selfish genes and mindless intellectuals

The other night on CSPAN books, Richard Dawkins, with a dramatic flourish, dismissed religion and associated traditions. While he did not use the word "deluded" when he referred to those who are religious, as did Geoffrey Miller, Dawkins surely would not deny that he felt the term was an appropriate one. A number of issues emerged during this program. First, girlish giggles were heard as echoes to all of his most dramatic points. One has to wonder why. Was this response due to "intellectualism," which is now firmly founded on an anti-religious platform? Or, was it an appreciative response to the "art" of his presentation? Females amused and attracted by a famous and influential male? Although I did not watch the entire program, the ones to ask questions were primarily male. The only female I saw, a "fellow" athiest, praised him with enthusiasm for his bravery. Is it brave to be anti-religious in a crowd of fellow intellects? One has to wonder. The males who did ask questions tried to discredit him on some of his religious points. Dawkins, however, is quite quick and well able to deflect criticism, often through artful sarcasm.

While I am a Darwinian, in the sense that I understand and accept the theory and its implications, what bothers me is the mindlessness of many of our intellectuals--this use of great gifts to obscure and build political positions. It has always bothered me over the years that my most "intellectual" students have supported Modern Darwinian theory, without knowing what it said or implied, because, apparently, it was the position that intellectuals, such as they, should take. One has to wonder why they would support the theory without understanding it. It seems more honorable to me to admit you are accepting a position on faith, which is what these students are actually doing, not based on empirical science or logic.

The question I would have asked is this: Given the general intelligence of all modern humans, how can we account for the fact that religion is ancient and widespread? Does this not suggest that religion might have had an important function? Might this function be empirically identifiable IF we bother to define religion (Dawkins never did) in such a way as to make it possible to study it empirically? Isn't the first step of the scientific method "DEFINE AND STATE"? Shouldn't we consider multiple hypotheses? Science should be made of sterner stuff. Do they really teach students to make such gross overstatements, to rely on sarcasm and art to make a point-- and to do such poor science -- at Britain's best universities?

This experience reminded me of the Samuel Wilberforce-Thomas Huxley debate, using wit, but not logic and science, to discredit an opponent.

"Then the Bishop rose, and in a light scoffing tone, florid and he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution; rock -pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey? On this Mr Huxley slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure stern and pale, very quiet and very grave, he stood before us, and spoke those tremendous words - words which no one seems sure of now, nor I think, could remember just after they were spoken, for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in no doubt as to what it was. He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. (see http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/legend.html for more historically-based information).

Truth? What confidence he had. As Wilberforce had pointed out, evidence supporting the theory was, at that time, lacking. Some of his criticism was appropriate: Darwin did not know about genes and it was not until the 1940s that much of this theory was put together. However, the point here is that for such a smart species, we can be pretty dumb and we are particularly dumb when we ignore the scientific method and when we fail to apply skepticism to the ideas we hold most fondly.