Dawkins' emails...

Dawkins calls it quits

In an unprecedented move, the famous author and atheist Richard Dawkins says he will quit his quest to expose religion as a delusion. In a public statement Dawkins explains he is tired of repeating the same arguments over and over, and suffered a mental breakdown during a recent debate in Texas. "I can't help feeling that my position, though logically sound, leaves believers feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been the only logically tenable life philosophy for me, I no longer think one needs to accuse religion of being the root of all evil to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." said the famous evolution scientist. Although Dawkins maintains that evolution remains the only satisfactory explanation for the diversity of life on earth he concedes he might have been belligerent and overly pugnacious in previous encounters and feels he now lacks the will and energy to inform all these people about their own stupidity.

Dawkins et al. Seek to Emulate the Bayblab Podcast

Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sit down for drinks to discuss whether they are arrogant atheist assholes. A very entertaining conversation on the psychology behind irrational beliefs, and why people get so upset when these beliefs are questioned or criticized. In other words, why isn't it cool think freely about religon in a "free-thinking" civilization?

While these discussions clearly had a more substantial budget than the bayblab podcast (notice the martini glasses, fireplace, bookshelves and full-length video footage), we are clearly a better-looking bunch. Pretty entertaining, even if you're getting tired of all the creationist vs. evolutionist fuss like me.



(HT: Sandwalk)

God is not great

That is the title of Christopher Hitchen's new book. While I can't say that I admire Hitchens as much as Dawkins, in fact he is a bit obnoxious, I do enjoy seeing him debate. On a recent tour for his book, he's decided to do his debates in the bible belt, taking the enemies of reason head-on.

In Dawkins' review of his book, here is what he had to say about Hitchen's debating skills:
"I hadn’t met Hitchens before, but I got an idea of what to expect when Grayling emailed me to discuss tactics. After proposing a couple of lines for himself and me, he concluded, “. . . and Hitch will spray AK47 ammo at the enemy in characteristic style”.
Grayling’s engaging caricature misses Hitchens’s ability to temper his pugnacity with old-fashioned courtesy. And “spray” suggests a scattershot fusillade, which underestimates the deadly accuracy of his marksmanship. If you are a religious apologist invited to debate with Christopher Hitchens, decline."

I think Hitchen's should come debate with John Torry, before the conservatives start including ID in out science books.

"Viruses" Rule the World: Dan Dennett on Memes, Consciousness and Religion

This mind-bending lecture from Tufts University philosopher/cognitive scientist Dan Dennett is a must-listen if you haven't already. Kicking it off with the genetic analogy of parasite-driven ant suicide, Dennett picks up where Dawkins left off with The Selfish Gene, expanding on the meme ("idea-gene") concept to demonstrate how Darwinian principles can help us to understand the spread and impact of culture and ideas. In particular, he uses this approach to ask why many people are willing to sacrifice their own life for certain ideas. This leads to a discussion of the religion virus, and it's interesting that he takes quite a different position on the issue than the extremist one currently favored by Dawkins himself. Also manages to get in some important points on the illusion of human consciousness. It's 20 minutes well worth it, I promise you. See his other TED talks for more detailed treatments of religion and consciousness.

PS - You don't have to take my word for it - look at that classic beard and decide for yourself whether the man isn't a wizard-scholar of the highest order...

Discussion: Religion as Bad Science

I was following an interesting email exchange at Impressions Bioblogiques regarding creationism vs. evolution. The discussion spans several posts that can be read here, here and here (anglophones be warned, the discussion and commentary are exclusively in french). As is usually the case, this turned into a debate-by-proxy about the existance of God. That got me thinking about whether the right questions were being applied (The proper argument for an atheist should be: 'God does not exist', not 'Evolution happened'. Using the latter to argue the former is a straw man argument.)

Of course, Science has a duty to interact with Religion when Religion makes scientific claims, and even more of a duty to take them on when those claims are false (Young earth creationism, for example). But the question of religion, or more specifically the existance of God, is not a scientific question. It is not a testable hypothesis, makes no predictions from that hypothesis, and is not falsifable. I had concocted a post asking whether religion can and should be held up to scientific scrutiny (beyond actual scientific claims it makes, as my example above) when I came across this discussion between Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss in Scientific American which covers much of the ground I was going to attempt to, but far more eloquently. At the very least, it's an interesting read.

Popularity in science

According to google trends, Richard Dawkins has just surpassed Stephen Hawking on the media whore popularity contest. We might just have to dump Stephen for Richard on the bayblab podcast...

Can plants sense kins?

Ok I admit that story has already been all over the media. When I first read about it, I just didn't think it was that interesting so I didn't post it. However now that I've actually read the paper I have a few comments. Firstly its 4 pages long and has 2 figures, wow it's a big conclusion for such a simple experiment. Second I want to explain Hamilton's kin selection idea since it is the basis of that paper. It essentially boils down to this: "if individuals have the capacity to recognize kin (kin recognition) and to adjust their behavior on the basis of kinship (kin discrimination), then the average relatedness of the recipients of altruism could be high enough for this to be favored."
Now because I have a huge man-crush on Dawkins, and I would carry his half-ape half retarded fish babies, I have to mention Dawkin's views of kin selection. In writings on Kin Selection there are often references to Richard Dawkins’s article ‘12 Misunderstandings of Kin Selection’, in Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 51 (1979), 184-200. Basically Dawkins doesn't think that kin selection is a special type of natural selection. He opposes the view that natural selection can be exerted on a group, since only the individual survives and reproduces and not a group. There is more to his arguments, but It's worth actually reading it.

So how does this relate to plants. Well kin selection is a complex process usually associated to social animals. Plants on the other hand, can't see, smell or move, or at least are limited in their ways to sense kinship. And if you can't recognize a kin, how can you have altruistic behavior? Now it's well known that when plants are in close proximity, they will exhibit more aggressive competitive behaviors, in order to secure resources. Rather than using its energy to grow or flower, it will allocate more to roots to cover larger areas. Now this group asked a simple question, will the plant be as competitive with its root system if the other plant in the pot is from the same species. Surprisingly it wasn't as agressive, suggesting it knows about the plants in its environment, but how? Anyways, I like this experiment because it would make for an awesome science-fair type experiment, or a good way to teach kids about evolution, kin selection
and natural selection.

Does Dawkins exist?