Dissecting Dawkins' qausi-scientific "religion as child-abuse" claim

[Petr]

Peddling this sort of pseudo-science shows what an unreliable propagandist and overall jerk Dawkins is.

http://www.dailypress.com/features/family/dp-39928sy0feb10,0,7588302.story


GUEST COLUMN

Religion isn't bad for kids

Tom Gilson
February 10, 2007


Richard Dawkins' book, "The God Delusion," has been a New York Times bestseller for more than 16 weeks. Why so popular? Dawkins is the Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and in some ways he is remarkably well suited for a job like that. His writing is marvelously clear and engaging. His early book, "The Selfish Gene," an explanation and defense of evolutionary theory, has been called the best popular-level science book ever written.

He leads the "Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science" and calls his Web site, "A Clear-Thinking Oasis." He pointedly contrasts his own rationality with what he calls religion's irrationality. His attacks on religion are shrill. For example: through one full chapter of "The God Delusion," he maintains that teaching religion to children is child abuse. This is not just as an arresting figure of speech, an exaggeration to make a point. Dawkins soberly compares religious upbringing to sexual abuse, and finds religion the worse of the two.

This famous scientist supports this with no systematic data, just a few pages of anecdotes, stories of people who suffered at the hands of ill-advised religious education. Stories like that, sadly, can be found; but what do they represent? If religious training is thought to be child abuse, an obvious scientific hypothesis follows: Children with religious upbringings should show some of the symptoms that are typical of abused children.

These symptoms are well known. They include fear, panic attacks, eating disorders, depression, low self-confidence, irritability, difficulty relating with others, substance abuse, and so on.

Not every abuse victim experiences most or all of these, but outcomes like this are typical. If a religious upbringing equals abuse, there ought to be signs that something like this happens to children of religious families.

There is data to test such a hypothesis. It was published well before Dawkins' book, so he had ample opportunity to know what science had to say. Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, led a massive, authoritative study called the National Study of Youth and Religion. The results were published in the 2005 book, "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Eyes of American Teenagers" (with co-author Melinda Lundquist Denton), published by Oxford University Press (yes, that's Dawkins's university). It is the best study of its kind to date.

This study sorted its 3,290 participants into levels of religious involvement: The Devoted, The Regulars, The Sporadic, and The Disengaged. Because America's predominant religious groupings are Christian, the "Devoted" and "Regulars" were predominantly Christian - Protestant and Catholic. Therefore these results can fairly be taken as relating specifically to Christianity. (Results for other religions are hard to determine from the data.)

The closer teenagers were to "Devoted" rather than "Disengaged," the less they engaged in these negative behaviors:

Habits: Smoking, drinking, marijuana use, TV watching, pornography use, "action" video game use, R-rated movies;

At school: Poor grades, cutting classes, getting suspended or expelled;

Attitude: Bad temper, rebellious toward parents;

Sex: Early physical involvement, including number of partners and age of first sexual contact.

Those more "Devoted" on the scale showed more of these positive outcomes:

Emotional well-being: Satisfaction with physical appearance, planning for the future, thinking about the meaning of life, feeling cared for, freedom from depression, not feeling alone and misunderstood, not feeling "invisible," not often feeling guilty, having a sense of meaning to life, getting along well with siblings;

Relationships with adults: Closeness with parents, number of adults connected to, feeling understood by parents, sensing that parents pay attention, feeling they get the "right amount of freedom" from parents;

Moral reasoning and honesty: Belief in stable, absolute morality; not pursuing a "get-ahead" mentality; not just pleasure-seeking; less lying to parents and cheating in school;

Compassion: Caring about the needs of the poor, caring about the elderly, caring about racial justice;

Community: Participation in groups, financial giving, volunteer work (including with people of different races and cultures), helping homeless people, taking leadership in organizations.

The findings are overwhelming. On page after page, chart after chart, on every one of the 91 variables studied, the closer teens were to the "Devoted" end of the scale, the healthier their lives were. These are the results of Dawkins' "child abuse." This is what he complains is so bad for children.

H. Allen Orr wrote, "(Dawkins) has a preordained set of conclusions at which he's determined to arrive. Consequently, (he) uses any argument, however feeble, that seems to get him there." In other words, he sees just what he wants to see. It's ironic - that's what he accuses believers of doing.

What can we conclude? This study suggests (though its methods cannot prove) that growing up Christian is a very good thing. Concerning Dawkins and his book, we can easily see that his attack is falsely based. We also see that this "rational" scientist ignored science and clear thinking to make the point he wanted to make.

Sixteen weeks a best-seller. For those who bought the book and found it persuasive, this should give you serious doubts about its credibility. (Other reviewers have found flaws on a similar scale throughout the book.) For followers of Christ who have been concerned about the bluster raised by books like this: This, like other baseless attacks, will pass. The Christian faith has stood for a long time; it will withstand this too.


Gilson is the Director of Strategic Processes for Campus Crusade for Christ. He can be reached at http://www.thinkingchristian.net.

[okieredust]

This is an interesting article characterizing Dawkins culturally/philosophically from one who knows them fairly well, albeit is a mealy-mouth liberal himself.


These are not just the views of an enraged atheist. They are the opinions of a readily identifiable kind of English middle-class liberal rationalist. Reading Dawkins, who occasionally writes as though ‘Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness’ is a mighty funny way to describe a Grecian urn, one can be reasonably certain that he would not be Europe’s greatest enthusiast for Foucault, psychoanalysis, agitprop, Dadaism, anarchism or separatist feminism. All of these phenomena, one imagines, would be as distasteful to his brisk, bloodless rationality as the virgin birth. Yet one can of course be an atheist and a fervent fan of them all. His God-hating, then, is by no means simply the view of a scientist admirably cleansed of prejudice. It belongs to a specific cultural context. One would not expect to muster many votes for either anarchism or the virgin birth in North Oxford. (I should point out that I use the term North Oxford in an ideological rather than geographical sense. Dawkins may be relieved to know that I don’t actually know where he lives.)

Lunging. Flailing, Mispunching (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html)

Personally though I'm not that glib. Dawkins seems rather distressingly like those atheist government hacks who used to work in universities and propoganda shops in the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc states. The fact that Dawkins can pass for "a readily identifiable kind of English middle-class liberal rationalist" maybe shows you how closely the EEU is approaching the old U.S.S.R. Focusing on children is one classic mark of totalitarianism. :confused:

[Petr]

Personally though I'm not that glib. Dawkins seems rather distressingly like those atheist government hacks who used to work in universities and propoganda shops in the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc states. The fact that Dawkins can pass for "a readily identifiable kind of English middle-class liberal rationalist" maybe shows you how closely the EEU is approaching the old U.S.S.R. Focusing on children is one classic mark of totalitarianism. :confused:
Dawkins would easily fit the profile of Fabian infiltrator-Socialist.

(Have you read C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength?)


Petr

[okieredust]

Dawkins would easily fit the profile of Fabian infiltrator-Socialist.

(Have you read C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength?)


PetrI've read about it. You think he's "The Head"? ;)

What I wonder about Dawkins is simply that even if his is not "Europe’s greatest enthusiast for Foucault, psychoanalysis, agitprop, Dadaism, anarchism or separatist feminism," he certainly has not become known for attacking them. Only religion, which of course is by far the safest thing to attack within the academy, and prettty much the literary and media circles which have made him famous. When scientists become politicians, a strong animus of some sort is driving them. I suspect in Dawkin's case its just that thing that occasionally grabs scientists - the taste for raw fame, celebrity, and power, beyond the cloisters of one's science study group.

I suspect, like a lot of people who obviously have abilities to publicize themselves, part of his power lies in his ability to break with convention. In this, as what his cultural bearings as "a readily identifiable kind of English middle-class liberal rationalist" part of the convention may be in not attacking religion, such as Linda Raeder described


"Today, I believe, one ought to keep total silence on the question of religion when writing for an English audience, though indirectly one may strike any blow one wishes at religious beliefs."—John Stuart Mill to Auguste Comte (1845)
http://www.umsystem.edu/upress/spring2002/raeder.htm


Raeder goes on to describe the depth of Mill's animus towards traditional religion, and his desire to found an alternate. Probably this expression of this visceral and to me somewhat crude anti-religious theme in the modern liberal English speaking world explains both Dawkins' success, and conversely his opposition from some corners of humanism, for expressing sentiments they might wish be better left unsaid.

[Petr]

Setting the record straight

by Krauze

Okay, I can accept Salon calling Richard Dawkins an evolutionary biologist, since he did publish some books on theoretical evolutionary biology in the seventies and eighties. But now that an article in Science is referring to him as a "geneticist", I must put my foot down.

Dawkins' education is in zoology, with an emphasis on ethology (a.k.a behavioral biology). His publication record is stuffed with essays about philosophy, sociobiology, and religion, but absolutely nothing pertaining to genetics.

Then again, "sociobiologist-turned-atheist-preacher" probably doesn't look as good on a business card.


Guts Says:

December 6th, 2006 at 12:55 pm | Wow the confusion is actually widespread:


The University of Oxford geneticist and campaigning atheist Richard Dawkins …
http://education.guardian.co.u...

Famed geneticist Richard Dawkins, author of such seminal books as "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker,"
http://science.meetup.com/32/c...

The thinkers he sets out to oppose are some of the most formidable writers and theorists of our time, including the geneticist Richard Dawkins and the …
http://www.prospect.org/print/...

Oxford geneticist Richard Dawkins establishes foundation to prevent "pseudo science" taking over in schools.
http://education.guardian.co.u...

By analogy of the term genes, the English zoologist-geneticist Richard Dawkins creates the term memes as “unit for cultural transmitting”,
http://www.blesok.com.mk/tekst...

Geneticist Richard Dawkins invented the word MEME for the unit of cultural transmission, analogous to the the term GENE for the unit of biological …
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cyphe...


The list is actually quite long. Even the "skeptics" got it wrong

Comment by Guts — December 6, 2006 @ 12:55 pm

See also a less respectful approach:

http://lupoleboucher.livejournal.com/15805.html?mode=reply


Richard Dawkins has never done anything of note, other than marry a Dr. Who sidekick (the ugly one who acted 'smart' instead of frightened or angry) and write a crappy book on sociobiology. I used to be thrilled by sociobiology, thinking it a hard hitting science which told it like it is. I suppose it provides the occasional insight, But by and large it is a nonsense field which makes humans out to be meat puppets with no culture, thoughts or free will. I could actually get rid of the whole free will thing, but it is obvious people have culture, and some people even have thoughts. Really, the Dr. Who chick is an appropriate match. Dawkins and his wife are people who act "bright" -but they ain't, really. His latest kick seems to be cheesing off religious people by referring to atheists as "brights." I find this hysterically funny when comparing Dawkins to, say, Robert Griffiths, who is an unabashed Jesus Freak, and who makes Dawkins and wife look like mongoloid idiots. For that matter, Griffiths is rather smarter than Penrose and Hawking (I think the former is a deist and the latter a christian) as well. If you don't believe me that such a smart guy loves the Lord, check out the link. I know him a little as well; his brain radiates enough waste heat to peel the paint in any room he enters. I won't even begin to speak of other brilliant christians I have had the pleasure of working with in my career in atomic science (and, of the really scary-smart guys I have worked with, they were all either chinese or christians); Griffiths is insanely great. And I say this as a more or less militant atheistic pantheist who is fond of Satan. Yeah, it takes some character to admit you're being a bigot when you characterize a whole group of people as dumb. Or perhaps I should say, it takes a special lack of character to puff yourself up at the expense of others in this way. I don't see it as any more edifying than polack jokes, and it's a lot less funny, as everyone knows Marie Curie was a polack. I'd rather be known for my character, than for writing a bigotted book that will be as forgotten in a few years as formerly famous Lysenkoist biologists are today.

...

The general public themselves, well they are flattered as all hell when they can get through such a tome by a learned magnifico. It makes half educated bozos (bildungsphilisters!) feel like they are smart and that they know something. It doesn't matter that it really be by a learned magnifico; it only matters that the magnifico is famous. It's all a big circle. Famous intellectuals get famous by condescending to the masses. The masses make the intellectuals famous. They're both ignorant as lumps of dung. Think about it for a moment; would a really smart person be able to communicate with enough regular people to sell a bestselling book? If they do communicate something, it will have nothing to do with what they thought of in the first place. Nobel Prize winners rarely have anything to say which the public can understand; if they do, it is likely they didn't deserve their prize. Really original thoughts only appeal to a real elite, not a marketed demographic group.

One of the amusing side effects of all this is the vainglory of both public intellectuals and the dipshits who fall for the nonsense in their bestselling tomes. The public intellectuals often believe their own bullshit. See Dawkins for a beautiful example. The readers treat the public intellectuals sort of like Christians treat Jesus; much of their self esteem seems to derive from the association.

Dawkins' latest book has indeed been described as "decidedly, even defiantly middlebrow" by one reviewer...


Petr

[okieredust]

See also a less respectful approach:

http://lupoleboucher.livejournal.com/15805.html?mode=reply



Dawkins' latest book has indeed been described as "decidedly, even defiantly middlebrow" by one reviewer...


PetrIf it isn't highbrow and scientific, I have to wonder what keeps it from being targeted by Muslims. Specifically comparing Islamization to child abuse, or hinting Muslims were worse/equivalent to child molesters, would almost certainly be targeted and thrown out as hate literature, as far better works have been in France. I assume he avoids this by principally if not exclusively talking about Christianity, although he philosophizes he feels this way about all religions (at least theistic ones).

Another reason it seems to me to have cultural-Marxist pedigrees.

[Seraphim]

Make no mistake--the modern Anglo-Western world is under the domination of French Revolutionary terrorists and Bolshevistic nihilists (in various grades of concealment and criminal-mindedness). The organized counter-elite propagates faint-hearted Liberal anomie as the prelude to the totalitarian, "demonic" anomie and theophobic violence of universal secular-messianic communism, "the religion of the antiChrist".

Traditional Christians in the Anglopone sphere have the supreme duty of inwardly and outwardly combating this counter-elite-created process of atheistic subhumanization. One of the main occult goals of the counter-elite has always been the Neron-ian persecution of Traditional Christians--this gives their distorted, subverted psyches some sort of infernal gratification. Without emotional hysteria, it is clear the "age of the catacombs" for Traditional Christians draws nearer and nearer. Dawkins is just one the exoteric symbolic mouthpieces of the Soviet-inspired destructive action against religious freedoms in the Anglophone and North American civilizations. The U.S. supreme court 1962 legislation against prayers in public schools and the ACLU subversion are foretastes of the "demonic" totalitarian violence against religion to come.

Fr. Seraphim Rose, the great American genius convert to Orthodoxy, correctly said: "One might take, as a symbol of our carefree, fun-loving, self-worshipping times, our American 'Disneyland'; if so, we should not neglect to see behind it the more sinister symbol that shows where the 'me generation' is really heading: the Soviet Gulag."

In the 1930's, the clairvoyant Elder Ignatius of Harbin, Manchuria prophetically declared: "What began in Russia will end in America."

The time will eventually come for Traditional Christians in the modern world to transform themselves from passive-minded sufferers of elite-sponsored pornocratic lawlessness into martyric Knights of Christian Order.

[Petr]

One of the main occult goals of the counter-elite has always been the Neron-ian persecution of Traditional Christians--this gives their distorted, subverted psyches some sort of infernal gratification.
Progressivists have promised, either implicitly or explicitly, an earthly paradise to their followers. When the paradise fails to materialize, scapegoats must be found. And who would fit that role better than Christians, who dare to preach that men have some inherent limitations that all the technology in the world cannot do away with?

For people like Dawkins, Christians will serve as "wreckers" who are sabotaging the progressivist utopia. They are venting their own inner frustrations ("why am I not omnipotent!") at us.


Petr

[Seraphim]

Progressivists have promised, either implicitly or explicitly, an earthly paradise to their followers. When the paradise fails to materialize, scapegoats must be found. And who would fit that role better than Christians, who dare to preach that men have some inherent limitations that all the technology in the world cannot do away with?

For people like Dawkins, Christians will serve as "wreckers" who are sabotaging the progressivist utopia. They are venting their own inner frustrations ("why am I not omnipotent!") at us.


Petr

Thanks for the thoughts Petr. What you say is indeed true. In terms of psychological etiology, hubristic secular messianism (in its Jewish and non-Jewish variants) is at the very root of the subversive processes of modernity. The following is from the Catholic Catechism, but one doesn't have to be Catholic to understand the meaning:

Paragraph No. 675

Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

Paragraph No. 676

The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.

[Oklahomaman]

If it isn't highbrow and scientific, I have to wonder what keeps it from being targeted by Muslims. Specifically comparing Islamization to child abuse, or hinting Muslims were worse/equivalent to child molesters, would almost certainly be targeted and thrown out as hate literature, as far better works have been in France. I assume he avoids this by principally if not exclusively talking about Christianity, although he philosophizes he feels this way about all religions (at least theistic ones).

Another reason it seems to me to have cultural-Marxist pedigrees.

Of course it's hardly a case of genuine good will toward Islam as Leftists dislike Islam as much as Christianity but generally refrain from direct criticism of Islam until it becomes a more immediate threat. Protection of competing ethnic and religious worldviews (however detestable to liberal ideology) in the public square undermines the dominate Christian culture, a tactic learned in early days of the Bolshevik regime. In areas where Muslims are actually threating the liberal establishment, it's much more acceptable for establishment liberals and leftists to criticize Islam. Such is the situation in Denmark and the Benelux where the left is getting more vocal about the social problems created by Muslims immigrants who are unamendable to liberal ideology.

Muslims are also inclined to write off Dawkins as a "Christian problem" insofar as his animus is seemingly directed toward Christianity almost exclusively. Muslims undoubtedly lack the visible intellectual resources to deal with hyper-rationalists like Dawkins. So it appears to me at least they've generally adopted a policy of non-engagement.

As for Dawkins, its hard to treat him as a serious thinker when he develops such rank sophistry as memetics.

[okieredust]

Of course it's hardly a case of genuine good will toward Islam as Leftists dislike Islam as much as Christianity but generally refrain from direct criticism of Islam until it becomes a more immediate threat. I'm not really sure philosophically you can say that. The left vs. right dichotomy is part of western culture, where when you move into Islam by definition you are moving outside of western culture. Hence I don't see leftists anti-religious dogma's, as we undetrstand them as leftists, really applying to non-Christian religions. (China is a different story, but "left" there tenfs to mean something quite different in that context.
Protection of competing ethnic and religious worldviews (however detestable to liberal ideology) in the public square undermines the dominate Christian culture, a tactic learned in early days of the Bolshevik regime.Solzhentisyn noted really the most greater tolerance of Imans and Mosques in Muslim areas of the USSR as opposed to the Christians in mainstream Russia.


In areas where Muslims are actually threating the liberal establishment, it's much more acceptable for establishment liberals and leftists to criticize Islam. Such is the situation in Denmark and the Benelux where the left is getting more vocal about the social problems created by Muslims immigrants who are unamendable to liberal ideology.That is happening there, true, but it seems after the fact. Islam there is now a major and establshed force.


Muslims are also inclined to write off Dawkins as a "Christian problem" insofar as his animus is seemingly directed toward Christianity almost exclusively. Muslims undoubtedly lack the visible intellectual resources to deal with hyper-rationalists like Dawkins. So it appears to me at least they've generally adopted a policy of non-engagement.Sure, Muslims are tribal, and don't respond unless criticisms are specifically targeted towad them. I was just using a "what if" scenario - obviously Dawkins wouldn't dream of making any of his criticisms specifically targeted toward Islam, which would seem logical. (Child abuse for instance is much more mainstream in Islam). Which just shows again his hypocrisy. He polemicizes against a religion which really created his freedom to polemicize.


As for Dawkins, its hard to treat him as a serious thinker when he develops such rank sophistry as memetics.Haven't really studied that. Is that his mainstream scientific contribution?

[Oklahomaman]

Haven't really studied that. Is that his mainstream scientific contribution?

Pretty much if you construe the word scientific liberally. Though like a lot of other things to which college freshmen give their undying adulation, it lacks credibility with serious academics. Like Randroidism, its more of a plaything for intellectual novices than anything else.

[okieredust]

Pretty much if you construe the word scientific liberally. Though like a lot of other things to which college freshmen give their undying adulation, it lacks credibility with serious academics. Like Randroidism, its more of a plaything for intellectual novices than anything else.

Somehow I'd read a little about his antireligious proseltyzing, I hadn't quite realized the basis for his fame as author of The Selfish Gene. Its an interesting theory, and also springboard for jumping out into sociology, culture, and political life.


In his book The Selfish Gene (1976), the ethologist Richard Dawkins coined the slightly different term "meme" to describe a unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, arguing that replication also happens in culture, albeit in a different sense

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

The idea actually reminds me of and undoubtedly influenced the field of evolutionary psychology also, although I haven't studied it closely, therefore Kevin MacDonald in a sense. I can see a couple of places where their work definitely diverges.


Dawkins has been consistently sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection.[14]

Even more importantly, he appears to be bosum buddies with MacDonald's big bete noire in the physical sciences, Stephen Jay Gould.



On the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould...

Sounds like he is a good demonstration what MacDonald's notion of group strategies: Cooperate with "the right people" and push your ideas the right way and you become a best selling author and celebrity for some half baked notions. Be uncooperative with "the right people" and you right books like Culture of Critique which get deep-sixed and not even reviewed, except by a few SPLC types.

Sounds like a perfect idea to refute the beneficial effects pf evolution - it is often times not the cream, but the scum, that rises to the top.:(

[Jack Bauer]

A poll conducted a few years ago-- initiated by Larry Witham, a conservative Christian editor of The Washington Times-- shows most top level scientists and mathematicians (American Academy of Sciences, etc.) disbelieving in God and the afterlife. A modest percentage claimed they were agnostic and a small, very small, percentage claimed they had a personal faith (e.g., Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, etc.). I read somewhere where a Nobel Laureate in physics said that nearly all the scientists in his fairly large circle had no belief. It is not that they were in anyway militantly atheist, just dismissive. He said that when they encounter someone who believes in a traditional religion, such as Christianity, they are more amused than anything else. They are curious how someone can possibly believe such things.

[Petr]

A poll conducted a few years ago-- initiated by Larry Witham, a conservative Christian editor of The Washington Times-- shows most top level scientists and mathematicians (American Academy of Sciences, etc.) disbelieving in God and the afterlife.
First of all, just what makes these people "top level" scientists, better than all others? Just because they are members of materialist-controlled elitist establishment groups?

You should stop thinking that these techno-nerds are some categorically higher kind of human beings.


Secondly, we are not even talking about "very small percentages" - this 15 % figure doens't even cover agnostics or pantheists:

"Tyson spoke with an evangelist's zeal, and he had the heretics in his sights. Referring to a recent poll of US National Academy of Sciences members which showed 85 per cent do not believe in a personal God, he suggested that the remaining 15 per cent were a problem that needs to be addressed. "How come the number isn't zero?" he asked. "That should be the subject of everybody's investigation. That's something that we can't just sweep under the rug."

This single statistic, he said, gave the lie to claims that patiently creating a scientifically literate public would get rid of religion. "How can [the public] do better than the scientists themselves? That's unrealistic.""

http://richarddawkins.net/print.php?id=334


And since you mentioned mathematicians:

When Dr. Behe was at the University of Texas El Paso in May of 1997 to give an invited talk, I told him that I thought he would find more support for his ideas in mathematics, physics and computer science departments than in his own field. I know a good many mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists who, like me, are appalled that Darwin's explanation for the development of life is so widely accepted in the life sciences. Few of them ever speak out or write on this issue, however--perhaps because they feel the question is simply out of their domain.

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=13425&highlight=mathematicians


And speaking of Dawkins and physics: :p

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1022


Barrow to Dawkins: “You’re not really a scientist.”


A Scientist’s Scientist
John Barrow wins 2006 Templeton Prize
By Julia Vitullo-Martin

When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of nature at last summer’s Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship lectures, Barrow laughed and said, “You have a problem with these ideas, Richard, because you’re not really a scientist. You’re a biologist.”

For Barrow, biology is little more than a branch of natural history. “Biologists have a limited, intuitive understanding of complexity. They’re stuck with an inherited conflict from the 19th century, and are only interested in outcomes, in what wins out over others,” he adds. “But outcomes tell you almost nothing about the laws that govern the universe.” For physicists it is the laws of nature themselves that capture and structure the universe—and put brakes on it as well.


Petr

[Jack Bauer]

BELIEF IN PERSONAL GOD- 1998

Personal belief: 7.0%
Doubt or agnosticism: 20.8%
Personal disbelief: 72.2%


On the subject of eminent scientists, they mention unpublished data collected by one of the co-authors: "Beit-Hallahmi (1988) found that among Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences, as well as those in literature, there was a remarkable degree of irreligiosity, as compared to the populations they came from." The reference is to: Beit-Hallahmi, B. (1988). The religiosity and religious affiliation of Nobel prize winners.

[Petr]

"Beit-Hallahmi (1988) found that among Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences, as well as those in literature, there was a remarkable degree of irreligiosity, as compared to the populations they came from."
Do you uncritically worship the opinions of establishment secularist institutions like Nobel Prize committee?


The not-so-Nobel decision

Recognition denied for achievement of great scientist—who is also a creationist

...

All of which makes the exclusion of Dr Damadian as the third co-recipient of the Nobel so pointed that even some of the secular media have talked of the possibility of a link between Dr Damadian’s exclusion and his creationism. The New York Times raised the issue in a recent report.3 In fact, as renowned an anticreationist as the agnostic/deist Canadian philosophy professor Michael Ruse has written of his own deep concern.4 Choosing his words carefully, he writes of the ‘likely hypothesis’ that the motive for rejecting Damadian was his open creationism. Damadian is a Christian, says Ruse, whose beliefs include the Genesis account of creation: ‘Adam and Eve the first humans, universal flood, and all the rest’.

Ruse says that in the eyes of the Nobel committee, ‘it is bad enough that such people exist, let alone give them added status and a pedestal from which to preach’.

http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/536


See also:

Alas, Hoyle paid for his outright questioning of the materialist paradigm. In the 1950s, Hoyle had some ingenious ideas about stellar fusion, and predicted that the Carbon-12 nucleus would have a certain energy level (called a resonance) to enable helium to undergo fusion.8 His co-worker William Fowler eventually won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 (with Subramanyan Chandrasekhar), but for some reason Hoyle’s original contribution was overlooked, and many were surprised that such a notable astronomer missed out. Fowler himself in an autobiographical sketch affirmed Hoyle’s immense contribution:

‘Fred Hoyle was the second great influence in my life. The grand concept of nucleosynthesis in stars was first definitely established by Hoyle in 1946.’

http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1819/


Ever since the Enlightenment, and the rise of explicitly "anti-sectarian" institutions like Freemasonry and Unitarianism, religious indifference, or at least latitudinarian tolerance, has tended to be de rigeur in the fashionable "high societies" of the West. Overt religiosity is seen as faux pas, cramping possibilities for social climbing.


Petr

[okieredust]

A poll conducted a few years ago-- initiated by Larry Witham, a conservative Christian editor of The Washington Times-- shows most top level scientists and mathematicians (American Academy of Sciences, etc.) disbelieving in God and the afterlife. A modest percentage claimed they were agnostic and a small, very small, percentage claimed they had a personal faith (e.g., Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, etc.). I read somewhere where a Nobel Laureate in physics said that nearly all the scientists in his fairly large circle had no belief. It is not that they were in anyway militantly atheist, just dismissive. He said that when they encounter someone who believes in a traditional religion, such as Christianity, they are more amused than anything else. They are curious how someone can possibly believe such things.Well firstly, as Petr points out, getting selected to the Natl. Acad. of Sci ., let alone a Nobel Prize, is a very political event. In fact just getting to that point in your career where you start to be considered is very political, and the selection is furthermore.

There are a couple of other considerations too. In a certain sense Nobel Prize winners etc. are similar to high achievers in business say, where there is a somewhat similar degree of irreligiousity. There's an old axiom in sociology about religion that belief is concentrated in the middle classes. The very poor aren't good enough for God, while for the very rich he's not good enough for them.

Also, the mystique of scientists owes somewhat to the legend of thinkers like Aristotle, Newton, and Leibnitz, "the renaissance man" when a man could be an expert in all areas of knowledge, and expertise in one area was transferable to another. Today such, if not possible, is at least very difficult and unusual.

Bill Gates might epitimize this level of techno-achiever (or techno-nerd as Petr called him). A few years ago someone asked him what his religious beliefs were. He said "Oh, I don't know, atheist, agnostic, something like that". What surprised the interviewer though as they talked with Gates wasn't this answer per se though, rather it was the impression that actually Gates had never really thought about it much. The world beyond C code was not of great relevance to him.

We don't routinely poll famous rock musicians on their impressions of astronomy controversies or molecukar genetics, why should we poll professional lab rats on life outside the test tube?

A final note might be the factors behind composition behind the scientific elite is entirely unlike that of the other elites, Jewish background being one of the contributing factors.

[Factotum]

The idea actually reminds me of and undoubtedly influenced the field of evolutionary psychology also, although I haven't studied it closely, therefore Kevin MacDonald in a sense. I can see a couple of places where their work definitely diverges.


Dawkins has been consistently sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection.[14]

Yes, the contrary, pro-group selection view of religion is here:

Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society

By David Sloan Wilson

Reviewed by Kevin MacDonald

http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/books-dswrev.html

An interesting book, despite some philo-Semitic language I read as a mild rebuke of KM.

[Last Chance Armada]

What surprised the interviewer though as they talked with Gates wasn't this answer per se though, rather it was the impression that actually Gates had never really thought about it much. The world beyond C code was not of great relevance to him.

Techno-nerds generally don't have much interest in anything that's not related to the latest OS/X release or some other pointless piece of techno-crapola. The techno-nerd epitomizes the Last Man in many regards. I look at these fellows with a mixture of pity, bemusement, and general disdain. Pity because most of them would really rather be doing something different; bemusement because... I just don't understand. The disdain comes from the fact that most of these guys simply epitomize the modern wimpy "organization man" that I cannot stand. "Dilberts", in other words.

There are a few exceptions to my generalization(s), but in my experience, not many. There probably just aren't that many people who have the necessary capacity to think broadly AND deal with the minutiae inherent in the engineering and scientific disciplines (not to mention the overspecialization inherent in the sciences these days which further narrows the scope of the 'techno-nerd's' line of thought). 500 years ago, an educated gentleman could probably reasonably expect to understand most of the world's knowledge, or at least have a passing familiarity with it. But in 2007? Even a PhD can only expect to keep up with a fraction of the developments in his own field.

Perhaps my own experience is biased, but after working with these fellows for a good decade now (and being one myself to a large degree, although the passing years have found me completely disinterested in technological developments) I have found that there are more "40 going on 13" year olds out there than I ever would have thought possible as a young man. "Men" who collect Star Wars figures, play with little novelty toys, have squirt gun fights over lunch, and are obsessed over some anime character or science fiction actress. There's something about the techno-nerd's "secondary" characteristics -- his man-childish obsessions -- that renders him a perfect Organization Man. Give him some new Microsoft something-or-other, a mail-order bride, and his "space church" in the form of some science-fiction series and he's perfect cannon/idea fodder for the NWO.

[Petr]

Perhaps my own experience is biased, but after working with these fellows for a good decade now (and being one myself to a large degree, although the passing years have found me completely disinterested in technological developments) I have found that there are more "40 going on 13" year olds out there than I ever would have thought possible as a young man. "Men" who collect Star Wars figures, play with little novelty toys, have squirt gun fights over lunch, and are obsessed over some anime character or science fiction actress. There's something about the techno-nerd's "secondary" characteristics -- his man-childish obsessions -- that renders him a perfect Organization Man. Give him some new Microsoft something-or-other, a mail-order bride, and his "space church" in the form of some science-fiction series and he's perfect cannon/idea fodder for the NWO.
Check this out: :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw


Petr

[Petr]

We don't routinely poll famous rock musicians on their impressions of astronomy controversies or molecukar genetics, why should we poll professional lab rats on life outside the test tube?
This corresponds to the ideas of famous late philosopher of science and intellectual maverick Paul Feyerabend:


We need not fear that such a separation will lead to a breakdown of technology. There will always be people who prefer being scientists to being the masters of their fate and who gladly submit to the meanest kind of (intellectual and institutional) slavery provided they are paid well and provided also there are some people around who examine their work and sing their praise. Greece developed and progressed because it could rely on the services of unwilling slaves. We shall develop and progress with the help of the numerous willing slaves in universities and laboratories who provide us with pills, gas, electricity, atom bombs, frozen dinners and, occasionally, with a few interesting fairy-tales. We shall treat these slaves well, we shall even listen to them, for they have occasionally some interesting stories to tell, but we shall not permit them to impose their ideology on our children in the guise of 'progressive' theories of education. We shall not permit them to teach the fancies of science as if they were the only factual statements in existence.

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18902&highlight=feyerabend


Also, an amusing rant:


http://www.sciforums.com/archive/index.php/t-40654

dixonmassey

09-11-04, 03:22 AM


There are so many hopes on the saving power of science these days that I want to laugh. Why? Well, cause I work there and I know more or less how things work. I know what is the main product of the scientific machine these days (Ans: BS).

The amount of the useful innovations (especially in fundamental sciences) is drying up. Hype, hard "used car" sale techniques, old boys network, fraud, deliberate futility, etc. fill the gap left by the "real stuff". I want to vomit when I hear a word "nano". "Nano boom" is the most disgraceful hype frenzy science has ever seen. Me (modest worm) know several science crooks successfully milking nano cow. People are putting word nano in every hole because that is where funding is. Transforming science into mass bread winning profession did more harm than good to the progress (in the long run).

Here is my list of "why's" the modern science sucks and will suck more in the future.


1) Salemanship is #1 skill "successful" scientist MUST have. If you are not a naturally born salesman, stay away from science careers. Your chances to succeed are close to zero independently of everything else you have.

2) Successful modern scientist should be a narrow minded zombie pecking his topic 24/7 until funding is there. Otherwise, somebody else, pecking the very same topic, will get funded. Being a science zombie is a good thing on one side (24*7>>8*5). On the other side, being a zombie does not play well with creativity. To be truly creative person one must be as well rounded as he can. You never know where that "spark" in your brain will come from. Certainly, it rarely comes from the continuous pecking at the same spot.

You'll be amazed to know what simple/elementary things renown scientists with 20 something years of experience do NOT know.

3) Modern science is a bullshit factory. Amount of papers, information is amazing BUT most of it is repeating itself BS. Why? Cause, scientists must publish to survive, keep his job, get funded in the future. Sure, one can publish a lot by doing superb cutting edge research every other week. But science is not a manufacturing plant. So, folks have chosen simpler ways to boost their paper counts. #1 trick is to publish as many papers as one can based on a single modest result, or NO significant results whatsoever. Fraud, comes the second. "Massaging/forging data" sounds disgusting? Well, it doesn't if you want to keep your paycheck coming.

4) Competing for funding. Sounds as a very free market approach, which should work well in science. Well, not if >70% of work time MUST be spent on the writing multiple proposals, reports, BS papers to show that funding $ were well spent. Having the most original idea does not guarantee a funding at all. Why? Cause, clerks in funding offices judge merits of your proposal based on the names of authors and research institutions they work at. Peer reviewer may kill your proposal just to "steal" ideas. In two words, names of authors of a proposal, names of institutions they work at DO count; Content of a proposal counts for less. Reseach tzars with dozens of low paid slaves in labs will always win funding competition. Why? Cause, tzar may forget about doing everything else (including research) and write proposals, shake hands, manage slaves and lab, etc. Less blessed in the slave department scientists (who actually do some science themselves) have no chances to compete with tzars for funding independently of the merits of their research.

5) You'll say scientists have freedom of what to study. I'll say hell NO. Government clerks, etc. decide indirectly what scientists will study by allocating $. Academic freedom is largerly fiction. Academic prostitution is a more precise word to describe things. Scientists follow hype directions as a flock of sheep follow a leader goat to a buthcery, trampling everything in their way. Secondly, mainstream interpretation of results is encouraged. Indirect or direct critique of somebody's else work is discouraged (you never know who'll review your proposal next). So, if you want to keep funding $ coming, you better keep your head on the average mainstream level (if you do not have big name support).

6) Oversaturation of science labor market. Fresh Ph.D.s in postdoc spots are treated/paid as sh*t. It's cheaper (no obligations too) to hire a postdoc slave than a technician with HS education. Results are straightforward: fresh Ph.D.s are used mostly for brain numbing jobs (technicians should do). When I worked in a National Lab, I have observed up close and personal a record set by a 60K/year technician who did NOTHING for 3 straight weeks, while 4 times cheaper (counting overhead) Ph.D. slaves of science did all the work he's supposed to do. Such a sweatshop system discourages well rounded folks, which have interests beyond a narrow topic they work on, from pursuing science careers. Some (not all) determined science "zombies" survive sweat shop system by sacrificing larger portion of their best years to "pecking". Creative potential of the science work force diminishes.

The news about abysmal job prospects in sciences is spread more or less well. As a result, majority of the best and brightest (even from poor countries) try to avoid science careers.

7) Even successful science "zombies" start their independent careers well into their 30th (on the average). Their best (from new idea generation standpoint) years were sacrificed to save a few bucks for their $ conscious supervisors by doing brain numbing work instead of technicians, etc. What a waste of the human potential/life modern science machine is.


Modern science has become so compartmentalized that scientists can often be very clueless even about science outside their own small specialized area. Scott "Dilbert" Adams has observed this as well:

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/11/intelligent_des.html


The Intelligent Design people have a not-so-kooky argument against the idea of trusting 90%+ of scientists. They point out that evolution is supported by different branches of science (paleontologists, microbiologists, etc.) and those folks are specialists who only understand their own field. That’s no problem, you think, because each scientist validates Darwinism from his or her own specialty, then they all compare notes, and everything fits. Right?

Here’s where it gets interesting. The Intelligent Design people allege that some experts within each narrow field are NOT convinced that the evidence within their specialty is a slam-dunk support of Darwin. Each branch of science, they say, has pro-Darwinists who acknowledge that while they assume the other branches of science have more solid evidence for Darwinism, their own branch is lacking in that high level of certainty. In other words, the scientists are in a weird peer pressure, herd mentality loop where they think that the other guy must have the “good stuff.”

Is that possible? I have no way of knowing.

But let me give you a little analogy. One time in my corporate career I was assigned to lead a project to build a 10 million dollar technology laboratory. The project was based on the fact that “hundreds of our customers” wanted a place to test our technology before buying our products. I interviewed several managers who told me the same thing. Months into the project, I discovered that there was in fact only one customer who had once asked for that service, and he had been satisfied with another solution. The story of that one customer had been told and retold until everyone believed that someone else had direct knowledge of the hundreds of customers in need. If you guessed that we immediately stopped the project, you’ve never worked in a big company. We just changed our “reasons” and continued until funding got cut for unrelated budget reasons.

I’d be surprised if 90%+ of scientists are wrong about the evidence for Darwinism. But if you think it’s impossible, you’ve lived a sheltered life.

Petr

[Jack Bauer]

Fred Hoyle was no Christian.

[Jack Bauer]

Petr,

From what I have read on the web re: Damadian, he was the progenitor of a specific approach to MRI that was abandoned.

I certainly don't believe that the greatest minds of modern times are Nobel Prize winners. Turing, Wittgenstein, and Von Neumann come to mind. I have read many biographies and autobiographies of great minds-- from both of Nobel Laureate physicist Richard Feynman's autobios to bios on Turing, Wittgenstein, Von Neumann, and Heisenberg. From all these I am left with the overall impression that most of the exceptional minds were and are irreligious.

[Petr]

Fred Hoyle was no Christian.
No one has claimed such a thing. Strawmanning.


Petr

[Petr]

From all these I am left with the overall impression that most of the exceptional minds were and are irreligious.
Things are not quite that black-and-white simple.

http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html


Regarding the assumption of materialism, Schrödinger comments, "anyone who wants to make it can do so; it is convenient, if somewhat naive. He will be missing a great deal if he does." Or, as Heisenberg put it, "materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct "actuality" of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range." And he adds a warning that "the naive materialistic way of thinking is an obstacle to understanding the quantum concept of reality."

Despite the profound discoveries of Heisenberg and Schrödinger over sixty years ago, most of us today still think we live in the naive materialistic world. This world view can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus, who taught that the fundamental substance of the universe is composed of indivisible and indestructible atoms which moved in empty space.

...

We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On: As Matter Dissolves

The first piece of the Newtonian mechanism to crumble was materialism: the immutable atoms were not so immutable after all. Soon after the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 it was found that atoms sometimes transmute into other atoms, just as the alchemists had dreamed. Next, the electron was discovered in 1897, a particle much smaller than any of the supposedly fundamental atoms. Thus, the atoms forming the substantial basis for all existence in the material world view were not the firm foundation they were taken to be. But this discovery in itself only pushed materialism down one step in scale, to the smaller particles which made up the atoms. While the substantial foundation had shifted, it was still just as firm. . .or so they thought.


Says Heisenberg:


In the philosophy of Democritus the atoms are eternal and indestructible units of matter, they can never be transformed into each other. With regard to this question modern physics takes a definite stand against the materialism of Democritus and for Plato and the Pythagoreans.

http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p13e.htm


Petr