Anyhow, Talking Fresh 5 was great. Hats off to the organizers and presenters. And hats off to Tracy for hosting the first annual muse party! Here's my t-shirt limerick to which she refers in her post.
I might add more to this post later on, but for now I'll just point to a review that was mentioned by Trevor Herriot during his session. Here's Marilynne Robinson on Dawkins.
13 comments:
Head of cement! Head of CEMENT!
Oh goody. As if you of all people needed help thinking of what to call me. What was I thinking...
Probably not much, as your head is made of CEMENT!
Good grief.
Must be heavy !!
Oy vey! That review is frigging unreadable, not just for the turgidities of its prose, but for the bald dishonesty about--or at least incredibly stupid incomprehension of--Dawkins' basic arguments. Several of these are pointed out by Andrew Krause in the comments field of this post:
http://darwiniana.com/2006/10/23/marilynne-robinson-on-dawkins/
Brenda, did the person who mentioned this review think it was good? I hope not, because it's ridiculous.
Har har, Anonymous.
Zach, if I remember correctly, essentially yes. A wishy-washy answer I know, but the session was a conversation between the writer and the audience and could easily be misrepresented here. Thanks for the link to the comment by Andrew Krause. I still haven't read TGD. I hope to crack its spine in May.
A far more persuasively written negative review of TGD is Terry Eagleton's in LRB:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html
Even Eagleton, however, deals more with Dawkins' tone, his supposed "bitchiness," than the substance of the arguments Dawkins makes and the questions he raises. And Eagleton is prone to mushy lapses, saying basically, "you can't approach God with Science because God isn't about reason, He's about love." He also mischaracterises some of Dawkins' thoughts, but not in the egregious wreckingball way that Robinson does. Which might actually be worse, because it's far more credible.
Thanks, Zach. That was entertaining and highly readable. While a number of Eagleton's remarks caught my attention, this one in particular speaks to some of the issues raised during the course of Talking Fresh:
"Dawkins quite rightly detests fundamentalists; but as far as I know his anti-religious diatribes have never been matched in his work by a critique of the global capitalism that generates the hatred, anxiety, insecurity and sense of humiliation that breed fundamentalism. Instead, as the obtuse media chatter has it, it's all down to religion."
How fair is this statement in your opinion?
It's reasonable, to the best of my knowledge. But what Eagleton doesn't acknowledge is the extent to which the histories of capitalism and Judaeo-Christianity, particularly protestantism of various types, have been complementary, if not coextensive. There's not much difference between Smith's "invisible hand" and God. And the Free Market has become something of a monotheistic ideal for the high priests of neoliberal economics.
It's a stretch, however--a big one--to say that Dawkins is a Hegelian teleologist or an apologist for American economic imperialism. If there's been no developed critique of global capitalism in Dawkins' work, it's most probably because he doesn't see its relatively limited claims as epistemological competition for scientific inquiry.
If Dawkins were to venture into socio-economics, I would hazard a guess that he'd be more allied with JK Galbraith and C. Wright Mills than Ronald Reagan. But I hasten to say this is just speculation.
I'd also add that the cause-and-effect relationship posited by Eagleton begs a number of questions. Religious fundamentalism and tribal violence has been around a lot longer than global capitalism. While I do believe that America is largely responsible for the hatred directed against it by people in the Middle East and elsewhere, it's something of a guilty-liberal cliche--and a gross simplification of centuries of political turmoil--to say that global capitalism is THE cause of fundamentalist terrorism.
Do you ever stop partying, Z? Madman, you are. Mad.
Eek! This conversation would likely look a whole lot different if Darwin hadn't had that darned barnacle obsession...
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