Re: Richard Dawkins Question

"John Edser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> JE:-
> Amazingly, Dawkins cannot see that
> religion is THE critical group binding
> and group identifying human belief
> system

AQ:
I think we all know Dawkins' views on religion. Perhaps you could explain
what you mean by "religion is THE critical group binding and group
identifying human belief system"?
I would have thought science and secular ethics would be a more appropriate
model for the 21st century.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4373988,00.html

JE:
> Dawkins has failed
> to identify trade as the most important
> human, _biological_ adaptation.

AQ:
Are you suggesting trade is *not* a cultural adaptation? That there are
genes for trade?

JE:
> Dawkins political leaning is to the far left.

AQ:
That depends on where you stand. If you were on the far right, Dawkins would
look like he is on the far left. But then so would Al Gore and Gerhard
Schroeder. From my few readings of Dawkins' political views I would say he
is of the moderate liberal left (as opposed to authoritarian right):
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Media/articles.htm
If you disagree, perhaps you could cite some examples?
If you're not sure where you stand I suggest you take the test:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/

JE:
> Their intention seems to be in trying
> to prove that altruism is a superior ethic and
> a fact of nature.

AQ:
What evidence do you have for this assertion?
In The Selfish Gene Dawkins' writes:
"Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish."
If we must teach altruism, how can it be a "fact of nature"?

JE:
> Dawkins is on record in opposing Thatcher's
> free market economic reforms, which today
> can be proven to have provided the prosperity
> that the UK now enjoys via market globalisation.

AQ:
Perhaps you could offer some proof?
There are many reasons for the UK's prosperity, but I can be sure that
monetarism isn't one of them. The policy of using the money supply as the
sole tool of economic management as pursued by Reagan and Thatcher in the
early 1980s proved disastrous. Do you not remember stagflation and mass
unemployment? Even Milton Friedman, the father of monetarism, says he was
wrong:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,982271,00.html
Thatcher was deeply unpopular during this time, and the only reason she won
the 1983 election was because of the Falklands War. After that there was an
economic boom caused by massive deregulation of consumer credit laws,
leading to irresponsible lending and huge personal debt, which was the major
cause of the recession of the early 90s.
This was nothing compared to the misery suffered by endebted Third World
nations who saw repayments escalate as the dollar interest rate rose.

JE:
> It was Regan and Thatcher that wound back
> Maynard Keynes massive acts of economic group
> selection that sanctioned enormous economic
> protectionism and government "pump priming",
> waste.

AQ:
... and replaced this, at least in America, with economic demand management
and "pump priming" via massive spending on the defence budget (cf. the
military-industrial complex):
http://www.cdi.org/budget/2004/
http://www.cdi.org/issues/usmi/complex/

JE:
> It is the _unique_ human event of trade that
> makes humans different from animals

AQ:
I would suggest that language, art and technology are what sets humans apart
from animals. Trade is a consequence of these attributes.

JE:
> Dawkins is on record as opposing the war with Iraq.

AQ:
... along with the majority of his fellow Europeans:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2747175.stm
Anyway, this still doesn't place him on the "hard left", unless you suggest
the hard left includes Charles Kennedy, Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan.

JE:
> he has poured scorn on the intellectual capacity of George Bush

AQ:
... as many others have done, both within the US and in the rest of the
world.
If you are you suggesting that critisim of Bush implies anti-Americanism,
may I remind you that 50% of Americans did not vote for Bush.
On September 11:
"I felt a savage anger, and an instant bonding with America. For all its
faults, the USA is a major centre of world civilisation, in some ways
(admittedly not many) the greatest there has ever been. It was under attack
from a pre-medieval barbarism, incapable of developing advanced technology
but happy to parasitise the technology of the very society it enviously
wanted to destroy with it."
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Media/2002-09-11oneyearon.htm

JE:
> Dawkins seems to imply that his work in
> evolutionary theory, which features Hamilton's
> false logic of selfish geneism, has somehow provided
> him with some sort of superior insight into the ethics
> of world events

AQ:
Perhaps you could cite some examples?
>From my reading, I would suggest Dawkins is very wary of drawing parallels
between genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Some quotes from The
Selfish Gene:
"I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things
have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave."
"Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then
at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other
species has ever aspired to do."
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Catalano/quotes.htm