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The Selfish Gene says pretty much this. https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925 https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/d

by bentt 3y ago

The Selfish Gene says pretty much this. https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925 https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/01928... However, I've never grabbed onto Dawkins atheism as much as come to believe that the ways things "live" is much more diverse and amazing than we can even imagine.

zvmaz 3y ago
> However, I've never grabbed onto Dawkins atheism as much as come to believe that the ways things "live" is much more diverse and amazing than we can even imagine. What has atheism to do with the "ways things "live"?
- Galaxeblaffer 3y ago
  many religious interpretations of "living" is that it's magic and beyond the grasp of science. it basically boils down to if you believe that life is an inherent property of matter or if you believe that some magic entity makes things live. i know there's a huge gradient in between for most people, but at least for me, i think that might be the root cause (besides a gazillion other reasons) of being an atheist.
  - visarga 3y ago
    Not only religious minds, but modern philosophers too, hold onto dualism - David Chalmers and his "hard problem" of consciousness is a case in point. Here, "hard" signifies what science can't touch, suggesting a distinct domain. Likewise, philosophers such as Giulio Tononi with his Integrated Information Theory are edging towards panpsychism, the idea that everything possesses a shred of consciousness. This, too, is a somewhat religious stance. I personally see no hard problem and believe only certain systems harbor consciousness. The magic element is simply evolution. Evolution, an open-ended optimizer, crafted everything in a singular run. Consciousness exists to safeguard the body and ensure self reproduction, it is the inner optimization loop, the outer one being evolution. That's the link I see between them, they work together and each one is creating/supporting the other.
    - zvmaz 3y ago
      Dualism does not necessarily entail theism or atheism. David Chalmers is an atheist [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p0BjA8mvU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p0BjA8mvU4
      - Kbelicius 3y ago
        I believe that GP was talking about dualism in the philosophy of mind context. In that context dualism basically means that there is a mind and a brain and that in some sense those are two radically different kinds of things.
    - Lambdanaut 3y ago
      Yes. The burden is proof is supposed to be on the person making a claim that breaks the known pattern. We can think of consciousness in it's most simple terms as an experience of any number of bits of data. If we are to accept that we ourselves have experiences, which we must lest we go down a fun pathway to madness (that I highly recommend for those excited by the prospect of existential crises), then there is no reason to accept that "lower" life forms do not also have experiences. This chain of reasoning follows down, down, down, into what we may think to be simpler and simpler experiences of being. Down to the insects, and then the microbes. There comes a point where whether something is alive or not becomes more about its ability to create cogent copies of itself, which certainly does not feel like a requirement of having an experience. Beyond that lies the Earth, the wind, the rain, the basic elements our ancestors have respected and reverred for millenia in societies that did not invent the patriarchal dichotomy between subject and object that teaches us the unfounded "fact" that there are some things called "objects" which have no experience of reality, that we the "subjects" may control entirely. Get deeper into intuitive practices, and one may have experiences of interacting with so called "objects" in ways that suggest a deep union between subject and object. A union that precludes the separation our hectic monkey minds have been taught. It is as if every particle of this universe is "alive" in its own writhing way, at different scales. All feeling the subtle vibrations of others. The burden of proof is on those that say that consciousness "stops" at some point and the entity becomes an object, yet a mechanism has never been found. The belief in fully unconscious objects, is then, faith based. The "hard" problem of consciousness is only a problem when you want it to be.
  - zvmaz 3y ago
    Whether we know what "living" is or whether we solve the hard problem of consciousness is logically distinct from atheism (or theism, for that matter). Unless you think that our ignorance justifies theism, in which case you commit to a logical fallacy.
    - wongarsu 3y ago
      If you have the concept of a soul or spirit as a metaphysical thing, you can nicely sidestep the question of what constitutes a living being by simply saying "the things that are alive are exactly those that have a soul". Not all theistic belief systems do this (I don't think Christianity has a widespread belief that plants have a soul, for one example), and believing in a God indeed does not prevent you from questioning the physical world with a scientific mindset. And even many atheists believe in souls (you don't need to believe in a God to believe in the metaphysical after all). But still, the two concepts aren't entirely orthogonal. Certain religious worldviews are mutually exclusive with certain interpretations on life. And if your interpretation of life conflicts with the locally prevalent religion that might cause you to become an atheist.
      - pixl97 3y ago
        Uh, this seems like a turtles all the way down problem as faith has just pushed the problem over to this nebulous soul thingy that has no strict definition or means of identification. How do you falsify what a soul is or isn't?
  - jklinger410 3y ago
    If you are looking to the divine to describe every mystery then you belong with the religious folk.
  - Scarblac 3y ago
    Being an atheist doesn't need a "root cause". Believing in something needs reasons, the absence of belief is the default.
    - Fidelix 3y ago
      That would be better described as agnosticism. In practice, people who identify as atheists - such as Dawkins - affirm that there is no god. That's a belief.
      - tshaddox 3y ago
        But it’s a belief about epistemology, not a bunch of specific affirmations about the thousands of deities and mythical creatures that humans have proposed. The agnosticism/atheism dichotomy is pretty silly once you think in terms of epistemology, particularly if you believe in fallibilism or even philosophical skepticism.
      - neuromanser 3y ago
        Agnostic - I don't know if there's a God. Atheist - I don't think there's a God. Is that wrong?
      - Scarblac 3y ago
        Only religious people care about distinctions between agnosticism and atheism. Religious people can't even agree on what this God concept is supposed to be, but they can make fine distinctions in the ways people don't share their belief in it.
    - Galaxeblaffer 3y ago
      of course atheism doesn't need a root cause, but you can still justify this default by trying to dive down into why it actually is the default and to me personally when i boil the whole thing down this is sort of the root of why.
tasty_freeze 3y ago
Dawkins had something to contribute when it comes to the claims of creationism, specifically the biological evidence for common descent. But when it comes to the question more generally, he is not a good source for counter-apologetics. He simply has little background in theology to make informed, nuanced claims. There are others (like agnostic Bart Ehrman) who have the education and decades of study to comment on this history of religious thought.
- jgeada 3y ago
  That's a bit like claiming that an astrophysicist needs to understand astrology to make informed nuanced claims. That is obviously absurd, it is the people making outlandish claims with zero concrete evidence that need to prove their claims. Just because religion and credulity have been with us a long time does not give them any special status with regards to truth or proofs.
  - tasty_freeze 3y ago
    I'm not saying that Dawkins is wrong, I'm saying a lot of what he wrote was not compelling to anyone who disagrees with him. It has been years since I read his books, but let's say he says, "We all know it is extremely unlikely that a dead person came back to life, much less physically ascended into heaven? Where is this place heaven?" That might sound cutting to someone on the side of Dawkins, but to those who are religious he sounds like a simpleton, as if their religion hasn't already given them an answer to such elementary questions. On the other hand, people steeped in religious tradition know all the arguments and counter arguments and can contest religious claims in a way that has a greater chance of breaking through. For instance, it is 100% obvious and undeniable to most Christians that Jesus claimed to be God and that his disciples also believed that. Bart Ehrman has an entire book [1], based on historical precedents and writing contemporary to early Christianity, as well as having spent years reading the Gospels in its original Greek, which shows that that "obvious" narrative was alien to early Christians. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Jesus_Became_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Jesus_Became_God
- aerique 3y ago
replete 3y ago
The interview Dawkins had with the Indian metaphysician (I forgot the name) made me realize how blinded Dawkins is by his material-reductionist belief system. Dawkins appeared to have no idea what the man was talking about because his belief system could not compute the meaning of what the man was trying to explain to him. Sapolsky's Harvard lectures on human biology in particular the fractal nature of the visual cortex changed how I think and understand, what stands out most from those lectures are of the problems reducing a complex system..
- code_biologist 3y ago
  Sapolsky has a new book coming out literally today called "Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will". Obviously I haven't read the book (yet) but here's the NYT promo interview https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/science/free-will-sapolsky.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/science/free-will-sapolsk... : In his latest book, “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will,” Dr. Sapolsky confronts and refutes the biological and philosophical arguments for free will. He contends that we are not free agents, but that biology, hormones, childhood and life circumstances coalesce to produce actions that we merely feel were ours to choose.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    But if that holds then he doesn't deserve any credit for writing the book right? Since it was already predetermined.
    - someplaceguy 3y ago
      If you give him credit, it increases the chances that he writes another good book in the future. Just because you don't have free will doesn't mean your behavior is not affected by your environment.
      - confidantlake 3y ago
        The act of me giving him credit or not doing it has already been determined.
joe__f 3y ago
I find him to be more of a sort of 'scientific theist'. He's so actively belligerent towards religious people, the way he spreads the gospel of science is very similar to some of the (to me) less palatable proselytising parts of Abrahamic religions.
- felipeerias 3y ago
  Somebody described his brand of atheism as essentially an Anglican heresy, since he shares most of the same moral and sociocultural views, as well as the same burning desire to bring people “out of the dark and into the light”. He just happens to disagree on the theology.
  - joe__f 3y ago
    Haha yes the irony is palpable. Maybe 'scientific theist' is pretty unfair actually, plenty of theists that I meet don't force their beliefs on other people, it should be 'scientific missionary' or something.
webdoodle 3y ago
The Root of All Evil had a profound impact on me. I read it when Reddit, /r/Atheism and /r/science were still young and cool. It led me to read a lot of Dawkins other works, but perhaps more importantly led me to read folks like Suzanne Blackmore's work on memetics.

by bentt 3y ago

zvmaz 3y ago

> However, I've never grabbed onto Dawkins atheism as much as come to believe that the ways things "live" is much more diverse and amazing than we can even imagine. What has atheism to do with the "ways things "live"?

Galaxeblaffer 3y ago
many religious interpretations of "living" is that it's magic and beyond the grasp of science. it basically boils down to if you believe that life is an inherent property of matter or if you believe that some magic entity makes things live. i know there's a huge gradient in between for most people, but at least for me, i think that might be the root cause (besides a gazillion other reasons) of being an atheist.
- visarga 3y ago
  Not only religious minds, but modern philosophers too, hold onto dualism - David Chalmers and his "hard problem" of consciousness is a case in point. Here, "hard" signifies what science can't touch, suggesting a distinct domain. Likewise, philosophers such as Giulio Tononi with his Integrated Information Theory are edging towards panpsychism, the idea that everything possesses a shred of consciousness. This, too, is a somewhat religious stance. I personally see no hard problem and believe only certain systems harbor consciousness. The magic element is simply evolution. Evolution, an open-ended optimizer, crafted everything in a singular run. Consciousness exists to safeguard the body and ensure self reproduction, it is the inner optimization loop, the outer one being evolution. That's the link I see between them, they work together and each one is creating/supporting the other.
  - zvmaz 3y ago
    Dualism does not necessarily entail theism or atheism. David Chalmers is an atheist [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p0BjA8mvU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p0BjA8mvU4
    - Kbelicius 3y ago
      I believe that GP was talking about dualism in the philosophy of mind context. In that context dualism basically means that there is a mind and a brain and that in some sense those are two radically different kinds of things.
  - Lambdanaut 3y ago
    Yes. The burden is proof is supposed to be on the person making a claim that breaks the known pattern. We can think of consciousness in it's most simple terms as an experience of any number of bits of data. If we are to accept that we ourselves have experiences, which we must lest we go down a fun pathway to madness (that I highly recommend for those excited by the prospect of existential crises), then there is no reason to accept that "lower" life forms do not also have experiences. This chain of reasoning follows down, down, down, into what we may think to be simpler and simpler experiences of being. Down to the insects, and then the microbes. There comes a point where whether something is alive or not becomes more about its ability to create cogent copies of itself, which certainly does not feel like a requirement of having an experience. Beyond that lies the Earth, the wind, the rain, the basic elements our ancestors have respected and reverred for millenia in societies that did not invent the patriarchal dichotomy between subject and object that teaches us the unfounded "fact" that there are some things called "objects" which have no experience of reality, that we the "subjects" may control entirely. Get deeper into intuitive practices, and one may have experiences of interacting with so called "objects" in ways that suggest a deep union between subject and object. A union that precludes the separation our hectic monkey minds have been taught. It is as if every particle of this universe is "alive" in its own writhing way, at different scales. All feeling the subtle vibrations of others. The burden of proof is on those that say that consciousness "stops" at some point and the entity becomes an object, yet a mechanism has never been found. The belief in fully unconscious objects, is then, faith based. The "hard" problem of consciousness is only a problem when you want it to be.
- zvmaz 3y ago
  Whether we know what "living" is or whether we solve the hard problem of consciousness is logically distinct from atheism (or theism, for that matter). Unless you think that our ignorance justifies theism, in which case you commit to a logical fallacy.
  - wongarsu 3y ago
    If you have the concept of a soul or spirit as a metaphysical thing, you can nicely sidestep the question of what constitutes a living being by simply saying "the things that are alive are exactly those that have a soul". Not all theistic belief systems do this (I don't think Christianity has a widespread belief that plants have a soul, for one example), and believing in a God indeed does not prevent you from questioning the physical world with a scientific mindset. And even many atheists believe in souls (you don't need to believe in a God to believe in the metaphysical after all). But still, the two concepts aren't entirely orthogonal. Certain religious worldviews are mutually exclusive with certain interpretations on life. And if your interpretation of life conflicts with the locally prevalent religion that might cause you to become an atheist.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Uh, this seems like a turtles all the way down problem as faith has just pushed the problem over to this nebulous soul thingy that has no strict definition or means of identification. How do you falsify what a soul is or isn't?
- jklinger410 3y ago
  If you are looking to the divine to describe every mystery then you belong with the religious folk.
- Scarblac 3y ago
  Being an atheist doesn't need a "root cause". Believing in something needs reasons, the absence of belief is the default.
  - Fidelix 3y ago
    That would be better described as agnosticism. In practice, people who identify as atheists - such as Dawkins - affirm that there is no god. That's a belief.
    - tshaddox 3y ago
      But it’s a belief about epistemology, not a bunch of specific affirmations about the thousands of deities and mythical creatures that humans have proposed. The agnosticism/atheism dichotomy is pretty silly once you think in terms of epistemology, particularly if you believe in fallibilism or even philosophical skepticism.
    - neuromanser 3y ago
      Agnostic - I don't know if there's a God. Atheist - I don't think there's a God. Is that wrong?
    - Scarblac 3y ago
      Only religious people care about distinctions between agnosticism and atheism. Religious people can't even agree on what this God concept is supposed to be, but they can make fine distinctions in the ways people don't share their belief in it.
  - Galaxeblaffer 3y ago
    of course atheism doesn't need a root cause, but you can still justify this default by trying to dive down into why it actually is the default and to me personally when i boil the whole thing down this is sort of the root of why.

tasty_freeze 3y ago

Dawkins had something to contribute when it comes to the claims of creationism, specifically the biological evidence for common descent. But when it comes to the question more generally, he is not a good source for counter-apologetics. He simply has little background in theology to make informed, nuanced claims. There are others (like agnostic Bart Ehrman) who have the education and decades of study to comment on this history of religious thought.

jgeada 3y ago
That's a bit like claiming that an astrophysicist needs to understand astrology to make informed nuanced claims. That is obviously absurd, it is the people making outlandish claims with zero concrete evidence that need to prove their claims. Just because religion and credulity have been with us a long time does not give them any special status with regards to truth or proofs.
- tasty_freeze 3y ago
  I'm not saying that Dawkins is wrong, I'm saying a lot of what he wrote was not compelling to anyone who disagrees with him. It has been years since I read his books, but let's say he says, "We all know it is extremely unlikely that a dead person came back to life, much less physically ascended into heaven? Where is this place heaven?" That might sound cutting to someone on the side of Dawkins, but to those who are religious he sounds like a simpleton, as if their religion hasn't already given them an answer to such elementary questions. On the other hand, people steeped in religious tradition know all the arguments and counter arguments and can contest religious claims in a way that has a greater chance of breaking through. For instance, it is 100% obvious and undeniable to most Christians that Jesus claimed to be God and that his disciples also believed that. Bart Ehrman has an entire book [1], based on historical precedents and writing contemporary to early Christianity, as well as having spent years reading the Gospels in its original Greek, which shows that that "obvious" narrative was alien to early Christians. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Jesus_Became_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Jesus_Became_God
aerique 3y ago

replete 3y ago

The interview Dawkins had with the Indian metaphysician (I forgot the name) made me realize how blinded Dawkins is by his material-reductionist belief system. Dawkins appeared to have no idea what the man was talking about because his belief system could not compute the meaning of what the man was trying to explain to him. Sapolsky's Harvard lectures on human biology in particular the fractal nature of the visual cortex changed how I think and understand, what stands out most from those lectures are of the problems reducing a complex system..

code_biologist 3y ago
Sapolsky has a new book coming out literally today called "Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will". Obviously I haven't read the book (yet) but here's the NYT promo interview https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/science/free-will-sapolsky.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/science/free-will-sapolsk... : In his latest book, “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will,” Dr. Sapolsky confronts and refutes the biological and philosophical arguments for free will. He contends that we are not free agents, but that biology, hormones, childhood and life circumstances coalesce to produce actions that we merely feel were ours to choose.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  But if that holds then he doesn't deserve any credit for writing the book right? Since it was already predetermined.
  - someplaceguy 3y ago
    If you give him credit, it increases the chances that he writes another good book in the future. Just because you don't have free will doesn't mean your behavior is not affected by your environment.
    - confidantlake 3y ago
      The act of me giving him credit or not doing it has already been determined.

joe__f 3y ago

I find him to be more of a sort of 'scientific theist'. He's so actively belligerent towards religious people, the way he spreads the gospel of science is very similar to some of the (to me) less palatable proselytising parts of Abrahamic religions.

felipeerias 3y ago
Somebody described his brand of atheism as essentially an Anglican heresy, since he shares most of the same moral and sociocultural views, as well as the same burning desire to bring people “out of the dark and into the light”. He just happens to disagree on the theology.
- joe__f 3y ago
  Haha yes the irony is palpable. Maybe 'scientific theist' is pretty unfair actually, plenty of theists that I meet don't force their beliefs on other people, it should be 'scientific missionary' or something.

webdoodle 3y ago

The Root of All Evil had a profound impact on me. I read it when Reddit, /r/Atheism and /r/science were still young and cool. It led me to read a lot of Dawkins other works, but perhaps more importantly led me to read folks like Suzanne Blackmore's work on memetics.