Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist by trade and holds the Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. He is also, like me, a godless heathen. His speech yesterday saw him wearing all of these hats simultaneously.
Although I've read a lot by Dawkins, seen many interviews, and one of his television series, I found the prospect of seeing him in-person exciting. As The D and I were walking upstairs to find a place in line, I looked up only to find Prof. Dawkins walking down them towards me followed by a coterie of students who I presume they were members of the secular student organization. I chuckled to myself because the sight rather reminded me of a scene from Brazil with the boss hurrying through the halls with his minions in tow.
We ended up with pretty decent seats. After a brief wait, UW prof Sean Carroll gave his introduction. At one point, he asked audience members to raise their hands if they'd ever read one of Dawkins' books and it appeared that a substantial number of folks had their arm in the air. It was going to be a very friendly audience.
With the pleasantries over, Dawkins came onstage and began with a plea for patience as his laptop was being unfriendly. This was quickly resolved, however. I don't have my notes from the lecture before me so I can't give much of a blow-by-blow account. Instead, let me talk about what happened at the end of it.
The D said that she wanted to ask him about what happens after religion is gone. At least I think that's what she was keen on knowing. I was a bit confused by what she was saying but I believe the gist of her interest was this: Religion satisfies certain needs common to all people. So if you remove religion, how will these needs be met? Perhaps she'll comment here and correct me, but I think this was the crux of her inquiry.
I could only respond that this was beyond the purview of Dawkins' lecture and, to the best of my knowledge, not addressed in his book The God Delusion. (I haven't read it. I did vow to forego the hardcover in favor of the paperback unless he came to Madison to speak. Lo and behold, I found a paperback for cheap a couple weeks ago and purchased it.) Instead there were three main elements to his speech last night.
Firstly there was his argument that there was no evidence for the existence of supernatural deities generally and Yahweh specifically. He noted that children tend to assume the religion of their parents and also invoked Bertrand Russell's teapot as reasons for disbelief.
The Teleological argument for God's existence or the Argument from Design was next. It allowed Dawkins to transition to the second main element of his presentation – explaining evolution.
Evolution via natural selection is a process which started some 4 billion years ago. This is a massive span of time and its size is not always appreciated. Change occurred gradually. Small steps accumulated over the aeons to produce complex organisms. (Luckily there didn't appear to be any Stephen Jay Gould fans in the audience as no one brought up punctuated equilibrium.) It is here that Dawkins really shined. He is, after all, an evolutionary biologist renowned for his ability to communicate science to the public. No doubt many people in the room understood this, but explaining just what evolution is and how it works is desperately needed even at the college level. It was old hat for any biology students in the audience but liberal arts majors can use all the science they can get. Perhaps things have changed since my days as a student at the UW but at the time there were no safeguards in place to ensure that aspiring liberal artists understood what is probably the most important concept in biology.
The final crucial element that I want to mention is best encapsulated by Dawkins' refrain of "consciousness raising". The D's question about people in a post-religious society remains unanswered and the reason for this is probably best understood by consciousness raising. What Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Victor Stenger, John Allen Paulos, and others do with their books is not to prescribe behaviors or give outlines for living in a post-religious society; instead what they're doing is trying to change common discourse with regards to religion. They seek to remove the taboos around discussion of religion so that belief in supernatural deities is not given a pass and not granted legitimacy merely by virtue of existing. For them (and me) religious belief is not a privileged position and such beliefs should be subject to the same scrutiny as economic theory, politics, etc. Being offended is not an excuse to be shielded.
Part of this consciousness raising effort involves the labeling of children. Dawkins pointed out that it is acceptable to label 4 year old children by the religion of their parents, e.g. – a Christian child or a Muslim child. This, he said, is ridiculous (and tantamount to child abuse, in his eyes) because children do not understand what it means to be a Christian or what Christianity entails. Only religion gets this kind of pass, he argued. After all, we don’t call kids Keynesian children or Hayekian children.
Again, I think the objective of the so-called "New Atheists" is not to delineate a framework for a post-religious society. They are, to varying degrees, out to push the virtue of critical thinking, to explain evolution, and to change our discourse so that religion is stripped of its privileges and the taboo of offending the religious is removed.
As I told The D last night, none of the New Atheists believe that religion is going to be eradicated like small pox. No matter how incisive your reasoning and how much evidence piles up, there will be religious people. But part of the consciousness raising aspect is the promotion of secularism, i.e. – keeping religion in the private realm. It is impossible to get rid of belief in Yahweh but that doesn't mean we cannot, for instance, keep Intelligent Design out of biology classes.
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