{"id":49,"date":"2008-01-25T05:00:53","date_gmt":"2008-01-25T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.consider.org\/blog\/?p=40"},"modified":"2008-01-25T05:00:53","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T11:00:53","slug":"a-review-of-richard-dawkins%e2%80%99-the-god-delusion-part-xiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/a-review-of-richard-dawkins%e2%80%99-the-god-delusion-part-xiv\/","title":{"rendered":"A Review of Richard Dawkins\u2019 The God Delusion Part XIV"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listen to the MP3<\/font><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this part of my review of Richard Dawkins\u2019, \u201cThe God Delusion<\/a>\u201d I will continue my look at Dawkins\u2019 speculations on the roots of morality. \u00a0Dawkins rejection of God and acceptance of evolution forces him to find an evolutionary basis of morality.\u00a0 He admits that \u201cOn the face of it, the Darwinian idea that evolution is driven by natural selection seems ill-suited to explain such goodness as we possess, or our feelings of morality, decency, empathy, and pity\u2026 Isn\u2019t goodness incompatible with the theory of the \u2018selfish gene\u2019?\u201d (pg 214-5)<\/p>\n

<\/o:p>Dawkins\u2019 goes on to argue that the idea that it is, is a misunderstanding and the evolution is not incompatible with goodness.\u00a0 There are two main problems with Dawkins argument. The first is that it is really very selective and theoretical and amounts to little more than special pleading.\u00a0 The second is that while Dawkins\u2019 see evolution\u2019s ability to account for goodness as a strength, and yet another reason we do not need religion, the special pleading nature of the argument is in reality an indication of a much deeper problem: that as put forward by those like Dawkins it is a tautology .\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/o:p>In logic a tautology is an argument that is always valid. While this sounds like a good thing, the problem with tautologies can been seen in the following example; it will either rain or not rain tomorrow.\u00a0 Now this statement will always be valid, regardless of location or weather.\u00a0 But while always valid, it tells us nothing about whether or not we will need an umbrella. In short it really tells us nothing at all.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p>What Dawkins explanation really reveals is that evolution is a huge complex tautology.\u00a0 It can explain anything the evolutionist needs it to explain.\u00a0 Soon after Darwin, the theory began to be applied to societies to justify why some people were better off than others, in Social Darwinism.\u00a0 It then became the basis of Eugenics, which effectively argued for selective breeding of people, to produce better people, much the way we selectively breed animals.\u00a0 This culminated in Hitler\u2019s belief in a master race, and the elimination of impure bloodlines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/o:p>Following WWII, this was all rejected, and rightly so, as immoral. While we continued to selectively breed animals, people were off limits.\u00a0 Yet Dawkins now argues that he can explain an almost opposite morality also based on evolution.\u00a0 What this means is that evolution can explain either view. Just like the statement it will either rain or not rain tells us nothing about the weather, evolution tells us nothing about morality. It only tells us about the ability to speculate to a particular goal on the part of the scientist.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p>The problem with the particular answer Dawkins gives is that he cites a number of \u201cgood Darwinian reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous, or \u2018moral\u2019 towards each other.\u201d (pg 219) Yet those pushing Social Darwinism, or Eugenics in the 1920s and 30s also had many good Darwinian reasons as well. So a clear question become why Dawkins\u2019 Darwinian reasons should be preferred to these other Darwinian reasons. For most people this is pretty easy to determine as history has shown that the Darwinian reasons for Eugenics leads to some pretty immoral things.\u00a0 But since Dawkins is arguing for the basis for morality, he cannot use morality to make such a choice without falling victim to circular reasoning. \u00a0Which leaves him with special pleading; his reasons are better than the reasons that led to eugenics because they give him the answer he is seeking.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p>Yet even if Dawkins were correct, and our sense of morality is what it is because of evolutionary pressures to survive, it still would not follow that this is what morality should be in the twenty-first century.\u00a0 Dawkins acknowledges this when he says that \u201cthose rules still influence us today, even where circumstances make them inappropriate to their original function.\u201d (p 222) In short, even if Dawkins\u2019 is correct concerning his view of the evolutionary basis for morality, that says nothing about what morality should be today.\u00a0 In fact the only thing Dawkins would have succeeded in doing it arguing that morality is at best a residue of the evolutionary process, and there is no reason it should hold any automatic power over our actions.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p>In fact the only principle left would really be \u201cmight makes right.\u201d\u00a0 Whoever has the power, would determine right and wrong.\u00a0 Of course the problem here is that had Dawkins view been accepted earlier, for example before much of the progress in civil and human rights over the last couple of hundred years, there would have been no reason to make those changes, and they very likely would never have happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/o:p>The belief in human rights is grounded in the belief that we are all created in the image of God, and what God has given, no one can arbitrarily take away, not even the king.\u00a0 The anti-slavery movement was not grounded in Darwinian reasons, but in religious belief, in particular in the belief that slaves were men with rights.\u00a0 Luckily those views became well entrenched before Darwin put forth his theory, as I am not at all sure that had the ideas of evolution become entrenched first, whether an anti-slavery movement could have ever taken root.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p>This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity<\/a>: a Faith Based on Fact.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen to the MP3\u00a0\u00a0 In this part of my review of Richard Dawkins\u2019, \u201cThe God Delusion\u201d I will continue my look at Dawkins\u2019 speculations on the roots of morality. \u00a0Dawkins rejection of God and acceptance of evolution forces him to find an evolutionary basis of morality.\u00a0 He admits that \u201cOn the face of it, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,32],"tags":[95,1990,483,2008,1111,1242,1276],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheist","category-books","category-reviews","tag-agnostic","tag-atheist","tag-evolution","tag-morality","tag-richard-dawkins","tag-tautology","tag-the-god-delusion"],"yoast_head":"\nA Review of Richard Dawkins\u2019 The God Delusion Part XIV - Politics and Religion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hushbeck.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/a-review-of-richard-dawkins\u2019-the-god-delusion-part-xiv\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Review of Richard Dawkins\u2019 The God Delusion Part XIV - 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