Dawkins: If it is a central facet of what it means to be human, so much the worse for humans. The world is not irrational. The world may be unfair but it is not irrational. The rational response to an unfair world is to recognize that we have no right to expect it to be fair. If that sounds callous, I’m sorry, but it is the business of science to understand the way the world is, not to try to derive comfort from it. All we can do is take political and other human action to make fairer that small part of the world over which we have control. As it happens, I think there is a poetic consolation to be found in science, and I tried to give expression to it in Unweaving the Rainbow
Krauss: I was recently in Washington, D.C., where as member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists I unveiled the new Doomsday Clock, which reads five minutes to midnight. After spending time examining the national security policies of the major powers vis a vis nuclear weapons, I am hard pressed to ascribe the word ‘rational’ to any of it. The universe may be unfair, but there are a host of examples that I think suggest human society is also not governed by rationality at the present time.
In any case, the next topic I would like to discuss with you relates to what a scientist’s primary goals should be when talking or writing about religion. Both you and I have devoted a substantial fraction of our time to trying to get people excited about science, while also attempting to explain the bases of our current respective scientific understandings of the universe. So it seems appropriate to ask which is more important: using the contrast between science and religion to teach about science or trying to put religion in its place? I suspect that I want to concentrate more on the first issue, and you want to concentrate more on the second.
I say this because if one is looking to teach people, then it seems clear to me that one needs to reach out to them, to understand where they are coming from, if one is going to seduce them into thinking about science. I often tell teachers, for example, that the biggest mistake any of them can make is to assume that their students are interested in what they are about to say. Teaching is seduction. Telling people, on the other hand, that their deepest beliefs are simply silly—even if they are—and that they should therefore listen to us to learn the truth ultimately defeats subsequent pedagogy. Having said that, if instead the primary purpose in discussing this subject is to put religion in its proper context, then perhaps it is useful to shock people into questioning their beliefs.
Dawkins: The fact that I think religion is bad science, whereas you think it is ancillary to science, is bound to bias us in at least slightly different directions. I agree with you that teaching is seduction, and it could well be bad strategy to alienate your audience before you even start. Maybe I could improve my seduction technique. But nobody admires a dishonest seducer, and I wonder how far you are prepared to go in “reaching out.” Presumably you wouldn’t reach out to a Flat Earther. Nor, perhaps, to a Young Earth Creationist who thinks the entire universe began after the Middle Stone Age. But perhaps you would reach out to an Old Earth Creationist who thinks God started the whole thing off and then intervened from time to time to help evolution over the difficult jumps. The difference between us is quantitative, only. You are prepared to reach out a little further than I am, but I suspect not all that much further.
Krauss: Let me make clearer what I mean by reaching out. I do not mean capitulating to misconceptions but rather finding a seductive way to demonstrate to people that these are indeed misconceptions. Let me give you one example. I have, on occasion, debated both creationists and alien abduction zealots. Both groups have similar misconceptions about the nature of explanation: they feel that unless you understand everything, you understand nothing. In debates, they pick some obscure claim, say, that in 1962 some set of people in Outer Mongolia all saw a flying saucer hovering above a church. Then they ask if I am familiar with this particular episode, and if I say no, they invariably say, “If you have not studied every such episode, then you cannot argue that alien abduction is unlikely to be happening.”
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Add CommentDawkins & all atheist scientists conveniently take what they like and rejected what they don't like to present science as strictly materialistic and by default deny any non-physical reality. Human perception (& animal for that matter) is being supposedly researched and studied using what Dawkins describes as a "scientific standard", namely the double blind. This is utter rot and he knows it. Double blinding is used in drug trials precisely for the reason that it relationally distances the two parties and by such distance destroys insightful perception (not intuitive but insightful, which relies on relationship). To be scientific a control is run along side the experiment THAT IS ALL! Great Prayer experiment produced a nil or negative result. They did not even get a placebo effect. The negative result is interesting. It can only be done by administering a nocebo! See my website http://www.annavictoria.net and find that human perception points to a non-physical reality its science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA nice discussion, and balanced at least on the part of Krauss, whereas Dawkins is his usual self, pontificating and patronizing to those who dare to believe. Although I agree with their views on religious fundamentalism, scientific fundamentalism also has brought misery to the world, namely the belief in racial superiority - which stems from (incorrectly) evolutionary theory. Furthermore, it's preposterous to suggest that people of faith are somehow less intelligent. I try not to ridicule atheists, perhaps Dawkins shouldn't ridicule people or faith, or it makes him as narrow-minded as those who ridicule the non-believers.
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Edited by Milan320 at 04/15/2008 7:29 AM
Krauss is too symphatetic to religion (as an appendix), while Dawkins really pursuits the questioning of the beliefs. Overall it is an interesting discussion.
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