Re: [asa] Dawkins, religion, and children

It seems there are fluctuations between Dawkins' contribution to natural science and his ideological views. It appears that the majority of TE's would be right willing to accept Dawkins' views in the fields of evolutionary biology and even to some degre in ethology. Is this right?!? But when he crosses boundaries to write about religion, his views are rather skewed and certainly not simple expressions of (objective) scientific knowledge.
   
  The same holds true for any other natural scientist out there. To the degree that he or she crosses boundaries from their fields of study into areas where others are specialized, they run the risk of speaking without authority about things they know much less about than their own speciality(ies).
   
  This comment is made not to highlight the limitations of all persons in terms of the diverse academy, but to show that Dawkins uses his 'scientific authority' to propogate (replicate, spread) his 'memes' (ugghh!) beyond his personal knowledge.
   
  This is why I constantly harp on the need for ASA to invite anthropologists, psychologists (hello Louise), sociologists, economists, culturologists and other social scientists/scholars (hi David O.) to assist in the discourse. Nobody's voice at ASA is as prolific as Dawkins'. When he steps outside of his expertise, promoting his scientism, naturalism (e.g. Dave S. asks, 'what's wrong with being a 'naturalist'?) and secular humanism, as ideologies, then ASA abundantly needs the help of sociologists and philosophers of science (not just Ted's history of science) to counter-blast Dawkins' baseless rhetoric. (Please excuse that my knowledge of ASA's contributors is limited to the discussion list and articles I've read on the ASA web-site - certainly there must be sociologists and philosophers of science in ASA!)
   
  Put Dawkins in the fields where I walk and ask him if he's certain about 'universalistic evolutionism' and if he can back it up with more than rhetoric and a quick demise will follow. Exit, Richard Dawkins, stage left!
   
  Are you going to do it with computer (science) language, Iain? Wouldn't you/don't you defend R.D.'s knowledge of eVo-biology and ethology? Or do you criticize his 'science' as well as his 'ideology'?
   
  G.A.
  

Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com> wrote:

I hope people aren't too offended by some of the explicitly direct words in the above. I am truly outraged by this. I can't understand why anyone would want to defend him [Dawkins].
  
Iain

       
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Received on Sat Apr 28 09:29:18 2007