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Post by rainmac on Sept 6, 2011 23:09:48 GMT
Does anyone have objections to Dawkins' so-called scientific approach in The God Delusion? Not whether God exists or not, per se, which is not the question I'm asking here. Rather his logic in some critical stages is suspect. For instance, he cuts to the heart of the matter of God's existence when he asks, who designed the designer? OK, but later he talks about the origin of religion and says children are innately wired to accept and believe what their elders tell them, including religion. This, according to Dawkins, has the unintended consequence of making the child extremely gullible, resulting in the child absorbing farfetched mythologies and believing in imagined spirits. My problem is, he skips the part about why and how the first people adopted religion. It just started somewhere along the way apparently. If he criticizes God-believers by asking who designed the designer, doesn't he have the same obligation to discuss how and why religion started in the first place? Is my grievance reasonable...or not?
Also, RD says, "Darwinian selection habitually targets and eliminates waste. Nature is a miserly accountant, grudging the pennies, watching the clock, punishing the smallest extravagance." I agree heartily. But just 19 pages later he describes how the brain is organized into modules for dealing with specialized needs and that religion can be seen as a by-product of the misfiring of several of these modules. These brain modules are vulnerable to misfiring in the same kind of way as childhood gullibility. What happened to natural selection punishing the smallest extravagance? Something that is an error and without any adaptive or advantageous purpose, according to Dawkins, should have been eliminated by evolution, the miserly accountant. Religion shouldn't have become an overwhelming phenomenon if it's simply a mistake.
Is RD suffering from lapses in logic in his effort to denigrate religion? Is his so-called logic faith-based rather than science-based? Or am I making something out of nothing?
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Post by unkleE on Sept 7, 2011 6:53:46 GMT
Does anyone have objections to Dawkins' so-called scientific approach in The God Delusion? ...... If he criticizes God-believers by asking who designed the designer, doesn't he have the same obligation to discuss how and why religion started in the first place? Is my grievance reasonable...or not? ..... Religion shouldn't have become an overwhelming phenomenon if it's simply a mistake. Is RD suffering from lapses in logic in his effort to denigrate religion? Is his so-called logic faith-based rather than science-based? Or am I making something out of nothing? You are touching on something that he has been criticised for before. For example, in this article, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson criticises Dawkins for being unscientific about religion. In Wilson's view, religion can be studied from an evolutionary perspective (which means assuming that religious belief has conferred an evolutionary advantage), and he thinks scientists already have some handles on why religion helps survival. And he criticises Dawkins for not even attempting to come to grips with this scientific work. Here are some quotes ... On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning rather than gratifying their impulsive desires.The demonic meme hypothesis is a theoretical possibility, but so far it lacks compelling evidence. Much remains to be done, but it is this collective enterprise that deserves the attention of the scientific research community more than angry diatribes about the evils of religion.Dawkins’ diatribe against religion, however well-intentioned, is so deeply misinformed.Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.David Sloan Wilson's comments reinforce the thought that on this matter, Dawkins is more interested i being anti-religious than he is in being scientific. |
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Post by elephantchang51 on Sept 8, 2011 14:16:03 GMT
Can somebody explain to me why belief in the truth of religious claims cannot confer an evolutionary advantage,even if such claims are false? Or to put the point another way,why would the truth of religious beliefs,as opposed to the beliefs themselves,have any bearing on evolutionary advantage?
Excellent link,Unklee..
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Post by himself on Sept 8, 2011 21:25:05 GMT
Every trait has an evolutionary advantage for survival. How do we know? Because the species possessing the trait has survived. There is something deeply circular about this reasoning. The evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould once derided this [perhaps hard-wired] tendency to tell adaptation stories as telling "just so stories." The force of his charge can be felt when you realize adaptationists are just as capable of telling such a story for Not-A as for A.
If Dawkins believes in his heart that "children are innately wired to accept and believe what their elders tell them," let him point to the actual materialistic genes that do so.
And then explain the humble and servile behavior of teenagers.
Does this hard-wired gullibility also explain why they believe in science? (Science, I say, not engineering or technology.)
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Post by unkleE on Sept 8, 2011 23:36:45 GMT
Can somebody explain to me why belief in the truth of religious claims cannot confer an evolutionary advantage,even if such claims are false? Or to put the point another way,why would the truth of religious beliefs,as opposed to the beliefs themselves,have any bearing on evolutionary advantage? I'm not an evolutionary scientist, but I think it is considered that the truth of beliefs does not have a direct evolutionary advantage, because natural selection works on behaviour. e.g. it doesn't matter whether you believe a lion is hiding in the long grass or not, what matters is whether you run or not. But most of us would think that beliefs affect behaviour and so affect natural selection indirectly (although some determinists might think that both beliefs and behaviour are determined by brain chemistry). If so, then the truth of those beliefs would also affect behaviour. But the interesting question is whether the truth of beliefs affects survival. This question is the basis of an argument against naturalism proposed by Alvin Plantinga. I won't do it justice, but Plantinga argues that the truth of beliefs doesn't guarantee survival, and that therefore if natural selection is the only process determining survival, we have no reason to believe that our cognitive faculties are truthful - only that they enable survival. It's a particular formulation of the argument from reason used by CS Lewis and revived by philosophers like Plantinga and Victor Reppert. I think the argument represents a serious dilemma for the naturalist. For, as the argument says, if we hold that the truth of beliefs doesn't aid survival, then it is hard for a naturalist to believe that reason is trustworthy. But if we hold that the truth of beliefs does aid survival and hence we can trust our reason, then we are faced with the fact that most people throughout the world believe in God, and so that belief must have aided their survival and must also be more likely to be true. But it isn't an easy question to answer. We would intuitively think that some religious behaviours (e.g child sacrifice) would be detrimental to survival. But David Sloan Wilson has studied the behaviour of Jain ascetics, which looks for all the world like it would be detrimental to survival, yet he shows how it is in fact helpful. So I don't know the answer to your question. (Long way round to that conclusion!  ) |
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Post by rainmac on Sept 9, 2011 21:46:13 GMT
Can somebody explain to me why belief in the truth of religious claims cannot confer an evolutionary advantage,even if such claims are false? Or to put the point another way,why would the truth of religious beliefs,as opposed to the beliefs themselves,have any bearing on evolutionary advantage? unkleE, thanks for the link to DSW. He's certainly much farther evolved on this issue than Dawkins. Unfortunately, his efforts to explain religion's adaptiveness rely on group selection theory, which is hardly mainstream. Group selection is based primarily on mathematical models--not a bad thing necessarily--but the evidence for it in real animals is almost non-existent. Group selection is a tough argument to hang the evolution of religion on. Just as DSW says the meme hypothesis is a theoretical possibility, group selection is exactly the same while lacking compelling evidence. While people have struggled to fit religion into a framework of individual-level selection, they shouldn't give up trying. Your argument representing Plantinga is interesting. I'm not familiar with his school of thought. I would say that both belief and reason are kinds of red herrings despite people's overwhelming belief in their reason. The work of Tversky and Kahneman laid the groundwork for showing that human cognition is based on heuristics and emotionally-driven biases not logic. Thousands of studies by professors such as Michael Gazzaniga, John Bargh, Daniel Wegner, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Timothy Wilson, V.S. Ramachandran, Antonio Damasio, and Joseph LeDoux show that unconscious processes have far more to do with human behavior than conscious reflection and so-called reason. That is, if you believe the last half-century of neuroscience has anything to offer. ;D First start by examining religion as behavior. Once a cogent theory of religion is proffered based on an ethological approach (what actions do people do), then beliefs can be evaluated secondarily. |
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Post by James Hannam on Sept 11, 2011 21:13:43 GMT
For me, group selection at least has the virtue of being something that makes sense - I can see how it would work. I wrote a little on it for the blog last year: bedejournal.blogspot.com/2010/08/group-selection-why-i-now-think-it-is.htmlThis sort of group selection is quite compatible with gene selection. The group is just the environment in which the gene exists. Best wishes James |
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Post by rainmac on Sept 15, 2011 7:35:51 GMT
From your blog: Group selection says that your reproductive chances are boosted when you are a member of a successful group...Indeed, your reproductive chances are also increased. Kudos for embracing a genetic approach. Given religion's pervasive nature, it begs an explanation that has roots in biology. However, there's something intrinsically insufficient about the group selection approach. It puts the cart before the horse. No doubt religion increases group cohesion, which potentially increases group success. This, along with explaining the existential mysteries (why we exist, what's our purpose in life) are the primary functional reasons given for religion. Group selection is appealing because it fits nicely with the observed communal effects of religion. What it fails to account for is why individuals should be receptive to the religious rituals in the first place. Why would tribal music, dance, myth/storytelling, and visual art (paintings, carvings, etc)--the behaviors of religion--have any effect on people? Many times I've heard people say things like, "One guy started drumming and people liked it and started to move with the rhythm," or "People were seeking spirituality which led them to create religion." They make the huge and inappropriate logical leap that early humans should already like music, dance, etc, or that they just happen to have a spiritual bent prior to the formation of religious behavior. No, these things don't just happen. Evolution doesn't work that way. To make the case that group benefit led to such complex and resource expensive religious behaviors is a real challenge to any model of evolution. Thousands of social species survive and thrive in herds, packs, etc, without the need for all the overhead of religion. Why did humans? Social cohesion mechanisms had already existed for tens, if not hundreds, of millions of years. The origin of religion has to start at the individual level of selection. Long before it reached the stage of social interaction, there had to be developing predispositions for early religious behaviors to positively stimulate the brain's reward centers. Why did the rhythm, tone, and pitch of music feel good just like it makes us feel today? There was first emotional liking in order for social reinforcement secondarily. The trick is to figure out why or how ritual behaviors tickled early people's emotions. So far the answer is lacking. |
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Post by unkleE on Sept 15, 2011 23:35:29 GMT
The origin of religion has to start at the individual level of selection. Long before it reached the stage of social interaction, there had to be developing predispositions for early religious behaviors to positively stimulate the brain's reward centers. This is where assumptions come in. Start with the assumption there's no God, or that he's irrelevant to this process, and you'll try to find an origin as you say. But as a christian who accepts the findings of science, I am quite happy to believe (if this is proven to be the case) that group selection plays a role in religious belief. But I am going to also want to make a different assumption about origins than you might make. I see no reason why I cannot believe that some religious beliefs, and perhaps all religious impulses, have an origin in God, his self revelation and the way he designed us. (I can still believe in evolution and design by believing that God set up the universe to develop in the way it did, including producing human beings.) So I see no reason not to accept that both evolutionary and divine factors are relevant. |
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Post by rainmac on Sept 16, 2011 5:48:51 GMT
unkleE, straddling both religious and science spheres is commendable -- trying to see both sides of the equation. So isn't it possible that God designed people to worship Him by making Himself a projection of their minds? That was His mechanism for making Himself known.
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Post by unkleE on Sept 16, 2011 13:47:47 GMT
unkleE, straddling both religious and science spheres is commendable -- trying to see both sides of the equation. G'day rainmac. Thanks for the commendation, but I don't think of it that way myself. I just think of it as trying to know the truth, and I think that the empirical truths of science lead strongly to the metaphysical truths of belief in God. I don't think I know enough about what a "projection" is to say, but I do think that God has made us with the ability to know him. So I think I agree with you. My point was that to say this is true doesn't logically lead to saying God is a projection, as if that was all he is. |
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Post by himself on Oct 23, 2011 20:36:19 GMT
Kudos for embracing a genetic approach. Given religion's pervasive nature, it begs an explanation that has roots in biology. Well, genetics has good religious roots: Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian monk, assigned by his monastery to work on hybridization (which was a longstanding research program at that monastery. Mendel himself had trained as a physicist, not a biologist.) The monastery built him a greenhouse with which to establish true-breeding peas, and fields in which to grow them. You can't "beg an explanation," you "beg the question." But that means to assume the conclusion. |
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