre-judged half way house understanding of the greater phenomena behind it, he might settle for that less extreme position of agnosticism pending further exploration.

“Intuitive genius”? More ambiguous arm-waving. Yes, the cultures he lists have amazing survival skills in very challenging environments, but those skills are only “intuitive” in so far as they’re not scientific; they’re still learned skills. Baby Bushmen don’t spring from the womb miraculously able to track animals in ways that first-world minds find utterly incomprehensible, they learn to do it, because their entire culture is built around those skills. Now, tell me why we should assume that because someone has learned to be a phenomenal tracker, we should give extra weight to their views on the universe? Did they discover electricity? EM radiation? Get to the moon? Does their “intuitive genius” grant them the ability to treat tuberculosis? No. These people are undoubtedly very skilled, but those skills give them precisely no insight into the nature of the Universe.

I’m not going to go into that “less extreme position of agnosticism pending further exploration” argument again. Look through the last couple of week’s archives. Suffice it to say, there’s no reason to believe in God, so I don’t believe in God, so I’m an atheist. Show me evidence, and I might change my mind.

60% of cutting edge scientists persist in failing to categorise themselves as atheist at all. Where 40% might choose to follow his lead, another 40% confess to a faith not at all at odds with the finding of physics, bio-chemistry or cosmology. This ratio remains largely unchallenged over the past 100 years. The conclusion from science is clear; in no way can it be said it debunks the ‘spiritual’ mind.

“Lots of clever people believe it, so it must be true.” You really call that an argument?

In fact there are significant problems with any such claim, and they spring first and foremost from cosmology: take the small but unavoidable matter of the cosmic constant and the uncannily prescient anthropic principles.

Backwards thinking. Of course we’re a “good fit” to the Universe, we arose and evolved within it. To argue that the Universe must have been designed to give rise to us, presupposes that we were the desired result, to then argue that we must have been the desired result because the Universe is designed for us is circular reasoning.

And not least from bio-chemistry - we have yet to successfully computer model the emergence of life on Earth from their initial building blocks without some form of ‘informative inflation’ hypothesis.

God of the Gaps. Do you promise that when we do successfully computer model the emergence of life on Earth from their initial building blocks, you’ll shut up? Or do you plan on finding something else we can’t yet explain scientifically?

This posits an equally mysterious ‘self organisation’ as the only means for matter to overcome the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in order to kick start evolution. Indeed this is not unlike Plato’s ideal ‘desiring’ some kind of ‘replication’ of potential form.

It’s been said before; if you think abiogenesis violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics, then you don’t understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The 2nd law of thermodynamics says that heat will not flow from colder body to a hotter one. How does that have anything to do with the origin of life?

So in a sense when Richard Dawkins strays from his personal remit of minimalist ‘science populariser’ onto the time honoured territory of metaphysics it is faintly reminiscent of that Edward Woodward character in 70’s horror classic The Wicker Man. Like Sergeant Neil Howie, Richard Dawkins fairly blunders around the realm of intuition totally oblivious to what is taking place around him. While there may be no unsavoury resolution implied there is perhaps a strong implication of Bob Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man, to paraphrase: ‘something is happening there, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Spock.’

Or, to paraphrase in a slightly different way; “There’s more to life than you know, and you look foolish for not seeing it, but I’m not going to give you any specifics, because if you can’t already see it, you’re too foolish to understand anyway.” Or, to put it another way; “The Emperors new clothes sure do look nice.”

PS: For anyone who has read Dawkin’s The God Delusion, in the spirit of fair play, might do well to also read Alistaire McGrath’s more measured reply The Dawkin’s Delusion.

Read it. Thought it was a load of unconvincing drivel, that amounted to nothing more than “You’re not a unicornologist, so you can’t tell me there’s no such thing as unicorns, and anyway, you can’t prove there’s no such thing as unicorns, so stop not believing in them.”

Actually, having just been through that again, I notice a lot of use of the word “intuition.” That smacks of post-modernism and their ridiculous “other ways of knowing”. I guess I should never have expected anything sensible.