Monday, April 14, 2014
Mehdi Hasan interviews Dawkins for Al Jazeera
The entire interview is well worth the time it takes. But for quick reference, here are some highlight points:
At 14:34 Dawkins rather heatedly states: "I don't much care about what's good and evil. I care about what's true!" Start shortly before 14:00 for full context. Unfortunately Hasan doesn't attack the "truth" in science.
At 31:20 Evidence.
At 41:00 Civilization is not due to religion.
At 43:30 Atheist beliefs without evidence.
Regarding the universe: "the multiverse is the Darwinian way of solving the problem of fine tuning the universe" (paraphrased).
Well of course it is: another Just So Story is required, based on zero evidence. Thus the new Just So Story trumps "mystery" because it is a way around the immediate need for an agent. But it is also an infinite regress which doesn't answer the source of the multiverse, therefore yet another Just So Story is required, if the source of all things is to be maintained as physical-only.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
Of course he doesn't care much about good and evil. Especially since he is the one (like all atheists) who defines it and re-defines it on the fly... and who might come out on the short end if an objective standard of good and evil were to exist.
As it does.
And of course, he prefers his infinite regress to 'religion' because... well, because he wants to. He defines and re-defines 'truth' to mean 'whatever I happening to be saying right now'.
An objective truth that relies on logic, common sense and yes, some sort of evidence (material or otherwise) would be very inconvenient to a man who makes his shit up as he goes.
As he does.
No, really, this Dawkins fellow just cracks me up. He's so corrupted at this point that he doesn't see anything wrong with the following:
"the multiverse is the Darwinian way of solving the problem of fine tuning the universe"
I never realized natural selection (whether true or false) affected anything beyond life here on our little ball of mud. But apparently Saint Darwin's Wand can be waved at just about anything to make it absolutely true.
Hoo boy. And Dawkins has a problem with Christianity? I'd say it's less outrage at us rotten religious nuts than it is a case of envy. He doesn't want to rock the boat, he just wants to be in charge of it.
The bloke is a bumbling buffoon. He's like a caricature of *himself*. Not 3 minutes in and I'm in hysterics.
2:09: '[Interviewer] My guest today...stands firmly on the side of science, and has provoked controversy with his attacks on religion.'
Right off the bat the interviewer is (seemingly) giving credence to this tired and faulty dichotomy. Only the unthinking would take this seriously.
2:56: '[Dawkins] I'm an atheist in the same way as I'm an a-leprechaunist, an a-fairyist, and an a-pink unicornist... I'm as sure [that God does not exist] as you are that fairies don't exist... The evidence [for both God and fairies] is equally poor.'
You see why I say he is like a caricature of himself? It's his favourite bloody line! Evidently he thinks this is one his 'trump cards' (like his 'You are an atheist with respect to all other gods' nonsense). This is the stuff of children! To treat fairy stories as equal to the question of God's existence is both immature and illogical. This is supposed to be a serious discussion (I presume), and in the prestigious Oxford, if you please, and yet straight away we see the childish atheistic posturing in all its glory.
Does Dickie Dawkins know of anyone who continued to believe in, say, fairies beyond childhood? Better still, does Dickie D know of anyone who, having given up belief in fairies, then *returned* to belief in fairies in adulthood?
Is it too late for this biological robot to be re-programmed?
He talks of evidence. But is he even aware of the different categories of evidence, and the difference between evidence and proof? Does he even understand the nature of evidence?
So no delving into the nature of evidence and what that entails.
More multi-verse fairy-tales bereft of evidence, all the while keeping a straight face. Is Dickie D even remotely conscious of his hypocrisy?
The multi-verse 'hypothesis' still requires an explanation!
Thanks again for nothing, Dickie!
The Last Superstition, by Dr. Edward Feser, pp. 84-85:
EXCERPT:
"As the philosopher and historian of science E. A. Burtt stated in his classic The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science,
even the attempt to escape metaphysics is no sooner in the form of a proposition than it is seen to involve highly significant metaphysical postulates. For this reason there is an exceedingly subtle and insidious danger in positivism, If you cannot avoid metaphysics, what kind of metaphysics are you likely to cherish when you sturdily suppose yourself to be free from the abomination? Of course it goes without saying that in this case your metaphysics will be held uncritically because it is unconscious; moreover,it will be passed on to others far more readily than your other notions inasmuch as it will be propagated by insinuation rather than by direct argument. . . . Now the history of mind reveals pretty clearly that the thinker who decries metaphysics . . . if he be a man engaged in any important inquiry, he must have a method, and he will be under a strong and constant temptation to make a metaphysics out of his method, that is, to suppose the universe ultimately of such a sort that his method must be appropriate and successful. . . . But inasmuch as the positivist mind has failed to school itself in careful metaphysical thinking, its ventures at such points will apt to appear pitiful, inadequate, or even fantastic.
Burtt could have been writing about the New Atheists, for his words describe them "to a T." Dawknis, in particular, as we shall see, constantly tries to frame the debates over the existence of God and the nature of the human mind as if they hinged on evolution, attempting thereby to transform the Darwinian method of analysis he is most comfortable with into a general metaphysic that holds the master key to every scientific and philosophical problem. Precisely because he is a non-philosopher doing high-falutin' metaphysics disguised as straight science, his metaphysics is very bad indeed - or as Burtt might say, "pitiful" and "inadequate" where religion is concerned, and downright "fantastic" when Dawkins's "selfish gene" and "meme" theories carry altogether into fairyland. But because this bad metaphysics is held by him more or less unconsciously, he has been able very effectively to propagate it by insinuation rather than argument to countless readers, and to remain blissfully unaware that there is any serious alternative to it."
END EXCERPT
E-X-A-C-T-L-Y!
Dawkins is right when it comes to which is more important (evil and good vs truth). Truth IS more important because you can't decide what is good and what is evil without. But you can decide what is true and what is false without regards to which is good and which is evil. I can't see why he being vilified for saying that.unless someone here can figure out good from evil BEFORE determining what is true and what is not.
Hyder Noori, welcome.
Dawkins takes truth to mean science-only factoids; but science never, ever produces truth. Science produces only contingent factiods which can be overturned by the next experimental falsification. And they frequently are. Science cannot ever address the non-falsifiable issues including good and evil, because they will always show as "not falsified" due to the impossibility of applying the rules of empiricism to the non-falsifiable assertions. Karl Popper settled this issue in "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", 1935.
Science is wholly dependent upon logic, not the other way around. And even logic cannot determine Good and Evil, as Nietzsche proved in "Beyond Good and Evil", 1886.
Unfortunately for the New Atheists, Dawkins is illiterate in the logic of science as well as the logic of philosophy. Good and evil are not contingent upon scientific findings. Dawkins is wrong, and he shows that he does not even understand the basic concept of empirical, objective knowledge generation, which is impotent in the face of moral principles, and which never, ever, produces truth. Empirical science addresses only the physical facts which can be experimentally replicated for objective examination. These physical facts have nothing to do with morality.
Dawkins admitted as much when he said that he could not claim that Hitler was wrong in doing what he did. In other words, evolution and selection are without moral compunction, including mass murder and genocide, according to Dawkins. Under both men, morality is only what they say it is. That renders them to be moral elitists, bent on the removal of any opposition.
6:05: "Faith means belief without evidence ..." Well of course it does. Just because you want it to. Gotta have our straw men, after all.
"... Now that is evil." It may be ignorant. It may be illogical. It may be foolish. It may be a lot of things. But why would a man who insists he doesn't "much care about what's good and evil, actually" consider a lack of intellectual rigor evil?
Oh, yeah. Straw men.
7:00: "There is a logical progression from believing by faith to doing terrible deeds like suicide bombings." Yeah, sure there is. And what's Dawkins' response to the evidence that such evil deeds are motivated less by religion than by politics?
"Umm, umm, I've seen other evidence, there are different people that say different things, I've seen testimony...." And then he doesn't actually, you know, CITE any. Because confirmation bias.
11:15: "Dogmatic belief"
Finally, Dawkins is forced to admit it's not religion, and no one notices. It's "dogmatic belief in something". Anything? "Stalin was incidentally an atheist." Oh, except atheism.
15:30: "I accept that individual religious people have done good things."
"Not driven by religion?"
"Well, I mean, who knows?"
20:30ff: Challenged to defend his assertion that being brought up Catholic is worse child abuse than priestly sexual assault, Dawkins cites his letter from America. Hasan calls him on it: "You're a rationalist. One letter from one woman in America really isn't a basis to extrapolate and make such a sweeping conclusion."
"That is of course true, and I'm not basing it on that." Then why'd you bring it up? So now are you going to tell us what you DO base it on?
"It seems to me..." Ah, pure personal opinion. He was better off with anecdotes.
17:15: "It's not surprising that before Darwin people believed in all sorts of things they wouldn't believe in now."
And so there it is: Dawkins' religion is evolution, it's prophet is Charles Darwin, and all of history is divisible into BD and AD. We'll forget the fact that evolution is only about biology and pretend it's the Grand Unified Field Theory of all knowledge (or at least all knowledge worth knowing).
And that was as far as I cared to listen because Hasan's summary at 16:15 was devastating (and Dawkins' attempted deflection pathetic): "You're saying that people carry out violence in the name of God and I cite to you an example of very famous people who have done good in the name of God and you say 'I'm not interested.'"
I haven't read Dawkins writings. If this interview is representative, "I'm not interested." The Dawkins of this interview is a man with no coherent position to offer; who apparently hasn't spent a day in his life in deep thought on any of the issues he's pontificating on, and yet will go to great lengths to expound on the evils (but not the good) of faith despite being not much interested in good and evil; and who is, in two words, all about confirmation bias in his adjudication of the evidence. Or maybe he does have good evidence and rational arguments for his positions and he just forgot to bring them with him. Either way, it's hard to believe anyone who's not already a member of Dawkins' fan club could have found anything in his ramblings persuasive.
Dawkins doesn't discuss First Principles. He doesn't lay out any axioms. He doesn't show how his conclusions logically flow from either. There is no rational coherence to any of his posturing, just pure lazy opinion punctuated with anecdote and selective consideration of evidence. I was not impressed.
I would pay anything to hear Dawkins debate another great Oxford luminary: the ex-atheist CS Lewis. Be like watching Muhammed Ali boxing a three-year old.
So I finished the interview after all. I really wish SOMEBODY had asked the obvious question:
"So, where'd the multiverse come from?"
Stefani,
Good catch on the statement that "There is a logical progression from believing by faith to doing terrible deeds like suicide bombings."
There is another logical progression, and that is the progression from believing in accidental existence due to evolution and not in fixed morality, to the creation of elitist, Atheist, totalitarian, genocidal, torturing states which fixate on murdering their opposition. These are far more prevalent, and are conveniently denied by most Atheists, despite their obvious connection.
And yes, it is definitely telling that Dawkins is not interested in Good or Evil, except for the things which he, The Dawkins, declares to be evil. He is transparently assuming the Messiah role for himself.
Post a Comment