I read this headline — “Mary Midgley argues that opponents of intelligent design are driving people to accept it” — and my first thought was that surely some editor had mangled the sense of an interview. No one could be that blatantly nonsensical. And then I read the first paragraph and discover that it was an understatement, and that Midgley is much more extreme.
People are not going to accept scientific fact if they think it is morally pernicious. When people are asked why they are persuaded by intelligent design, they often say that it’s the only alternative to scientific atheism and Darwinism which are pernicious moral doctrines; they see it as the only refuge from this anti-human bloody-mindedness. It’s at the level of attitudes to life that these choices are made. And people will think scientists as a whole believe this. As Professor Winston has said, science becomes discredited by this kind of stuff.
Well, yes, I suppose that is true. The peasants are also not going to accept the presence of Jews if they think it is morally pernicious — what decent human being would want to live anywhere near people who drink the blood of Christian babies, after all? They are going to be persuaded to join in the pogroms because they are going to see it as a refuge from subhuman parasitism, and it’s an entirely reasonable self-defense made on the level of moral choice. Need I point out that science then becomes discredited by the many Jews present in the field?
We have a couple of ways that we can respond to this kind of nonsense.
Some seem to favor the idea of waving around The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and, while deploring its content, suggesting that this a good reason to ask all Jews to lie low and avoid the spotlight for a while (i.e., permanently). We need to frame science as untainted by the Jews so we can get more people to accept it and to avoid other political obstacles. I have to agree: it certainly would make science more comfortable to anti-semites if we purged the Jews, and I suspect that scientific polling would back me up on that.
I wonder, though, if it might be better to oppose the false claims of the Protocols, rather than allowing the bigotry to limit what we’re allowed to say. Maybe we shouldn’t flatter the anti-semites by courting their approval. Maybe we should point out that the people who benefit from the pogroms seem to have a vested interest in portraying Jews as evil people, and that the swelling mobs of pitchfork-wielding people isn’t a justifiable response. Maybe instead we should undercut those lies by allowing Jews to be more vocal, standing up and revealing that they are good people, that they are our neighbors, our friends, even our relatives, and that they aren’t “morally pernicious” at all.
It’s even more ridiculous when this reasoning is applied to atheists. We aren’t facing death or dispossession for our ideas, but so far only a more subtle discrimination and attitudes like Midgley’s. This is exactly the situation in which we should be coming out and demonstrating the falsity of Midgley’s assumptions. It seems to me that if anyone is promoting enrollment in Intelligent Design creationism’s smear campaign against the taint of atheism in science, it’s the people who perpetuate the idea that atheism is morally suspect.
Accepting the critics’ claim of the “morally pernicious” status of their target is basically surrendering to a lie. Why does Mary Midgley want to honor a lie?
It seems strange that a respected paper like the Independent should publish such cant. Does anyone know who this Mary Midgley is?
Defamation!
PZ,
The “Coming out” link leads to a file not found page.
I have only one question: who is Mary Midgley smoking meth with while fucking strangers in airport toilets and evading taxes?
C’mon, you know it’s going to come out that she’s some sort of problem-gambling Oxy-addict who keeps shaved he-goats in the shed or something like that sooner or later.
She sounds as if she thinks it’s like choosing candidates in an election. “Well, I quite like the Theory of Evolution and it’s use of evidence, but Intelligent Design is taller and easier to understand, so I’ll go with that one.”
Not too difficult to rip a stupid argument to shreds is it?
The ID defenders seem to have an infinite capacity for obtuseness. I suppose that’s a good thing, in the sense that they should be pretty ineffective, as PZ’s post demonstrates, but it is really just a symptom of their delusion. The bad news is that all the followers are similarly afflicted and thus see the argument as sensible. Oh, and they will start squealing about Godwin.
I don’t quite get how they can claim that atheism is pernicious. I hear that fairly regularly, that atheists have no more code, no regard for life, etc. But quite the contrary seems to be the logical state for me. A religious person, who believes that there is paradise awaiting for good people who die, should be more likely to kill than an atheist who believes nothing but death, and a cold grave, await you. Even an agnostic, who hasn’t enough evidence to decide, strikes me as someone who values life more than a Christian (or other denomination). Horrible things have been done in the name of religion, honestly the same can’t be said for atheist or agnosticism. The perpetrators of these acts may have been atheists, or agnostics, but they didn’t commit them in the name of either. The same can’t be said of Christian Crusaders, or islamic Jihadists, etc.
For many people, these are not simply ideas – they are badges of group membership. Clinging to a mantra re an article of faith serves not as a concept for the religious, so much as shibboleth to distinguish in-group from out-group. Primate politics is wired into our thinking, which is why critical thinking is so important (and so uncommon).
Silly PZ — how are we to make common cause with the anti-Semites if the “New Pro-Jewish Noise Machine” argues for a place for Judaism in science? There are a lot of social problems that anti-Semites can help us solve if we just join with them and keep quiet about the Jews in science. Don’t you know anything about framing? If not, I can refer you to an expert…
For many people, these are not simply ideas – they are badges of group membership. Clinging to a mantra re an article of faith serves not as a concept for the religious, so much as shibboleth to distinguish in-group from out-group. Primate politics is wired into our thinking, which is why critical thinking is so important (and so uncommon).
These are the kind of tardfaces that think a blank page promotes atheism.
This crazy broad bashed Dawkins “Selfish Gene” over thirty years ago and obviously hasn’t learned anything since. They are having a good laugh over at richarddawkins.com about this as well.
I don’t quite understand how scientific facts can be morally pernicious, anyway. How does a system in the universe or on the planet functioning in a natural manner affect anyone’s morality at all?
Indeed. Do you have a wholesale supplier of straw to make your dummies from?
I have this radical idea that one way to stop this is to point out that scientific atheism isn’t the only alternative. Indeed, I have an even more radical thesis that most of the people who think in the way Midgley describes have a strong commitment to Christianity. I would even go as far as apostasy in suggesting that if one wants to defend science, then it might be easier to show that it doesn’t have to conflict with Christianity.
If you do it nicely, you might help break the atheism=evil myth as well.
Bob
Because the Bible apparently tells them so.
Okay, let’s correct some major confusions on this thread: (1) Mary Midgley is not a creationist, not even of the ID subspecies. (2) She is not some out-of-left-field nobody, but is a widely read and respected philosopher. (3) She is not herself a religious believer, although she does have an unfortunate tendency to embrace ideas and emotions that seem “deep and mysterious” that all-too-frequently infects professional philosophers, which I see as nothing more than rank mysticism. (4) She has in the past said some very sensible, interesting, and worthwhile things – even about science.
That said, the excerpt from her new screed quoted by The Independent is COMPLETE DRIVEL. I’d say it contains the worst arguments I’d ever seen – if it actually contained any arguments. Instead, as far as I can see it contains all and only cheap rhetoric rather than any actual rigorous reasoning and evidence. What a load of bollocks!
I will admit that there’s something to her position that Dawkins’ hyper-competitive panadaptationist perspective on evolution has a certain political subtext, its success or failure to explain natural phenomena is the only criterion by which it can be judged good or bad science, not its political implications or its rhetorical content! My judgment is that the “selfish gene” approach to understanding natural selection is bad science because it does fail to explain many important phemonena – although of course there are also lots of phenomena it does account for quite well. But that judgment MUST BE separate from the potential political and rhetorical uses to which the theory can be (and sometimes has been) put. Moreover, Dawkins himself has explicitly and repeatedly rejected those political and rhetorical appeals as the rank nonsense they are, and is quicker than anyone else to point out the naturalistic fallacy inherent in taking the brutal necessities of natural selection as any kind of moral compass.
The article at RichardDawkins.net:
Against the grain: There are questions that science cannot answer
If you do it nicely, you might help break the atheism=evil myth as well.
No, Bob, you misunderstand. Atheism=evil by definition for these folks. You’re talking as though the evidence that this is not the case will somehow persuade the religious from their preconceived notions. We have ample evidence that no amount of evidence will do this on any front, why should we assume it will work in this case?
Wise up, chumps. Natural selection means using something that others are not.
You have been schooled.
Midgley is a philosophy professor, I think. Writes a lot on animals and ethics. Haven’t read much of it, but she seems sane and the work has a good reputation, I think. Let me offer a bit of a defense here, at least on some points. (Know that hte defense is half-hearted, in this sense–it is meant to stimulate my own thought, and maybe yours, and is not something I would defend to the hilt.)
She’s right that in the public’s mind (or a big part of that ‘mind’), evolution and Darwin have always meant immorality. The Scopes Trial illustrates a lot of that, and I only undersood it after I realized that WJ Bryan was making a moral point–albeit a mistaken one–and not a scientific one. I had always encountered this politician, WJ Bryan, in history, and I LIKED him. As a similar godless liberal, you too I htink would have voted for him over the Republican competition. Then I knew of this ‘other’ guy, WJ Bryan, who was the dolt in the Scopes Trial. I’m not sure I even knew they were the same guy for some time. But they are, and Bryan was truly afraid of the Social Darwinists, as I would have been, too. They WERE scary.
The point that might have been made then (and probably was) was that scientists then didn’t do enough to clarify that good ol’ Darwinism (and evolution) did NOT imply it’s extension to the moral realm. And that point would have, I think, been well-taken.
I think the situation is similar now–replace Social Darwinism with evolutionary psychology, and, in hte public’s mind, or in Sam Brownback’s mind, the situation is still really scary. Now, I know, I REALLY know, that SD’ism and EP are not equivalent, but it IS a tough point to see sometimes.
So if Midgley’s point is just, “Be really careful, and very specific here, and try to clarify these issues,” ok, point well-taken.
WJ Bryan wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t the buffoon portrayed in Inherit the Wind. Some of these people aren’t stupid, either. He was confused about an issue, and it is US who have to clarify things for his modern counterparts.
Brad
By means of reality’s well-known liberal ( = morally pernicious) bias?
By means of reality’s well-known liberal ( = morally pernicious) bias?
Midgley is a philosophy professor, I think. Writes a lot on animals and ethics. Haven’t read much of it, but she seems sane and the work has a good reputation, I think. Let me offer a bit of a defense here, at least on some points. (Know that hte defense is half-hearted, in this sense–it is meant to stimulate my own thought, and maybe yours, and is not something I would defend to the hilt.)
She’s right that in the public’s mind (or a big part of that ‘mind’), evolution and Darwin have always meant immorality. The Scopes Trial illustrates a lot of that, and I only undersood it after I realized that WJ Bryan was making a moral point–albeit a mistaken one–and not a scientific one. I had always encountered this politician, WJ Bryan, in history, and I LIKED him. As a similar godless liberal, you too I htink would have voted for him over the Republican competition. Then I knew of this ‘other’ guy, WJ Bryan, who was the dolt in the Scopes Trial. I’m not sure I even knew they were the same guy for some time. But they are, and Bryan was truly afraid of the Social Darwinists, as I would have been, too. They WERE scary.
The point that might have been made then (and probably was) was that scientists then didn’t do enough to clarify that good ol’ Darwinism (and evolution) did NOT imply it’s extension to the moral realm. And that point would have, I think, been well-taken.
I think the situation is similar now–replace Social Darwinism with evolutionary psychology, and, in hte public’s mind, or in Sam Brownback’s mind, the situation is still really scary. Now, I know, I REALLY know, that SD’ism and EP are not equivalent, but it IS a tough point to see sometimes.
So if Midgley’s point is just, “Be really careful, and very specific here, and try to clarify these issues,” ok, point well-taken.
WJ Bryan wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t the buffoon portrayed in Inherit the Wind. Some of these people aren’t stupid, either. He was confused about an issue, and it is US who have to clarify things for his modern counterparts.
Brad
I hope you’re happy… you’ve ruined the Comic Sans MS font for me PZ. =p
By means of reality’s well-known liberal ( = morally pernicious) bias?
By means of reality’s well-known liberal ( = morally pernicious) bias?
I guess what I don’t understand is why it is “evolutionists'” fault. Who say that if you aren’t a creationist, you must be an immoral atheist? Oh, wait. Creationists say that.
I had a sinking feeling when I read the title of the article, and it was sadly proved to be correct. Really, every time anyone goes down the tired old “atheists cannot be moral” road – especially as the entire reason for moving away from the ‘new atheist’ strategy – it invalidates basically everything they have to say.
I mean, really – we’re going to make headway with the people who think that atheism=evil by shutting up? We’re what’s driving them toward ID? Really? Seems to me that if they think that being secular is equivalent to being evil, they’re pretty much all primed for ID’s bullshit anyway, and it’s the ‘atheism=evil’ crap that we need to challenge, not sit back and let them wallow in their own ignorance.
After The God Delusion came out she published a review in New Scientist which would have shamed a first year philosophy student with its blatant use of strawman arguments against it.
It would seem from that alone that she has little regard for the hoi polloi and their reasoning skills, also no sense of professional shame. I think she is one of those who deplore the whole impoltieness of breaking the taboo over criticising religion and thinks that such discussions should be left to professionals like her whilst sitting secure in ivory tower studies.
“I hope you’re happy… you’ve ruined the Comic Sans MS font for me PZ.”
Someone had to. Think of it as tough love.
Nope, it means that the others have inherited a trait that prevents them from having as many surviving fertile offspring as you in the current environment.
Nope, it means that the others have inherited a trait that prevents them from having as many surviving fertile offspring as you in the current environment.
AlanWCan –
Actually, I’m not. Read the rest of my argument is the important bit – we can argue for science more effectively by side-stepping the atheism=evil problem.
But being nice whilst we’re making our arguments won’t harm.
Bob
Good God, even if what Mary says in the first paragraph is true, why does she blame Dawkins instead of the ranting liars at the DI? It’s certainly not Dawkins who says that Darwin is responsible for Hitler.
Here’s some more egregious swill, interspersed with comments:
Yeah yeah, of course Dawkins doesn’t say that, but then we don’t agree with Darwin that acquired traits are inherited either (except epigenetically). She seems to agree with IDists that ours is the church of Darwinism, and if Dawkins deviates from whatever Darwin wrote, then he is wrong.
You haven’t even read anything by Dawkins, have you Midgely? You’re coming awfully close to IDism when you just make things up like that.
Why are you reducing “the debate” to that level? BTW, there’s no debate, not with non-ignorant and non-stupid people. And the only reason Dawkins speaks of the competition in evolution is because that’s the way it works, including where co-operation also operates. One of Dawkins’s points is that co-operation can come out of competition.
Besides, it’s absurd for her to be claiming that Dawkins is pushing economics into science, when at least in America that ought to be a selling point. The creo churches are pushing red-in-tooth-and-claw economics, not Dawkins.
Why yes, it was wrong for our founding fathers to set up a secular gov’t to keep the perfidy of religion at bay. There was no Inquisition, Old Testament genocides, or Salem witch hunts.
Where’d this woman ever get a degree?
So, is Marxism causing many problems today? Focus, Mary, focus. Of course ideologies are used for ill much like religions, but the staying power of religion manages to influence the development of ideology. Hegel’s quasi-religious claptrap had a lot to do with the magical belief in dialectical materialism getting a foothold.
Let’s see, you were going to explain why ID arose, since it doesn’t compete with science, weren’t you? What happened, did you nod off into your little dream world again?
Um, sources? You know, I’d have thought you understood the need for evidence, but so far I have seen exactly none.
Where’s the evidence that they can’t be settled in the lab?
More importantly, so what if they can’t be answered at the present time? “Belief” without sufficient evidence is fine if people just want to hang their hat onto a belief without evidence. But don’t confuse the importance of how real answers are found with the fact that many people want fake answers, whether or not real answers have been found.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Yes, how dare we subtly and insidiously try to sneak some of our decent moral standards onto these immoral and amoral theists. :-D
Actually, Inherit the Wind was far kinder to William Jennings Bryan (fictionalized as “Matthew Harrison Brady”) than was, say, H. L. Mencken at the time of the Scopes Trial. It portrays him as a populist hero whose greatest sin is the dogmatism which grew in his old age. He and the Clarence Darrow character (“Henry Drummond”) were close friends and allies, and can still enjoy a civil chat on a summer’s evening, although their differing notions of progress divided their ideas. Drummond criticizes Brady for incuriosity, but after his death, delivers a quiet eulogy: “A giant once lived in that body. . . but Matt Brady got lost, because he looked for God too high up, and too far away.”
IIRC, she’s pushing 90. Really not the mental image I needed.
don’t feel bad, it was bound to happen sooner or later. in fact, you might well consider it a favor.
For a philopsher Mary Midgley’s thinking is as wooly as sheep’s fleece.
Scientific fact cannot be morally pernicious, fact is fact (reality) and morally neutral. The morality part is where people decide to do go with it.
“As Professor Winston has said, science becomes discredited by this kind of stuff”
Give me a break – the point at which scientists stop evaluating evidence and coming up with suitable conclusions, they will stop being scientists.
People are very clever at dealing with contradiction. They will accept science (or at least its benefits in terms of technology) and continue to believe in myths and fairy tales, even when these are contradicted by science. However, if their life dpends on it (do you want this modern medicine based on evolution) they will go for the medicine and still believe in creationsim.
We do need to realize that science is morality-free. Science has no values and passes no value judgements. It takes being a human being to do that.
opponents of intelligent design are driving people to accept it.
Yes, shutting up about it has been so successful. Welcome to the party Mary, you’re only twenty years late.
Like Halloween. Pernicious n’ shit.
I guess I haven’t figured out how ID is the only alternative to moral decline – there are are lots of alternative beliefs in religion (and within Christianity, for that matter), and otherwise which do not require opposition to evolution. (I would think that the presence of civil societies in places untouched by ID might be a clue that ID is not required to inhibit moral decline.) The basis for ID seems to be a bad interpretation of the Bible driven by people hoping that their dishonesty and persistence in such will give them the right to control the followers of the religion they claim to share – it would seem that support of ID rather than opposition to it would be the “moral decline” position. If that were not enough, the behavior of US leaders who claim to be guided by the same morals that undergird ID might be a clue that that perhaps the dichotomy expressed by Ms. Midgley is a false one.
I think it needs to be pointed out that “Because My Invisible Sky Friend Said So” (BMISFSS) is not a safe foundation for a moral code. BMISFSS can be used to defend moral behavior, sure. But it is easily and often adapted to defend morally bankrupt behavior. BMISFSS is simple servitude, and assumes that one’s commanding officer will take responsibility for the moral consequences of actions.
We’ve decided that “because my commanding officer said so” is not sufficient to excuse culpability in the event of a war crime. We should push this same rationale into the realm of morality. It’s NOT acceptable to act immorally and use the BMISFSS defense.
Atheism, or at least the decoupling of metaphysics and ethics, is the only moral approach to the ethical question because it actually allows assessment of morality according to an objective criterion rather than argument from authority.
“2) She is not some out-of-left-field nobody, but is a widely read and respected philosopher.”
I am not aware of many who respect her very poor understanding of what evolution is. She certainly has not understood Dawkins’ message in “The Selfish Gene” which may explain why her criticisms of it are so silly.
If other philosophers consider Midgeley to be a leading light in their field then philosophy has a real problem.
At least homos can’t marry.
It’s all a typo; she meant to say “vermicious,” not “pernicious.”
We aren’t facing death or dispossession for our ideas,
not correct.
don’t forget the story about the woman and her family that were forced to move from their neighborhood because of discrimination against atheists.
wasn’t that the documented incident that started that ridiculous panel of religiosos talking about how that family “deserved it because they should have laid low”. didn’t you, PZ, even have a thread on that very thing a few months back?
we don’t want to think it has gone that far, but really, it’s been that way for quite some time.
atheists ARE being dispossessed, and have been for some time.
It’s all a typo; she meant to say “vermicious,” not “pernicious.”
Not delicious?
Mmmmmmm. Atheism.
I must confess I am confused by your position. In the past, I got the impression that you felt that your self-declared status as ‘godless liberal’ arose naturally from your work as a scientist, and attempts to show that science and religious beliefs can co-exist are at best fundamentally misguided.
This, I suspect, is what Midgley was referring to. If one feels one has only two options – godless liberal scientist or meaningful fundamentalist – then those who find the former option unattractive will indeed feel driven to the latter. This is why some of us are so passionate about emphasizing that science requires methodological naturalism but not metaphysical naturalism. For instance, I absolutely accept that a physical analysis of Atterberg’s Symphony No.2 in terms of vibrations and frequencies could be wholly accurate and complete in terms of physics. But I do not feel this requires me to deny that the Symphony in question can be viewed from another legitimate perspective and considered beautiful.
Either science implies atheism, as you seem to claim, in which case Midgley is right that your arguments drive people to the opposite extreme; or there is a genuine middle ground, in which case I would suggest that your opposition to those who seek to stake out such middle ground (such as the clergy letter project) is misguided.
FYI
The Guardian Profile
Saturday January 13, 2001
———————————–
Mary [Midgley], Mary, quite contrary
A fiercely combative philosopher, she wrote her first book in her 50s after she raised her family. Now 81, she is our foremost scourge of ‘scientific pretension’ and a staunch defender of religion – although she doesn’t believe in God
Mary Midgley, aged 81, may be the most frightening philosopher in the country: the one before whom it is least pleasant to appear a fool. One moment she sits by her fire in Newcastle like a round-cheeked tabby cat; the next she is deploying a savage Oxonian precision of language to dissect some error as a cat dissects a living mouse.
________________
Since this was written in 2001, she’d now be 87.
Since the number 6 has some woo attached to it in christian mythology, I think the christians should have their own morally upright math. In other words, since 6 is morally pernicious, then clearly 3+3=7 for christians.
I gather that PZ’s objections to this, and my own, are not the dichotomization of science vs. religion, but the stated equivalence of atheism with immorality. There is no basis for drawing such an equivalence. Midgley, presuming she is not bone-stupid or dishonest, should be working to dispel such a false equivalence rather than pandering to it.
With friends like Midgely, who needs enemies?
Meanwhile, things are heating up here in Texas. The Texas SBOE has spent the last two weeks figuring out how to skew the science standards process so they can dumb them down. They seem to reason, if every student is made stupid, no child is left behind, right?
There are questions science cannot, yet, answer. That’s a urine-poor excuse to fail to ask the questions and seek answers, though. Midgely’s view is driving people to insane asylums and early graves. Given the alternative, evolution science is the rational choice.
Of course, she’s not much on being rational, it appears.
What makes it a different perspective? Whatever it is you perceive to be beautiful in those vibrations cannot be decoupled from them. One can’t reproduce the vibrations without the beauty. The latter is dependent upon the former.
That different people have different notions of beauty doesn’t change that, of course.
For those interested, here is one of Midgley’s articles from RIP (Royal Instit. of Phil.) that “rips” Dawkins:
Gene-juggling by Mary Midgley
and of course, Dr. D’s response:
In Defence of Selfish Genes by R. Dawkins
If the facts are shown to be hostile to our society’s moral code, then we need to get ourselves a new moral code.
Unfortunately, people who think that things like ‘ethics’ are devoid of objective meaning don’t care about the facts, they care about what people say – and if the facts interfere with people repeating the arbitrary dogmas the critics want them to say, well then – abolish the facts!
Mary Midgley is pretty fully described here. The excerpt which I recall from way back (and which hasn’t been retracted to date):
MartinM @#34:
For some reason, I assumed she was a member of the moral majority (à la Haggard, Craig et al.) rather than an elderly philosopher.
I know, I know, most of you can’t believe that I can jump to conclusions and run off at the mouth, but it can happen. And you were here to witness it.
I case you read this, sorry Mary.
(Hmm, have another go at the link: Mary Midgley )
Quoting Caledonian:
Except that divine command (“Because My Invisible Sky Friend Says So”) morality is [i]not[/i] a moral code. BMISFSS does not state anything about the morality of an action, and most people who invoke BMISFSS are not concerned with the actual morality of their actions, but rather whether or not their actions will get them, personally, into Heaven.
If any “morality” is based on utter selfishness without concern for the ethical status of an action, it’s Christian BMISFSS “morality.” It’s about time that someone said so.
Richard Dawkins posted today that Midgley has admitted she didn’t even read his book, “The Selfish Gene” when she wrote that blistering article (see my previous post) attacking it. So much for her honesty. Grim…sad…pathetic.
Source: Dawkins’ post at http://www.richarddawkins.net (click)
Music is supernatural? Wow, I didn’t know that.
Oh man, my HTML skills are failing. I totally put that italics in bulletin board tags. Clearly my atheistic bias is preventing my from seeing the truth, which is obviously that God designed the universe with hypertext markup language protocols.
If you need a God in order to understand that harming deliberately and gratuitously other people is Bad, then you have a very serious problem. Nay, we all have a very serious problem.
If you need a God in order to understand that harming deliberately and gratuitously other people is Bad, then you have a very serious problem. Nay, we all have a very serious problem.
Richard Dawkins posted today that Midgley has admitted she didn’t even read his book, “The Selfish Gene” when she wrote that blistering article (see my previous post) attacking it. So much for her honesty. Grim…sad…pathetic.
Source: Dawkins’ post at http://www.richarddawkins.net (click)
Wow, it’s sort of sad the way she misunderstood The Selfish Gene. I would think she’d learn from that blunder that she wasn’t quite fit for a public platform discussing biology, and that it’s probably a good idea to read Dawkins’ works before sticking her foot in her mouth in attempted critique.
In this new article, she’s again displaying her naive view of evolution and of contemporary theories of evolution (including Dawkins’ own position). However, to her defense, she does not at all support attitudes like “scientific atheism”=”morally pernicious.” She merely discusses the challenge that such an attitude poses to the public perception of science and reality. And she’s right about that, even if she directs the blame in what’s mostly the wrong direction.
Regarding biology, you really need to stop, Midgley. It’s pretty embarassing when philosophers and critical theorists talk over their own heads about things they don’t understand (see also Searle, for example). It makes one think less of philosophers in general.
A couple of posts have mentioned that this lady has done some good writing at some point. Would anyone more familiar than I with her work care to defend her? As far as I can tell, she’s an example of someone unwilling to correct her own scientific ignorance, yet has made a career out of writing about science.
Quick! Name a genocide committed in the name of monetarist ideology!
The Neo-Keynesian Massacre?
The Great Money Supply Famine?
The War to Reinstate the Gold Standard?
None of these ring a bell?
Also, black women need to stop having babies. It reinforces the stereotype.
PZ — I want you to fertilize my eggs.
Inkadu:
How about the “Second Iraq War?” Most (all?) of the colonial wars of the 19th century?
Marxists will be happy to argue, rather persuasively, that many military conflicts have capitalist economic roots.
Inkadu you have it absolutely right. Just look up the history of the British East India Company for a very good example. Or the behaviour of the railway companies as they drove the metal roads across the continental US.
The British navy drove their captains in the 18th and 19th centuries by allowing them to sell and keep most of the profits from captured enemy vessels. If that is not capitalism driving warfare I don’t know what is.
That Independent piece read like someone had whimsically glued a load of sentences together. It has a very low circulation, it’s terribly underfunded (although it has some gems like Robert Fisk) and is pretty crap, even by the UK’s low journalistic standards.
It was bad enough for her to write a review of The Selfish Gene without having actually read it–and it was worse still for her to get it so very, very wrong.
But it’s now twenty-eight years later and she apparently still hasn’t read the book–or even the Wikipedia article on it, for that matter. Can we take up a collection to mail her one? Please? Or maybe just a postcard reading “it’s the selfish gene, not the selfish individual“?
Nearly three decades of procrastination! I’m astonished that she has the chutzpah to peddle the same lies (at this point, they’re no longer mistakes) she did over a quarter-century ago, and I’m very, very disappointed that anyone could be foolish enough to publish her screed.
“For instance, I absolutely accept that a physical analysis of Atterberg’s Symphony No.2 in terms of vibrations and frequencies could be wholly accurate and complete in terms of physics. But I do not feel this requires me to deny that the Symphony in question can be viewed from another legitimate perspective and considered beautiful.”
Sorry, but there is no reason to believe that your other “legitimate perspective” and your sense of aesthetic and what you find beautiful is somehow detached from methodological naturalism and science. It is perfectly legitimate for fields of science such as psychology and neuroscience to ask why a human being feels a particular way. This is precisely why many of us reject NOMA and the idea that somehow science and religion occupy different spheres of knowledge that don’t interact — religionists make claims that clearly have empirical consequences all the time, so it cannot be said science has no say (e.g. prayer works, zygotes have souls and souls are the source of our consciousness despite the fact zygotes have no consciousness, etc.).
Wait. Anti-human? How is it possible for secular humanists to be anti-human at the same time?
You know, this would have been quite the fitting post yesterday. (Yarr!) There’s a very detailed history of buccaneering on Google Book Search that, among other things, delves rather deeply into the specifics of how plunder was divvied up between crew members. (They even had compensation for lost eyes and limbs.)
I should point out that these people weren’t actually employed by the British; they were more like independent contractors. Like independent contractors do, they eventually slipped their bonds and began attacking any ships in sight, their proud traditions falling to pieces in the more well-known years of out-and-out piracy.
James McGrath wrote
The “middle ground” is compartmentalization. Can you believe in both God and evolution? Yes. The two can be reconciled. As Michael Shermer put it, “You can believe in God and evolution as long as you keep the two in separate, logic-tight compartments. Belief in God depends on religious faith. Belief in evolution depends on empirical evidence.”
But is evolution indicative of a disembodied Intelligence called God? No. If you follow evolution to its natural conclusion, no God. Just as when you follow chemistry to its natural conclusion, no Life Force.
So science implies atheism to those who take God as a hypothesis about reality. It does not imply atheism to those who see the question of whether God exists or not as a moral issue, instead of a factual one. Morals based on what, though? On facts. Otherwise, theism is nothing more than humanism imbued with poetry and metaphor.
So we atheists are supposed to push the idea that it’s a good thing to compartmentalize God into “a matter of faith?” A moral issue? When “having faith in God” means being open, loving, sensitive, and caring about others? And then they notice we have no faith in God? Cut our own throats, why don’t we?
That “middle ground” isn’t going to work for us. That’s the area where people insist that believing in God isn’t like believing in a science theory, it’s like believing in beauty, love, and the value of kindness. It’s about being open to wonder and possibility. Right. So much for respecting the position of atheism, then.
My own reading of the Independent article, which doesn’t really give much to go on, was that Midgley’s comment primarily centred round the word “selfish”. As I unnderstand it, (without having read her other comments on Dawkins’ work) she is saying that picking a metaphor which people associate with bad behaviour will resonsate more with people who don’t understand the science than any presentation of the science. Far more people know Dawkins called the gene “selfish” than have ever read his book. Hence people react viscerally towards his theory on the basis of a word with (im)moral connotations, rather than consider a theory that has nothing to do with morality. Indeed, Dawkins specifcally says that it would be a pretty poor guide to constructing morality. While I’m not at all sure this has anything to do with why people accept the nonsense of ID (I just don’t follow the logic there), I think there’s a more sensible point about choosing rhetoric carefully than most commenters here are recognising. Most people (gross generalisation mode on) are scientifically illiterate, and don’t react to the science, but the image. I make those comments as an evolution accepting Christian who gets really annoyed by both ID and creationism, so you may have to allow for my bias, just as I try to allow for yours. But a plea to think about the implications of the rhetoric of “selfish” as an emotional turn-off seems to me one worth pondering.
From The Guardian Profile:
Ooh! I’m scared!
If the passage PZ cites is indicative of her towering intellect, I wouldn’t be concerned about being the one appearing the fool by comparison.
Dawkins’s new book is to be called “The somewhat-self-centered-but-really-a-pretty-nice-guy-once-you-get-to-know him Gene”
Spaulding @63,
Andrew Brown, who very occasionally comments here, wrote a book called The Darwin Wars that describes (among many other things) the exchanges between Midgely and Dawkins. Though he seems generally sympathetic to Midgely, Brown remarks that she got her biology about as wrong as one could possibly get it; all the more astonishing, as she was well aware she was no biologist, and so got one to help her. Brown’s book is very well worth reading.
As for Midgely’s stuff, I’ve read very little of it, but liked Wickedness. I also have Beast and Man on the shelf somewhere, and must get round to it one day.
Again with these flawed equations:
Atheism = immorality/evil
Religion = morality/good
The evidence simply does not support either, history, sociology, hell watch the news, you’ll see “religious” people day in and day out doing immoral and evil things. Yet, despite all of this, religious people instantly equate religion to good. Again, pesky ‘liberally-biased’ evidence messing up proper conservative “truth.”
I am certainly OK with the idea of belief in God (which is not, in spite of Dawkins, limited to theism) as humanism plus an appreciation of metaphor! :)
All I understood Midgley to be saying is that, if one believes there are only two options, a scientific worldview devoid of meaning and morality, and belief in the traditional theistic God coupled with ID or YEC. I didn’t understand her to be supporting the view that those are the only options. I only understood her to be criticizing both extremes for reinforcing the wrong impression that this is an either-or situation. I don’t think I’m misconstruing the quotation, but there may have been more to what she said than is quoted here. All I understand her to be saying is that, as long as scientists continue to give the impression that science itself shows life to be meaningless and undermines morality, people are going to run the other way, and all the evidence in the world will not convince them not to, since they are making a choice with their hearts and not their heads.
Bob: “I would even go as far as apostasy in suggesting that if one wants to defend science, then it might be easier to show that it doesn’t have to conflict with Christianity.”
I submit that theists have *known* for a very long time that scientific understanding shoves God out into the Cold of the Abyss. Why else would theists have gone to such trouble for so long to attack or distort science?
Sure, some theists are able to ignore the fact that science negates religious myths, so they manage to accept science while believing in the unbelievable. However, the literalists who have done so much damage to science are not willing to listen to explanations of scientific realities. Even though some Christians have long demonstrated that they believe in both, literalists will not listen even to Christian scientists. The appeasement of attempting to dissociate science from atheism that you recommend will NOT work.
It is not simply that literalists are unable to comprehend science, or that they have not been educated in science, it is that their minds are shuttered tight against reality. These obtusely ignorant theists are not merely closed off to the reality of evolution, but to moral, sociological, psychological, medical, environmental and political realities, etc. You name it, the cognitive disordered literalist will deny it and ignore it if it proves inconvenient. (I do say “cognitive disorder” advisedly even if other physicians have not yet acknowledged the problem officially.)
I have been an atheist far longer than I have been a vocal atheist. I was already thinking along the lines that the only way for science to fight back is to attack the root cause of the ignorance, which is the fact that literalist sheep have been told ad nauseam that they must think the way they think (or don’t think) because this is what their religious leaders are telling them to believe. I think that the New Atheists have the right idea — theism rather than pure ignorance is the problem.
“If you do it nicely, you might help break the atheism=evil myth as well.”
As above, theists have been told to believe this. I think that the message that atheists can be moral must be repeated over and over to as many as might listen. The real problem, as I see it, is that theistic moralists are not truly moral if, unlike Jonathan Haidt, one regards the essential features of morality as comprising do-no-harm and be fair. I think that Haidt is incorrect to include conservative parameters under the umbrella of morality — those are precisely the values that lead idiots to believe that Dubaya is anything other than a mor*nic m*nace.
Theists have taken over the Internet. I think that scientists and atheists alike must take some of it back.
Two separate issues.
Humans give meaning to life. It has no inherent meaning in nature. That is not the same as undermining morality. Indeed, giving meaning to life is how humans have developed moralities. Morality flows from our sociality, not from any supernatural source.
Midgley has had a set against evolution since the sociobiology debates of the 70s. It’s not that she denies it, but she seems to find some philosophical issues with it whenever she writes about it. I suspect she was frightened by a Darwinist in school.
OK, if she’s pushing 90, that might be an explanation in istelf. Lots of old people go like that, my father included. Still extremely glib, with all their rhetorical tricks intact and their language skills, but the thinking behind the words has been reduced to a few knee-jerk reactions and warmed-over prejudices. Very old dog — no new tricks!
Hap: “The basis for ID seems to be a bad interpretation of the Bible driven by people hoping that their dishonesty and persistence in such will give them the right to control the followers of the religion they claim to share – it would seem that support of ID rather than opposition to it would be the “moral decline” position.”
Ironically, ID could not have achieved its modern incarnation without science in that it borrows from the genetic code, biological complexity, and information theory. I take you to be referring to the truly ancient teleological argument for the existence of “God”.
When ID was put on trial in Kansas, its proponents actually perjured themselves by claiming that they did not “speculate on the identity of the designer”. Even though they had been careful not to *state* the presumed identity, “to speculate” also means “to believe”, so they were clearly lying since any fool, including a creationist fool, already knew Who was cast in the role of “Designer”.
I have always taken the IDers, despite their patent dishonesty about creationist arguments, to be true believers in their religious convictions. I have assumed that their distortions were created not so much to control the followers, or to sell books, as to support their own unfounded beliefs. Because the arguments for design are riddled with fallacies of logic, I have always assumed that any equally unfounded claims that only Biblical literalists could be moral are based on equally faulty illogic from unacceptable premises.
Maybe I have been too kind to the IDers!
This subject has become tiresome beyond belief, so I’m merely going to drop in a quote that PZ might perhaps appreciate. It’s from Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, as Thursday is instructing Goliath Corp.’s lab techs on the finer points of navigation in the BookWorld . . .
“I drew a rough circle near the Maritime Adventures (Civilian) genre. “We think that this area is heavy with detritus from an unknown genre – possibly Squid Action/Adventure – that failed to fully form a century ago. Twice a year Maritime is pelted with small fragments of ideas and snatches of inner monologue regarding important invertebrate issues that don’t do much harm, but bookjumping through this zone has always been a bit bumpy . . . ”
Amusingly enough, [Warning: Mild Spoiler Alert] she soon finds herself aboard the steamship Moral Dilemma, trapped within . . . . {shudder} an ethics seminar lecture (no trolleys are involved, but life-saving but unaffordable medicines do make an appearance, among other things . . .)
Midgely: ““For instance, I absolutely accept that a physical analysis of Atterberg’s Symphony No.2 in terms of vibrations and frequencies could be wholly accurate and complete in terms of physics. But I do not feel this requires me to deny that the Symphony in question can be viewed from another legitimate perspective and considered beautiful.”
This sort of thing makes me want to ram a sharp stick into my eye. Honestly, lady, Whitman (“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”), Keats (“Lamia”) and even Poe (“Sonnet – To Science”) have said it very much better, while scientists/science-lovers have answered that sort of over-Romanticized obscurantist silliness well enough, I think. (Although it would be interesting to see a Keats-Dawkins debate over rainbow-appreciation – alas . . .).
“ . . . the truth, which is obviously that God designed the universe with hypertext markup language protocols.”
Well, that explains a lot . . .
“I think that Haidt is incorrect to include conservative parameters under the umbrella of morality –”
Oh, I dunno – insofar that he’s taking a descriptive approach based on anthropological and psychological data, it seems to make a fair amount of sense – I mean, to say that primarily ‘conservative’ moral issues aren’t part of human morality is rather bizarre, when you think about it , and when one considers that the other parameters/pillars/wha’ever may well have been a big part of the’ standard model of morality,’ one might say – what would have been understood as corresponding to ‘moral concerns’ for most human groups throughout most of cognitively-modern human history – it seems even odder. (Unless, of course, the authoritarian/in-group/purity bits really become important only after, say, the rise of agriculture, or perhaps some other transition?)*.
Anyway, off the top of my head, I suspect his questionnaires an’ all may – though poor design/phrasing – be missing some aspects of liberal morality. For example, ideas of purity/sanctity would seem to also be rather important for many liberals, but in different enough ways that his questions completely miss them, rendering them invisible. From a certain point of view, ‘conservative’ morality has an oddly privatized, inert, or perhaps overly literal view of sanctity/purity (subversive art? yawn); instead, liberal purity concerns (driven by non-harm and fairness, rather than in-group loyalty and respect for authority/hierarchy) attach to things like sweatshop-made clothes, perhaps racist/sexist language, pesticide-laden, wastefully produced (and exploited-labor-using food, etc. Which gets us into a whole ‘nother aspect of liberal (or would it make sense to distinguish between liberal and left) morality, which involves enormous loyalty to/respect for an in-group of a sort, but one that’s been stretched enormously wide, to encompass not just – at least in theory – the rest of the species, but also other species, to one or another degree, and even ecosystems and such-like.
* Conversely, it’s always struck me as rather interesting not just that something along the lines of the Golden Rule is so widespread, but that it also seems as if it popped up in a variety of places possessing dense and diverse populations mingling in cities and empires, unless this is merely an artifact created by the nature of the evidence. In other words, that it’s not just a reflection of fundamental human empathy, but a specific set of cultural/historical developments utilizing it when basic family/in-group loyalty & attachment is no longer sufficient – because the social environment has gone so far beyond your local band or village – and some sort of patch is desperately needed. . .
No doubt this is a very timeworn realization, but I never pay enough attention and honestly, I’m also the kind of person who makes the same excited realizations a couple times a year until they eventually start sticking . . .)
Someone wrote something that stupid? How does the first section even come close to implying the second? Hell, I understand the acoustics and physics involved in music, particularly singing, because I graduated with a BA in music, concentrating in voice. The fact that I understand how professional opera singers produce their art adds to my appreciation. The mad scenes of Donizetti or Bellini are amazing not only for their technical difficulty, but also for ther beauty and emotional impact. Understanding the acoustics of the Concertgebouw takes nothing away from my intensely emotional experience of hearing Mahler’s first symphony there (I was quite literally sobbing at the end of the performance)
This woman is a fucking idiot!
Shastra: “Can you believe in both God and evolution? Yes. The two can be reconciled.”
I would say that you could achieve this by being a deist and shoving God back to a pre-Bang role in setting up the laws of physics. I’m not arguing for deism. I’m a strong atheist in that I consider the so-called “supernatural” a totally artificial category invented by humans to permit their special miraculous explanations and their precious afterlife category.
The God of the Bible was an interfering character and should, by the Bible’s own account, have left considerable evidence that could incontrovertably be traced back to Him. He didn’t for some Mysterious Reason of His Own. (This is particularly odd when you consider the trouble he supposedly took over sending Jesus to save us from our sins). The Big Bang left a trace, after all, so why didn’t God? I think that the facts actually disprove the Christian God, and I further think that the demonstrable fact that human societies invent religions out of human psychosocial needs effectively disproves religion. (Yes, I know the philosophical point the we can’t disprove a negative, so at a theoretical level I should only say that the possibility of validity for any religious claims for the supernatural are vanishingly small.)
“But is evolution indicative of a disembodied Intelligence called God? No. If you follow evolution to its natural conclusion, no God.”
Again, if God is moved back to the role of set-up rather than interference, then God is compatible with evolution. Deism, at least as I understand it, leaves natural forces total responsibility for their actions. I cannot imagine what point there is to worshipping the set-up phase beyond the hope of Heaven.
“So science implies atheism to those who take God as a hypothesis about reality. It does not imply atheism to those who see the question of whether God exists or not as a moral issue, instead of a factual one. Morals based on what, though? On facts. Otherwise, theism is nothing more than humanism imbued with poetry and metaphor.”
Isn’t it extraordinary how slippery the definition of God, as presented by theists, proves to be? I don’t think though that very much of theism *is* humanistic or even acceptably moral (fairness and no-harm). This is particularly true when theists, rather than taking the Bible as a guide for personal moral behavior instead use it as a weapon to attack others who are actually harming nothing other than squeemish theist prejudices.
Many theists are good, loving people, but not, I fancy, because religion per se made them so! The anti-atheist theists whom I have encountered do not seem to fit into the good, loving category, and certainly not into the logical category. Perhaps I have merely been unlucky.
Theists hold unfounded beliefs about reality, and this includes holding unfounded beliefs about the true nature of morality.
“[The middle ground]’s the area where people insist that believing in God isn’t like believing in a science theory, it’s like believing in beauty, love, and the value of kindness. It’s about being open to wonder and possibility. Right. So much for respecting the position of atheism, then.”
That’s a very good point. Nobody, including atheists, disputes the value of beauty, love, or kindness, which obviates all need for insisting upon a Supernatural Being. In making *that* argument for the definition of God, theists are eradicating all need for religious doctrines because almost all of us have those capacities and those who don’t have them won’t achieve them through religion. (Therapy perhaps, religion very unlikely.)
scatheist wrote:
And I’m a scientific atheist, in that I consider the “supernatural” category to include all those top-down intuitions which consider mind, intentions, and values to be immaterial “forces” which exist above the physical, and act on them. So science can and did examine the supernatural, and it just didn’t pan out. That could change, of course, and supernaturalists hope it will — which shows that the bogus “science can’t deal with the supernatural” protective move came after the category was already there, it didn’t form it.
But other than that, we’re pretty much in agreement, I think.
Dan S: “Oh, I dunno”
You said it.
” – insofar that [Haidt’s] taking a descriptive approach based on anthropological and psychological data, it seems to make a fair amount of sense”
It is a “descriptive approach based on anthropological and psychological data” that is pertinent to a description of the various systems employed across the society, yes. The danger of extrapolating from such inclusivity is that the definition of what one is studying becomes subject to description rather than to the accepted definition. Haidt himself states the harm and justice parameters are the classically accepted parameters for defining morality within most studies of moral philosophy. Remember that the best way for an academic to be noticed is for him or her to produce a new idea, even if the newness is merely achieved by expanding definitions to include parameters better included in separate definitions. Haidt is actually describing the sort of emotional disgust reaction that PZ addressed, and which Haidt himself describes as generating reactions that the emoter cannot justify within a post hoc moral explanation.
” – I mean, to say that primarily ‘conservative’ moral issues aren’t part of human morality is rather bizarre, when you think about it , and when one considers that the other parameters/pillars/wha’ever may well have been a big part of the’ standard model of morality,’ one might say – what would have been understood as corresponding to ‘moral concerns’ for most human groups throughout most of cognitively-modern human history – it seems even odder. (Unless, of course, the authoritarian/in-group/purity bits really become important only after, say, the rise of agriculture, or perhaps some other transition?)*.”
And you complained about the lengthiness of discussion on this topic! If you were so bored, you simply should have stopped reading since you won’t be tested on the material.
Haidt is actually describing the emotional reactions that are emphasized by individuals within his study groups. Haidt himself emphasizes that loyalty/in-group/purity are primarily conservative values. I am not saying that liberals do not place any value on these things. However, I am saying that emphasizing these values does not necessarily guarantee moral behavior (by the classical definition). Some in-group authority figures who emphasize purity have not emphasized and are not emphasizing moral behavior. No need to mention the obvious examples of misuse of authority to promote personal ambitions by appealing to human emotions. Liberal thinkers tend to look at the value of *what* is being promoted rather than to pay excessive heed to *who* is promoting it. This excessive reverence for in-group hype has been repeatedly demonstrated to be potentially dangerous down through history.
The rest of your verbosity merely struck me as pat, conservative, derisive, self-advertizing, good-ole boy argumentativeness, and I leave you to it.
Why do these creo morons always pick on biologists and evolution. The root source of the “science” problem was Galileo and Copernicus and Columbus. The earth is not flat like the bible says. The earth orbits the sun, not the other way around like the bible says. Really, biologists are late comers to the reality based community. It is time to blame…..Astronomers.
I expect the peasants to be at the gates of observatories worldwide with torches and pitchforks after church on Sunday. Some things MAN WASN’T MEANT TO KNOW!!!
Monado # 83,
hmm, sounds like one of the ways that people try to cope with creeping memory-loss and dementia – proud and verbally combative folks just keep up the front. The fact that Midgley’s bewilderment and pretending-to-understand is documented as extending back to 1979 does undermine the explanatory value of the progressive dementia hypothesis, however.
Richard D’s response was excellent at his site linked above.
I have only just stumbled on this, and have no time to do it properly. But I know Mary M — and wrote the profile several poeple have cited here. I haven’t yet read her ID pamphlet. But I’m sorry to say that Dawkins is flat-out lying if he says that she did not read the Selfish Gene before reviewing it. It just isn’t true. I know this becasue it was almost the first thing he ever told me — I had just come from reading her pieces before interviewing him and rather tactlessly opened the conversation by referring to this.
He told me the story then, attributing it to Ullica Segerstråle; Of course I checked it out with Midgley (whom I did not then know, I think) and of course she denied it.
I got hold of US at her American university, and she confirmed that Mary Midgley had not at all confessed to not reading the book before reviewing it — it would be disgraceful if she had done — and Dawkins contacted me later to say that he, too, had spoken to US and they agreed that it was all a misunderstanding. Then, about three years later, we were both at a college supper in Oxford and almost the first thing he said to me was that MM had confessed not to reading the Selfish Gene. It’s not true. It is an unpleasant example of self-deception driven by vanity.
When I look at this jeering mob here, shouting abuse at an 87-year-old woman, I understand a little more about witch trials. Even if you all are atheists.
#92, Judging for her comments, I find it obvious that she has not read “the Selfish Gene” (by any reasonable definition of the word “read”).
Andrew Brown #92
Midgley repeated the wrong arguments over several decades. Her age has nothing to do with it. Her unintelligent analysis has everything to do with the criticism you see here.
Her first statement states that people can think that scientific facts are morally pernicious. Facts are facts, using “scientific” as an adjective is just a tautology. If a moral philosopher really wanted to improve the world perhaps they would make clear that facts have no morality. Its the people who have the morals.
After her many years discussing morals you would think she would have realised that by now.
Oh, and trying to nitpick about whether or not she perused TSG is misleading, RD has already mentioned it.
Andrew,
Assuming, for the moment, we take it as read that Mary Midgely’s comments on Richard Dawkins were made after an exhaustive reading of his work…
Her comments are still a bunch of horseshit.
“The ideology Dawkins is selling is the worship of competition. It is projecting a Thatcherite take on economics on to evolution. It’s not an impartial scientific view; it’s a political drama.”
Even for a reader too stupid to comprehend his books, the ending of TSG and numerous other parts of Richard Dawkins writing are explicit in showing that statement to be a lie.
If you’re enjoying learning more about Witch Trial’s, I suggest you look how often involved people’s willingness to believe easy lies told about others.
“The earth is not flat like the bible says.
See Sherri Shepard on The View in that youtube clip .. .
The earth orbits the sun, not the other way around like the bible says.
Apparently around 20% of Americans disagree . . .
It’s quite possibly much worse than we think.
scatheist – I must say, I’ve never been called a conservative good-ole boy before. Verbose, certainly, but . . .
Anyway, though, if you’re defining “morality” as that which is classically treated in most studies of moral philosophy, or even, that which is most likely to promote moral behavior as we understand it, well, sure, no argument there. I just think Haidt seems correct to point out that in much of human experience, ~morality is defined far more broadly, and includes certain concepts left out of classical moral philosophy. On the other hand, I’d disagree with – among other things, probably including different moral systems being incommensurable- the idea that liberal morality is comparatively ‘impoverished’, as he puts it (yes, I understand that it’s a matter of relative importance, not total neglect).
“For instance, I absolutely accept that a physical analysis of Atterberg’s Symphony No.2 in terms of vibrations and frequencies could be wholly accurate and complete in terms of physics. But I do not feel this requires me to deny that the Symphony in question can be viewed from another legitimate perspective and considered beautiful.”
Seriously, where do people get this sort of idea? I was actually just reading about it in Levitin’s new book This Is Your Brain On Music – which seems to have been released in paperback before it came out in hardcover, oddly – perhaps someone was rushing to get ahead of Sacks’ new one on music & the brain? – as a commonly-held and oft-repeated claim. Yet I’ve never heard of even a single scientists ever making such a claim (that, say, understanding the physic of music, or even the neurology/evolution of music, requires one to deny aesthetic appreciation). One can understand why some people would imagine that evolution would require folks to sign onto some hideous vision of moral nihilism, etc.- they’re wrong, sure, but it’s a sort of coherent wrong, as opposed to this not-even-wrong wrongness. No doubt it sheds some sort of light on common understandings of science, or the nature of meaning, or something. It’s really annoying, though.
@Andrew Brown:
I’m sure that Mary Midgley is more than able to withstand the slings and arrows of a blog comments thread, no matter her age. To suggest otherwise comes across as somewhat patronising.
All the same, though her comments may have been garbled by the interviewer, she does seem to have misunderstood the point of ‘The Selfish Gene’ and hasn’t demonstrated any indication that she’s read anything Dawkins has written on altruism. As she might agree herself, if you get the facts of an argument wrong, you deserve to be criticised.
That said – it’s clear that some of the commenters here didn’t bother to check who Mary Midgley was before hitting the Post button. Smoking meth and public toilets? This woman is not a religious fundamentalist.
Think -> research -> think again -> write -> post.
But her evident lack of comprehension of the work she pretends to be able to critique is very reminiscent of creationists quoting inappropriately from bits of science that they’ve completely misunderstood. If she read the book at all to any meaningful extent (eg not just pronouncing out some words), then her reading comprehension ability (including the critical thinking necessary for self-checking her interpretations are accurate) is seriously in doubt.
Checking into her background (of reading classics and being or trying to be a philosopher) merely reveals information which looks all the more damning against her – except presumably to others of similar pretentiousness who are determined to overlook just how deservedly bad the general reputation of people in those groups is among the evidence-based, reality-based types (see the Sokal Affair). There should be some worthwhile exceptions somewhere (eg round here on occasion!) but they are very much in the minority and the role of “proving the rule”.
I did not intend to suggest that most scientists would dismiss music appreciation on an aesthetic level. But certainly there certainly ARE some who would say ‘Love is JUST a phenomenon of body and brain chemistry, the result of evolution, developed because this bonding mechanism favored the survival of one’s offspring to at least the age of reproduction’. I have no doubt that this is indeed a significant part of the story. My only problem is with the word ‘just’, as though all the relationships, love songs and poetry have no value simply because we understand the underlying mechanism. The qualia of being in love is not, in my view, reducable to the chemistry of being in love. And my understanding of Midgley’s point is that the few scientists who say things like ‘Human beings are just one of many bearers of selfish genes, the meaning of whose existence is nothing other than the propagation of those genes’ actually drive those who value love, beauty, and other such aspects of life away from science and towards the other extreme.
All I came here to do is to refute the false claim that MM has ever admitted that she did not read the Selfish Gene. Anyone who wants to discuss the merits of her argument — or indeed of PZs — can step outside and do it at helmintholog.
Ack! I thought the music ref was from Midgely – now I feel bad about staggering around the comments here yelling at her about it, or alternately, McGrath, calling you a lady (‘You, sir, are no lady’?) – if that sort of thing bothers you. But ok, I see where you’re going re: remarks about love – and it’s is really annoying, esp. because I’m sure that folks saying that sort of thing don’t at all mean to deny the experience of love, etc.. Miscommunication.
Would it not be fair and proper to ask that the commenters (& PZ) expressing derision at Midgley’s drawing such superficial and erroneous conclusions from the title of The Selfish Gene alone, actually be expected to read more than a few culled statements of hers in a London newspaper? Dawkins selfish gene argument is fairly subtle, and needs the explication of several pages to be understood, yes?
Likewise, Midgley has written at great length and (in my opinion) erudition about (among other things) the subject of how scientific theories affect and are affected by culture. Don’t take my word for it. Read something. Many of her books are available used through amazon at a low price, and you won’t be sending her a penny.
But please don’t jump to knee-jerk conclusions about someone you know nothing about, especially when premature conclusions and misunderstandings are exactly the thing you are fighting against.
C. Schoen, scroll up to comments 31 and 54.
C. Schoen, scroll up to comments 31 and 54.
C Schoen (#102),
It is somewhat patronizing to suggest that commenters are generally ignorant of Midgely’s wider body of work, and therefore unqualified to opine in this case. Whilst it doesn’t follow that being wrong in this case necessarily invalidates any opinion she might express, the context to this attack on Dawkins does suggest a level of intellectual dishonesty on her part, and indicates a disposition to construct strawman arguments. (Although it would seem, judging from the passion and vitriolic tone, that she does so earnestly.)
The views purportedly expressed to Nick Jackson are entirely consistent with her previous attempts to address Dawkins’ work (see the RIP articles linked to above). That is to say that she, deliberately or otherwise, misstates and perverts both the matter and intention of his writing.
To do so over the course of more than two decades, and in light of her grudging almost-apology after explicit correction of the factual errors in her original review of [i]The Selfish Gene[/i], seems very strange indeed. The most generous – but patronizing – conclusion is that she simply failed to understand [i]The Selfish Gene[/i] and [i]The God Delusion[/i]. It seems much more likely – given her apparent intelligence – that she makes moral readings of those works in support of her own agenda.
Oops! Must use the right tags next time!
There’s a good article on Midgley’s misunderstandings of Dawkins here.
The difference being, perhaps, that the worst you can expect from an athiest “witch trial” is some rough criticism like she’s getting here. Christian witch trials have a history of going somewhat farther.
Bernard,
I don’t see why it is patronizing to presume ignorance of MM’s wider work based on comments like 1, 4, 5, 6, 11, 14, 15, and even 40, 42 and 57 written after it was pointed out that MM was not actually a Christian fundamentalist, but an English analytic philosopher (hey, they’re the good guys!) with no patience for sloppy thinking.
I’m suspicious of the way MMs comments were presented in this article. Notice that Nick Jackson is called the “interviewer” but no questions are included in the article. It looks like her remarks have been taken out of context. As someone who has read several of her books and articles, I can vouch for her thoroughness and clarity of argument. You might still not be persuaded, but going by soundbites is no way to make a judgement. (In other words there is no “context” in this case.)
What you are calling intellectual dishonesty is completely unfounded, which you will find if you trouble yourself to read the argument, which is grounded in a legitimate difference of opinion.
Finally, who doesn’t make “moral readings in support of [their] own agenda”? Let’s not be naive.
C. Schoen and Andrew Brown: I agree. There are too many crude attacks here on Midgley by people who know next to nothing about her work. In my opinion she is a philosopher definitely worth reading, particularly on the subject of the ideological uses of science. (I say this as someone who teaches philosophy.) Of course, she’s not in Dawkins’ league as an evolutionary biologist — but then Dawkins is nowhere near being in her league as a philosopher.
Scatheist (84): I could be wrong and violating “Never assume malevolence when stupidity is sufficient.” I figured that the lack of willingness to understand either their own sources (Genesis is a problem for a literal interpretation, which they seem to ignore) or the science their theory relies on or claims to refute (even Behe, who allegedly should know better) despite their lack of competence does not imply sincere motives – they know their philosophy has problems, and instead of dealing with them honestly, they avoid them, or make up new excuses. If their underlying reality (in which they claim faith) is inconsistent, it can’t be the driving force for what they are doing.
“Never assume malice when stupidity is sufficient” has let innumerable malicious people off scot free to go back into the world to wreak more havoc.
See: The Bush administration. Most of those in charge of running Bush the Lesser’s administration for him were involved in Watergate.
I read through some of the links on her Wikipedia page, and in the Guardian piece about her she offers up this gem of nonsense:
She can’t believe in religion because, “many of the essential doctrines of Christianity are impossible for a decent and educated person to subscribe to,” yet she still says there must be something of worth in it. Is there anyone out there more familiar with her writings that could offer up what she says there is of value in religion? The incense? The ceremony? Candles and fancy gowns? Exactly what of value is left in religion if you dismiss it’s core doctrines as superstition incompatible with decency and modern thought?
Shastra @88: “And I’m a scientific atheist, in that I consider the “supernatural” category to include all those top-down intuitions which consider mind, intentions, and values to be immaterial “forces” which exist above the physical, and act on them.”
Ah! I regard what you are describing as being simply a matter of scale. The scaling-up sequence might look something like: Na+ K+ ions; Na+K+pump and depolarization-repolarization of membranes; neurons; neural nets; neuroanatomic structures and associated specialized activities, such as feedback regulation, vision, emotion, cognitive activities, etc ; consciousness as integration of inputs; “mind-soul” as integration of consciousness = personal psychology; human psychology; social interactions; and so on.
Our awareness of the operations in the above progression clearly kicks in at a macro level of conscious awareness of neural operations. With somewhere between 10-100 billion neurons each with as many as 1,000-10,000 interconnections to other neurons, it is no wonder that we are not capable of immediate awareness of the underlying processes and that neuroscientists have difficulties teasing the details from the background complexity. Not to mention the superimposed ethical limitations to investigation!
Based on what most Abrahamic religions seem to imply, the supernatural is a special protected area outside the physical world (the matter and energy that scientists could investigate). This supernatural category provides an arena from which deities can manipulate anything in the universe that believers wish to ascribe to said deities.
I think that if we view experience from the perspective of scale, then we can dispense with quibbling about whether or not scientists appreciate both the beautiful music and the fact that the process comprises vibrating strings, compression and rarefaction of air impinging upon the inner ear, transduction of vibrations into auditory nerve transmisions, and esthetic-emotional analysis of the auditory signals. If we talk scale, we can all agree.
“But other than that, we’re pretty much in agreement, I think.”
It probably boils down to definitions. I don’t mean to refer to semantic quibbles, but rather to the fact that much conversation proceeds on the assumption that others attach equivalent meanings to the words we employ to convey ideas. So, yes, I think that we are in agreement.
@Andrew Brown
I wasn’t aware of rumors that she had literally failed to read The Selfish Gene. My intent was to point out her gross lack of comprehension, as evidenced by her review.
She falsely concludes that Dawkins denies the concept of kin selection.
She misunderstands Dawkins’ use of the terms “altruistic” and “selfish” as implying conscious motive and moral intent on the part of the gene or the individual, though Dawkins frequently reminds readers that his use of these terms implies only the consequence of an item’s actions upon its own fecund survival, rather than postulating decisions or intent.
Midgley’s misunderstanding is not limited to Dawkins’ statements on selection forces; she also misrepresents his personal philosophical reaction to these selection forces. Migley incomprehensibly interprets Dawkins as a moral advocate of selfish intent in human behavior. In fact, any philosophical musings in TSG present the opposite case, that Dawkins admires true altruism as a noble but rare event, one that is harshly discouraged by selection of replicators, but made possible through the higher moral consciousness of humanity. It’s significant to note that Dawkins’ philosophical and moral musings are a minor side point that occupies little space in a book focussed on the primacy of “gene”-level benefit in understanding selective forces. Midgley has apparently inverted Dawkin’s philosophy, and misconstrued it as the main thrust of the book. One gets the sense that she would shelve the book in the sociology or ethics section of a library, rather than the biology section.
And quite frankly, her age has nothing to do with her ignorant misuse of a public forum or her laughable lack of comprehension while posing as knowledgable. Some of the comments above may have been a bit off-color, but calling someone on their bullshit isn’t a witchhunt, it’s rational criticism.
Dan S @96
“I must say, I’ve never been called a conservative good-ole boy before.”
Then, I owe you an apology. I was very tired and got hopelessly tangled in trying to decipher what you were saying, which I superficially took to be a defence both of the potentially unmoral aspects of conservatism (what I found alarming in Haidt).
“Anyway, though, if you’re defining “morality” as that which is classically treated in most studies of moral philosophy, or even, that which is most likely to promote moral behavior as we understand it, well, sure, no argument there. I just think Haidt seems correct to point out that in much of human experience, ~morality is defined far more broadly, and includes certain concepts left out of classical moral philosophy.”
I agree that humans do define ‘morality’ very personally and emotionally, though I see this as one of the chief barriers to developing fair standards of morality on which most reasonable members of society could agree. (Laws will always be necessary to deal with those who refuse to adhere even to reasonable standards.) In a sense, I am saying that I think that an effective moral contract does not comprise transducing highly personal disgust reactions into excessive control of genuinely harmless behaviors by other people. Because Haidt is a psychologist rather than a philosopher by training, he seems to be dismissing post hoc formulations of the principles underlying people’s emotional reactivities. I think that this is to dismiss the point, particularly in view of the fact that many of his study participants seem to have been unable to account reasonably for their moralistic feelings. It’s not that we don’t perform or avoid particular behaviors on the basis of moral feelings, it’s just that it strikes me as risky to pay undue honor to disgust feelings as though they indicate the operation of a moral instinct. Quite often, disgust feelings are more connected to hygiene than to morality.
Even before reading Haidt’s article in Edge, I was aware that conservatives place much more emphasis than liberals on adherence to the dictates of chosen authorities. I think that the socially divisive problems that arise from this in-group loyalty stem from the sometimes, indeed too often, harmful messages promulgated by conservative authorities-of-choice.
“On the other hand, I’d disagree with – among other things, probably including different moral systems being incommensurable- the idea that liberal morality is comparatively ‘impoverished’, as he puts it (yes, I understand that it’s a matter of relative importance, not total neglect).”
I must have missed his saying ‘impoverished’, which would have disturbed me even more than my reading of his article did! I found his article very interesting and I did try those moral inventories – needless to say, I scored as a liberal.
I did not take him to be saying that liberals lack a moral sense, but I did object to his implication that obedience/tradition/purity necessarily added to moral thinking. They could enhance moral attitudes, but only if the obedient, traditional, ‘sanctity-first’ message was actully moral according to the no-harm/justice criteria, and too often that is not the case.
Hap @110 “”Never assume malevolence when stupidity is sufficient.” they know their philosophy has problems, and instead of dealing with them honestly, they avoid them, or make up new excuses. If their underlying reality (in which they claim faith) is inconsistent, it can’t be the driving force for what they are doing.”
You have hit the nail on the head about their cognitive errors. In debating theists, particularly conservative and evangelical theists, I have repeatedly observed a failure to see, let alone acknowledge, that they are indeed being illogical. Some creationists play the most extraordinary anti-logical gymnastics, utterly contradicting themselves within a couple of sentences.
A recent neuroscience study demonstrated that conservatives demonstrate lower activity in the truth-discrepancy center (ACC) than do liberals. When I read of this, I had a ‘Bingo!’ moment. They favor the status quo because they cannot cope with change. The study fits with what I have repeatedly observed — the arguments of conservative theists are conclusion-driven. That is, they cling to their inculcated beliefs in their deity and distort the rest of their ‘facts’ and compound illogic to fit this preconceived notion of a deity.
Obviously, the deeper motivation for these cognitive distortions lies in an emotional need for simplistic, magical explanations, but, more importantly it is fueled by the need to be a Special Creation destined for Life Everlasting (with or without virgins).
At a superficial glance, this utter lack of understainding and of critical thinking looks like stupidity (which fits with the inverse correlation between religiosity and IQ observed in most studies), but this does not necessarily mean that ‘stupidity’ alone explains the cognitive distortions.It certainly does not signify that all theists are ‘stupid’.
I would define functional intelligence as being a reflection of rational acceptance of facts combined with logical hypothesis-building based on acceptable cognitive systems of understanding. In this sense, many conservative theists truly do operate as though suffering from low functional IQ in broad areas including religious dogma, misleading pseudoscience for dummies, environmental issues (as though we liberals welcome the disaster that is global warming), politics, interpersonal relations, and so on.
I see religion’s role in this dilemma as resulting from its reinforcing unfounded and illogical beliefs, trapping religionists in stamp-of-religious-approval stupidities. So long as religious dogma is treated as inviolable and unquestionable, then lost sheep will follow the wrong, officially ‘sanctified’ leaders and elect the wrong political leaders.
Spaulding @114,
I’d be very curious to see a blackline of the second edition of TSG (the one that I, and I suspect most of us here, have read) against the first edition, which is what Midgely will have read before she wrote “Gene Juggling”. I agree with Andrew Brown that, while Dawkins certainly didn’t mean what Midgely took him to mean, a lot of what he wrote practically invites one to make that misreading. I remember him carefully warning readers not to fall into that trap, not to take his metaphor too far; but were those warnings in the first edition?
I’d heard of Mary Midgley before I read this post. She’s a well-known philosopher who writes books with titles almost as catchy as those of Richard Dawkins, particularly Utopias, Dolphins and Computers: the problems of philosophical plumbing which was enticing enough to get me to buy it.
I didn’t read very far as I found a lack of rigour in her writing when rigour is just about the first essential of philosphical thinking. A similar touchy-feely attitude seems to pervade this article.
Nevertheless, she addresses an important point. The current furore over the ‘Is the earth flat’ comments of Sherri Shepherd show that when pushed, many people WILL NOT give up the comfort of religion with all it offers in terms of an afterlife, punishment and reward (oh and freedom from having to think).
I wrote a post about this in my blog The View from the Pond and I hope it’s okay to put a link here – http://theviewfromthepond.blogspot.com/2007/09/i-wanna-live-forever-but-it-aint-gonna.html
C. Schoen (#108),
Clearly, the most pugnacious commenters were somewhat ignorant of who Midgley is, and leapt to judgement too quickly, but it would be unfair to address those people rather than the multitude of others who are offering criticism on the basis of readng and understanding Dawkins’ work.
I’m certainly not judging Midgley solely on the basis of this article, since it is entirely possible that comments were stripped of context,or that she was misquoted. The major basis for my criticisms is the series of RIP articles. She very clearly misread The Selfish Gene, and compounded the error by apologising – in a direct response to Dawkins’ rebuttal – for the tone of her original article, whilst utterly failing to address the factual errors.
That earlier conflict sets a very clear context for the article referenced above, and is entriley consistent with the tone and nature of the comments attributed to her in it.
The difference of opinion between Midgley and Dawkins – and don’t be so quick to assume that I’ve not done my research on this one – is based upon a consistent misreading of Dawkins’ work. Her first RIP article on The Selfish Gene simply reads as though she had utterly misunderstood Dawkins work.
Midgely claimed, in her response to the Dawkins RIP piece, that his scientific terminology is dangerously semantically confusing – presumably, to excuse her own misreading. She then proceeded to misattribute semantic meaning to that terminology, where in every case that I can see, Dawkins has been at pains to define and restrict that terminology. She then argues that this is a consequence of Dawkins use of terminology – a practice which is so absolutely commonplace across the sciences as to be utterly unremarkable in this case.
Given the clarity of Dawkins work, and his pains to restrict any gven argument, give the evidential background, and highlight the limits and underlying assumptions, then it is very strange that Midgely chooses to attack the author, rather than question the comprehension skills of the reader directly. Of course, there is an implicit slur on Dawkins readership, that they will be unable to make those semantic distinctions, despite the time taken to explain them.
Even if we grant her point, she seems at time to forget her own caution about the potential for linguistic misinterpretation. She exploits the semantic confusion – which of her own creation – to make counterarguments against opinions which Dawkins simply does not express. This tactic is consistent in the early RIP articles, through to this piece (assuming the varacity of it). This piece, as per the RIP, is a litany of factually incorrect claims about Dawkins book. Almost every paraphrase she makes of Dawkins opinion is simply untrue, and most of her counterpoints are explicitly addressed in The God Delusion. This is dishonesty, where deliberate or not.
She seems simply not to understand much of evolutionary biology, its terminology or theory, but nonetheless take issue with it (where she seems to think she’s only arguing with Dawkins).
Bernard,
Simply because Dawkins says “Don’t take this metaphor literally” a few times in TSG does not mean the matter is crystal clear. For one thing, he contradicts himself more than once when, despite his own caveats he writes things like “we were born selfish,” clearly meaning humans, not genes. In his essay in RIP he writes that he belives it “literally” true that organisms are “programmed” by their genes.
Now about the specific versus common meaning of selfish. Elsewhere in TSG he writes that “genes exert ultimate influence over behavior.” Even if we accept the “behavioral” rather than psychological meaning of “selfish” as used by biologists, this still has ethical implications if you connect the dots. Genes are behaviorally selfish, organisms are programmed by their genes and genes exert ultimate control over organismal behavior. This seems to add up to organisms being genetically determined to act selfishly–in the behavioral, not psychological sense, true, but at the organismal level what’s the difference?
Dawkins does write that we must “learn” to be altruistic as a society because our genes have predisposed us differently, but he does not explain by what means, if our genes exert “ultimate influence” over our behavior, we are to work against them.
So it seems to me it is far from simple and obvious what Dawkins “meant” by his terms, which is probably why MM is still talking about it. As one commenter wrote above, Dawkins “practically invites” the misunderstanding.
There is a lot of talk on this thread on how facts are facts, and not up for intepretation, which is an extremely naive point of view. There is no truly objective way of conveying information. All linguistic expressions are conditioned by context, subtext, and other cultural baggage. Especially when writing books for the general public it is important for scientists to keep in mind that words matter.
C. Schoen,
Well now, if Midgley – as others have – wanted to argue that The Selfish Gene is simply a poorly written as a text for the layperson, then that is a very different matter. As it is, she attacked the biology as much as the presentation of the biology, and this is the basis for many arguing that she made a moral reading of something which deserved only (dispassionate, critcal) scientific judgement.
I think that Dawkins makes it clear that, although he ultimately thinks of organisms as vehicles for their genes, that the behavioural implications of this alone constitute a simplification of reality. He does state the limits of this model, in terms of the underlying assumptions, as well as its explanatory powers.
However, the main point is not about who is technically correct – Dawkins is not an infallible authority, by any means – but Midgley’s misrepresentation of Dawkins views. This is much clearer in the article mentioned above, and her original RIP article (the apology piece is the one which leans much more heavily towards the semantic arguments – although, her objections to Dawkins’ jargon would be much more appropriately addressed to scientists in general, rather than anyone in particular).
She states, for instance that Dawkins believes that natural selection is the only source of evolution, which is clearly not true – it is simply wrong to say this, and it is beyond doubt that it is wrong. Now, suppose we give her the benefit of the doubt, and allow that she herself may have been misquoted. However, we later encounter a point about Dawkins ignoring other froms of fanatical ideology to concentrate on religion, and yet Dawkins explicitly addresses this in The God Delusion. Do we, once again, allow the benefit of the doubt to Midgley? (I don’t know. But I’m fairly sure that I’d have created a lot of noise if I was as badly misquoted.)
Even so, if we ignore the apparent factual errors completely , does her central thesis make sense? Well, I can see no evidence to suggest that she is correct – her hypothesis is plausible, I suppose. However, I’ve always thought that preachers, religious political organisations, and churches where the dynamos driving the ID movement – that it exists to support faith – rather than science and scientists driving people to seek religious explanations. It will be interesting to see what evidence she presents in her new pamphlet.
Bernard,
I think you’re trying to have it both ways. There’s very little biology to attack in TSG. The book operates on primarily a metaphorical level, and on those terms is wholly subject to philosophical criticism. Remember that the reason behind Midgley’s article in Philosophy was not the publishing of TSG itself, which had happened two years earlier, but the foundation TSG had provided for the philosopher J.L. Mackie to develop his proposition, in that same magazine, that “reciprocal altruism” is the optimum human morality. So the complaint that this is science, and not ethics, seems to have been pre-empted before the argument even started. The notion that someone would apply the doctrine to ethics is not at all alarmist, given that was already taking place.
The metaphor of TSG is helpful to understand why populations tend to evolve in ways which resist being exploited by “cheats,” which was an important point to make in the 1970s, when group selection was called upon to explain why altruism could exist in a competitive landscape. But it is not a “factual” argument. Even talking about genetic “behavior” in a non-anthropomorphic way is metaphorical, since genes don’t actually behave at all, but rather are acted on by physical and chemical forces. Not to mention the fact that the way Dawkins defines “gene,” non-metaphorically, is a tautology (which he readily admits: “I have now defined the gene in such a way that I cannot help being right”). Furthermore the definition differs from the one used by geneticists.
So it’s a useful thought experiment, elucidating aspects of neo-Darwinism that are not otherwise easily explained, but not one to be taken literally. As Gould wrote, genes themselves are not selected individually, but rather in organisms’ bodies–all of a piece or not at all. So, on a literal level, to say the gene is the “unit of selection” is not even factually true. I don’t think any of this is misrepresentation on MM’s part. (The Independent article is another matter, but it does seem the editor did not take pains to put her remarks in context. Either they were clearly off the cuff, in contrast with the thoroughness of her written arguments.)
On natural selection as the “only” source of evolution, it’s true that RD has given lip service to the neutral theory and endosymbiosis, but anyone who has followed his work knows the regard he holds for natural selection. In his writings he uniformly attributes it with sweeping powers, describing it in almost mystical language. In fact, the very fact that RD is an adaptationist indicates that mechanisms other than natural selection must be marginal at best. A good interviewer or editor would have followed up to clarify her remark that “Dawkins says that natural selection is the only source of evolution.” But even if it is literally false, it does capture a certain aspect of Dawkins’ work.
As for Midgley’s central point, that certain scientific doctrines strike many people as immoral, I think that’s clearly true. Religious fundamentalism has risen markedly in both the US and the Middle East over the last 75 years or so. It would be over-simplification to attribute this all to scientific materialism, but certainly that has played a role. You’re correct that the churches drive the ID movement, but what drives the churches?