I hope this is as good as I think it will be.

[Dappadee]

The root of all evil?
Channel 4 @ 20:00 on January 9th & 16th

Professor Richard Dawkins, Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and world-renowned evolutionary biologist, is no stranger to controversy. His outspoken views on religion and his championing of evolutionary theory have earned him the nickname of "Darwin's Rottweiler", an epithet he wears with pride. In this controversial two-part series, Dawkins describes God as the most unpleasant fictional character of all and launches a wholehearted attack on religion as the cause for much of the pain and suffering in the world. In the light of overwhelming scientific evidence that shows a supreme being cannot exist, and in a world in which religious conflict and bigotry are increasingly centre stage, he believes that for the good of humanity, religion needs to be challenged and dismissed. In this first film, Professor Dawkins confronts the march of militant religious belief across the world. In the American "Bible Belt", he meets Ted Haggard, the President of the American National Association of Evangelicals, who believes that science will one day prove the Bible's Creation story right. In Jerusalem, where the terrible certainties of faith began and still rage, he challenges the Grand Mufti of Palestine and discusses with Yousef Al Khattab, a Jewish settler turned Muslim fundamentalist, the implacable hatreds that faith has thrown up in this blighted city. The 21st century, Dawkins argues, should be an age of reason but we are threatened by those who see unreason as a positive virtue. Faith is an indulgence of irrationality that is nourishing extremism, division and terror.

[Aerik]

I like Dawkins.


hey look, my first skeptic.org.uk post!

[Max]

Happy New Year! Hope no one is too hung over this morning.

I think many skeptics have long felt that religion is a source of much human suffering. Two things:

1. Has Dawkins discussed the possible evolutionary value of religion in this recent missive? Evolutionary psychology suggests that many (all?) behaviours have evolutionary roots designed to promote the continuity of life.

Unfortunately what promoted life six million years when those behaviours were formed may not be so good for the survival of our genes six million years later. For example, the human love of high fat food probably stems from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of those days. People who didn't know where their next meal was coming from did well to eat high-fat meals that sustained them in the long days and weeks between hunts. But today when food is usually more plentiful, it leads to obesity and heart-attacks.

Similarly, "religion" may have conferred evolutionary value on those who embraced it. Believing that a powerful deity was spurring you on may well have provided that extra adrenalin required when your family were attacked or in times of hardship. But today, it serves merely to polarise groups of people. Like high-fat foods, religion has outlived its usefulness.

2. I've noticed that when Dawkins writes, otherwise quiet skeptic communities are energised and start writing (not this one, but lists like PESTS for example).

Is there a celebrity culture in the Skeptic Movement? When Richard Dawkins and James Randi speak, do we pay more attention than when Joanne or Joe Skeptic speak?

If so, we may be guilty of allowing ourselves to be swayed by "authority". This is something many of us warn the public about: don't believe claims because they are presented by an authority figure. Analyse them based on the evidence presented.

I am not for a moment suggesting that figures like Randi and Dawkins do not provide evidence. I was merely wondering whether skeptics are as analytically critical of what our own members say as we are of the utterances of e.g. mediums like John Edwards.

Max

[Janet W]

Max, you wanted criticism? Here goes...

I've read articles by Professor Dawkins on a similar subject, and found them outrageous but thought-provoking. However, I wasn't particularly impressed by this programme.

I don't think anyone is going to be convinced that there's a slippery slope which starts with joining a pilgrimage at Lourdes, and ends with signing up as a suicide bomber.

His often patronising attitude towards believers ("these poor, desperate, deluded people") is not going to win him any friends either, and his presentation of religious ideas was sometimes rather superficial.

He seems to be crediting the general public with both too much and too little intelligence. On the one hand, this programme tended to talk down to people in a sub-Discovery-Channel way.

On the other hand, he talked as though, if religion is swept away, the vacuum will be filled by pure reason. We have enough experience
of post-Christian society to know exactly what comes to fill the vacuum: an irrational belief in an awful lot of other rubbish. Even the arbitrary behavioural laws of religion are replaced by increasingly exacting diet, de-tox and lifestyle regimes.

The best parts of the programme were where he enthused about science and the scientific method. I think it would be great to have him presenting a general "what is science?" programme or series on TV.

He did highlight the central tension between science and religion.. that
scientific knowledge (as Louis said the other week) is provisional and constantly improving, whereas religious knowledge is fixed, handed down in a book or a set of traditions. I think it would have been more helpful to use the programme to examine this point and its implications
in more detail, rather than fill it with sensational examples of bad religion.

On a lighter note, I've never seen a TV programme with Prof Dawkins before; I've only read his stuff. So it was interesting for me to actually see and hear him. What an amazing accent; I didn't know anyone spoke like that any more. It's the sort of accent that qualifies you to pluck specks of soot from Celia Johnson's eye.

[Tessa K]

Dawkins was trying so hard not to be ranty that he ended up saying very little that was new.

It struck me that his approach is not very good science. A quick look at human nature through history shows that we are very good at defining Us and Them one way or another. And defining someone as Them is a good excuse to treat them in all manner of unpleasant ways. Religion is just one of the Us/Them divides. While Communism and Nazism could be called pseudo-religions (they certianly have many of the trappings) Alexander the Great didn't need religion as a pretext for wiping out large numbers of people in his empire building. Nor did Ghengis Khan.

While we do need to deal with religion in its current manifestations, that is only part of the problem. If religion disappeared, we would pretty swiftly find another pretext. Wouldn't it be more scientific to look at WHY we do this, what evolutionary purpose it serves and how we could maybe tackle it?

As an evolutionary biologist, Dawkins should know that proximate causes are only half the story.

And why no mention of Hinduism? That's not exactly a fluffy religion, especially for women.

[Janet W]

What exactly did you think was not good science, and in what way? I'm not necessarily disagreeing, just didn't quite know what you meant...

Agree absolutely that there are Us/Them divides which are nothing to do with religion. Racial divides would be an obvious example.

As for "how it evolved"...
Us/Them isn't all negative.. the sense of identity/comradeship is a positive thing too, which is presumably why it has survived.

"...how we could maybe tackle it..."
You seem to be presupposing that the root cause of conflict is this division into groups. But it's hard to know this for sure.. religion certainly perpetuates the definition of the groups, but once the groups have come into existence there are so many other causes of strife, mainly to do with money, land, power and the limited charity of human nature, that it's hard to tell which is cause and which is effect. Particularly somewhere like Palestine.

And then of course religion is sometimes capable of transcending these divisions and making us aware of our common humanity (for example, in the fight against slavery).

[Tessa K]

What exactly did you think was not good science, and in what way? I'm not necessarily disagreeing, just didn't quite know what you meant...

What I meant was that Dawkins' main thrust was that religion was the root of all evil, rather than a symptom of human nature.

[/quote] And then of course religion is sometimes capable of transcending these divisions and making us aware of our common humanity (for example, in the fight against slavery).[/quote]

I'm not sure that the people who fought against slavery were wholly inspired by religion. It's possible they were inspired by humanitarian intentions and that religion was just the framework for expressing these. After all, apartheid in South Africa was not broken up as a religious mission.

[Max]

Similar discussions happening here

http://www.lastthursday.net/node/4152

and here

http://www.lastthursday.net/node/4215#comment-49142?PHPSESSID=7b298074b6574620f1901746d28433e6

When will they invent an uber (meta) bulletin board I wonder?

[Max]

Wouldn't it be more scientific to look at WHY we do this, what evolutionary purpose it serves and how we could maybe tackle it?

Chris French's group do precisely that sort of research. I agree that it is a more scientific route.

[Max]

He did highlight the central tension between science and religion.. that
scientific knowledge (as Louis said the other week) is provisional and constantly improving, whereas religious knowledge is fixed, handed down in a book or a set of traditions. I think it would have been more helpful to use the programme to examine this point and its implications
in more detail, rather than fill it with sensational examples of bad religion.

I didn't see the program. Did he provide any kind of evidence that religion causes more "harm" than comparable organised secular activities?

[Janet W]

No, Max, he didn't... though I'm not sure how you would actually go about doing this.

He interviewed some unpleasant people and used them to demonstrate that religion is bad for you.
... leaving someone like me free to demonstrate that religion is good for you by citing the influence of Methodism on the formation of socialist ideas, or the Christian inspiriation of numerous social reformers.

...and we leave by the same door as in we went.

As you've both said already.. not a very scientific approach.

The hypothesis that religion does more harm than good in society (as opposed to the hypothesis that God exists) should be, at least in theory, testable, though I'm not sure you how you could ever do this in practice?
Is there a narrower, better-defined version of this hypothesis which could be tested?

(At the very least, it might make a good subject for a Skeptics in the Pub debate.)

Thanks for the links to the other 2 forums, Max. I'm really impressed by your debating skills; I think you are presenting the "what is scienctific knowledge" argument very clearly and convincingly. I find it takes me ages to think out an answer to a forum post...

[Max]

Thank you Janet. For me the key in these debates is to keep them as unemotional as possible. I used to be very bad at that. I think the key is patience and not to let people get to one.

My experience is that many arch-skeptics and arch-claimants (for want of a better term) get very heated in their discussions. Now, I love (positive) emotional expression in contexts like art, music, and love. But somehow, in science, negative emotion gets to me. So I try to avoid it even when chatting with the most ardent believer.

What's your interest in skepticism?

[Janet W]

What's your interest in skepticism?

? Not sure how to answer that.. is skepticism concrete enough to be something you can be interested in?

I just like analysing things and listening to clever talk. And I've found it really refreshing to hear so many different views; normally I'm either discussing with people who have a very similar viewpoint to me, or I'm not having this sort of discussion at all.

Actually, it all started quite recently, when I was looking for a Christmas present for my partner and happened on the BadScience website.

To answer your much earlier question, you'll be pleased to know that Prof Dawkins did present an explanation of the evolutionary origins of religion, which went something like this:
People were more likely to survive if they could identify the cause of an event. Specifically, if they could identify the human or animal causing the event, they could then do something about it (avoid/chase off/humour it/them), thus enhancing their chances of survival. Conditioned (whether via genes or via learned behaviour.. don't think the programme said which) to ascribe an agent to every action, they then ascribed any unexplained events to a supernatural agent.

So, this is saying... not (as you suggested earlier) that religion is a once-useful and now-defunct product of evolution - the emotional equivalent of an appendix - but that it is a by-product of our desire to find causes.

Perhaps you could say (though Prof D didn't..) that science and religion share a common origin in our desire to find patterns and causes. Sisters under the skin. Goodness me.

[Janet W]

Tessa,

I'm not sure that the people who fought against slavery were wholly inspired by religion. It's possible they were inspired by humanitarian intentions and that religion was just the framework for expressing these

I wasn't trying to suggest that all people of good will are inspired by religion, and I do agree completely with your second sentence, which I can't possibly put as well as you did.

But I do definitely think that some were inspired to be better people, by their religion. The famous example is John Newton, the master of a slave ship who became a leading light in the anti-slavery movement after his Damascus road Christian conversion.

Humanitarian intentions have often been insufficient to persuade people of the humanity of other races. For example, reading even writers as enlightened as Wells and Somerset Maugham, writing as lates as the 20th century, it's clear that their intelligence and liberal views was not sufficient to bring them to any kind of acceptance of Africans as equals.

The New Testament has a strong egalitarian message, e.g. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28, since you ask..) and at various stages in history this has provided a powerful challenge to the received wisdom of the time.

I remember being taught in Latin lessons that one of the reasons Christianity was so ruthlessly suppressed in the Roman empire was that they were worried about the corrosive effect on society of a doctrine that declared slaves and free men to be equal.

I'm afraid I don't know enough about the teaching or social impact of other religions to provide any examples beyond Christianity.

[Janet W]

Yet another thread on this subject (which actually took me by surprise.. thought they'd all be very pro-Dawkins) at:

http://www.badscience.net/?a=xdforum&xd ... 1&xt_id=81