Here is what one might consider another installment of an on-going discussion we’re having here about religion and the way its defenders and supporters and promoters and fans re-define it for purposes of persuasion or coercion. One example is from an article by Paul Davies in an old Atlantic (September 2003) I happened to read the other day: ‘E.T. and God.’ It’s basically about what the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for human religion, but along the way he makes this strange (yet very familiar) comment, after calling the dismissal of religion by the director of the SETI Institute’s Center for SETI Research ‘rather naive’:

Though many religious movements have come and gone throughout history, some

We were talking about Darwinism and morality, among other things. Here is George C. Williams in Plan and Purpose in Nature as quoted by Richard Dawkins in the title essay of A Devil’s Chaplain:

With what other than condemnation is a person with any moral sense supposed to respond to a system in which the ultimate purpose in life is to be better than your neighbour at getting genes into future generations,…in which that message is always ‘exploit your environment, including your friends and relatives, so as to maximise your genes’ success…?

Dawkins then quotes George Bernard Shaw doubting evolution because he didn’t like its cruelty, H.G. Wells rejoicing in the cruelty, and Julian Huxley trying to derive some … Read the rest

Ah. I see via Normblog and Twisty Sticks that I’ve been neglecting a duty. That’s what I get for reading hastily and selectively because I’m catching up because I’m so far behind because I’ve been working 28 hours a day on this dictionary thing because my colleague kept saying We have to finish in a month no two weeks no a week no three days no an hour no right now, so like Miss Clavell I ran fast and faster, and had such a backlog of reading and posting you would not believe. So, anyway. Jew.

In case there are any of you even more behind than I am, that’s a counter-googlebomb, a googlebomb to counteract an anti-semitic googlebomb. … Read the rest

There are a couple of discussions of Evolutionary Psychology at Twisty Sticks: one here and the other here. They’re interesting because of what appears to be a fairly unshakable assumption that all evolutionary psychologists have a right-wing agenda and that the agenda determines their conclusions. That’s probably true of some evolutionary psychologists – I think I’ve read one or two of those – but it’s not true of all of them. It’s a bit puzzling. It’s not easy to figure out why people are convinced that thinking natural selection might have played a part in making human nature what it is requires being a free marketeer. I’m not a free marketeer, and I think natural selection played a part … Read the rest

Not too bad, thanks. The agony is somewhat abated, as Macaulay said. (Was it Macaulay? I think so. At the age of two, or a week, or something, when a kind evangelical woman spilled some coffee on him.) I’m tottering around, pale and trembling, but recovering. A little weak, a tad mentally unstable, but on the mend. Kind of you to ask. The flowers are lovely. I don’t suppose you brought any chocolates – ? No no, of course not, silly question.

I wrote the Comment yesterday in such a way that it sounds as if I think I wrote the dictionary all by myself. I noticed that after I’d done it, but having done it, didn’t want to correct … Read the rest