It’s most controversial part is its argument that in the absence of exceedingly powerful cultural programming to respect human life, human life will be less respected. Such programming is not to be found within Darwinism. On the contrary, the “survival of the fittest” motif taken as an ethical imperative have lead to eugenics movements and attempts to exterminate races deemed inferior.

It’s most startling bit is near the end during an interview with Richard Dawkins. Dr. Dawkins seems to agree with Francis Crick that a naturalistic version of intelligent design is a reasonable solution to the origin-of-life problem.

Why I liked the movie:

It exposed me to a new idea, which is pretty rare for a movie. The idea is that for any set of physical laws there exists a most probable scheme by which life could have evolved. Highly evolved versions of that most probable scheme could have designed new schemes for life (which are presumably better than the original scheme in some way) and could have seeded other planets with these.

What I did not like about the movie:

It didn’t explicitly state that the controversy is not about evolution but about naturalism. Intelligent Design proponents are anti-naturalists in that they believe that certain aspects of reality are fundamentally unintelligible to the human mind. That is the source of the intolerance from the scientific establishment. Anti-naturalism conflicts with a tacit metaphysical assumption behind science — that we can in principle understand the whole of reality.

Lawrence B. Crowell

“Discussing the theological difficulties that polytheism allegedly creates, Dawkins continues:

“How did the Greeks, the Romans and the Vikings cope with such polytheological conundrums? Was Venus just another name for Aphrodite, or were they two distinct goddesses of love? Was Thor with his hammer a manifestation of Wotan, or a separate god? Who cares? Life is too short to bother with the distinction between one figment of the imagination and many. Having gestured towards polytheism to cover myself against a charge of neglect, I shall say no more about it. For brevity I shall refer to all deities, whether poly- or monotheistic, as simply `God’” (Dawkins 2006: 35-6).

The first issue to point out is that Greek and Roman followers of the “pagan” traditions were not in the least bothered by such “theological conundrums.” This was the case, because to them the stories about Aphrodite, Venus, Zeus and Jupiter were just that: traditional stories, instead of theological doctrines (Balagangadhara 1994; Feeney 1998). To the Greeks and Romans, the stories were not subjects to truth claims; that is, the predicates “true” and “false” were simply not applicable to the many stories about the deities. Hence, many such apparently “contradictory” stories could co-exist without conflict.

It was only when the church fathers tried to show that the Greeks and Romans had “false religion” that suddenly these stories became bearers of truth value and that the so-called “contradictions” appeared. Like the Christian ancestors who shaped their thought, the Enlightenment philosophers failed to grasp that the Roman and Greek stories were not meant to be doctrines or descriptions of the world. Hence, they ridiculed these stories as “mythologies,” fictionalized and embellished accounts of human history (Hazard 1935). The difficulties that Dawkins notices are those created by Christians and Enlightenment philosophers, who tried to make sense of the traditional stories of Greece and Rome as
mythological doctrines.”

In a memorable passage, Dawkins discusses the problem of Trinitarianism in Christianity and extends it to other forms of “polytheism,” such as the cult of the Virgin Mary and the saints in Roman-Catholicism. “What impresses me about Catholic mythology,” he shares with the reader, “is partly its tasteless kitsch but mostly the airy nonchalance with which these people make up the details as they go along. It is just shamelessly invented” (Dawkins 2006: 35).

As a reader, try to bracket away all presuppositions about religion and reread the sentences. If you succeed in doing so, the impact of Dawkins’ claim dissolves. So what, if certain details of Roman-Catholicism are human inventions? What is the problem in aspects of religion being “shamelessly invented”?

From a non-Christian, neutral point of view, it is unclear why Dawkins bothers to mention this. However, anyone with a basic understanding of the history of
Christianity will note where his claim comes from: Dawkins himself reproduces a piece of theology in this sentence (apparently without knowing it). From its earliest beginnings, Christianity claimed that it was the original and pure revelation of God, first given to Adam. This original revelation had been corrupted by sinful idolaters, seduced by the Devil into the worship of the false god and his minions. This corruption, according to Christian theology, took the
form of human additions to the pure divine revelation: rites and myths, fabricated by priests and prelates.

During the Protestant Reformation, Luther, Calvin and their followers began to accuse the Roman-Catholic Church of the same sin of idolatry. They cried that the pope and his priests had invented a plethora of dogmas and rituals and imposed these on the believer as though they were part of God’s revelation and necessary to salvation. In this sense, the worst accusation one could make against Roman- Catholicism was that it consisted of “shameless human inventions.”

The Enlightenment philosophies extended such charges of idolatry to all of Christianity and to all “religions” of humanity. All of these, including the notion of God itself, were human fabrications, the atheists among them claimed. Ironically, Enlightenment atheism thus presupposed and built on the claims of Christian theology. Without the background belief that there is something intrinsically wrong in religion being a human invention—very much a Christian belief—the impact of such charges simply disappears into thin air.

At this first level, Dawkins reproduces Christian theology, even though he masks it as an atheistic insight that is supposed to liberate humanity from religion.

View 1: I am an atheist who does not believe in gods/deities.

View 2: I also think that gods/deities are human mind-constructs. This is based on 3,000 or so myths/tales/dreams/delusions (whether psychological or chemical or optical in nature)/cultural history of the previous stated/observation of the nature of man over centuries and the present, and so on.

This does not mean I do not have an appreciation for the cultural myths, or the sociological, psychological and sociopolitical nature of the above, nor why some maintain faith in the supernatural.

View 3: View 2 led to the thinking of View 1.

View 4: Science has informed us that there is a good amount of unassailable evidence that conflicts (and outright knocks out) with much of religious doctrine and mythical tales.

View 5: I agree with PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins about most of their views. Cultural awareness? Ha! Dawkins understands that quite well, and I think PZ does too. So I read them for both science and atheistic views regardless of what they personally assert about their atheism.

View 6: Philosophy is for a rainy day when one can’t go outside and look at the birds and bees flitting around. Yay, for naturalism!

Sorry, if I’m an annoyingly simpleminded lurker. (-:

Other critics throughout the world are also attempting to do something. Osama bin Laden is obviously one of these. Another Arab example is in Kuwait, where the U.S. re-established government also has it’s critics; some of them actually want to create an electoral process! Eight such activist critics were recently arrested, and a protest march was tear-gassed (from http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/564F7174-6225-443F-815B-8BD59ADE7DFB.htm)
One might expect that the U.S. government, which calls for democracy in the Middle East, would provide support to those organizing elections, and that the American new media would publicize such attempts, but there is no evidence for that currently available.

We now return you to the interminable discussion of theism enjoyed by America’s educated elite. How many fairies really can dance on the head of a pin? Inquiring minds want to know!

Confuse this at your own expense.

http://www.juancole.com/2008/03/iran-danger-and-opportunity-polk-guest.html

* Religious fundamentalists – Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus – share an eschatological vision. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that each faith includes groups who actually yearn for apocalypse during which time the world is destroyed to be reborn as a messiah or mahdi appears. To the “true believers,” hurrying toward the end of the world is a race not toward horror but a fulfilling spiritual experience in which it is only the enemies of the true faith who will suffer (as St. John so graphically portrays in The Revelation). In their version of messianism, the Shiis believe that the righteous will be delivered from the tyranny of the corrupt, the Shiis believe, and the earth will be filled with justice and happiness.

Thus, one need not fear but actually should embrace actions that lead toward “the end.” We know this eschatology is the mind-set of Christian fundamentalists; less well known is that it is also the mind-set of Shia fundamentalists. What we think of as fatalism, is not just acceptance of destiny but often is proactive. This may shape at least some Iranian attitudes toward the terrible destruction that would come from an American attack. My impression is that the Iranian Shia fundamentalists, presumably including their mujtahid leadership, believe that the ensuing war would hasten the way toward the Last Day when the Twelth Imam, The Mahdi, would reappear to cleanse the world of evil.

Now I shall simply display again your previous comment. If snobbery is not the correct word to use I don’t know what is.

Unfortunately, Dawkins makes a bad critic of religion, even if he is a good spokesperson for science. If he were half as informed about the history and development of the atheism/materialism that he believes in, as he is about evolutionary biology, then perhaps he might be more effective. As it stands, he’s about as well-educated in atheism as many extremist/fundamentalist Christians are regarding the roots of their own belief systems–that is to say, not very. He seems to be an expert in his particular field of scientific study, but when he strays into philosophy, it’s bound to be a botched job; he simply is not very familiar with the vast and complicated philosophical underpinnings of the modern views which he takes for granted (assumptions tracing their origins back to Descartes’ arbitrary division between matter and mind, and sometimes even further). Amusingly, these very same modern biases are at the heart of much of those fundamentalist religious movements today that some scientists (and other reasonable people) find so objectionable. For those with more background in philosophy and its development, listening to Dawkins argue against extremist religiousness is like listening to Pepsi and Coke attack one another over nutritional content. Philosophically speaking, they’re made up of much the same stuff, and both tend to be myopic, tone-deaf and stubborn in their critiques of the other.

All of this seems to be besides the point, though. To me, it’s fascinating, because it has to do with the way mythologies (and the self- and community-identities they shape) have developed in different cultures. It’s not so strange that modern Western secularists reject the notion that they have a cultural mythology of their own through which they define even the possibility of things like identity, truth, meaning and evidence. After all, almost all societies have defined myth as What Other People Have, whereas we have the Actual Truth. Your response is exactly in this vein–”I’ll believe it when you prove it to me as Actual Truth”–without considering that the mythologies within which we live set the boundaries on what counts as “proof” and “truth” and what is just so much noise in the background.

#79 Laurence, says:

Perhaps if you didn’t jump immediately to snobbery you would have realized that.

Wow! Talk about anti-intellectualism! If I’m educated in science, apparently I’m allowed to have my say here, but if I’m educated in the field actually under discussion (political philosophy, theology and social criticism) apparently I’m being a “snob”?

You’ll have to explain to me sometime how the question of the existence of deity has “nothing to do with” atheism. That is certainly a surprising assertion.