Did this open letter get drafted and posted?

Lindsay: I think the way to get his attention might be an open letter to him right here (followed by a concerted effort to make him aware of it). You wanna do the honours, Marcus, or shall I?

WSS

...to the Cambridge University Union.

It lasts about an hour, so if you haven't read it yet, you might like to listen. Cambridge Speech: The God Delusion.. Introduction of Dawkins without microphone lasts only about one minute.

Write and submit an article reviewing him, and have that sent.

Ted

I will send a copy to his publisher and hope it is passed on.

Marcus,

If you wish to get Dawkins' attention, perhaps you should submit an article on him to the Free Radical (or some worthwile pulication) and then make sure he gets a copy, which can be mailed c/o his publisher.

I won't belabor the point, as you & I have discussed it before, but just because someone is an atheist will not necessarily mean that he is fully rational. Many people will hold on to their ethical and political beliefs (or mistakes) for dear life. I was quite disappointed by Carl Sagan (a huge hero of my youth, and still a great influence) upon encoutering him in person, and after learning of his political views in depth. Nevertheless, his Demon Haunted World was the best anti-mystical book I have read, it contained only one paragraph and one further sentence that I found objectionable. (Also, Sagan respected religion as a sincere, if obviously flawed search for meaning, and did not feel the need to provoke his audience or his rhetorical opponents.) And, although I enjoyed Contact, you can see how Sagan too felt he had to appease the religious types with his cop-out ending.

I saw, but did not buy Dawkin's God Delusion last week. I was tempted to buy it and burn an American copy for you, but resisted the temptation.

My sincere wishes for your success in approaching him,

Ted

Laurie,

I have just read the chapter on morality - and it is not that bad for someone not familiar with Objectivism. I don't mind the negative use of the word "selfish" being derided by non-Objectivists if in the right context - because it is sometimes used in a way that Objectivists would agree with.

Namely, the sacrificing of the values of others to your own values.

I am very impressed that Dawkins indicates that to a certain extent - because here he refers not to "selfishness" per se, but instead makes the concept more explicit by using the expressions - "free-riding parasitism" and "selfish parasitism".

Of course, otherwise your points are quite excellent.

However, for a non-objectivist Dawkins has come a bloody long way in his pursuit of the truth.

I admire Dawkins. It takes a great deal of courage to do what he is doing.

The interview is pretty good until he leaves open the possibility of there being a God. He undercuts his entire argument there. Very bad. He does this because he isn't 100% confident in his epistemology. And the Objectivist epistemology is the only one I know of that can help him.

An open letter to him here is a great idea. I expect he will be very interested to look at it. The letter should be in the style of an ARI Op-Ed, tightly centered on a clear theme.

When he turns up, I for one will expect the unexpected. He will probably find some reason to not accept Objectivist epistemology straight away. Even if he approaches it honestly I expect it would take him months or years to truly accept it. And if he does see the light he'll be pissed that he's been missing it all these years.

Laure and Marcus, I've enjoyed your posts here.

(Edit: by "except" I mean "accept")

I think Dawkins' biggest flaw is in his idea of morality.  Here are some ideas:

1) Dawkins accepts idea of "being good" as overcoming our baser instincts, whereas we see it as using our number-one tool of survival, our reason, to the fullest.

2) Dawkins doesn't define "good", but implies that it equates to putting interests of others first.

3) pg 261.  Dawkins sees "reciprocal altruism" as the basis of trade.  Needs clearer definition of altruism.

4) Has a social outlook on morality.  I don't think he would see a need for morality for an individual alone on an island, but Objectivists see it as vitally important there.

5)  pg 231, "More generally, selfishhness, or free-riding parasitism on the goodwill of others, may work for me as a lone selfish individual and give me personal satisfaction.  But I cannot wish that everybody would adopt selfish parasitism as a moral principle, if only because then I would have nobody to parasitize."  I agree, except about the use of the term "selfishness".  When do we hear the accusation of selfishness: used against a mugger stealing an old lady's handbag, or used against the old lady herself, admonishing her to share its contents??

6) Point we should make:  attack on Reason attacks the Mind, which attacks the Self.  Some good Bible quotes or quotes from religious figures would be useful here.  Show the parallels between attacks on reason and attacks on selfishness. 

7) Don't cede to religion the idea of an objective moral standard.  A religious moral standard is the OPPOSITE, because anyone can come along and posit their own idea of "what God wants".  Although it might seem subjective at first glance, a human-based morality is the ONLY one that CAN be truly objective - the same for everyone and derived from the nature of man.

...please do - if you know how get his attention to read it - I would be extremely grateful if you have something in mind already.

I think the way to get his attention might be an open letter to him right here (followed by a concerted effort to make him aware of it). You wanna do the honours, Marcus, or shall I?

Linz

I have been considering writing him an e-mail or letter ever since the root of all evil documentary.

Do you Linz, Laurie and anyone else here at SOLO want to help me with this?

I think the point he is missing so far is that the religious notion of self-sacrifice is the root cause of much of the evil he is highlighting. Once he gets that it should be an easy induction towards the benefit of "selfishness" in the objectivist sense.

I haven't worked out how to get his e-mail address or a postal address.

He writes in the book that he gets tonnes of letters and e-mails and tries to read all of them. So, it should be worth it.

Someone ought to pressgang him onto SOLO. I sense that the only reason he's not an Objectivist is that he hasn't heard of Objectivism. He certainly understands the small 'o' version. I think he's become so fixated on mystical subjectivism he hasn't thought through the secular ethical & political implications of a commitment to reason.

Linz

I just finished "The God Delusion" and enjoyed it.  I think the fact of its existence is more important than its specific contents.  It is pretty rambly, not so well-organized; and sometimes I get the impression he is picking off the weaker arguments in favor of religion.  Objectivists will find his discussions on morality to be flawed; he doesn't seem to have thought things through on that topic.  But then, everyone has his weak spots.

But the mere existence of this book is a very, very encouraging development.  Dawkins is absolutely, uncompromisingly opposed to faith, and for the right reasons.  He is no Objectivist, but the more respected people make some noise as atheists, the more the cultural "center of gravity" will move in a healthier direction.  His book isn't intended to convince the religious to give up their faith (for that, George H. Smith's "Atheism: The Case Against God" is superior!); it's intended to reassure the quiet doubters out there that it's OK not to believe.

Another contribution of the book is the analysis of how humans came to have religious beliefs.  There is some good stuff here - one idea I found interesting is the theory that children are naturally "dualist":  they see the mind as a little person sitting inside your head, which could exist on its own independent of the body.  This idea, if it persists in adulthood, can lead to belief in life after death, and belief in a non-physical creator of the physical world.  Through this example and many others, Dawkins shows that the more we know, through the study of all the sciences, the less plausible the idea of God becomes. 

It appears that Richard Dawkins has started up a trans-atlantic charity called the "Richard Dawkins Foundation".

Its goals are to promote science and reason through education, lectures and other media.

http://www.richarddawkins.net/index.php

This is from the introduction to the website:

"The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America. I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organized ignorance."

That sounds familiar. Did he steal those first few sentences from Linz, or was it Ayn Rand?

Anyway, good on him! (And yes, I do know that he is not an objectivist!)

"God's existence has to be either true or false--there are no two ways about the existence of an entity."

Good point - but Dawkins states from the beginning that it is a "God Hypothesis" - he is arguing against - and that hypothesis is highly improbable of being correct. Creation is an alternative to the scientific explanation that does not invoke God.

He thinks in those terms because he is foremost a scientist and not an objectivist. If he didn't propose a creative God as a scientific theory - but allowed claims it was outside the realm of scientific consideration - he would have nothing to say.

An objectivist would not have cause to label "God's creation" a scientific theory, because he could still argue the case against the existence of God (even if not a scientific theory) because an objectivist would never accept the claims of religions that such ideas fall outside the realms of reason and are an issue of faith.

I didn't like Dawkin's interview at all. For a scientist who supposedly should think in a logical manner, his atheism is fundamentally contradictory. He concedes that he must leave room for the possibility (however small) that there might be a god, and yet, he claims to be committed to the "truth," and that the religious believers are believing a lie. God's existence has to be either true or false--there are no two ways about the existence of an entity.
Thus, if Dawkins is claiming a committment to the "truth," then he should be bold enough to actually say that the TRUTH is that there is NO god! It appears to me that Dawkins is trying to have his cake and eat it too.

...the founders would be angry about today's political environment.

What typifies the first handful of US presidents is that they all made very strong public criticisms of christianity and organized religion. Can you imagine that now?

Dawkins also quotes a surprising sentence froma treaty with Tripoli and the US government made in 1797 under George Washington and signed by John Adams:

"As the Government of the USA is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion...!"

Dawkins points out that there was absolutely no public outcry whatsoever in the US at the time of the treaty being made public.

He asks what happened to this secular grounded state (where it is now difficult to be a US politician and an outspoken atheist), and he says he doesn't really know. He has a few suggestions though.

The buggers won't make anything of it. They'd blank out.

If the Founders suddenly appeared in our time, they'd be a mightily impressed by our technological power but soon sickened by the shenanigans in Washington and in the capitals of every other so-called freedom-loving nation.

Modern state worshipping politicos *know* that the heroes of 1776 had more guts and conviction in their little fingers than an entire Congress full of Clintons, et al, ever will. Don't even get me started on *my* country's sad excuse for statesmen.

They also know that Jefferson never paid slavish adherence to any god, just as he never did to the state. And he never used biblical tenents as a subsitute for reason as some in the current administration are wont to do.

I originally thought that there would be book burnings in Washington by various US Christian groups.

However, I am only 60 pages into the book and Dawkins is heaping praise on the US founding fathers for setting up a secular state.

Surprisingly (for me because I didn't know this before) Dawkins admires Thomas Jefferson and has quoted him about five times and labelled Jefferson a "de facto" atheist.

What will religious US politicians and pressure groups make of that - I wonder?

Thanks for posting this. I appreciate Dawkins' work generally...and I think his new book is an extremely important one. Though, I must say, he probably won't be able to convince many (or any) of the bible-thumping faith-a-holics. They're just too far over the edge, in my opinion.