“John Cornwell”
Richard Dawkins takes an exasperated look at John Cornwell’s throughgoing misrepresentation of his book. In one example, Cornwell takes part of a general discussion of consolation, which includes this passage –
We can also get consolation through discovering a new way of thinking about a situation. A philosopher points out that there is nothing special about the moment when an old man dies. The child that he once was “died’ long ago, not by suddenly ceasing to live but by growing up. Each of the seven ages of man “dies’ by slowly morphing into the next. From this point of view, the moment when the old man finally expires is no different from the slow “deaths’ throughout his life.
and says this about it (the ‘you’ is Dawkins) –
The atheist “philosopher’s” view you cite argues that when an old man dies, “The child that he once was “died’ long ago. . . From this point of view, the moment when the old man finally expires is no different from the slow ‘deaths’ throughout his life.” Tell that to a teenager dying of cancer, and his family.
The ridiculous scare quotes pissed me off as soon as I saw them, and they pissed me off even more when Dawkins elucidated:
Do you see what Cornwell is up to here? First he puts the word “philosopher” in quotation marks, which can only have been intended sarcastically. In a footnote, I attributed the argument to Derek Parfit, who happens to be an extremely distinguished philosopher, author of the book Reasons and Persons, described by another eminent philosopher, Alan Ryan, as “something close to a work of genius”. Even if Cornwell didn’t see my attribution to Parfit, his sarcastic quotation marks were uncalled-for. How did he know whether I got the argument from a real philosopher that he respects, or not? Why be sarcastic?
Why indeed? Apparently because he’s yet another defender of religion who wants to hurl random abuse rather than say anything even faintly reasonable. Right, the “philosopher” Derek Parfit; well played.
Second, Cornwell describes my “philosopher” as an atheist, although I never said he was an atheist and Parfit’s point would be just as valid whether he is or not. There never was any suggestion that the argument is an atheist argument, put by an atheist philosopher. That wasn’t why I brought it up, not at all. Once again, Cornwell is reading what he expects to see, not what is actually there. Third, as with the Linklater misreading, Cornwell seems to think that I am offering the (Parfit) argument as an atheistic alternative to religious consolation. Why else would he add the gratuitously sour sentence: “Tell that to a teenager dying of cancer . . .” Once again, I was offering the Parfit argument simply as an illustration to clarify the kind of thing that consolation can mean: the consolation we can derive from a new way of thinking about familiar facts.
Apart from all that, it’s good stuff.
But if that is irritating, the following is gratuitously offensive. Cornwell is talking about Dostoevsky’s reading of nineteenth century thinkers. He mentions Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Utopian Marxism, and “a set of ideas that you would have applauded – Social Darwinism.” Does Cornwell seriously imagine that I would applaud Social Darwinism? Nobody nowadays applauds Social Darwinism, and I have been especially outspoken in my condemnation of it (see, for example, the title essay that begins A Devil’s Chaplain).
He’s right you know – I’ve quoted that passage from ‘A Devil’s Chaplain’ and from Darwin’s letter which is the source of the phrase, more than once, in response to one misreader or another who gets Dawkins wrong on this. People are convinced that he’s a great naturalistic fallacy fan but he’s not, and he’s said that as clearly and definitely as it’s possible to say it. Natural selection sucks. And I’m not much impressed by John Cornwell, either.
The Social Darwinist bit seems odd in conjunction with the end part of this.
I think Dawkins is making a mistake in accusing Cornwell of deliberate misrepresentation; both an error of fact (IMHO) and an error of tactics. It is, frankly, foolish to believe that when you attack someone’s deeply-held beliefs, that you won’t get an emotional response back, and to reply with another emotional response does not improve your standing as a rational commentator.
Of course, there are atheists whose reactions apparently never go anywhere near the brain on the way from the gut to the open air…….”they do it all the time” what amazing pointless codswallop.
‘Deeply held’ belief is a misnomer. There’s nothing deep about religion. the study of theology maybe complex, but hanging on to a set of arcane biases and rules against *all* the evidence is shallow, and the waste of intellect is equivalent of using an interstellar starship as a doorstop.
I agree it’s a journalistic kind of phrase and should therefore be avoided. I was actually intending it to mean something rather specific, something like “emotionally-supported” as opposed to “rationally-supported”, hypothesising as I do that (a) tendency to religious belief has an underlying genetic component and (b) that there is individual variation in this respect.
In particular, I hypothesise that people who came to religion, or back to religion, relatively late in life, and who have a long intellectual struggle with it, may be people who have a strong genetic propensity to be open to supernatural explanation. AFAIK Cornwell is one of those people; Francis Collins is another. And CS Lewis.
I don’t think ‘shallow’ is a useful word here.
potentilla – I regretted that outburst as soon as I hit ‘go’. I agree with the genetic propensity hypothesis. I had a grapple with faith a couple of years ago, for the first and only time of my life. My fascination for the ability of humans to love unconditionality (e.g. a parent toward his or her child) became a fixation, and I wondered if that the very knowledge that it is *possibile* for a human to extend that unconditional love to the whole of life on earth is what unconsciously drives religious belief -that this condition defines what a believer sees in his or her God, and that it is the closest to perfection we can get.
Thinking I was finally understanding what, for instance Beethoven, believed so passionately while he wrote his faultlessly beautiful string quartets, in a atate of profound deafness, was a very emotive and compelling experience. I wondered if some people – believers – have this nagging incongruity regarding universal love set as a default at the basis of their otherwise perfectly rational minds. They way they deal with it is to cast it very early in their intellectual development as inexplicable, hence supernatural, spiritual, and learn to live with it with the help of religious texts and fellow travellers. I ended up in a right pickle over it – that I too could, at least theoretically, embrace this unconditionality, so why not God ?
However it all fell over in about twenty-four hours on Boxing Day 2004 when the enormity of the Asian tsunami hit home. A God that deals that violence to his ‘children’ has no place in my heart, I thought. Suffice to say I could not reconcile that intellectually, and have been faithless (again) ever since. Quite happily so. The quartets are still astonishingly beautiful.
The “unconditional love” point is an interesting one, which I haven’t seen made before. Of course, for evolutionary-psychology bores like me, unconditional love for one’s children can readily be explained without recourse to a god hypothesis. And do people love anyone other than their children unconditionally? I rather doubt it. (“Their children” doesn’t necessarily literally have to be their own biological children, of course, just children who somehow trigger whatever our brain uses to decide who our biological children are).
I like to use the term “spirituality” to refer to the genetic propensity for supernatural explanation. It’s not pejorative, and to me it means more or less zero.
If you are interested in the subject, Justin Barrett’s “Why Would Anyone Believe in God?” is an interesting summary of the adaptive cognitive traits that might produce the religious propensity as a spandrel (ie evolutionary by-product). JB is himself a believer, which is good because one doesn’t constantly worry that he might be overstating his case in order to support his conclusions, since his conclusions support atheism just as well (better, IMHO) as belief.
“Of course, for evolutionary-psychology bores like me, unconditional love for one’s children can readily be explained without recourse to a god hypothesis. “
Yes. This knowledge hasn’t made my godless experience of parenting any less profound for me. In fact not having God in the way has probably left me with more time to profoundly experience.
“Why Would Anyone Believe in God?” sounds very interesting, thanks for the tip.
If you really want to be annoyed at bad reasoning and random definitions check out Salley Vickers on Cornwell:- http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2361294.ece
which to my fury was on the Arts & Letters Daily site.
I’ve given her a brief fisk on my site but I would offer her up as fisking for beginners. And a girlish style as well.
Potentilla – I’m not sure about your genetic explanations. Since religion has often come with ascetic celibacy I would have thought it a poor adaptation for continuing the species (I’m probably doing Darwin at kindergarten level here). As for artistic creation, those who do it feel like the gods as they do it but are often very bad at parenting. I can’t see how it helps the species.
KB Player – (a) evolution is not (mainly, possibly at all) to do with helping the species; that’s a fundamental misunderstanding (b) in any case, the best current evolutionary explanations for religion revolve around it being a side-effect of things that are adaptive (for individuals), rather than being adaptive in itself and (c) I don’t think I agree that “religion has often come with ascetic celibacy”; I would say that celibacy is only enjoined upon a fairly small minority of religious people.
Thanks potentilla. I knew my knowledge of Darwinism was at the infant stage. Celibacy though including enforced virginity and castration is a motif that runs through religions. Also sexual prohibition of one kind or another. And the idea of evolutionary explanations even as side-effects seems to be insufficient to refinements of what we broadly call the spiritual impulse or the artistic impulse. You may “explain” music in that way but why Mozart rather than Salieri?
Anyway before ever writing the word “Darwin” again I’ll read the book you recommend.
The artistic impulse is a different thing again; the best hypothesis at the moment is sexual selection, like the peacock’s tail, but more unisex.
I’d probably better not clutter up Ophelia’s comments by writing lengthy essays on evolution and human evolutionary psychology, but I can make lots of other book recommendations if you are interested!
I tracked you down to Edinburgh – I’m in the Highlands – here if you’re interested (sorry, O, blogwhoring again).
No need to apologize; blogwhoring quite permissible. So are essays on evolution and human evolutionary psychology, for that matter.
I take issue with your first comment though –
“It is, frankly, foolish to believe that when you attack someone’s deeply-held beliefs, that you won’t get an emotional response back”
Did Dawkins believe that? Is there any reason to think he did? In any case he wasn’t criticizing the emotionality of Cornwell’s response, he was criticizing the way it misrepresented what he said. I don’t think emotion gives people the right to pretend people have said what they didn’t say – and Cornwell did this in a book, remember, so he doesn’t have the excuse of being a newspaper columnist in a hurry. We could say he simply failed to exercise due diligence.
I just thought the tone of his response on his own site was taken-by-surprise. Maybe I’m wrong, or maybe the surprise he was taken by was the fact that it was Cornwell specifically who was misrepresenting him.
I don’t think emotion gives people the right etc either, but I do think emotion (indignation, cognitive dissonance) makes it more likely that people won’t be as careful as they should be about the due diligence.
Emotional responses are fine if you’ve just gone up to someone at a dinner party and told them their god doesn’t exist, they’re even understandable in a blog post or comment. You do not (or perhaps should not) expect people with academic pretentions to go and write books based on those emotional responses without at least reflecting on whether the person you’re criticising actually says what you claim they say.
Here’s an article by Cornwell on Dawkins: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2158503,00.html
It contains an expansion on the Nazi jibe and some amusing bait and switch of the literal/metaphorical god variety.
I very much like Nick S’s post #2, above. It really is a good idea once in a while to try to imagine what it is like to be religious. It must help to have had a phase like that (which, alas, I haven’t). Or you can just talk to people who have.
But on another note: I don’t really get why Dawkins irritates people so much…for example, Mark Vernon, here–http://www.philosophynow.org/issue62/62vernon
I found Dawkins bracing, fun, smart, erudite, and wrong in about 25 places. His mistakes don’t send me into a rage, though…I guess because, bottom line, he’s a member of my tribe.
“Since religion has often come with ascetic celibacy
I read: “The Church was daily receiving vast accessions of property from the pious zeal of its wealthy members, the death-bead repentance of despairing sinners, and the munificence of emperors and perfects, while the effort to procure the inalienability of its possessions dates from an early period. Its acquisitions, both real and personal, were of course exposed too much greater risk of dilapidation when the ecclesiastics in charge of its widely scattered riches had families for whose provision a natural parental anxiety might be expected to override the sense of duty in discharging the trust confided to them. The simplest mode of averting the danger might therefore seem to be to relieve the churchman of the cares of paternity, and, by cutting asunder all the ties of family and kindred, to bind him completely and for ever to the Church and to that alone. This motive, as we shall see, was openly acknowledged as a powerful one in later times, and it no doubt served as an argument of weight in the minds of those who urged and secured the adoption of the canon.” pp. 42-43
“I would have thought it a poor adaptation for continuing the species”
I wouldn’t as they still, right the way through history, behind/beyond closed monastic/presbytery doors had their concubines, mistresses, sweethearts, lovers and common law wives. Moreover, too this way they left their trademarks behind. There was two nights ago on Irish TV a programme regarding Father Michael Cleary, RIP a Dublin Curate who secretly lived with a very vulnerable woman [who while we’re on the subject grew up in Goldenbridge. I knew her sister very well] He fathered by Phyllis two children which he did not want to recognise, until she forced him – into the position… This very gifted singing priest could charm the hind legs off the back of a donkey. His parishioners and superiors alike doted upon him. Like many priests who father children. He led a double like. There was clearly no way the Cleary Irish species was going to become endangered — by him in any way if he could. Oiche mhaith!
[wearily] Don’t say ‘or someone’ – that’s annoying. Nobody else posts any links in News; nobody else posts anything on B&W; don’t pretend there are gremlins here, it’s silly.
Potentilla I agree,Dawkins bitches about vernon sneering and does the same thing himself by using terms like gratuitously sour or dishonest,I thought it made him look small. Andy why would you want to hate the guy?just because you disagree with his point of view?
Nick I dont get this you believed in a god that stood by as the holocaust took place but stopped believing after a tsunami?
Sorry Cornwell not Vernon.
Richard – he is entitled to use those words because this is a direct and personal attack that misrepresents him.
In particular, Cornwell accuses Dawkins of Nazi-like rhetoric and “…urging the elimination of religion in the name of all that civil society holds dear…”
That is rather stronger stuff than the two words you use as an example of Dawkins being “sneering”:
“sour”, in the context of:
“Cornwell seems to think that I am offering the (Parfit) argument as an atheistic alternative to religious consolation. Why else would he add the gratuitously sour sentence: “Tell that to a teenager dying of cancer . . .”
where it is entirely fair because Cornwell is saying
“Tell that to a teenager dying of cancer, and his family”
in response to a balanced reflection on the meaning of ‘consolation’ where Dawkins says “A philosopher points out that there is nothing special about the moment when an old man dies. The child that he once was “died’ long ago, not by suddenly ceasing to live but by growing up. A man who does not relish the prospect of his own death may find this changed perspective consoling. Or maybe not, but it is an example of consolation through reflection”
That really is a sour and spiteful note that fundamentally misunderstands what Dawkins is trying to say.
The word ‘dishonest’ is used in the intro “This is a tendency for critics to read what their prejudices expect to see in a book…I am wondering whether I was being too charitable. I am now wondering whether he is actively dishonest.” which is what his entire article is about – whether or not Cornwell has deliberately set out to misread what Dawkins has said. The second use is when Dawkins objects to Cornwell saying “You refer to believers as “faith sufferers”, and you refer to you and your associates as “we doctors”.” because the expressions have no connection in the book with “we doctors” used in a section about genetic linkage (and Dawkins says that he used it jockularly), and “At the very least, it certainly looks suspiciously like petty malice: trawling my pages to find something unpleasant to say”. This is important because it ties in with Cornwell’s Nazi allegation:
“Dawkins parallels his viral analogies, moreover, with sinister medical analogies….He refers to believers as “faith sufferers”, and to himself and like-minded associates as “we doctors”. Much as I am convinced that Dawkins deplores the ideology of nazism, the precedents of such medical analogies, applied to certain religious and racial groups, have hardly been innocuous in the history of the 20th century.”
So I think you’re playing silly rhetorical games with that objection because the two situations are entirely disanalogous – Cornwell accuses Dawkins of wanting to expunge the religious in a manner akin to the Nazis, and Dawkins says that Cornwell bases his accusations on blatant misreadings of his writing which he thinks may well be due to dishonesty.
I didnt say he wasnt entitled to use those words P.M I just think a point by point rebutal would have been more efective,it would alow the reader to judge between the emotional atack and the rational responce! instead Dawkins tells the reader what to think.
Nonsense, Richard; Dawkins did a point by point rebuttal. He compared what Cornwell claimed he said to what he actually said, point by point.
Yes of course he did O.B I was unclear in my last post the point I was trying to make was that I would have found his rebutal much stonger if he hadnt resorted to insults and speculation of Cornwells motives,how does he know what was in the guys head?
And hasn’t Cornwall broken Godwin’s Law – and putatively lost the argument?
Is there not some kind of corollary of Godwin’s law about the probability of wrongly invoking Godwin’s law?
No that would be Tingey’s law. Of course that also covers misspelling proper names, generation of typos, abusive emails, repetition, whining, shouting, getting things wrong and ignoring corrections from knowledgeable experts, and a few other things.
Like accusing people of l[oung]ing.