From the archive
I saw a couple of hours ago that Daniel Dennett has left the stage, and I put off mentioning it because it displeases me.
Let’s turn our minds back to December 2006 and the day Judge Jones issued his ruling in the Kitzmiller case. It inspired me to fire off an email to Richard Dawkins inviting him to comment for publication here, which he immediately did, eloquently.
Judge John Jones has given the Founding Fathers the first really good reason to stop spinning in their graves since the Bush junta moved in. It would have been a scandal if any judge had not found against the ID charlatans, but I had expected that he would do so with equivocation: some sort of ‘on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand’ consolation prize for the cavemen of creationism. Not a bit of it. Judge Jones rumbled them, correctly described them as liars and sent them packing, with the words “breathtaking inanity” burning in their ears. The fact that this splendid man is a republican has got to be a good sign for the future. I think the great republic has turned a corner this week and is now beginning the slow, painful haul back to its enlightened, secular foundations.
So I felt encouraged to ask more, and Daniel Dennett was the next up.
Judge John E. Jones’s opinion in the Dover Area School District case is an excellently clear and trenchant analysis of the issues, exposing the fatuity and disingenuousness of the ID movement both in this particular case and in general. However I found one point in it that left me uneasy. In the Conclusion, on page 136, Jones says “Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator [emphasis added].” I have not read the scientific experts’ testimony, and I wonder if Judge Jones has slightly distorted what they said. If they said that the theory of evolution in no way conflicts with the existence of a divine creator, then I must say that I find that claim to be disingenuous. The theory of evolution demolishes the best reason anyone has ever suggested for believing in a divine creator. This does not demonstrate that there is no divine creator, of course, but only shows that if there is one, it (He?) needn’t have bothered to create anything, since natural selection would have taken care of all that. Would the good judge similarly agree that when a defense team in a murder trial shows that the victim died of natural causes, that this in no way conflicts with the state’s contention that the death in question had an author, the accused? What’s the difference?
Gods have been given many job descriptions over the centuries, and science has conflicted with many of them. Astronomy conflicts with the idea of a god, the sun, driving a fiery chariot pulled by winged horses – a divine charioteer. Geology conflicts with the idea of a god who sculpted the Earth a few thousand years ago – a divine planet-former. Biology conflicts with the idea of a god who designed and built the different living species and all their working parts – a divine creator. We don’t ban astronomy and geology from science classes because they conflict with those backward religious doctrines, and we should also acknowledge that evolutionary biology does conflict with the idea of a divine creator and nevertheless belongs in science classes because it is good science.
I think that what the expert scientists may have meant was that the theory of evolution by natural selection in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine . . . prayer-hearer, or master of ceremonies, or figurehead. That is true. For people who need them, there are still plenty of job descriptions for God that are entirely outside the scope of evolutionary biology.
How long will it be before anyone has occasion to write a sentence like this again? Thanks to all those trying their damnedest to make the republic “great again”, the United States has fallen a good few corners back. There’s a lot more pain ahead than Dawkins, or anyone else, could have imagined back then.
YNNB,
I don’t know that I’d be so pessimistic, and I’m a renowned grouch.
Sure, there are things to be concerned about: Trump and the threat to democracy, and climate change being two leading candidates. But there’s always been stuff to be concerned about. We spent decades under the imminent threat of civilization-ending nuclear war. Acid rain, the ozone layer. Crime and inflation were much worse in the 1970s than the rather modest uptick in recent years that has everybody up in arms.
And of course a lot of social progress. The other day I overheard the table next to me having a discussion where an elderly man was explaining to his younger companions (probably his children) that no, actually, it WAS a big deal getting people to say “Ms” instead of “Mrs. or Miss” — like, people really freaked out about it and groused about out-of-control feminists controlling their language, etc. Within living memory it was just accepted by many that adult women couldn’t have their own bank accounts, and men legally couldn’t be guilty of raping their wives. We can still question whether the American public is ready to elect a woman president, but you don’t still hear mainstream figures argue that women aren’t capable of it (because, ya know, hormones and “that time of the month”).
I’m not saying that we should be complacent and figure that today’s and tomorrow’s problems will just be taken care of, but I think that the idea that we’re constantly falling “a few corners back” is the same fallacy that the MAGA types are indulging in.
Even on the specific issue that Dennett and Dawkins were discussing, about secular reasoning advancing, there’s been noticeable progress. The number of people declaring themselves to have no religion (they aren’t mostly atheists, mind you) keeps rising. Creationism, and its thin disguise as “Intelligent Design,” really did get a setback from the Dover decision, though of course they’re still around.
Some years back, Daniel Dennett gave a lecture here in Canberra, which I was privileged to attend, and during which he stated his reasons for maintaining that Charles Darwin was the greatest scientist who ever lived. Iin his own memorable words, “… greater than Newton, greater than Einstein”. because, as I remember it, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection affected so many other areas of thought. It was also my privilege to have a short one-to-one discussion with him afterwards.
I have spent most of my 84 years (retired from that now) teaching secondary science, chiefly biology, and at all levels. In the staff room I shared with others at one stage, I had a desk next to one occupied by a chemistry teacher, who was a practising Christian; as was her academic physicist husband. She would maintain that “there must be a creator of the Universe. It cannot all have come from nothing.!” (Her husband agreed; and they were both lay-preachers at their local church.)
My own academic training was in both the humanities and the sciences, and I maintain that (shared) beliefs are important for community cohesion at whatever level, and people have to have their personal beliefs respected, as long as that respect is mutual.
I have long also been a convert to the position of JBS Haldane: “Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose…I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.” (Possible Worlds, 1927.)
When I survey the vast part of the Universe that we are aware of, from the countless billions or even trillions of galaxies down to the mysteries of quantum mechanics, I find it all very hard to reconcile with the idea that it was all created by a god named Yahweh, who was into blood sacrifice, and in order to save the world from that eternal damnation which was his own invented reward for the human habit of curiosity named ‘Original Sin’ by theologians, he assumed human form and had himself sacrificed (as Jesus Christ) to himself (as Yahweh the vengeance-seeker.)
But it suits some people for their own peace of mind, to accept and believe that. And I am not into destroying their peace of mind, as long as they respect mine. But if they don’t, the gloves come rapidly off.
A creator of the universe cannot have come from nothing!
It’s always perplexed me that the religious happily embrace eternity for their god, but the Idea of an eternal universe is a bridge too far. And that infinity is fine in one direction, the future, but not in the other.
OB @ #4: Ah yes, the old First Cause barney.
Theist: God has always existed. / Atheist: And on the same basis, so then has the tangible Universe. / Theist: But nothing material can last forever. Heraclitus argued from that. / Atheist: But the immaterial idea of God can? So whose eternal and material head gets to carry this head gets to carry this divine idea around forever? / Theist: God’s. He has always existed. / Atheist: So why not the Universe also? / And round and round we go….
The Christian idea of Heaven is also interesting. People die, and the souls (ie consciousnesses, beings; and if they have been good) join the Heavenly Choir and sing God’s praises for the rest of Eternity. That makes God the Infinite Egotist; ie the Infinite Sinful Human. Etc. Etc. Etc.
But I will have to leave this here. I hear someone knocking on my door. Could be that bloke from the Salvation Army back again.
When I was in high school in the 80s, I was fortunate enough to be there as a senior when one of the math teachers persuaded the administration to do an Intro to Philosophy class. The Mind’s I, which Dennett co-wrote/edited with Douglas Hofstadter. It may have been the single most influential thing I ever read, coming at just the right time to open my eyes to the raw power of looking at the world with an analytical approach.
Well done that math teacher, and of course Dennett and Hofstadter.
I saw Dennett at a number of public appearances, the first at a 2009 celebration of Darwin’s 200th birthday. I also had the privilege of spending a bit of personal time while driving Dan and his wife Susan to the airport after a conference in Montreal. He had a rare combination of having brilliant ideas and being able to communicate them, plus by all accounts being an all-round nice guy. It is truly sad that he is gone.
Based on my understanding of Dennett’s philosophy, “Daniel Dennett” did not die, because “Daniel Dennett” did not exist in the first place. He was a collection of uncomprehending competences that produced the illusion of consciousness that could be referred to as “Daniel Dennett.” Recognizing the reality of the illusionary nature of consciousness is very helpful in such times as these.
@Andrew #10: Helpful indeed.