There are only a few biologists on Substack that I know of (Colin Wright is another), so I welcome the addition of Richard Dawkins’s new site, “The Poetry of Reality,” which you can find at the link below:
You can subscribe for $70 per year, but can also subscribe for free to get the occasional public post.
So far there are two posts up. First, an introduction in which Richard poses a series of discussion questions (I’ll give just a couple of the many):
Rather than write a manifesto in the form of an essay, I have chosen to cast it as a series of propositions or questions, invariably followed by the word “Discuss”. It is not my intention to pose these discussion points to my guests. Rather I intend, by this repetition of “Discuss”, to convey the atmosphere that I hope will pervade both forums, podcast and Substack. It should be an atmosphere of continual questioning, recurrent uncertainty, and I hope stimulating dialogue. “Discuss” really means discuss.
“There is a real world out there, and the only way to learn about it is objective evidence gathered by the scientific method.” Discuss.
“There is no such thing as your truth as distinct from my truth. “There is just the truth, and that means evidence-based scientific truth.” Discuss.
“Truth is not obtained by tradition, authority, holy books, faith or revelation. Truth is obtained by evidence and only evidence.” Discuss.
. . .What the hell is postmodernism? Have you ever met a self-styled postmodernist who could give you a coherent answer? Discuss.
What is a woman? Discuss.
You can already see that his site is going to attract attention!
Second, there’s a free post called “Evidence-based life,” a nice essay in which Richard argues that we should base our lives, as far as possible, on empirical evidence, avoiding “faith” or superstition. Here’s one paragraph from that, which I like because it’s related to something I wrote ten years ago (and in fact quoted Dawkins at the end):
Even expert scientists haven’t the time or the expertise to evaluate sciences other than their own. Most biologists are ill-equipped to understand modern physics. And vice versa although, I have to admit, to a lesser extent. In any case, nobody has the time to do full justice to all the detailed research papers in a journal such as Nature or Science, even if we could understand them. If we read a report that gravitational waves have been reliably detected as emanating from a collision between two distant galaxies, most of us take it on trust. It almost sounds like taking it on faith. But it’s a faith that’s more securely grounded than, say, religious faith. That’s an understatement. When biologists like me express “faith” in the findings of physics, we know that physicists’ predictions have been verified by experimental measurements to find accuracy. Very different from “faith” in, for example, the doctrine of transubstantiation which makes no predictions at all, let alone testable and tested ones.
h/t: Daniel
Interesting, thanks! I’ll sign up for the free public option.
I dare say that the usual suspects will turn up on one of those Substack threads to post something along the lines of “A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman. Don’t discuss!” It will certainly be fascinating to watch how such nonsensical contributions are moderated.
There’s nothing to discuss in RD’s first three propositions; they’re correct as stated.
PS Reminds me of the Mike Myers skit Coffee Talk on SNL — Intellectual property is neither. Discuss!
RD’s first three propositions are correct as stated? Agreed. Most or all of the others too.
Nevertheless, questions remain. How do we know that there is a real world out there, and the only way to learn about it is objective evidence gathered by the scientific method? Is that belief, which I share, proved by objective evidence?
Do we know why we exist? Presumably RD would say that there is no reason why we exist beyond the facts of evolution and he has recently said we don’t know how evolution got started.
Do we know what we are made of? If the answer is that we are made of the stuff of biology and ultimately physics, we can still ask whether that is the whole of the story. Later, RD mentions “private feelings”–– “Truth is not obtained by private feelings but by publicly testable evidence.”. Explaining how private feelings could be made of physical particles is not easy. Those physical particles would be public, not private, so how can they constitute private feelings? Or does RD mean that private feelings do not exist?
“Truth is not obtained by tradition, authority, holy books, faith or revelation. Truth is obtained by evidence and only evidence.”
Pretty much everyone understands and accepts that evidence is needed to back up beliefs, but the argument then turns to what counts as good evidence. The basic rational test for good evidence is that which serves as reliable grounds for successful behavior (staying alive, achieving your goals), and there’s no rival to having publicly observable objects and events as guides to action. There’s no other route to maximal, albeit provisional and revisable, objectivity. Rationally we should all be good evidential empiricists in this very bland, commonsensical way, the way that Dawkins points out is the hallmark of experimental and observational science and that I think inclines us to naturalism (as opposed to supernaturalism). But of course people carve out exceptions left and right as driven by ideologies, hopes, fears, wanting to be right, etc., etc. Getting folks to think through their epistemology is tough, but key to getting them on board about naturalism.
I agree, what is meant by “evidence” often needs to be expanded on. Though when communicating with others we tend to expect certain meanings of terms to be understood depending on context.
One that I sometimes nit pick at in discussions is when people say “there is no evidence.” In most cases that isn’t really true. There is almost always some evidence. It may be that the evidence is uniformly poor, and there may be little of it, but that’s not the same as no evidence. Of course, in certain contexts we can confidently expect others to understand that we are using “no evidence” as a kind of shorthand. But when we are arguing against opponents of science, for example, we shouldn’t count on that understanding.
There is no evidence for an omniscient and benevolent god.
I think many people interpret “reliable grounds … for achieving your goals” in terms of personal goals, as opposed to the goal of accuracy in understanding reality. Thus the question of whether your truth is the same as my truth takes the trivial observation that you think sauerkraut is delicious but I don’t and proceeds to the extraordinary conclusion that God exists for me but not for you because I know what’s good and you don’t.
Yes, nicely said.
I’ve signed up. It’s hard to resist the writings of an esteemed biologist who writes about many different subjects and is committed to rationality in discussion not just of biology but of the topics of the day.
An interview with Dawkins on Unherd:
https://unherd.com/2023/06/was-new-atheism-a-mistake/
He relents a tad on religion and its usefulness for well being – differentiating with untrue yet still possibly advantageous for human flourishing. A bit surprising…
Well, I haven’t necessarily heard that, but I believe that when he’s previously described the evils of religion he does allow that there is some limited good to it. However, I think he would go on to say that on balance it does far more harm than good.
Quite an interesting discussion, although RD seemed to be getting rather tired of it well before the end.
And some fairly unpleasant and indeed batshit personal insults in the comments.
Not surprising for the comments section at Unherd, though the site runs some useful articles. As for the interviewer, he seems to be one of those “we were better off with religion” types and was trying to maneuver Dawkins into saying so. Awful as the woke are, I’d take them over Ayatollahs or evangelists any day. And as PCC would point out, the least religious societies happen to be the wealthiest and happiest ones.
Dawkins: “If we read a report that gravitational waves have been reliably detected as emanating from a collision between two distant galaxies, most of us take it on trust. It almost sounds like taking it on faith.”
And as science becomes increasingly corrupted by ideology and politics, it is, indeed, like taking it on faith. This has long been the case in the social sciences; the natural sciences are, unfortunately, no longer immune. You don’t have to corrupt much of it for trust in the entire edifice to come crashing down.
Great news. I’ve been waiting for Dawkins to weigh in on all the current forms of woo.