KARL JASPERS
FORUM
TARGET ARTICLE 106
STRUCTURING IN
THE UNSTRUCTURED -
IS GOD A
DELUSION ?
by Herbert FJ Müller
26 February 2008,
posted 1 March 2008
[1]
ABSTRACT
This
paper discusses some questions which are re-activated on the occasion of reading
the book ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins.
He recommends abandoning theism in favour of atheism. -- His argumentation is very well written
and documented but handicapped by his naturalist epistemological view, which is
similar to the theistic ones which he criticizes, in that both eliminate the
subject from a fictitious supposedly mind-independent reality. The result is that the discussion of God is
confined to the question whether or not he exists mind-independently; and to
the intellectual and social difficulties resulting from theism. This neglects the need to consider holistic
experience. -- From a constructivist subject-inclusive
viewpoint, one may understand mind-independent theism as a human tool,
developed from a more original subject-inclusive religion that is centered on
the encompassing aspect of experience, for which Dawkins’ point that ‘God does
not exist’ is not relevant. -- The desire for
mind-external authorities is in part a consequence of the human invention and
use of language, which has resulted in a bewildering increase of possibilities
for thought and action. In order to deal
with this difficulty, mind-external guiding authorities were then invented,
affirmed and for reasons of social control often imposed on everyone. -- But when such as-hoc fictions are
presented as absolutely true nowadays, they are not easily compatible with
increasing knowledge. Therefore the
concrete guidelines and images tend to dissolve more and more in science,
religion, and art, despite counter-reactions from many who feel threatened by
this development. Naturalism can on the
other hand become intolerant just as do other dogmatic beliefs. -- The human need to create and maintain
adequate subject-inclusive working-structures including meaning is now more
pressing than ever.
[2]
INTRODUCTION
After
the disintegration of many of the dogmatic communist regimes around 1989,
dogmatic religion has filled a doctrinal gap, and once more become an important
political guiding force. As it happens
with all ideologies when they are mistaken to be of absolute validity instead
of being used as human tools, religion can become counter-productive, as
witnessed by some of its recent international side effects such as Bin Laden’s
inexhaustible supply of suicide bombers and the elections of GW Bush as US
president. Richards Dawkins’ book ‘The
God Delusion’ (2006) puts these and related problems into perspective. He recommends giving up theistic belief in
favour of atheism; he does so forcefully and in an elegant style, and has
assembled a large amount of relevant historical material as well as examples
from his personal experience, in public discussions and written exchanges. This is a stimulating book, and an important
achievement.* I
will here discuss some aspects of this topic (page numbers refer to Dawkins’
book).
[3]
GOD AND
SUBJECT-FREE MATERIALISM
Dawkins’
proposition is complicated by his epistemology which he calls intellectual
materialist monism, and which he apparently thinks is needed for science. He writes it means that ‘mind is a
manifestation of matter’ (pp.209-10).
‘Our brains construct a continuously updated model of what is out there’
(p.113), that is to say, of a postulated
mind-independent reality (MIR). The
alternative view he discusses, and rejects, is ‘dualism’, which ‘distinguishes
between matter and mind’. His opponents
and other discussants often seem to start from the same or a similar basis, or
alternative.
[4]
The problem is that the mind cannot be a manifestation of matter because matter
is a concept structured within the mind; this is, if you like, a topological
question. Materialism-type of opinions
are based on traditional (naïve) metaphysics-ontology, which assumes that one
can know (about the existence, or various other aspects, of) a mind-independent
reality, transcending experience by doing so -
it means being oblivious to warnings since the time of Plato that this
cannot be done. This neglect is easy to
comprehend, since Plato’s opinion was couched in ambiguous language
: though MIR cannot be known, it
is nevertheless supposed to be ‘real’; and one can see its shadows (commonly
called ‘appearances’) on the wall.
[5]
But such comprehension does not remedy the problem : that in all types of MIR-belief the subjects
are amputated from reality (and further that, in part due to this absence of
subjects, the beliefs can often not be corrected). Because of that, MIR-beliefs are
dysfunctional, and consequently, materialism and other MIR-views cause
conceptual difficulties in a number of fields, for instance concerning the
question of the mind-brain relation, as just mentioned, and as previously
discussed in various texts in this Forum.
However, a great many publications and discussions are based on these
and similar problematic epistemological premises.
[6]
In Dawkins’ book it results in his claim that the existence or non-existence of
God is a ‘scientific question about the universe’ (p.73). The discussion about ‘God’ remains confined
to the question whether or not ‘He exists’ (namely, mind-independently,
objectively; in chapters 3 & 4), and to problems like the many intellectual
and moral oddities and absurdities in theistic books, practices, and political
opinions, particularly fanatical ones; the strange arguments of creationists
and intelligent-design advocates, or the positive geographical association of
crime rates with conservatism in the US (p.263). All these are indeed of concern, but Dawkins’
main question misses the target.
[7]
SUBJECT-INCLUSIVE WORKING-ONTOLOGY,
STRUCTURED FROM
NO GIVEN STRUCTURES
NO TRANSCENDENCE,
BUT FEEDBACK FROM
TOOL USE
In
the following I examine this aspect from the zero-derivation structuring (0-D)
point of view, which has been discussed in this Forum (see TA 1 and other texts
in KJF). Mind-and-world-and-all
working-structures are tools formed within experience, and do not refer to any
pre-fabricated mind-external structures; they would have to be fictitious
anyway, since it is not possible to leave or ‘transcend’ the bubble of ongoing
subjective experience. Seen from there,
subject-exclusive MIR-objectivity (often assumed to be the essence of ‘scientific’
thinking) is a secondary technical development, a helpful procedure for many
scientific questions; but it can function only as a shortcut for
subject-inclusive knowledge; it becomes easily counter-productive when this is
overlooked. And indeed all belief in
MIR-ontology, not only the one concerning God, requires a leap of faith to
outside the bubble (for instance to a postulated fictitious MIR-agent called
‘Nature’, with naturalism as a non-theistic religion). The leap itself can in principle not be reconciled
with critical thinking, but it is rarely corrected. There are often severe social penalties for
attempts to reverse the leap, particularly in fundamentalist religions and
ideologies.
[8]
Dawkins writes that ‘Constructing models is something the human brain is very
good at’ (p.116), although he is by no means a constructivist, since he is
apparently firmly convinced of his MIR-ontic
naturalism. But science does not need
ontology (only the fictitious MIR-science does), and cannot produce, but only
dissolve, ontology. Science requires working-concepts
and working-assumptions, which are tested by feedback during use. That may result in ‘mid-course’ corrections,
and if successful it can with their help develop reliable mechanisms like space
shuttles or DNA analysis. When
MIR-ontology is understood as a shortcut for a subject-inclusive view, it
becomes working-ontology, or as-if-ontology.
This means a change from traditional belief in metaphysical MIR-entities
to an awareness that one uses working-tools within
ongoing experience. That heeds Kant’s
observation that onta (or noumena,
‘things-in-themselves’) are needed for thinking, although they cannot be
‘known’.
[9]
The difference in views between MIR-belief and 0-D structuring is of little
consequence for much of knowledge, including science, to the extent that
word-gestalt entities are available and reliable; but it becomes important in
the absence of objectifiable gestalt properties,
especially for questions dealing with the mind and its encompassing
aspect. All mental structures are
produced by humans - and by animals - as
needed and possible, and can to some extent become externalized, including the
God concept. How adequate (viable, as vonGlasersfeld calls it) they are, is determined via
feedback to the center of experience when using them. But without a constructivist correction, the
subject-exclusive MIR-thinking tends to introduce an unnecessary -
and entirely avoidable - complication of understanding.
[10]
SUBJECT-INCLUSIVE RELIGION
Concerning
religion, this point is illustrated by the fact that (initially unstructured)
mysticism can avoid the subject-exclusion problem of MIR-reasoning. Dawkins writes that mystery stimulates
scientists to work on problems (p.152; occasionally scientific progress is even
achieved in dreams). This function of
mystery as a source of structures can be extended to religion. One should also remember the philosopher of
science Paul Feyerabend’s insight that there are only
some islands of sense in an ocean of irrationality. Dawkins seems to think that irrationality
needs to be explained as a deviation from rationality (p.215); he got this
upside down, including for scientific work, because all working-structures of
rational thinking are structured within unstructured (i.e., ‘irrational’)
encompassing experience.
[11]
The
following quotation can serve as an example of religious mysticism; it is from
the writing of the (originally Lutheran, later converted Catholic) physician,
priest, and mystic Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler), 1675.
“ 8. GOtt lebt nicht ohne
mich.
Jch weiß
daß ohne mich GOtt
nicht ein Nun kan leben /
Werd' ich zu nicht
Er muß von Noth den Geist auffgeben.
[God
does not live without me. I know that
without me God cannot live an instant / If I perish He must of need give up His
spirit.]
9.
Jch habs von Gott / und Gott von mir.
Daß GOtt
so seelig ist
und Lebet ohn Verlangen /
Hat Er so wol von mir
/ als ich
von jhm empfangen.
[I
have it from God / and God from me. That
God is so contented and lives without desire / He has
as well from me / as I have received from Him.] ”
[12]
Scheffler employed ‘God’ as
an extrapolation of himself, as his personal universal spirit, a conceptual
tool for handling the encompassing aspect of his mind. This subject-inclusive God-concept is neither
a mind-independent objective fact nor a delusion; it serves to coordinate the
unstructured center of thinking with its structured periphery. It is a response to a human need that
everyone has, for overall understanding and perhaps structuring (but as in Scheffler’s instance, it does not require an MIR-God
(p.394). It can be answered by a variety
of techniques and of beliefs. Dawkins
himself seems to manage this need by generalizing a naturalist faith, although
he also appears to pretend that there is no such desire -
stiff upper lip syndrome ?). For Scheffler, God remained entirely identical with himself,
the subject. Feedback from a previously
externalized conceptual tool to the center of experience does not apply here;
the feedback (if you want to call it that) is built-in, immediate, as it is in
meditation generally. That is an earlier
and more original aspect of religion than the (secondary) theistic MIR-type
dogma. If the presence of the
unstructured center is acknowledged, this kind of attempt is entirely
compatible with analytical thinking, and Dawkins’ question of the MIR-existence
of God does not arise.
[13]
MIR-ON-MIR CRITIQUE
But
it does come up with respect to the secondary MIR-theisms. MIR-theism is derived and externalized from
subject-inclusive religion by eliminating the subject as well as the
possibility of feedback, turning God into a subject-exclusive
entity-in-himself, an absolute external authority which often does not even
allow considering alternatives. Then
Dawkins’ critique is justified, but both the theistic belief and the critique
are based on the same erroneous MIR-premises.
It
also applies for instance to all MIR-beliefs of eschatological type, like the
notion that suicide bombers go to heaven immediately after death. That belief can, in the absence of
post-mortem feedback, only be maintained by pre-mortem MIR-indoctrination. The mid-course point where correction might
be undertaken - when people find out whether or not they are
in fact in heaven - would be after the explosion. The only available feedback is pre-mortem,
and consists of social approval and indoctrination, with no possibility of
correction except by reversing the leap of faith, and that is usually a
dangerous proposition.
[14]
GOD, GESTALT, AND
LANGUAGE
And
furthermore, the God question is closely related to more general conceptual
developments, related to a chain of effects resulting from the human invention
and use of language as a new instrument, added to the earlier gestalt
configurations, in part enforcing tendencies present at a pre-verbal level (the
following is quoted from Müller, 2007, section 4).
“
... In comparison with non-verbal animals, language use
1.
enables a great increase of possibilities for
individual and collective thought and action, but this is accompanied by
2.
uncertainty of what to think and do, and thus
3.
a need for certainty-mechanisms. That is answered by
4.
assumptions of mind-external certainties (reality,
MIR, onta), which have long been used in the form of
a word-image-conceptual scaffolding to stabilize subject-inclusive operational
structures, which were felt to be unreliable, vague, or arbitrary. But this
procedure leads to a belief in a primary or ontic
subject–object split, and causes an inversion of thinking, where mental tools
are assigned a role of external, sometimes absolute, authority over thinking.
Then the word-image certainties can also become barriers that
5.
restrict freedom of exploration, including in
particular a
6.
disappearance of subjectivity, which in turn
7.
prevents the study of the mind–brain relation. ...
”
[15]
The fourth step in this list involves several aspects.
A
stabilization of concepts results from adding words to earlier
gestalt-formations which are predominantly though not exclusively visual in
type. One may at times forget that
gestalt-entities define to a large extent what one calls ‘reality’. The supra-individual communication aspects of
language, including written texts, may be over-interpreted as indicating a
mind-independent validity of the word-gestalt-concepts. They are then used for MIR-ontology purposes;
their mind-external nature, existence, and obligatory nature is
implied and may also be officially proclaimed and codified.
Circumscribed
gestalt entities (stones, genes, sheep, individual
people) are well suited for such a procedure, although the MIR-interpretation
is mistaken. Official standardization
(dictionaries, encyclopaedias, etc.) can facilitate thinking, communal life,
and social control.
[16]
But this is less clear for entities without visual-gestalt features : qualia, generalities, possibly subatomic
particles, and particularly the central aspect of experience where concepts
form but which cannot itself become completely structured, because it is
encompassing (umgreifend, Jaspers), it is the
unstructured and unstructurable (‘irrational’) matrix
of all structures.
Still,
individuals and societies have a need for reliable function in that area as
well. For one thing, there is a need for
expectations (and rules) for behaviour and for hierarchies of command. Rules fill a gap which results from the
under-determination of ‘behaviour’ by instinctual mechanisms, and they are more
effective coming from a postulated absolute authority.
[17]
Then there is a need for (shared) understanding. This too is often answered by the invention
and structuring of fictitious overall MIR-authorities like Gods, God, Nature,
etc., which may or may not be concretely understood as person-like (anthropo-morphic, pseudo-gestalt). Terms like ‘cosmic consciousness’
also tend to aim at complete structuring.
Or also by proclaiming the absolute MIR-correctness of some ideas that
are thought to offer all-encompassing structures; this includes for instance
subject-exclusive scientific ‘theories of everything’, which shows that
MIR-science also discovers a need for holism (this is not paradoxical if
naturalism is seen as a religion, but MIR-TOEs are not ‘of everything’). The subject-exclusion in communism typically
leads to dictatorship by default, because ideas and ‘systems’ by themselves
don’t ‘run people’ (see also [23] below).
Theisms are at least more honest, since the dictatorship of God is clear
from the start.
[18]
Since humans (as well as animals) create all of their mind-and-world-and-all
structures, beliefs in mind-independently pre-structured entities, ideas, and
authorities imply an inversion of thinking (Müller 2005); that conflicts with
intellectual analysis, because MIR is (working-)fiction. The difficulty can be addressed by
acknowledging that MIR-beliefs are shortcuts for subject-inclusive
working-structures, which serve as tools for thinking, in analogy to tools like
words or numbers. To deal with the
encompassing, there is the possibility of techniques like mysticism or nirvana
experience, where the subject remains the agent, despite being unstructured at
the center (Müller 2005). (Buddhism can
serve as an atheistic religion, if concrete beliefs like transmigration of
souls, etc., are discarded.)
[19]
RELIGIOUS ART AND
FAITH
In
December 2007 I visited the Kolumba Museum of the
Catholic Archbishopric of Cologne, which had recently opened, a remarkable
place. It is on the site of the
late-gothic Kolumba Church in the center of town,
which had been destroyed by bombs in the second world war. A Madonna statue survived the event, and in
1950 a small chapel was built around it amongst the ruins (‘Madonna in den Trümmern’, architect Gottfried Böhm). Recently the place was converted into a
museum (Swiss architect Peter Zumthor).
[20]
The ground floor consists of the exposed foundations of three successive
churches, from Frankish times to the late Gothic structure, and of Roman
structures from before that. High above, on steel pillars, are two museum
floors which show the Kolumba church’s saved
treasures, relics, flags, sculptures, and a Madonna painting by Stephan Lochner (~1450).
They are intermingled with and surrounded by modern and very modern art,
much of it abstract, and mechanical moving sculptures (Rebecca Horn), with two
works referring to the holocaust. It
includes works by Beuys, Warhol, Jawlensky, and many
others. One room shows three medieval
crosses surrounded by, among others, three large paintings entitled ‘dark
grey’, ‘grey’, and ‘light grey’ (R. de Crignis 2005),
whose visual content is exactly what these titles say.
[21]
Almost simultaneously with the museum’s opening, a large new window was
installed in the nearby Cologne Cathedral’s south transept. It has an abstract design, by Gerhard
Richter, consisting only of coloured squares, as arranged by computer. In relation to the other (traditional)
windows of the Cathedral, there is the same kind of contrast as in the
museum.
(Dawkins
suggests that medieval cathedrals are ‘architectural peacock’s tails’, because
their construction required an enormous amount of work, and they were ‘never
used for any useful purpose’ (p.192).
This last I would say is a considerable over- (or rather under-)
statement; or else it points to a (deliberate ?) blind spot for the individual
and social need to deal with the holistic part of experience, including his own
(see [12] above). And further, he does
not mention, as he evidently should, the pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal, Buckingham Palace, the
Château de Versailles, or the Brandenburger
Tor.)
[22]
My reaction to these artistic puzzles was trying to understand what the
intention of the artistic arrangements might be. The museum’s little guidebook recommends : ‘look,
let your fantasy roam, think, ... take art seriously, beyond the words ...
’ Good advice, I would say. Here is some of my roaming thinking
: Does the Church (the Vatican,
or the diocese) here want to convey the modern development not only of the
spirit of art, but of the faith as well ?
Does the old concrete meaning of religious beliefs now dissolve into
ever more diluted - or more precisely : less and less anthropomorphic, and generally
less structured - contents ?
(Although this trend goes counter, for instance, to
the recent creation by the Vatican of a large number of new saints (Dawkins
p.56), and the recognition of ‘miracles’ associated with that.) How close is this disappearance of structure
in the development of art and architecture related to the dissolution
(‘ruination’, maybe) of religious faith structures ? Can a concrete theistic faith be replaced by
a computer program, or more likely by meditation, by nirvana experience where
structures disappear ?
(see also pp.110-112)
[23]
RECEIVED ANTHROPOMORPHIC PRE-STRUCTURES
VERSUS ACTIVE STRUCTURING
I
do not intend these questions to be a destructive statement; quite to the
contrary, I suggest they reflect the present epistemological situation
: the recognition that we have to
structure everything and create stability as we go along, and temporarily only. No mind-independent mechanisms of any type
can replace our agency - notwithstanding the ambiguities of Plato and
Kant, nor the partly functional MIR-proposals of theists since Abraham, of
naturalists since Thales, of formalists since Frege
and Russell, and of computer-scientists since Turing (p.327). Due to the ever greater functional power of
science-knowhow and its conflicts with MIR-beliefs, we can no longer ignore the
need to be in charge of our creations, despite the impossibility of central structuring,
which is an important practical difficulty (Müller 2005). As Dawkins puts it, ‘the
nineteenth century is the last time when it was possible for an educated person
to believe in miracles like the virgin birth without embarrassment’ (p.187). - That
does not make things easy, but at least it shows where we are, and what we have
to do.
[24]
This dissolution or disappearance of religious structures is related to the one
in non-religious MIR-contexts. As
Francis Crick proposed in his ‘astonishing hypothesis’ : subjective experience is nothing but (an
after-thought maybe of) the activity of a neuronal network. Dawkins might add that the body is nothing
but a by-product of the activity of a bunch of selfish genes. And James Watson told him that although there
might be no purpose in life he still anticipated having a good lunch
(p.126).
[25]
Does it then follow that the meaning of life is nothing, or else a delusion
? More specifically, do selfish genes
and Darwinian insights prevent us from creating meaning ? This is of course where the creationists come
in. And Watson seems to agree with them;
he thinks that the purpose of life has traditionally come from a God outside us : but where did he
get his urge to study DNA ? Presumably not from a lunch menu. In any case (as Crick has unintentionally
demonstrated), a task like understanding and deciphering the DNA-code differs
from questions involving the center of experience, which cannot become a
word-gestalt-object. And nowadays
everyone can, or should be able to, structure, or not structure, and name, or
not name, his belief as he sees fit
- and preferably also remain open
to the discussion of its basic premises and consequences.
[26]
BELIEF, DELUSION, MENTAL
ILLNESS, NUTTINESS, AND
ANAESTHESIA
How
sensible is it to call God a delusion ? The Vatican does better : the official advice is that one needs to make
an ‘ontological leap’ to the Christian faith, which is more helpful than just
to claim that ‘it is so’. This too does not
address the conceptual problem adequately, since ‘God’ is usually also seen (by
default ?) as a mind-independent agent and sovereign
authority. But at least nowadays they
don’t claim, in contrast to some fundamentalist Christian and other sects, or
to Dawkins in his book, that God’s existence (or non-existence) can be
determined by an empirical (MIR-objective, ‘scientific’) or else purely
conceptual (‘ontological’) method (p.103ff).
And further, shouldn’t naturalism also be called a delusion, since it
too requires an irrational leap of faith ?
[27]
Also, one needs to make a distinction between beliefs which have been
sanctioned by cultural practice and are generally accepted as cultural cement,
and others that represent fanatical opinions, usually of one or a few people
(when there are many it means trouble).
There are many shades of opinion between these possibilities. Thus it is difficult to justify a general
statement like ‘God is a delusion’, although the confrontation of MIR-belief
with its analytic dissolution will always cause conflicts. -- That ‘God’ is an ad-hoc tool does not
qualify it as a delusion; numbers share this property, and although some people
waste a lot of time and effort to determine whether numbers are
mind-independently real, the question whether they are delusions does not come
up.
[28]
And furthermore, ‘delusion’ implies mental illness. Does Dawkins want to claim that all believing
theists, Jews, Christians, Muslisms, etc., are
psychotic (and have always been psychotic) ?
(pp.112ff) But he also writes that in
Europe theistic beliefs were standard until the 18th century, including for
scientists (for instance for Newton, Faraday, Maxwell; p.124). Does he want to imply that delusions only
occurred after 1800 ?
He does not really discuss this question, and instead goes into
‘simulating software in the brain’ (p.113).
In the preface he writes that delusion is a false belief (p.27), but for
‘God’ this is debatable (see [10] to [12] above). And again : how about naturalist beliefs ?
[29]
In milder language, does he want to say that all believers are nuts, except
materialist believers like himself ? The
desired result of such a ‘scientific’ judgment would in that case presumably be - who wants to be officially nuts ? - along
the lines of the pre-frontal amputation (or at least anaesthetizing) effect
resulting from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum,
or the 5-times daily brainwashing of some religious routines, or of Fidel
Castro’s 5-hour speeches, to prevent unauthorized thinking, to keep the
faithful in line.
Generally,
considering the functional properties of faith might be more useful than
polemics about its MIR-derivatives by means of MIR-based criticism.
[30]
SOME HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS
TOWARD AND
AWAY FROM
CONCRETE ANTHROPOMORPHIC THINKING
(a)
Movements toward concrete ontic metaphysics-like
anthropomorphic theism are motivated generally by a desire for unity and
authority. For primitive societies this involves
a move toward unity from shamanism and specialized gods for every aspect of
life.
In
advanced societies it can be a counter-reaction against the erosion of
metaphysical certainties by knowledge, for instance :
Hypatia of Alexandria was a Greek
philosopher who was killed, for religious reasons, by a Coptic Christian mob in
about 415 AD. This event is sometimes
said to mark the end of the Hellenistic age and philosophy with its scepticism,
and the beginning of the Middle Ages, when everything
suddenly became clear as per dogma, with no need for further thinking.
Dawkins
points to the change in US political thinking, from the time of the explicit
secular opinions of Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues, to the present
prominence of fundamentalist religion in some geographical areas, and in the
government, of the US (pp.60 ff). This
concretization occurs chiefly in the less educated (p.128f).
Another
example is the present clash of Islamic societies with the modern world. They are moored in medieval thinking - the Ayatollah Khomeini was praised by Iranian
authorities as a ‘fine medieval scholar’ when he came back from Paris in 1979
to replace the Shah.
(b)
Movement away from anthropomorphic beliefs : The incompatibility of MIR-belief with
general scientific knowledge results in protests against infringement on
personal autonomy, enquiry, and initiative, and against intellectual
domination. The levels of intelligence
and education are relevant for that (pp.123-130).
(c)
The irreversible historical development related to science and technology tilts
the balance in favour of moving away from MIR-beliefs, despite strong
counter-reactions. Bin Laden has
recently suggested that in order to resolve the conflicts everyone should
convert to Islam - that might tone down the confrontation, but
not for long. Nevertheless, a desire for
concrete beliefs remains, and can be expected to remain, particularly in parts
of the world and of the population that have not participated in, or identified
with, the development. This is an
ongoing dynamic relationship which has to be dealt with; but maybe one should
not appoint such people to public office.
--------------------------------------
NOTE
*
That it is deliberately polemical is a strength of
Dawkins’ book; as such it can help to heighten awareness of these questions,
and it stimulates a frank reply, as I try to give in this article. In the blurbs the publisher says that
everyone should read it, and that it will change the world. Perhaps so, but although the book sells well,
that might require some special marketing strategies, such as lobbying
spiritual leaders, with appropriate financial and other incentives, to make it
obligatory reading for their followers.
One could think of Pat Robertson, the Mullah Omar (this would cover, to
start with, some of the Taliban in America (p.323) and Afghanistan), Bruce
Chapman of the Discovery Institute, and the King of Saudi Arabia, among
others. They might also profit from
Dawkins’ tossing in a free French lesson for the benefit of those who were mis-indoctrinated in school : ‘sang froid’
translates as ‘a bloody cold’, and ‘coup de grâce’
means ‘lawn mower’ (p.222 fn; from ‘Fractured French’ by FS Pearson). And once you go to the trouble to think about
it, all of this is of course perfectly clear.
--------------------------------------
REFERENCES
Angelus
Silesius (Johannes Scheffler)
(1675), Der Cherubinische Wandersmann.
Available from Projekt Gutenberg
<http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=5&xid=50&kapitel=4&cHash=a52ee37cb9cheru101#gb_found>
Crick
F (1994), The Astonishing Hypothesis. The Scientific Search for
the Soul. New York
: Scribner’s.
Dawkins
R (2006, 2008), The God Delusion. (Paperback edition)
Boston, New York :
Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin.
Feyerabend P (1999), Conquest
of Abundance. A Tale
of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being. Chicago : University
of Chicago Press. (pp.32-33)
vonGlasersfeld E (1991, 1999),
Knowing without Metaphysics : Aspects of
the Radical Constructivist Position.
http://www.kjf.ca/17-TAGLA.htm
Jaspers K (1947 / 1991), Von der Wahrheit. München – Zürich : Piper.
Müller
HFJ (2005), People, Tools, and Agency:
Who Is the Kybernetes ? Constructivist
Foundations 1.1
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/articles/1.1.muller.pdf
Müller
HFJ (2007), Brain In Mind - The Mind-Brain Relation with the Mind at the
Center. Constructivist Foundations 3.1,
http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/articles/3.1.030.muller.pdf
Vatican
communications often emphasise the present official position concerning the
need for an ontological leap. A recent
example is : <http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0600273.htm>
--------------------------------------
Herbert
FJ Müller
e-mail <herbert.muller (at) mcgill.ca>