Why Richard Dawkins Thinks AI May Replace Us

https://mindmatters.ai/2020/05/why-richard-dawkins-thinks-ai-may-replace-us/

Outgrowing God

One atheist trope is that Christian faith is childish. We have a duty to wean ourselves from immature belief a celestial father-figure. 

To that many things could be said, but for now I'd point out that the very atheists who say this often adopt a paternalistic tone of disapproval. They themselves assume the role of father-figures. If you refuse to heed their fatherly advice, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, Dawkins, Coyne, Stenger et al. will be disappointed in you. Don't you wish to make them proud of you?

Essentially, then, they become substitute father gods. They play on the very psychology they impute to Christian believers. 

The celestial teapot

https://www.eskimo.com/~msharlow/philos/End_of_the_Teapot_Argument.pdf

Is Dawkins a great biologist?

Massimo

May 12, 2015 • 10:47 am

Modus,

“Dawkins at least is a credible intellectual in his field. He coined the term “meme” and is one of the world’s greatest living biologists”

Dawkins certainly has credentials. However, I cringe every time I see him characterized they way you do. To begin with, as far as I know (and I looked into it) he hasn’t published a novel piece of research in evobio in decades, unlike his long running rival, S.J. Gould, who kept publishing technical papers and books right to the end of his life. Also, Dawkins’ opinions on evolutionary theory are by now hopelessly dated, and not just because of what he thinks about epigenetics. So, yes, credentialed intellectual; no, not the world’s greatest living biologist, by a long shot.

https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/reflections-on-the-skeptic-and-atheist-movements/comment-page-2/#comment-14062

For a world-famous science prof., this is a remarkably thin bibliography of scholarly publications:

Extended Phenotype – But Not Too Extended. A Reply to Laland, Turner and Jablonka

Biology and Philosophy 19: 377–396, 2004.

Download

Parasites, Desiderata Lists and the Paradox of the Organism

Dawkins utilizes parasites to prove his argument that the most basic unit in the hierarchy of life is the organism itelf.

S63-S73, 1990

Download

The Evolution of Evolvability

Dawkins discusses the model (or environment and conditions) that he created to allow evolution to take place.

Artificial Life, SFI Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, 1988, pp. 201-220

Download

Replicators and Vehicles

This article asserts that the principles of evolution allow DNA to protect itself and DNA in turn has a greater purpose to our existence.

Current Problems in Sociobiology, Cambridge University Press, pp. 45-64, 1982

Download

Do digger wasps commit the concorde fallacy?

Richard Dawkins, H. Jane Brockmannt

Animal Behaviour, Volume 28, Issue 3, August 1980, Pages 892–896

Download

Twelve Misunderstandings of Kin Selection

This article addresses the 12 common misunderstandings in kin selection theory and denies them.

Z. Tierphyschol, 1979, 51: pp. 184-200

12 Misunderstandings (1979)

Joint Nesting in a Digger Wasp as as Evolutionarily Stable Preadaptation to Social Life 

Behaviour, Vol. 71, No. 3/4 (1979), pp. 203-245

Download

Evolutionarily Stable Nesting Strategy in a Digger Wasp

Brockmann, Grafen, and Dawkins examine the nesting behaviors of digger wasps and concludes that their strategy is evolutionarily stable.

 J. theor. Biol. 1979, 77: pp. 473-496

Download

Replicator Selection & the Extended Phenotype 

This is a modified version of a lecture given in the plenary session on “Sociobiology: at the 15th International Ethological Conference, Bielefeld, 1977.

Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 47: 61–76
Download

Hierarchical Organization and Postural Facilitation: Rules for Groom in Flies

Richard and Marian Dawkins examine the parameters of grooming sequences in blowflies.

Animal Behavior, 1976, 24: pp. 739-755

Download

Decisions and the Uncertainty of Behaviour

Richard and Marian Dawkins assert that behavior can be described through changing uncertainty or through a structural behavior pattern.

Rec. 1972, Vol. 20, No. 4: pp. 83-103

Download

The Hunting Behaviour of Individual Great Tits in Relation to Spacial Variation in their Food Density

James N. M. Smith and Dawkins respond to data collected in variations of food density and spacial changes present when testing great tit birds.

Animal Behavior, 1971, 19: pp.695-706

Download

A Threshold Model of Choice Behaviour

This article suggests a model for the underlying mechanisms of making choices from an evolutionary standpoint.

Animal Behavior, 1969, 17: pp. 120-133

Download

The “Peck/No-Peck Decision-Maker’ in the Black-Headed Gull Chick

Using the Choice Threshold Model, Dawkins and Impekoven determine the absolute number of responses to stimuli in black-headed gull chicks.

Animal Behavior, 1969, 17: pp. 243-251

Download

The Attention Threshold Model

This article utilizes selective attention theory to validate Dawkins’ Choice Threshold Model.

Animal Behavior, 1969, 17: pp. 134-141

Download

https://richarddawkins.net/richarddawkins/

A secular philosopher on the skeptic/atheist movements

Reflections on the skeptic and atheist movements

by Massimo Pigliucci

The Harris-Chomsky exchange, in my mind, summarizes a lot of what I find unpleasant about SAM: a community who worships celebrities who are often intellectual dilettantes, or at the very least have a tendency to talk about things of which they manifestly know very little; an ugly undertone of in-your-face confrontation and I’m-smarter-than-you-because-I-agree-with [insert your favorite New Atheist or equivalent]; loud proclamations about following reason and evidence wherever they may lead, accompanied by a degree of groupthink and unwillingness to change one’s mind that is trumped only by religious fundamentalists; and, lately, a willingness to engage in public shaming and other vicious social networking practices any time someone says something that doesn’t fit our own opinions, all the while of course claiming to protect “free speech” at all costs.

Let me give you some examples and name some names of big boys who can take the criticism and who will keep doing what they have been doing regardless of what I write anyway.

I have already mentioned Harris, who writes about ethics with little acknowledgment (or understanding, or both) of just how complex a topic it is, and how much literature there is out there to engage with. As he infamously wrote in the first footnote of chapter 1 of The Moral Landscape, “Many of my critics fault me for not engaging more directly with the academic literature on moral philosophy … [but] I am convinced that every appearance of terms like ‘metaethics,’ ‘deontology,’ … directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe.”  Why are we taking such a brazen display of anti-intellectualism as anything more than a clear mark of an overinflated ego? But far from that, Michael Shermer then builds on Harris’ point (or perhaps simply restates it, at much greater length), coming out with yet another “revolutionary” book about the science of ethics, predicated on an argument that had so many holes in it that I felt a bit embarrassed having to explain them in a public forum a couple of years ago [15].

Then we have Neil deGrasse Tyson. Great science popularizer, but also prone to anti-intellectualism in the form of dismissing an entire field (philosophy) of which he knows nothing at all [16], not to mention his sometimes questionable behavior when it comes to intellectual fairness, as even my colleague (with whom I often disagree) Jerry Coyne has firmly pointed out [17]. That particular episode had to do with yielding to the whims of yet another physicist/anti-intellectualist who has become a darling of SAM: Lawrence Krauss [18].

And speaking of great science popularizers who are very much adored within SAM: Richard Dawkins has actually gone on record as trashing yet another field (besides philosophy) of which he knows nothing, namely, epigenetics: “I am heartily sick of the ‘epigenetics’ bandwagon and almost look forward to the next one, whatever it turns out to be.” [19] Luckily, that so-called “bandwagon” (actually very sound, cutting age biological research) keeps going regardless of Dawkins’ opinion, producing thousands of papers every year and securing tens of millions in funding from evidently profoundly misguided federal agencies. And let’s not go (again) into the exceedingly naive approach to religious criticism that has made Dawkins one of the “four horsemen” of the New Atheism.

One can’t talk about either Dawkins or the Horsemen without at least in passing mentioning Christopher Hitchens, a brilliant polemicist, very funny and caustic writer, who however couldn’t make up his mind about his politics, ranging from Trotskyism to neoconservatism, all the while being universally eulogized by SAM as a genius and a saint (both of which he would have laughed at heartily) when he died [20].

(You may have noticed that the only prominent New Atheist I don’t take to task is Dan Dennett. That’s because I honestly think he is a better intellectual than the rest of them combined, and he also happens to be a genuinely pleasant individual. The fact that moreover he is the only philosopher of the group may or may not be coincidental, we don’t have enough data points to make that judgment.)

Last, but certainly not least (dulcis in fundo, as the Romans used to say) one cannot conclude this parade without mentioning P.Z. Myers, who has risen to fame because of a blog where the level of nastiness (both by the host and by his readers) is rarely matched anywhere else on the Internet, and who has lately discovered (together with a number of others that I don’t need to mention here) both social progressivism and feminism (or perhaps he invented them?), and has immediately proceeded to confuse them, somehow, with tenets of atheism.

I hope others equally worthy will not feel too bad about being left out of the above list. These are just examples of what I think has been an obvious general trend in SAM over the last decade or more.

https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/reflections-on-the-skeptic-and-atheist-movements/

Selfish genes

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/non-darwinian-biologist-rupert-sheldrake-takes-on-darwinian-atheist-daniel-dennett/

The greatest flimflam man on earth

http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/one-long-bluff-a-review-of-richard-dawkins-the-greatest-show-on-earth/

Down babies

Richard Dawkins has issued an unapologetic apology. It's one of those defensive "apologies" that's just a pretext to double down on the original claim:

https://richarddawkins.net/2014/08/abortion-down-syndrome-an-apology-for-letting-slip-the-dogs-of-twitterwar/

I'll venture a few comments:

I personally would go further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child’s own welfare.

Even if we accept his utilitarian yardstick, there's no evidence that giving birth to a Down baby increases suffering or reduces the sum of happiness. In fact, the evidence is very much to the contrary. 

In addition, it's sophistical to say you're acting in the child's own welfare by killing it. The child's own welfare presupposes the child's existence. It takes it from there. 

My position, which I would guess is shared by most people reading this, is that a woman has a right to early abortion, and I personally would not condemn her for choosing it. 

Dawkins is half right. Given atheism, Down babies have no right to live. 

But like many atheists, Dawkins fails to carry his position to its logical conclusion. Given atheism, women have no rights. Humans have no rights. It comes down to raw power. 

If you disagree, fair enough; many do, often on religious grounds. But then your quarrel is not just with me but with prevailing medical opinion and with the decision actually taken by most people who are faced with the choice.

Unless a Down baby pregnancy is significantly riskier than a normal pregnancy, in what sense is there a medical opinion on the preferability of aborting Down babies? Dawkins is hiding behind medical authority to lend respectability to a moral evaluation rather than a medical evaluation. 

Superintelligence

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins said the cosmological and/or teleological arguments for God's existence generate an infinite regress: a divine designer must be more complex than whatever he designs. Therefore, appealing to God to explain the world only pushes the demand for an ultimate explanation back a step; indeed, it compounds the perceived problem.

There are two different ways of responding to Dawkins:

i) We can respond to him on Christian grounds. We can point out that he hasn't mastered the position he presumes to refute. God isn't complex in the same sense that physical, composite objects or organisms are complex. God is not an organization. God is not a big thing made of smaller things, like disassembling an engine. To the extent that God is complex, he's complex in a way analogous to complex abstract objects like the Mandelbrot set. That's infinitely complex. But it's not the kind of thing you can take apart. It's not composed of smaller parts, which are, in turn, composed of even smaller parts, viz., a carburetor is part of a car engine while a gasket is part of a carburetor. But in classical theism, God has no spatiotemporal parts.

ii) But we can also respond to Dawkins on his own terms. His infinite regress argument reminds me of von Neumann's seminal lectures on self-reproducting automata. To begin with, it's very shortsighted of Dawkins to deploy an argument which, on the face of it, disproves macroevolution. As von Neumann notes:

Anybody who looks at living organisms knows perfectly well that they can produce other organisms like themselves. This is their normal function, they wouldn't exist if they didn't do this…Living organisms are very complicated aggregations of elementary parts…that they should occur in the world at all is a miracle of the first magnitude.
Furthermore, it's equally evident that what goes on is actually one degree better than self-reproduction, for organisms appear to have gotten more elaborate in the course of time. Today's organisms are phylogenetically descended from others which are vastly simpler than they are, so much simpler, in fact, that it's inconceivable how any kind of description of the later, complex organism could have existed in the earlier one…Evidently, these organisms have the ability to produce something more complicated than themselves. 

So an ironic consequence of Dawkins' argument is that, if sound, the infinite regress would disprove macroevolution. And that poses quite a dilemma for Dawkins inasmuch as macroevolution is his alternate to divine creation! 

Perhaps Dawkins would say the infinite regress argument only applies to designed products rather than undesigned products. If so, it's hard to see the logic of that restriction. If the designer must be more complex than what he designs, then mustn't the producer (e.g. evolutionary process) be more complex than the product? 

iii) There is, however, another problem with Dawkins' argument, from a secular scientific perspective. For his argument, if sound, would render AI research futile. As von Neumann goes on to say:

The other line of argument, which leads to the opposite conclusion, arises from looking at artificial automata. Everyone knows that a machine tool is more complicated than the elements which can be made with it…So, one gets a very strong impression that complication, or productive potentiality in an organization, is degenerative, that an organization which synthesizes something is necessarily more complicated, of a higher order, than the organization it synthesizes. This conclusion, arrived at by considering living organisms, is clearly opposite to our early conclusion, arrived at by considering living organisms. 

Von Neumann is discussing the prima facie dilemma of producing self-reproducing machines. Must a machine be more complex than what it produces? If so, then you can't make a self-replicating machine.

Yet AI is even more ambitious. According to AI, not only can computer designers construct self-replicating computers, but they can even construct computers which become more complex than the computer designer himself! Indeed, von Neumann, in the same lecture, gestures at this program: 

…the production of a more complicated object from a less complicated object is possible…There is a minimum number of parts below which complication is degenerative, in the sense that if one automaton makes another the second is less complex than the first, but above which it is possible for an automaton to construct other automata of equal or higher complexity…There is thus this completely decisive property of complexity, that there exists a critical size below which the process of synthesis is degenerative, but above which the phenomenon of synthesis, if properly arranged, can become explosive, where synthesizes of automata can proceed in such a manner that each automaton will produce other automata which are more complex and of higher potentialities than itself. 

Indeed, the AI community is concerned with the prospect that, if successful, AI machines will turn on their inventors and destroy the human race: 

So, while the idea of the generally intelligent agent continues to play an important unifying role for the discipline(s) of artificial intelligence, it also leads fairly naturally to the possibility of a super-intelligence. The usual concept is that if we humans could create artificial general intelligent ability at a roughly human level, then this creation could, in turn, create yet higher intelligence, which could, in turn, create yet higher intelligence, and so on ... “We can tentatively define a superintelligence as any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest.” (Bostrom, 2014 ch. 2). So we might generate a growth well beyond human ability and perhaps even an accelerating rate of growth, leading to an ‘intelligence explosion’. Two main questions about this development are when to expect it, if at all (see Bostrom, 2006; Hubert L. Dreyfus, 2012; Kurzweil, 2005) and what the impact of it would likely be, in particular which risks it might entail up to a level of existential risk for humanity (see Bostrom, 2013; Müller, 2014a). As Hawking et al. say “Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.” (Hawking, Russell, Tegmark, & Wilczek, 2014; cf. Price, 2013). 

These results should be taken with some grains of salt, but we think it is fair to say that the results show an agreement among experts that AI systems will probably reach overall human ability around 2040-50, certainly (with 90% probability) by 2075. From reaching human ability, it will move on to superintelligence in 2 years (10%) to 30 years (75%) thereaf- ter. The experts say the probability is 31% that this development turns out to be ‘bad’ or ‘extremely bad’ for humanity. 

So, the experts think that superintelligence is likely to come in a few decades and quite possibly bad for humanity – this should be reason enough to do research into the possible impact of superintelligence before it is too late. We could also put this more modestly and still come to an alarming conclusion: We know of no compelling reason to say that progress in AI will grind to a halt (though deep new insights might be needed) and we know of no compelling reason that superintelligent systems will be good for humanity. So, we should better investigate the future of superintelligence and the risk it poses for humanity. 

http://www.sophia.de/pdf/2014_PT-AI_polls.pdf

So AI turns Dawkins' regress argument on its head. A designer needn't be more complex than what is designed. To the contrary, what is designed may be (or become) more complex than the designer! 

My point is not to endorse AI. And, of course, I don't think creatures are equally complex, much less more complex, than their Creator. I'm just analyzing Dawkins' argument on its own terms. Even secularists don't share his intuition. 

The recurrent laryngeal nerve

I'm going to quote part of a Facebook exchange I ran across today:

Fulano De Tal 

RE The Recurring Laryngeal Nerve: The nerve's route would have been direct in the fish-like ancestors of modern tetrapods, traveling from the brain, past the heart, to the gills (as it does in modern fish). Over the course of evolution, as the neck extended and the heart became lower in the body, the laryngeal nerve was caught on the wrong side of the heart. Natural selection gradually lengthened the nerve by tiny increments to accommodate, resulting in the circuitous route now observed." - Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth

i) It's striking how unbelievers make very confident pronouncements concerning things they know nothing about. At best, Fulano is relying on thirdhand information, and probably fourthhand information (or worse), on the laryngeal nerve. To begin with, his stated source of information is Dawkins. So that's secondhand. But Dawkins is no expert on giraffes. So, at the very least, Dawkins is relying on secondhand information about giraffes. Which would make it thirdhand info for Fulano. Moreover, I doubt Dawkins consulted an expert on giraffes. Rather, this example has become such a cliché in the evolutionary literature attacking ID theory that I expect Dawkins picked it up from another Darwinian science writer who's not an expert on giraffes. And where did that science writer get it?

ii) Moreover, Dawkins hasn't been a working scientist for decades. Why assume he even has an up-to-date knowledge of current evolutionary biology? When was the last time he published a scientific article in a peer-reviewed journal? 

iii) Furthermore, one of Dawkins' staple objections to ID theory is that theistic explanations are "science stoppers." 

Notice, though, that when he defaults to the inefficiency of the blind watchmaker to account for the recurrent laryngeal nerve, his explanation is a science stopper. Rather than investigating whether this has unsuspected engineering advantages, he just assumes it must be the clumsy byproduct of a mindless process. So he stops short. He contents himself with that superficial explanation, rather than conducting an in-depth cost/benefit analysis of the recurrent laryngeal nerve–in itself, in relation to the overall body-plan of a giraffe, in relation to the habitant of a giraffe, &c.  

Also observe that Dawkins simply propounds a just-so story to explain it. He doesn't provide any hard evidence. 

iv) Finally, that example has been contested. For instance:

http://www.weloennig.de/LaryngealNerve.pdf

http://www.weloennig.de/GiraffaSecondPartEnglish.pdf

Dawkins in a nutshell

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/16/appetite-wonder-richard-dawkins-digested-read

Beyond good and evil

In the abstract, atheists assure us that it's possible, even preferable, to be good without God. But their moral footing is slippery when they shift to concrete cases:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/09/richard-dawkins-pedophilia_n_3895514.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

Shore Leave

Recently I saw the first part of "Shore Leave," the old Star Trek episode. I didn't watch the whole thing, because I've seen it several times. But it did make me consider how the teleplay would read if Richard Dawkins were the science officer instead of Spock.  

*******************************************************************************

[Planet surface]

SULU: Beautiful, beautiful. No animals, no people, no worries. Just what the doctor ordered. Right, Doctor?
MCCOY: I couldn't have prescribed better. We are one weary ship.
SULU: Do you think the Captain will authorize shore leave here?
MCCOY: Depending upon my report and that of the other scouting parties. You know, you have to see this place to believe it. It's like something out of Alice in Wonderland. The Captain has to come down.
SULU: He'd like it.
MCCOY: He needs it. You've got your problems, I've got mine. He's got ours, plus his, plus four hundred and thirty other people's. Where are you going?
SULU: To get some cell-structure records. A blade of grass, a bush, a tree, a flower petal. With these, we can tell the whole planet's biology.
(As Sulu crouches down behind some pampas grass, McCoy turns and looks straight at a white rabbit in a check jacket, yellow waistcoat, and looking at a gold pocket watch.)
RABBIT: Oh, my paws and whiskers! I'll be late.
(It heads off down a hole. Then a young girl comes running up, wearing a blue dress with a white apron.)
ALICE: Excuse me, sir. Have you seen a rather large white rabbit with a yellow waistcoat and white gloves here about?
(Wordlessly, McCoy points in the direction the rabbit went. The girl curtseys nicely)
ALICE: Thank you very much.
(She runs off after the rabbit)
MCCOY: Sulu!
SULU: What is it? What's the matter?
MCCOY: Did you see them?
SULU: See what? I don't see anything. What is it, Doc?

[Glade]

MCCOY: Captain, are you beaming down?

[Kirk's quarters]

KIRK: I hadn't planned to, Bones. Why?

[Glade]

MCCOY: Well, either our scouting probes and detectors are malfunctioning, and all us scouts careless and beauty-intoxicated, or I must report myself unfit for duty.

[Kirk's quarters]

KIRK: Explain.

[Glade]

MCCOY: On this supposedly uninhabited planet, I just saw a large rabbit pull a gold watch from his vest and claim that he was late.
KIRK: That's pretty good. I got one for you. The rabbit was followed by a little blonde girl, right?

[Glade]

MCCOY: As a matter of fact, yes.

[Planet surface]

(An establishing shot of a landscape)
DAWKINS: McCoy's giant, bipedal rabbit was obviously the product of natural selection operating on random mutation. 

MCCOY: A talking rabbit wearing a vest with a pocket watch?

DAWKINS: Don’t ever be lazy enough, defeatist enough, cowardly enough to say ‘I don’t understand it so an intelligent designer did it.’ Say instead, that it’s a puzzle, it’s strange, it’s a challenge that we should rise to. Whether we rise to the challenge by questioning the truth of the observation, or by expanding our science in new and exciting directions–the proper and brave response to any such challenge is to tackle it head-on. And until we’ve found a proper answer to the mystery, it’s perfectly ok simply to say ‘this is something we don’t yet understand–but we’re working on it’. It’s the only honest thing to do. Intelligent designers, they can be fun. Everybody likes a good story. Myths are fun, as long as you don’t confuse them with the truth.

KIRK: McCoy! McCoy!
MCCOY: Over here. Over here.
(They meet up by the lake)
KIRK: Bones, know any good rabbit jokes lately?
MCCOY: As a matter of fact, I do, but this is not one of them. Look at this. (a pair of large tracks in the soil) I saw what I saw, or maybe I hallucinated it, but I want you to take a look and tell me what you think about it.
KIRK: Footprints. Could be a rabbit. It would have to be an unusual creature to make this size tracks. What about Mister Sulu? Will he confirm what you saw?
MCCOY: Negative. He was examining the flora at the time.
KIRK: This is turning out to be one very unusual shore leave.
MCCOY: Well, it could have been worse.
KIRK: How?
MCCOY: You could have seen the rabbit.
KIRK: What's the matter, Bones, you getting a persecution complex?
MCCOY: Well, yeah, I'm beginning to feel a little bit picked on, if that's what you mean.
KIRK: More tracks. Looks like your rabbit came from over there.
MCCOY: A girl's footprints. The young blonde girl I saw chasing it.
KIRK: Yes. You follow the rabbit. I'll backtrack the girl. I'll meet you around the other side of the hill.
MCCOY: Good. I've got a personal grudge against that rabbit, Jim. 

Captain's log. Stardate 3025.8. Investigation of this increasingly unusual planet continues, and we are seeing things that cannot possibly exist, yet they are undeniably real.

[Rocky outcrop]

(Sulu walks along by a cliff face, a hatch opens in the ground and out comes a Samurai warrior to attack him. 

KIRK: McCoy. McCoy, do you read me? Kirk to McCoy. Come in.
(Sulu comes running over the rocks towards him)
SULU: Captain, take cover! There's a Samurai warrior after me.
KIRK: A what?
SULU: I mean, there was. (no one is chasing him now) Captain, you've got to believe me.
KIRK; Then offhand I'd say our instruments are defective. There are indeed artificial life-forms on this planet.

DAWKINS: Don't jump to hasty conclusions. If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word design. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle. Creative intelligence is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.”

SULU: You'd better have a look at this, sir. (the Samurai is a plastic dummy) I don't understand.
KIRK: Neither do I, Mister Sulu, but before we leave this planet, I will.
SULU: It's like a dummy, Captain. It couldn't be alive.
KIRK: Tricorder?
SULU: Still operating, sir.
KIRK: Bones, what do you make of that?
MCCOY: This is not human skin tissue, Captain. It more closely resembles the cellular casting we use for wound repairs. Much finer, of course.
KIRK: I want an exact judgment, Bones.
MCCOY: This is definitely a mechanical contrivance. It has the same basic cell structure as the plants here, even the trees, the grass.
KIRK: Are you saying this is a plant?
MCCOY: I'm saying that these are all multicellular castings. The plants, the animals, the people. They're all being manufactured.
DAWKINS: Negative, doctor. It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. “It is possible that the Samurai warrior was made by alien engineers in a subterranean factory shielded from our scanning devices. Intelligent design can't be ruled out as a matter of principle. There is certainly nothing impossible about hypothesis. But on grounds of probability it should be kept as an explanation of last resort. It is unparsimonious, demanding more than routinely weak evidence before we should believe it. If you hear hooves clip-clopping down a London street, it could be a zebra or even a unicorn, but, before we assume that it’s anything other than a horse, we should demand a certain minimal standard of evidence. 

(There's a buzzing sound in the air, and a plane flies overhead)

[Woodland path]

TELLER: What is it?
RODRIGUEZ: Of all the crazy things. Remember what I was telling you a while ago, about the early wars and funny air vehicles they used? That's one of them.
DAWKINS: There must be some natural explanation. Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as the biological evolution of a Mitsubishi A6M Zero, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which intelligent design has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous. That's a science stopper!

Memes, Demons, and Dawkins

It is not entirely clear how it is that positing unseen and undefined entities that infect human minds by unassessed processes involving the entities’ own quest for transmission and that cause people to do things that transcend their genetic imperatives is fundamentally different from medieval demonology or, in any case, qualifies as an empirically grounded explanation in terms of natural causes.

Jeffrey Schloss & Michael Murray, eds., The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion (Oxford 2009), 24.

Empirically equivalent

The following is from Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (pp 36-37):

[L]et's consider a statement made by Dawkins in his first work, The Selfish Gene.

[Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

We see here a powerful and influential interpretation of a basic scientific concept. But are these strongly interpretative statements themselves actually scientific?

To appreciate the issue, consider the following rewriting of this paragraph by the celebrated Oxford physiologist and systems biologist Denis Noble. What is proven empirical fact is retained; what is interpretative has been changed, this time offering a somewhat different reading of things.

[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.

Dawkins and Noble see things in completely different ways...They simply cannot both be right. Both smuggle in a series of quite different value judgments and metaphysical statements. Yet their statements are "empirically equivalent." In other words, they both have equally good grounding in observation and experimental evidence. So which is right? Which is more scientific? How could we decide which is to be preferred on scientific grounds? As Noble observes — and Dawkins concurs — "no-one seems to be able to think of an experiment that would detect an empirical difference between them."

Life behind the glass partition

Richard Dawkins

I feel sorry for the Pope and all old Catholic priests. Imagine having a wasted life to look back on and no sex.

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/statuses/300976272975212544

Of course, I’m no fan of the papacy or the Roman priesthood. That said:

i) Some priests lead double lives. And you doubless have some priests who were sexually active as teenagers, before they took their vows. In addition, some Catholic widowers enter the priesthood.

ii) Within the framework of atheism, what does it mean to waste your life? What’s the standard of comparison? “Wasted” in contrast to what?

I suppose Dawkins is suggesting that since we only get one shot at life, we should make the most of our brief, unrepeatable opportunity. And a priest is missing out on the best this life has to offer.

But atheists keep assuring us that even though human existence has no objective purpose or value, yet as long as we take satisfaction in whatever we’re doing, our life is meaningful to us. Well, then, if a man finds personal fulfillment in the priesthood, how is that a wasted life?

Maybe Dawkins would say he’s devoting his life to an illusion. So what? Many people love fantasy. They love opera, novels, movies, music videos, and other fictitious entertainment. They prefer fantasy to reality. They immerse themselves in science fiction. They find real life banal.

Does Dawkins think they are wasting their life? If so, who is he to judge?

iii) There’s something ironically Christian about Dawkins’ indictment. From a Christian standpoint, it is possible to squander the gift of life. To blow your opportunities. To fall short of the goal. To drop out of the race before you cross the finish line. To lead a misdirected life. An aimless life or a life with the wrong aims. That’s the tragedy of a godless lifestyle.

iv) Suppose you had a happy life, as Dawkins defines it. What’s so wonderful about looking back on life if you have nothing to look forward to in life? If your best days are behind you, how does looking back on life give you a sense of satisfaction? Wouldn’t your memories be a curse?

Consider life from a godless vantage point. Life is like a room with a bulletproof glass partition. We are born into a big spacious room. We have all that space ahead of us. That’s our future. Wide open with boundless opportunities and awaiting discoveries.

Behind us lies the glass partition. That’s our past. When we’re born, the space behind the glass partition is just a sliver.

But as we pass through the lifecycle, the past and future distribution steadily shifts. What lies ahead contracts in proportion to what lies behind. Ever more of our life lies behind the glass partition. Through the window of memory we can see our past, but the partition blocks us from reexperiencing the past. That’s unrepeatable. Irrevocable. Out of reach.

Sometimes we wish we could go back for a visit. Repeat our favorite days. Or take the other fork in the road we passed by the first time around. But it’s too late. No encores. No second chances.

As we age, the partition advances. The partition is pushing us towards the wall. Pushing us ever closer to the other side of the room. The room becomes increasingly cramped. When we look ahead, we see the encroaching wall. When we look around, we see tantalizing glimpses of our long lost past, stretching back into the receding distance, behind the impenetrable glass partition. If we had a happy life, we’re taunted by what we see. By what we miss. Futile yearnings.

Near the end of life our remaining days become claustrophobic. We’re trapped in the crawl space between the present and a few feet or inches of the future. The partition is pressing against us. Crushing us. Squeezing the life out of us. We take shallow breaths. Gasp for air. Our face is smack against the wall. And then we’re gone. 

Godlesspell: the two faces of atheism

Richard Dawkins can’t quite make up his mind on how we’re supposed to feel about our godless existence. On the one hand there’s Dawkins in his sour dour drill sergeant mode, who tries to shame us into accepting our sorry lot. That’s the manly, heroic posture to adopt:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting–it might be more comforting, for all I know. But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.

If it's true that it causes people to feel despair, that's tough. It's still the truth. The universe doesn't owe us condolence or consolation; it doesn't owe us a nice warm feeling inside. If it's true, it's true, and you'd better live with it.  

On the other hand there’s Dawkins in his euphoric, Summer-of-Love mode, who tries to inspire us to embrace the sheer wonderfulness of our godless existence. Follow your bliss:

 

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?

Humanism and human worth

According to naturalistic evolution, this is all humans amount to:

Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, USA; 30th Anniversary edition, 2006), 35.

 

Ask yourself if that's adequate go ground human hope, human worth, human rights.

Higgs on Dawkins's fundamentalism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/dec/26/peter-higgs-richard-dawkins-fundamentalism/print

Darwinian Goes Off-Message

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/video_to_dawkin062031.html