Another of those convergences: I just joined the Richard Dawkins group on Facebook, and discovered that today is his birthday. (Happy birthday sir!) It’s a convergence because over the last week I’ve been horribly dismayed. After decades of near hero-worship on my part, I’ve discovered that he is not acting as the man I’ve always believed him to be.
The issue is his position on group selection. (Don’t go away: it matters.) The way he has defended that position seems contrary to everything I have always so admired about him.
And I have so admired him, for so long. I have to watch myself constantly to avoid the kind of wild-eyed evangelism that serves only to give aid and comfort to the creationist enemy. The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype provided (some of) the fundamental underpinnings for my understanding of (human) existence, and the belief and value system that’s built on that understanding.
I didn’t really need to read The God Delusion — preaching to the choir — but I did so and greatly enjoyed it purely for the joy of his arguments — the lucidity, the cogency, the logical and rhetorical coherence.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve recounted his anecdote about an aging professor who changes his mind. (“My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years.” . . . “We clapped our hands red.”) It still brings tears to my eyes when I read it, and epitomizes how science, for all its real-world failings, is fundamentally different from faith. (Here. Start with “It does happen.”)
So, again, I’m nearly teary-eyed at the stance he has taken, and the rhetoric he’s deployed, in response to a body of thinking that has grown over decades and came to something of a culmination in 2007. (I’m late to the party on this one.) That body of evidence and theory contradicts one of his longest- and strongest-held beliefs: that group selection is hooey, that it could not have had any role in the evolution of human altruism.
Remember the stated goal of Dawkins’ seminal book: “My purpose is to examine the biology of selfishness and altruism.”
His basic theory: genes are the units of selection, and organisms are the vehicles of that selection. If a gene causes organisms to have more grandchildren, the gene’s frequency expands in the population.
Based on this, he rightly pooh-poohed warm, mushy, poorly-reasoned notions about genes contributing to “social cohesion” and the like. No altruistic gene could survive in a group if it didn’t provide net benefit for the individual containing that gene — either by helping the individual, helping kin who have the same gene, or through reciprocal payback from other individuals.
But what about the success of groups? Could groups with more altruistic genes have more grandchildren than groups with more purely self-serving genes? Could that group selection effect predominate over individual selection within the group?
It seems plausible, and from the first time I encountered the conundrum, it has always seemed to me to be a purely statistical question.
And that’s how (a damned impressive set of) mid-20th-century evolutionists went at it. They built models, ran the numbers, and determined that no: group selection could not overwhelm the forces of individual selection. If a gene isn’t good for an individual (and/or his kin), it will die out.
That belief achieved an orthodoxy in the political ecology of scientific academe that largely prevented later scientists from even raising the question, and successfully crushed most of the few efforts to re-examine it. It’s agonizingly similar to the despicable response that sociobiology and evolutionary psychology themselves encountered over those same decades, from the likes of Lewontin, Gould, and the “Theory” humanists.
As a result, both professionals and amateurs — including reasonably diligent amateurs like me — have been unthinkingly chanting along with that orthodoxy for years, decades. I don’t know how many times I’ve discredited thinking that seemed rooted in group-selectionist thinking.
And I was wrong. At least, I was too categorical. So I was sometimes/often wrong.
Here’s what makes me so sad: Richard Dawkins has been perhaps the most powerful voice for that orthodoxy, and he seems to be clinging to that idol even when its feet — his feet — are looking resoundingly clay-like.
Cutting to the meat, simplified:
In 2007, David Sloan Wilson and E. O. Wilson (the founder of sociobiology and one of the most brilliant, diligent, and sober evolutionary biologists to ever live, as Dawkins certainly agrees) published a paper (PDF) laying out the cogent, lucid, and compelling case that group selection can indeed predominate over individual selection in the evolution of altruistic genes — that the group can be a vehicle of selection, just as the individual can. (They talk about “multilevel selection.”)
In other words, genes that benefit the group can proliferate in the larger population, even if those genes are disadvantaged within the group. Again, it’s all a matter of models and statistics, and the Wilsons (no relation) deployed and cited damned convincing models and statistics showing that the earlier evolutionists probably got it wrong.
Now if Dawkins had cogent takedowns of those models and statistics, there is nobody I would rather hear them from. But his counterarguments have all been from principles, even when those principles are not thrown into question by Wilson and Wilson — their arguments are based on those principles.
What’s more dismaying is that Dawkins’ few dozen paragraphs in reply (remember, it’s been three years since then) bear all the hallmarks of a religionist who has not a leg to stand on, lashing out in frantic, desperate defense with red herrings, tangents, inapplicable arguments, dodges, weaves, and personal invective. (I’m not a professional in the field, but I know good and bad arguments when I hear them.)
This post is already too long, so I won’t detail everything here. You can see one of Dawkins’ replies here (PDF), and you can read the whole story from D. S. Wilson — including much of Dawkins’ response — here. Wilson’s 19-post blog thread is here in a one PDF.
I’ll just quote one passage from Dawkins to give the flavor of those replies:
…as far as I am concerned, the statement is false: not a semantic confusion; not an exaggeration of a half-truth; not a distortion of a quarter truth; but a total, unmitigated, barefaced lie.
This is not the Richard Dawkins I’ve known and (intellectually) loved for lo these many decades. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of that Richard Dawkins.
I can only quote D.S. Wilson’s words, which precisely echo my most heartfelt feelings:
In my dreams, I imagine him reading my modified haystack model and saying “Well done, David! I have been wrong all these years.”
Richard Dawkins won’t you please come home?
Comments
17 responses to “Delight and Abject Dismay on Richard Dawkins’ Birthday”
well
here is where you dismiss me as a fundamentalist neurotic wish fulfilling intellectual pygmy.
dawkins who “may have once been a good scientist” (opinion expressed by molecular geneticist of my acquaintance ) writes like a religious fundamentalist when he is attacking “religion” about which he seems to be nearly as ill informed as the religious fundamentalist.
no proselytizer I will leave you to find your own way in these matters, but i can tell you that i think it doesn’t matter much what you think you believe. “faith” is more a matter of taking the next step in the direction you want to go than it is a question of squinching your eyes and believing as hard as you can something you can’t believe.
and, as someone else i know put it… what matters is that you really care about the truth, and about doing good.
that, i think, is where our current crop of bright young men, non partisan experts, and advisors to the President, fail.
I LOVE that! Can I have it?? Right up there with Agnew’s “pinko-degenerate pseudo-intellectual commie-inspired impudent snob.”
Two things:
1. I agree that religious fundamentalists are profoundly ill-informed about religion. ( Not sure your syntax intended that, but I couldn’t resist.)
2. I also can’t resist citing Dawkins’ reply when he’s attacked for not understanding religion and theology: something to the effect of “I don’t have to be an expert on Leprechaunology in order to not believe in Leprechauns.”
I’m coming around to thinking that Dawkins has the same value in the religion debate that smart, cogently argued, and vociferous small-gov evangelists do. They keep the brakes on.
I think that’s a profound and profoundly true sentiment. But I have a somewhat higher estimate of the young experts, at least those that aren’t at the heights of power.
no, you got my syntax right. that’s exactly what i meant. the problem with the fundamentalists is not that their science is bad. it’s that their theology is bad. and (this will be harder for you) the problem with the atheists is not that their theology is bad, it’s that their science is bad.
they try to take “science” where it does not belong, turning it into theology.
as for the leprechauns… that is a profoundly ignorant statement. if Dawkins knew anything at all about religion he would know it is not about fairy tales. it is an effort to think seriously about the sorts of problems that confront real people in their real lives that cannot be answered by “scientific method” but which can be addressed by something like “taking the next step in the direction you want to go” having thought about that direction, and having a willingness to change direction when it looks like you are going the wrong way… and yes, to avoid blinding yourself by a primitive superstition called ‘science’ but having nothing to do with real science… you don’t want me to go on.
but you are a bright young man, and when you learn to take seriously the idea of paying attention to “reality” as opposed to the idols of the tribe you will begin to understand that the question of religion has nothing whatsoever to do with the existence or non existence of a cracked teapot in interplanetary space.
@coberly
>they try to take “science†where it does not belong, turning it into theology.
Here’s where I think there’s a difference:
Atheists simply assert (basically) that the universe doesn’t care what we do. That there are no moral laws or absolute moral truths to be discovered there by religious means. Or — this is key — by scientific means either.
So atheists are explicitly *dis*claiming any special knowledge of the moral realm, acquired via scientific methods. Fundamentalists (and many other religious people), *are* claiming that special knowledge, derived from religious means (“faith”).
No reasonable religious believer, I think, would assert that there are no truths, facts to be discovered via the scientific method (magnetism, evolution, etc.) — which is all scientists claim, nothing more. And very few, I think, would assert that those kind of truths, facts can be discerned through faith or other religious methods.
The claims are different, but even more so they are of different *types* — positive versus negative affirmation/disproof.
For that reason, I don’t think the assertions of fundamentalists and atheists are at all parallel or equivalent. Ironically, Atheists are far more humble (Christ-like?) re: their moral “knowledge” than fundamentalists.
But more wholistically:
The great value of religions, it seems to me, is in their practices, not their beliefs. The disciplines, social arrangements, and rituals of religious groups are profoundly satisfying and (often) improving on an individual level. They can also have miraculously good effects on the group level. (Whether the dark side of group effects, i.e. holy wars, outweighs that, is subject to debate.)
Also: I think atheists, by necessity, make just as much of a leap of faith as do religious people, just leaping in a different way, different direction. I don’t believe the universe gives a darn what we do — there are no moral laws inscribed therein, much less absolute moral laws. But I do ascribe to a strong moral belief system. The only way I can assert its validity, ultimately, is through faith.
But there’s a difference there as well: I’m asserting a faith in the human ability to form social compacts that benefit us all. There are several millenia of evidence to support that belief; it can and does happen, and it seems to have been happening increasingly over the centuries and millennia.
>an effort to think seriously about the sorts of problems that confront real people in their real lives that cannot be answered by “scientific method†but which can be addressed by something like “taking the next step in the direction you want to go†having thought about that direction, and having a willingness to change direction when it looks like you are going the wrong way…
I think that’s a wonderful description. But for me, at least, religion is unnecessary and even an impediment (again for me) to walking that path. The “thinking seriously” and “taking the next step having thought about that direction” is what matters.
>paying attention to “reality†as opposed to the idols of the tribe
The whole point of this post was stating — publicly, forcefully, and unequivocally — that my revered idol has feet of clay, that he seems unwilling to accept reality!
It drives me crazy when people point to the sun rising in the east, and say, “See?? The sun rises in the west.” I really feel like that’s what you just did.
a tangle of words it might be impossible to unravel at one sitting.
i don’t know if you have ever done real science. doing science is very different from claiming that science gives you special insight into theology.
i am not a religious person, but some people who say they are say that “faith” is something like falling in love. and of course [they do not say, but i say] the last thing you want to do is dissect the loved one to see if she loves you.
you are quite right about the atheists leap of faith… except perhaps that it doesn’t get him anywhere. a scientist makes something like a real leap of faith… really falls in love … when he does real science. and as far as i know an atheist could make such a leap, really fall in love, and undertake a journey that might [might] end up with him realizing he had been “seeking god” the whole time. i make no claims about this. just trying to give you another way to think about it.
if you think of “religion” as “what i believe about religion” …what i have been told, the way lots of “religious” people act and say they believe… then, first, you are probably right about that. but if you think of religion as the serious thoughts of serious people about the nature of ultimate reality, a reality that may include morality and purpose and ?? then you would be in a position to begin to see that the arguments of the militant atheists are missing the point entirely.
[it might not be a question of “god” saying “don’t do X” but of someone more like your mother saying “if you do X there are likely to be consequences that you won’t like.” and she doesn’t mean “when your father comes home.” but just that leaping off the back of the couch you might hurt yourself.]
as for the sun and the east and the west, i don’t know what i just did that made you feel like that, but it came to me as a smile one day when i realized that in Australia the sun rises on the right hand and sets on the left.
@coberly
>doing science is very different from claiming that science gives you special insight into theology.
?? The key point I was making was that science (and atheism) explicitly disclaim any special knowledge of the moral (or theological) realms.
>some people who say they are say that “faith†is something like falling in love.
That’s a very interesting thought. Continuing it: just as it’s (perhaps) necessary to subsume yourself to the irrationality of love to receive the blessings of a joyous lifelong relationship, perhaps the same kind of thing is true of religion? I don’t really believe either (completely), but the latter seems only somewhat less likely than the former.
>an atheist could make such a leap, really fall in love, and undertake a journey that might [might] end up with him realizing he had been “seeking god†the whole time.
That’s what my path feels like to me (assuming we keep the quotation marks). It’s heady in the same way love is. I think that (and the experiences of many other atheists) demonstrates that religion is not necessary to that path.
But science believer types (yes, I guess including me) would tend to assert that acceptance of science (at its best) is necessary to follow that path — that it’s the only method we have to plumb the majestic mysteries and complexities of the (God’s) universe, to challenge and go beyond our inevitably and horribly flawed and biased human notions and suppositions. There’s the crux, I guess.
>as for the sun and the east and the west, i don’t know what i just did that made you feel like that
You said “when you learn to take seriously the idea of paying attention to ‘reality’ as opposed to the idols of the tribe” in responding to a post that does *exactly that.*
Steve
first… i have been watching you try to reason with buff on AB. can’t be done. i tend to agree with you but i can’t see that it would do any good, and possibly some harm, to come in on your side. buff has seen the light on SS,,, as much as anyone sees the light, and i don’t want to lose him.
as for your comments here, i think you are missing something, and i’m not sure i can explain it. but here goes:
atheists may “explicity disclaim” but then they go right ahead and do it anyway. claiming that the universe has NO moral purpose is to make a theological claim.
i had hoped you would see the “falling in love” quality of doing real science. the “leap of faith” may be irrational by your verbal formulation of what “rationality” means. me, i am not so sure. every step in a “rational” argument involves a leap of faith. the whole point of science, or any careful discussion, is to limit the chances of leaping into a hole it is difficult to leap out of.
i guess people fall in and out of love all the time. but that doesn’t make the experience any less a part of reality. and while i don’t see it often, i think i see evidence of “love” that is not just another word for sexual intoxication…. though that’s not a bad place for it to start.
i would say that “your path” IS religion… even though you hate that word because it means something else to you.
“science” is the way we explore certain aspects of reality. what i am calling religion is the way we explore certain other aspects of reality.
the fact that most people’s religious ideas are as primitive as their ideas about physics does not mean that the universe does not exist, or that the moral qualities we see in ourselves are not as real as the physical qualities.
and i said that in Australia the sun rises on the right to remind you that sometimes your most basic intuitions are not necessarily the way the universe sees itself.
but i am being provocative, and you sound to me like the kind of person who will figure this all out for yourself in time.
Agreed on buffpilot. Not worth bothering. He’s got some okay thinking in other areas, but closed up tight on that one.
>atheists may “explicity disclaim†but then they go right ahead and do it anyway. claiming that the universe has NO moral purpose is to make a theological claim.
I see that point, and should clarify. I said it wrong.
My joking presentation of it:
I believe that there are universal moral truths. We just have no idea what they are.
Again, a smart-aleck way of saying it, but it embodies a humility that for me is at the core of morality beliefs that I admire and try to adhere to.
Scientists make no claim to special moral knowledge derived from the scientific method. To do so would be presumptuous and false.
In asserting that theology likewise cannot derive special moral knowledge, they are applying the same standards to both realms. That assertion is *not based* on scientific knowledge or the scientific method. It is a statement of faith, but it does not engage in special pleading on behalf of science. That embodies a even-handedness that is also at the core of moral beliefs that I admire. “If it applies to me, it applies to you too.” That stance is the very heart and core, it seems to me, of empathy and altruism.
Theologians assert that religion can give special knowledge of the moral realm, while science cannot.
>i had hoped you would see the “falling in love†quality of doing real science.
Oh I thought I had expressed that. That the exploration of the universe in all its complexity through science has much of that headiness, that tumbling into the bottomless realm of the human spirit. (I’m not a professional experimentalist, but there is a bottomless, ultimately undiscoverable [in total] treasure-trove of learning for me to explore — and yes, investigate, test — thanks to those who are.)
>religion is the way we explore certain other aspects of reality.
Do you think those aspects are unexplorable absent religion?
Atheists seek to explore that path every bit as much as believers — including via leaps of faith. But atheists don’t claim any special knowledge or ability on their own behalf.
When theologians say “we can do it but you can’t,” that’s a completely different statement from “neither of us can do it; we’re all fumbling along.”
>you sound to me like the kind of person who will figure this all out for yourself in time.
You get that that’s really condescending, right? “In time, youngster, you’ll understand that I’m right.”
Did you understand what I meant re: the sun rising in the east and your comment on idols and reality, vis-a-vis this post?
sorry to sound condescending i didn’t mean it. actually quite the opposite.
i would agree with you about “atheists” but not about the militant atheists who go around telling everyone what to believe.
and you use “religion” to mean something different than i do. you are talking about people who use “religion” the way some people (dawkins) use “atheism.”(or “science.”)
speaking of which… speaking of leprechauns, if Dawkins had said “I don’t need to know nothing about quantum theory to know I don’t believe in it” you would have seen the fallacy of his argument.
so lets see if i can say this without sounding condescending, you sound like you are a lot like me. i think you may one day want to pay more attention to whether the universe is really quite so silent about moral questions as you have been led to believe. there are quite a few perfectly sane, honest, good thinkers who are interested in these questions.
i shouldn’t say any more. except this: it is probably neither kind nor good manners nor good politics to try to take away the comfort that some people derive from their “religion,” especially as the religion they say they believe contains in itself the best arguments against their own excesses.
and no, i did not understand what you meant re the sun rising in the east.
There is something i read once, can’t remember where, but it was a “religious” source: “Not through eastern windows only comes the light.” Or some such.
>if Dawkins had said “I don’t need to know nothing about quantum theory to know I don’t believe in it†you would have seen the fallacy of his argument.
Except: religious believers *agree* that science can provide special knowledge of that realm.
The reverse is not true; in the moral realm, claiming special knowledge is special pleading.
>i think you may one day want to pay more attention to whether the universe is really quite so silent about moral questions as you have been led to believe.
Perhaps so. But not (totally) “led to believe.” Lot of time wandering those paths on my own. I was incredibly intrigued by spiritual teachings in my teens and early twenties, explored them a lot. They never gave me any real satisfaction or led me down what seemed to be a path of enlightenment. (With age comes wisdom?)
>there are quite a few perfectly sane, honest, good thinkers who are interested in these questions.
I can say this unequivocally: in my experience the huge majority of religious believers have profoundly good hearts, and the best intentions. (The unspoken “but” makes that statement unfortunately condescending, but I don’t know how to avoid it without acknowledging religion’s “special knowledge.”)
>it is probably neither kind nor good manners nor good politics to try to take away the comfort that some people derive from their “religion,â€
Fully share your sentiment, wisely put. Also a fool’s errand. But I will still champion excluding religious “knowledge” as a guide to or influence on public policy. If religion somehow results in true wisdom, I’m all for that wisdom. But religious teachings and dicta should not serve as benchmarks of whether it is, indeed, wisdom.
>especially as the religion they say they believe contains in itself the best arguments against their own excesses.
On the individual level, much truth there. On the group level, the frequently resulting excesses don’t really need to be enumerated…
no, “religion” has been a disaster as a guide to public policy.
as long as you think “religion” is the pronouncements of people who call themselves religious, and i think “religion” is people by themselves, or in twos and threes thinking very seriously about “what it means to love god… and to love your neighbor as yourself” we are not going to understand each other.
i don’t think anyone can learn what i am calling religion from someone else, though once in a while someone points you in a good direction.
my take on “spiritual teachings” is that they almost always come from the other side. (joke. assumes the god – devil duality.)
if i remember, i got into this discussion by suggesting that Dawkins was no better when he talked about religion than he was when he talked about the genetics of altruism.
but i hope you can see that “religion” has nothing to do with “creationism” or even leprechauns.
and we oughtta leave it there. i am not helping you.
>as long as you think “religion†is the pronouncements of people who call themselves religious, and i think “religion†is people by themselves, or in twos and threes thinking very seriously about “what it means to love god… and to love your neighbor as yourself†we are not going to understand each other.
Aha: wonderful. Then we so understand each other. Count me in. (Though I’m hard pressed to discern between that and “philosophy,” I’m all for it.)
If all the world would invoke “God” as Lincoln did in his second inaugural, I would call myself a believer.
well, just so you know..
call it philosophy if you want. but it seems to have an action element.
[Lincoln was a strange cat. He seems to have been an atheist or something early in life. Not at all clear he didn’t have a change of heart. He seems to have been wrestling at a higher moral weight than I will reach in this life.
I’ve read a couple of books about this (Lincoln’s Virtues; William Lee Miller. and Father Abraham; Richard Striner) that say it better than I can.]
>call it philosophy if you want. but it seems to have an action element.
Yeah. Maybe what I said about religious “practices.”
> Lincoln’s Virtues;
Totally my favorite book on Lincoln. Addresses the central conundrum I always faced when reading other biographies: how did he *decide*? Now running not walking to get Father Abraham.
let me know what you think.
[…] delighted to find that someone with the necessary statistical chops has answered a question I’ve been asking for a while: Have any of the 130+ evolution scientists who’ve savaged Wilson and […]
[…] delighted to find that someone with the necessary statistical chops has answered a question I’ve been asking for a while: Have any of the 130+ evolution scientists who’ve savaged Wilson and […]