151. The Moral Instinct

Comment #112434 by Artful_Dodger on January 17, 2008 at 5:24 am

"Forgive me for stating the obvious, but don't we call this frame of reference "The Law"?"

This raises huge issues. If the law of the land reflects consensus then we should never have any quarrel with it, right? In East Berlin during the cold war soldiers on duty at Checkpoints along the wall were under a legal obligation to shoot anyone they saw trying to escape. Ordinary Berliners were under a legal obligation never to help anyone to escape. During the war it was against the law to harbour Jews or try to save them from the death camps. During Apartheit in SA, segregation was enforced on pain of death. Martin Luther King launched a campaign of civil disobedience because "the law" was deeply discriminatory and did not deserve to be obeyed.

I have no desire to see any kind of theocracy by the way. I am in favour of separation between religious and civil institutions. But let's not get too starry-eyed about the capacity of the law to enshrine acceptable values. It has often done just the opposite.

152. The Moral Instinct

Comment #112366 by Artful_Dodger on January 17, 2008 at 1:25 am

Stryer I know he as answered the question. He has inferred that, given consensus or "shared experience" any behaviour could be regarded as normal. I understood the answer, but I wanted to press you more on it. The reason being that the answer is completely unacceptable. This is not just a thorny issue. You don't seem to understand what a hell of a problem it is for naturalists!

As for the "justice gene", ok I can accept that people by and large choose to behave in ways which are conducive to the enhancement of the species and its long term survival. But what about specific scenarios? Imagine someone are faced with a choice whether or not to "unfairly" exploit an immigrant worker under their charge. Choosing to exploit might not favour the species as a whole, but will result in lower labour costs and therefore greater financial advantage. Will this individual be more likely to exploit or not to exploit? History shows that exploitation is the norm. Maybe if the employer is familiar with they arguments we are discussing they might say: "I know that the species as awhole would benefit from my treating my immigrant employees fairly. But not my business. In any case, if the general flow is towards the enhancement of the species, what difference will I make if I act selfishly?"

What we need is a moral frame of reference which will remind this individual of their "duty", whatever their inclination. Naturalism does not provide that.

But the answers I have received so far do not encourage me to think that what I am arguing for (univversals) is going to cut any ice with people who have swallowed naturalism hook line and sinker.

153. The Moral Instinct

Comment #112340 by Artful_Dodger on January 16, 2008 at 11:30 pm

Goldy I know there are a lot of people who don't have any problem with any of these things. Otherwise they wouldn't happen! What about you? Are they wrong or do they just smell bad? If "shared experience" or "consensus" approved of them, would they be wrong, or would they be normal?

As for the "justice gene", an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence! Is there any reliable evidence that we are "hard-wired" for morality?

154. The Moral Instinct

Comment #112237 by Artful_Dodger on January 16, 2008 at 3:51 pm

"The mere fact that some people think that they should exist is no proof that they do."

Steve I'm not saying that universals must exist because "some people" think they should. I think that all of us, intuitively, believe in objective morality, whether we call it that or not. There is always some pattern of behaviour that everyone will find not only "distasteful" but 100%, absolutely wrong, with no mitigating circumstance that will justify it. I can give you a list that you will probably agree with: paedophilia, sex slavery (trapping young girls into a life of prostitution on the spurious promise of a good job), expoiting and fleecing the weak and vulnerable, raping and plundering the planet's resources etc etc.

Can we agree that these things are wrong, and would be wrong even if some fiendish political establishment managed to brainwash us all into thinking that they were OK? Can we agree that they are wrong full stop? If they are wrong then it is possible to talk about universals. If it is not possible to talk about universals, then it all boils down to "taste" or "culture". In that case, who are we to interfere? The indignation that we feel is a genetic anomaly.

155. The Moral Instinct

Comment #112219 by Artful_Dodger on January 16, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Thanks for your reply Goldy. I'm not arguing for any particular God now. I'm just arguing for objective morality. OK, I'm open to the theistic implications of this, though I haven't begun to engage with that yet. All I was saying in the post you replied to was that the "yuck" factor (ie personal, subjective "taste" - the kind of behaviour that I find disgusting, or "cool") isn't going to get us anywhere.

There was an interesting post about morality as social a contract earlier. I think that there is something in that, given an optimistic view of humanity. It was Rousseau who coined the phrase I think (though it wasn't his idea of course). Rousseau had a very optimistic conception of humanity. "Men are born free, but everywhere they are in chains". He believed in the "noble savage" - that humans are a blank slate and that Society will either make or break them. I think that this view has been refuted, and there are not many philosophers (and probably no naturalists) who go along with it nowadays. But the rationalism of the Enlightenment was actually rooted in this conception of humanity: a education and regular doses of "reason" will gradually dispel the darkness, and we'll all eventually be able sit round our tables and talk things through in a civilised manner. But as I say, this conception of humanity has been refuted. It has proven very difficult (I'd say impossible) to reason people out of their spite, hatred, greed, prejudice, dishonesty, ... you name it. For Rousseau himself the "social contract", though wonderful on paper, proved a bit too utopian - given how he ended up.

In any case, who draws up the contract and on what terms? Will the conditions not inevitably end up being tipped in favour of the strong?

But having said that, it's not bad as a start.

"One can be manipulated to change whole ways of thinking - I don't think it is that hard"

That's true, probably for better or worse. But from where do we derive our conception of what is OK? How do we know what direction we want to move in? There's no such thing as a crooked line unless there is also such a thing as a straight one. It is against the standard of the straight line that we know that the crooked one is indeed crooked. Otherwise it wouldn't make any sense to call it a line at all.

156. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111999 by Artful_Dodger on January 16, 2008 at 7:21 am

I have accessed and am going to print and read the article referred to above. The idea of a social contract is interesting, and it should be achievable on the basis of well-grounded reasoning. I will give it some very careful thought. Thank you for supplying the link.

157. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111930 by Artful_Dodger on January 16, 2008 at 3:14 am

"Well, that, and the positive feelings you get when doing good, combined with rational thought and discussion"

That's all very well Steve as long as we can be sure that these positive feelings are the result of doing good and not of successfully imposing our agenda, or seeing it prevail. That can also produce "positive feelings". Succumbing to the ethos of our "group" and feeling that buzz of unanimity against the "other", precisely when the "other" is being crushed, can be very pleasurable.

And it can also be rationalised. We can also convince ourselves and our group that this attitude is "proper". That is why vulnerable victims of a "consensus" that has it in for them, end up being "reified": "Blacks are examples of evolutionary recapitulation and arrested evolutionary development" (in other words not fully evolved, subhuman), "The Jews are parasites", "Tutsis are vermin". This rationalisation is necessary if brutality is to be inflicted without the conscience of the perpetrator being compromised. And, as we know from Nazi propaganda, the "reasoning" can seem compelling. That is why reason itself must be gounded in universals.

158. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111868 by Artful_Dodger on January 15, 2008 at 10:40 pm

Goldy, are you seriously trying to tell me that the yuck factor can be a basis for deciding what's right and wht's wrong? In Rwanda (th example I know best) Hutus were brainwashed into seeing the Tutsis as vermin, the same thing happened in Nazi Germany. The result was a collective "yuck" everytime one of these "cretures" approached. Did that make it OK to eradicate them? People can be manipulated into seeing other individuals or groups with disgust. This is used as a means of mobilising public opinion. But it doesn't make it right. Now we view the events of Rwanda and the Holocaust with disgust. Why is our disgust "right" and theirs (that of the perpetrators) "wrong"? Some people are brainwashed into viewing gays with disgust. We view homophobia with disgust. Whose disgust is right and whose wrong? Presumably you have no trouble answering that question. But on what basis?

159. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111534 by Artful_Dodger on January 15, 2008 at 12:33 am

I haven't got a theory Goldy. I'm exploring options at the moment. I believe in universals. I think justice is an overarching, and foundational but also non-empirical reality. Otherwise, if it is just a matter of subjective feelings or cultural custom and tradition, then we are sunk. That's why I can't accept that it can be reduced to biological processes. Natural selection may well describe the mechanics of how we got to where we are. But I don't believe it can account for everything.

But as I say, I'm not grinding any axes.

160. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111524 by Artful_Dodger on January 14, 2008 at 11:30 pm

"Were the data completely random then it would not be amenable to categorisation."

OK, but I could also say: "Were the data not (inherently) amenable to categorisation it would be completely random". The fact is, as you have admittled here, the data that we have to make sense of is not random.

"This is why you actually have to learn a language in order to understand it"

Yes Cartomancer, indeed. I am not denying the importance of empirical reception and interpretation of data. But my empirical "equipment" would be of no use unless there were categories, a frame of reference, "schemata" within which and in accordance with which interpretation is possible.

I realise that you are making some good points which I need to think through. But you must also realise that empiricism has not been established as the only basis for epistomology.

161. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111420 by Artful_Dodger on January 14, 2008 at 2:38 pm

"Some people are total nihilists and some very compassionate"

Yes, but what I am saying is that whether you are one or the other really matters. It's not equivalent to saying "some people are footballers and others are dancers".

"If I say I am gay, what would you immediately assume from those words".

It depends on context. But the context serves to supply the meaning that is missing so that we can understand each other. Once the context has supplied the meaning, universals like "gayness" kick in. Once the meaning is known, the status of universality is established.

If I say "his face was red when he came out of the kitchen", I could mean: "He had just plunged his face in a bowl of tomatoe sauce", or "He was embarrassed because he had been caught doing what he shouldn't have been doing" or "He was furious", or a number of other things. "Redness" is a universal. That is to say, each of the possible meanings of "red" is universal. The meaning is available, but not at first blush, so to speak.

162. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111388 by Artful_Dodger on January 14, 2008 at 1:53 pm

"Africans need to fish, yet everyone else is taking them, including the Europeans. So Africans try to get to Europe but are branded illegal and sent back. There is no real place for them in Europe, no acceptance, which marginalises those that are there, but they can't go back because the society that marginalises them also takes their livelihood away. Where's the justice in that?"

No justice at all Goldy. But if justice does not exist as a universal, then it is not possible to say that there is any injustice in this. Surely we aren't going to slide down the greasy subjectivist or cultural relativist pole and end up saying "what is just and unjust depends on who you are or where you are". If that were the case then it wouldn't make any more sense to say: "there is no justice in that" than to say "twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe".

You and I agree that when you say "there is no justice in that" you mean that "it is outrageously unjust". But another possible meaning is "there is no justice in that" in the sense that "there are no camels on the North Pole". In other words we implicitly agree on the meaning of your sentence. So the meaning of your sentence is conceptual, and not inseparable from the words themselves. There are many cases of this in everyday discourse. This incidently corroborates my point about universals.

163. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111373 by Artful_Dodger on January 14, 2008 at 12:52 pm

Sorry, I didn't mean to be a wet blanket.

Feel free to keep up the distraction.

It's just that I'm still unconvinced that there does not need to be "explanation" before a "description". Description of random data requires categories like "redness", "bigness", "oneness" (etc). Therefore, as I see it, to say that abstractness grew out of empirical encounters with nature makes little sense.

I would like some answers to my questions about words and concepts. Is the physical shape and form of a word independent of its meaning? Is meaning prior to the word that expresses it? When the first homo sapiens spoke, mustn't there have been some mutual understanding between them re the nature of the "signified".

I don't claim to be an expert. I'm just trying to think it through. I don't have any axes to grind here.

If concepts and words and numbers can be shown to have the status of "universal properties", why not "moral goodness" too, or love, or justice, or mercy. ADH asked a question on another thread about the film Matchpoint. I think he said it was a question that one of the characters asked, or a comment that he made: "there is no justice in the world". If there are no universals he's probably right.

Anyway forgive my ramblings and, as I say, feel free to get back to the fundi show.

164. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111333 by Artful_Dodger on January 14, 2008 at 11:42 am

Looks like the discussion has gone awry on this thread. Oh well, I suspected it wouldn't last long *sigh*

165. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111286 by Artful_Dodger on January 14, 2008 at 8:29 am

"We see numbers all around us and then start to think about them in more abstract terms, leading to the field of mathematics."

Steve, it is my understanding that we already need to posit universals (or tropes or classes) in order to satisfactorily describe any empirical data. I actually think this is fairly uncontroversial among philosophers. In order to be able to make sense of inividual, random data, we need to have been equipped with some kind of schemnata into which to slot them. Maybe you are arguing that the said schemata are a function of the brains that we use to interpret the world rather than of the data that is being received? Or do these classes and categories already exist and our brains set about deciphering and ordering? I would have said that science itself depends on the latter being the case.

"A word exists as coded electrical messages or whatever in the brains of everyone who recognises it"

There you go again Cartomancer - using the word "recognition". There can only be recognition of that which already has an a priori status. It might well be obvious that I have not read up a great deal in this area, but I am fascinated by it. As someone who has been immersed in language and words for all of my working life I do have some idea of what I am talking about. I sometimes work as a translator. Translators work on the assumption that the concept signified by the word exists independently of the word in either language. Otherwise translation would be impossible.

166. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111204 by Artful_Dodger on January 14, 2008 at 3:12 am

Steve I'm not arguing for the supernatural. I'm sort of agnostic in that regard, though I'm open to the possibility. That is to say, I have no a priori commitment to the non-existence of a supernatural realm. Is metaphysical necessarily the same as supernatural in the accepted sense?

Numbers may be abstractions, and perhaps they are not substances. But they are, at least, non-physical properties. They may not have a tangible existence or "form" as you put it. But you cannot deny their existence independent of the physical medium via which they appear to our senses. This obviously contradicts physicalism does it not? If I am not mistaken, physicalism (materialism / naturalism) has it that nonphysical abstract entities do not exist. The same goes for names, for example, or the words which refer to concrete objects in the world that is external to our senses. When I write my name on a piece of paper, that ink on the paper does not become my name, it is not consubstantial with it.

I stand to be corrected on this point. But nothing I have read or heard so far comes anywhere near to convincing me that abstract entities do not exist, that there is not a metaphysical realm, or even (following this logic) that the existence of supernatural entities must be ruled out.

The topic of this thread is "the moral instinct". As I have argued on other threads, those who, like Dawkins, argue for morality argue necessarily not from instinct (particular), but from universals. Universals (like goodness and justice, or even "redness" or "oneness") do exist (albeit as abstractions until they are particularised), and they are not physical.

167. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111186 by Artful_Dodger on January 14, 2008 at 12:13 am

OK Cartomancer, you can inent words which might then disappear without trace when you destroy the medium (the paper and ink). Nevertheless the word you write down has an existence which is independent of the ink and paper. It was a thought before it was a physical word. Even if you were right here, what about numbers? You cannot invent numbers. They must have an a priori existence which is independent of the medium. If numbers exist as non-physical properties then physicalism is wrong.

168. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111089 by Artful_Dodger on January 13, 2008 at 2:21 pm

"a computer is an entirely physical entity, yet that stores a multitude of numbers, concepts and ideas as patterns of ones and zeroes in little silicon switches"

That is true of course. Nevertheless a comuter only manages and then displays these numbers and signs. It does not reflect on them. In the case of the paper-ink analogy, the ink used to configure a word is not itself the word. The word exists indepedently of the ink that is used to write it down and make it visible. The word itself is not a visible entity, and does not have physicality.

169. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111080 by Artful_Dodger on January 13, 2008 at 1:28 pm

OK, maybe so. But I would have thought that "instinctive understanding" translates as "intuition". That is to say, a hard-wired (if you like), or maybe rather deeply engrained awareness of what "first principles" had to be enacted in order for our emerging societies to function satisfactorily. I know that naturalists prefer the word "instinct" to "intuition". I suppose I could have said "instinctive awareness (or understanding) as you put it. But you can only understand what is there to be understood.

Earlier I asked a question (in an edit admittedly) about why entities like ideas, concepts, numbers, the outcome of a process of reasoning, and reason itself could not be regarded as metaphysical. How can they be physical? Wherein lies their "physicality"?

170. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111076 by Artful_Dodger on January 13, 2008 at 12:48 pm

"Certainly as far as organising our social groups is concerned the same priorities are in effect and the same strategies seem to work pretty much everywhere, which is why we pretty much agree on what the basic ground rules are."

I think you might be reading back into the past what we now understand as consensus. Are you not also arguing that consensus evolved over many millenia through interaction between individuals and groups? How could ground rules be applied if they hadn't actually evolved yet?

171. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111069 by Artful_Dodger on January 13, 2008 at 12:27 pm

Can you answer my question about the difficulty of consensual ground rules if homo sapiens emerged in different places over several tens of thousands of years? I really want to get my head round this.

Isn't reason itself metaphysical? Aren't the ideas that you have formed over the years metaphysical? Aren't numbers metaphysical?

172. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111064 by Artful_Dodger on January 13, 2008 at 12:20 pm

I don't know. Not necessarily spooky.

173. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111058 by Artful_Dodger on January 13, 2008 at 12:09 pm

Yes but you can only recognise something that is already there. In other words it must have been an objective reality in the first place, before we could take hold of it. Were these ground rules negotiated by the first humans? If homo sapiens emerged in different places over a period of many thousands of years, what guarentee was there that the ground rules were going to be compatible, unless they were a "given"?

174. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111050 by Artful_Dodger on January 13, 2008 at 12:00 pm

Yes I can see that Radesq and Cartomancer.

"Because whether it is an innate part of our makeup or a mutually agreed to standard of behavior civilized people feel horror at such senseless violence? But you know that, so what answer were you looking for?"

But this reaction presupposes some ideal standard of civilised behaviour. I guess I'm saying this because philosophically I am an idealist.

175. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111042 by Artful_Dodger on January 13, 2008 at 11:41 am

Yes Cartomancer, what you say reminds me a little of game theory. I think there'e a lot of truth in this observation. But what I ind it hard to see is how objective principle or principle perceived as objective arises from this scenario. Turning competitors into cooperators is a very intelligent way forward. But it is a survival stategy which will be dispensed with when not seen to be workable or conducive to survival (or supremacy). In that case "ought" becomes attached to verbs which commend hostility and aggression. I am reminded of the events in Rwanda. The Hutu radio broadcast non-stop hate-speech towards the Tutsis, saying that it was every Hutu's "duty" to drag these rats out of their hiding and slaughter them. Looking on the West, and many other Africans, were horrified. Why should we have been?

176. The Moral Instinct

Comment #111037 by Artful_Dodger on January 13, 2008 at 11:19 am

"Human beings can only survive and prosper, in the long run, if they avoid causing unnecessary harm to others and do not have unnecessary harm caused to themselves. Fact."

Are you sure about that? Do groups and individuals not often see their survival as depending on crushing and eliminating the competition? Actually Dawkins attributes altruism across group and tribal boundaries to a "misfiring" of genetic impulses. This makes it an anomaly, not the norm.

177. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #107429 by Artful_Dodger on January 4, 2008 at 1:41 pm

If atheism becomes "mainstream" (a big if) it will be interesting to see what measures are taken by atheists with political clout to bring their dream or a "faith-free society" to fruition.

178. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #107426 by Artful_Dodger on January 4, 2008 at 1:37 pm

"They are ubiquitous and like us, evolve to fit the culture that produces them. They are very much about clan scent, identity and cohesion within large and often disparate members of the clan. This gives the clan considerable strength against competitors and the environment. It is also about power and dominance."

This could be said not only of religions but of ideologies, belief systems INCLUDING atheism. This does not prove any particular religious faith or belief system to be true, of course. But neither does it prove it to be false.

Militant atheism is currently one of the most powerful proselitising forces in the Western world (to wit the OUT campaign).

179. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #107423 by Artful_Dodger on January 4, 2008 at 1:28 pm

"We will represent the main stream."

ie, the establishment, the Status Quo, the Ministry of Truth ...

180. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #106721 by Artful_Dodger on January 3, 2008 at 10:25 am

"Now I'm not an expert on these things, but I can think of several biblical instances apparently in favour of child abuse and genocide... can't think of any against... off the top of me 'ead."

There is NOTHING in the Bible that could be remotely construed as providing a mandate or even a pretext for child abuse or any other kind of abuse. As for the mandate "against" such behaviour, the decalogue is actually a pretty good place to start. As Jesus pointed out, the ten commandments can be summed up in the twin commaand to love God with all our heart and to love our fellow human as we love ourselves. LOVE for one's neighbour is not, by the way, mere tribal affinity. In his illustration of this proposition, the Samaritan (as such hated by Jesus' Jewish hearers) who acted in the way Jesus was commending had no tribal affinity with the Jew he helped.

181. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #106662 by Artful_Dodger on January 3, 2008 at 8:28 am

"They ride on the coat-tails of the natural human senses of morality and wonder at nature."

Steve, there is nothing MORAL about the natural human senses, and you know it! Words like "virtue" and "justice" are meaningless unless there is a standard outside of ourselves whereby certain behaviours can be deemed "virtuous" or "just". When it comes to making a choice between competing alternatives, what enables us to decide in favour of justice against our own individual interests or tribal affinities (not that we always do!) cannot be instinctual. There is no "justice gene"!

There is no getting around it. Preaching a message of moral and societal "improvement" requires you to believe in a dynamic that is quite different from Natural Selection. You can't have it both ways!

182. Mother Nature is Not Our Friend

Comment #106625 by Artful_Dodger on January 3, 2008 at 7:57 am

"And yet, we are now acquiring the tools that will enable us to attempt our own optimization. Many people think this project is fraught with risk. But is it riskier than doing nothing? There may be current threats to civilization that we cannot even perceive, much less resolve, at our current level of intelligence. Could any rational strategy be more dangerous than following the whims of Nature? This is not to say that our growing capacity to meddle with the human genome couldn't present some moments of Faustian over-reach. But our fears on this front must be tempered by a sober understanding of how we got here. Mother Nature is not now, nor has she ever been, looking out for us."

Interesting to read these words in the light of the following excerpt from John Gray's "Straw Dogs":
"Humanism is not science, but religion - the post-Christian faith that humans can make a world better than any in which they have so far lived. In pre-Christian Europe it was taken for granted that the future would be like the past. Knowledge and invention might advance but ethics would remain much the same. History was a series of cycles with no overall meaning. Against this pagan view, Christians understood history as the story of sin and redemption. Humanism is the transformation of this Christian doctrine of salvation into a PROJECT for human emancipation. The idea of progress is a secular version of the Christian belief in providence."

It is hardly surprising that atheism, especially the latest brand of it, has been called a "faith" by some of its opponents, believers and unbelievers alike. In view of this it is no wonder that thinking unbelievers like Gray have accused Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens of wanting to have their cake and eat it.

183. The OUT Campaign has its own Flea!

Comment #106515 by Artful_Dodger on January 3, 2008 at 4:23 am

"Some idiot for Christ is trying to cash in on RD's popularity just like the ones selling the flea books."

The problem for those who hold this view is that it backfires on RD himself, and on each of the other three horsemen. Dawkins would be poorer by quite a few thousand pounds were it not for the centrality of Christ to the world view of many of his contemporaries. I'm reminded of the pot calling the kettle black!

Many atheists (for want of a better term from their point of view) have levelled precisely this accusation at RD et al. From the point of view of a good number of these atheists, however, it is not that Dawkins is too radical. The problem is that he is not radical enough! He is trying to have his cake and eat it. In this regard it is interesting to hear Dawkins referring to himself as a "culturaal Christian". I suspect that this is in fact true, and not only in the sense that he sings Christmas carols! It is true in the sense that his discourse is inescapably imbued with Judeo-Christian thought categories. If he and his fellow horsemen can be heard at all it is only because they are standing on the shoulders of giants.

For example, Dawkins implicitly buys into the doctrine of "salvation" when he talks about human beings being able to transcend their DNA and, having been brought so far by the process of natural selection, take control of their destinies with a view to securing the moral enhancement of future generations. One cannot help hearing the voice of a prophet in this kind of language. There is nothing new about this of course. This sort of language was a characteristic feature of the Enlightenment from (at least) Rousseau onwards. Darwin's findings were not in themselves oriented towards future perfectedness or even improvement (biological adaptation to the changing environment cannot entail progress), but they were quickly constructed into a biological and social eschatology, with ever-increasing complexity being equated with ever-increasing sophistication and ever-increasing prowess coupled with ever-increasing moral "fitness". The assumption was that humanity would keep getting better and better, and less and less reliant on the obscurantist beliefs that stood in their way. Auguste Compte went as far as to predict the emergence of a new reason-based religion, complete with its creed, its prophets and priests (scientists), its rituals and its eschatology.

At one point Dawkins conceded (in a debate with John Lennox) that "modern Science grew out of Christianity". Going back a step, Christianity, with regard to the scientific mandate that is implicit in it, grew out of Judaism, which was deeply interconnected with the Socratic commitment to the transcendent "Good". (For Socrates Reason was the means whereby "the Good" can be accessed by human beings). Dawkins shares this commitment to the "Good", hence his oft repeated emphasis on our duty to take control of our destiny as a species, rather than remain subject to the inclination of our DNA. The problem is that this commitment cannot be deduced, try as he might, from as the purposeless biological phenomenon that Natural Selection is. When he (or Sam Harris in the "Mother Nature is not our Friend" article) speaks in these terms he does so as a post-Socratic, post-Christian rationalist. A number of "atheists" have pointed out this inconsistency in his thinking, and have decried as anthropocentric hubris the idea that we as a species can exercise any kind of control over the process that brought us where we are. These (more honest) atheists acknowledge with Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche that if God is dead, so is Humanity in the sense that "humanists" mean the term. And they embrace the nihilistic implications of this fact. So when atheists like Dawkins rail against the "immorality" of child abuse, genocide or anything else they regard as immoral, what we are hearing is not atheism but theism by another name - theism superficially disguised as atheism. As Dawkins himself has said: "DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just IS".