NOT FAIRIES, BUT FANTASTIC

From a long article on an interview by Michael Powell with Richard Dawkins in the New York Times:

Does this man, arguably the world’s most influential evolutionary biologist, spend most of his time here or in the field? Prof. Richard Dawkins smiles faintly. He did not find fame spending dusty days picking at shale in search of ancient trilobites. Nor has he traipsed the African bush charting the sex life of wildebeests.

He gets little charge from such exertions.

“My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side,” he says, listing the essential questions that drive him. “Why do we exist, why are we here, what is it all about?”

All right, Dawkins ain't out there digging. He's a philosopher of science or a scientific philosopher. (I'm not sure I have the terms correct.) Anyway, he's a thinker.

Dawkins is reluctant to lecture in places like San Francisco or New York, because those cities are already bastions of godlessness. He prefers the Bible belt, where he's not preaching his brand of atheism to the converted.

The popular theory amongst certain scientists that altruism and cooperation within the group plays a part in the survival of certain species is not convincing to Dawkins.

Genes, he says, try to maximize their chance of survival. The successful ones crawl down through the generations. The losers, and their hosts, die off. A gene for helping the group could not persist if it endangered the survival of the individual.

Such insights were in the intellectual air by the mid-1960s. But Professor Dawkins grasped the power of metaphor — that selfish gene — and so made the idea come alive.

Dawkins on the progression of evolution:

Professor Dawkins’s great intellectual conviction is that evolution is progressive, and tends to lead to more and more complexity. Species, in his view, often arrive at similar solutions to evolutionary puzzles — the need for ears, eyes, arms or an octopus’s tentacle. And, often although not invariably, bigger brains.
....

So it would be no great surprise if the interior lives of animals turned out to be rather complex. Do dogs, for example, experience consciousness? Are they aware of themselves as autonomous animals in their surroundings?

“Consciousness has to be there, hasn’t it?” Professor Dawkins replies. “It’s an evolved, emergent quality of brains. It’s very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.”

Praise be! I agree with Dawkins about consciousness in animals.

Critics grow impatient with Professor Dawkins’s atheism. They accuse him of avoiding the great theological debates that enrich religion and philosophy, and so simplifying the complex. He concocts “vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince,” wrote Terry Eagleton, regarded as one of Britain’s foremost literary critics. “What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus?”

Put that charge to Professor Dawkins and he more or less pleads guilty. To suggest he study theology seems akin to suggesting he study fairies. Nor is he convinced that the ecumenical Anglican, the moderate imam, the Catholic priest with the well-developed sense of irony, is religion’s truest representative.

“I’ve had perfectly wonderful conversations with Anglican bishops, and I rather suspect if you asked in a candid moment, they’d say they don’t believe in the virgin birth,” he says. “But for every one of them, four others would tell a child she’ll rot in hell for doubting.” (My emphases)

I expect that Dawkins is correct to say that there are Anglican bishops who would, in a candid moment, say they do not believe in the virgin birth, but, in fact, the lack of belief in a literal virgin birth would not necessarily undermine the whole basis for their faith.

And I wonder where Dawkins gets his numbers for the 4 to 1 ratio of Christians who would tell children they will rot in hell. From a study? From a poll? Could it be that the rot-in-hell types simply make more noise?

After two hours of conversation, Professor Dawkins walks far afield. He talks of the possibility that we might co-evolve with computers, a silicon destiny. And he’s intrigued by the playful, even soul-stirring writings of Freeman Dyson, the theoretical physicist.

In one essay, Professor Dyson casts millions of speculative years into the future. Our galaxy is dying and humans have evolved into something like bolts of superpowerful intelligent and moral energy.

Doesn’t that description sound an awful lot like God?

“Certainly,” Professor Dawkins replies. “It’s highly plausible that in the universe there are God-like creatures.”

He raises his hand, just in case a reader thinks he’s gone around a religious bend. “It’s very important to understand that these Gods came into being by an explicable scientific progression of incremental evolution.”

Could they be immortal? The professor shrugs.

“Probably not.” He smiles and adds, “But I wouldn’t want to be too dogmatic about that.”

Since I'm one of the impatient critics, help me here. To suggest that he learn a bit about theology before he denigrates it would be, for Richard Dawkins, like asking him why he doesn't study fairies. But wait! Dawkins ponders the distant future populated by creatures co-evolved with computers and possessing God-like qualities. These creatures are, for the present, only speculative possibilities, but, if they come into being, it will be by an evolutionary process which will be entirely explainable, presumably by the creatures themselves.

Perhaps I don't know enough about science, but the creatures described by Dawkins sound to me as scientifically fantastical as fairies or God.

Dawkins seems an affable fellow in person. Powell, the interviewer, calls him 'gracious'. Although the article is long, it is worth reading in its entirety. Don't forget the NYT limitation to 20 free visits per month to their online version. I feared I would run over my limit in the process of writing this post, which I probably shouldn't be writing anyway, because of my limited knowledge of science. But hey! I use a lot of quotes. Dawkins' description of future creatures caught my attention and was decisive in my determination, for better or for worse, to write the post.
Picture of Dawkins from Wikipedia.

UPDATE: Nicked from MadPriest.