The GOD Delusion

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The GOD Delusion
By Richard Dawkins
Danielle Ryder Courtney Cribb Chris Duggan
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The Anthropic Principle cosmological version

• We live not only on a friendly planet but also
  in a friendly universe. - Dawkins
• If chemistry and physics had occurred in just
  slightly different ways then life would not have
  been possible
• The Goldilocks value 0.007
• Theist Explanation Anthropic Answer

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The Anthropic Principle cosmological version

• Multiverse Theory is extravagant but simple.
• God or any intelligent design would have to be
  highly complex like the entities it is supposed
  to explain.
• Natural Selection

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An Interlude at Cambridge

• You are so nineteenth century
• Science Religion
• 6 Main Arguments

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Chapter 5 The Roots of Religion
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The Darwinian Imperative

• Natural Selection of Religion
• Benefits of Religion?
• Not restricted to genes of individual organism
• 3 alternative targets of benefits
• Group Selection
• Manipulative Influence of Genes in another
  Individual (parasite)
• Central Theorem
• Benefit of the Meme!

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The Darwinian Imperative

• how can we be so smart and dumb
  simultaneously - Dawkins
• Aboriginals of Papua New Guinea
• Religion Heterosexuals

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Direct Advantages of Religion

• Faith-healing
• Placebo Effects
• Why would a mind evolve to find comfort in
  beliefs it can plainly see is false
• A freezing person finds no comfort in believing
  he is warm.

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Group Selection

• Proximate cause of religion hyperactivity in a
  particular node of brain
• Ultimate Explanation Group Selection Theories
• Tribe Wars

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Religion as a By-Product of Something Else

• Dawkins Belief
• Moths committing suicide ?!
• Children obeying parents/guardians without
  question
• Passing on Good Advice Bad

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Psychologically Primed for Religion

• Paul Bloom dualistic theory of mind
• Humans and especially children are natural born
  Dualists
• Freaky Friday Movie
• Children are also native Teleologists
• Dawkins is a Monist

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Psychologically Primed for Religion

• Darwinian Advantage?
• Physical Stance
• Design Stance
• Intentional Stance
• By-product of Falling in Love
• Only to supposed to love 1 person
• Polyamory
• The Bachelor

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Tread Softly, Because you Tread on my Memes

• Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the
  opinion that has survived
• oscar wilde
• Knitting, Carpentry, Pottery can all be reduced
  to discrete elements that can be potentially
  passed down an infinite number of generations
  without alteration
• Absolute Merit
• Memeplex
• Unconscious Evolution

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Cargo Cults

• Real life example
• The Cult of John Frum
• If you can wait two thousand
• years for Jesus Christ to come
• an e no come, then I can
• wait more than nineteen
• years for John. - Sam

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Chapter 6 The Roots of Morality Why are we Good?
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Does our Moral Sense have a Darwinian Origin?

• The unit of Natural Selection The Selfish Gene
• Genes influence organisms to behave
  altruistically
• Genetic Kinship
• Reciprocal Altruism
• Bees Flowers
• Reputation
• Buying Unfakeably Authentic Advertising

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Case Study in the Roots of Morality

• We do not need GOD in order to be good or evil
• Most people come to the same decisions when faced
  with dilemmas and their agreement over the
  decisions themselves is stronger than their
  ability to articulate their reasons

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Chapter 7 The Good Book The Changing Moral
Zeitgeist
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The Old Testament

• The Bible is Weird
• Noahs Ark
• Asian Holy Men Tsunami caused by Human Sins
• We do not derive our morals from scripture or we
  pick and choose among the scriptures for the nice
  bits and reject the nasty - Dawkins

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Is the New Testament Any Better?

• Adds a new injustice infliction of pain
• and suffering
• Wearing a Cross
• Underlying unpalatable aspect of its ethical
  teaching

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Love Thy Neighbor

• In-group loyalty and out-group hostility
• Religion amplifies and exacerbates tendencies
• Labelling of children
• More in chapter 9
• Segregated schools
• Northern Ireland
• Taboos against marrying out
• Perpetuates hereditary feuds

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Love Thy Neighbor

• Even if religion did no other harm in itself,
  its wanton and carefully nurtured divisiveness
  its delibrate and cultivated pandering to
  humanitys natural tendency to favor in-groups
  and shun out-groups - would be enough to make it
  a significant force for evil in the world

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The moral Zeitgeist

• Changing Moral Zeitgeist
• Abrahams sacrifice
• Slavery and racism
• the manifest phenomenon of Zeitgeist
  progression is more than enough to undermine the
  claim that we need God in order to be good, or to
  decide what is good

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What about Hitler and Stalin? Weren't they
atheists?

• What matters is not whether Hitler and Stalin
  were atheists, but whether atheism systematically
  influences people to do bad things.
• Individual atheists may do evil things but they
  dont do evil things in the name of atheism.

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Chapter 8 Whats wrong with religion? Why be so
hostile?
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Fundamentalism and the subversion of science

• Truth in holy books
• Contradictory evidence must be thrown out
• I am no more fundamentalist when I say evolution
  is true than when I say it is true that New
  Zealand is in the southern hemisphere.

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The dark side of absolutism

• Muslim world and the American Theocracy
• Absolutism nearly always results from strong
  religious faith
• Reason to suggest that faith lends to evil
• Penalties for blasphemy
• For converting to Christianity (2006)

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Faith and homosexuality

• Under tailban the penalty for homosexuality was
  execution
• Private
• Harms no one else
• Alan Turing
• German enigma codes
• Offered a choice between 2 years in prison or
  chemical castration (1954)

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Faith and the sanctity of human life

• The death penalty
• George Bush
• Euthanasia
• Abortion
• Does the embryo suffer?
• Violence of religious opposition

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The Great Beethoven Fallacy

• If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8
  kids already, three of whom were deaf, two who
  were blind, one mentally retarded (all because
  she had syphilis), would you recommend that she
  have an aborton?
• The human potential argument
• Fail to seize the oportunity for sexual
  intercourse

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How 'moderation' in faith fosters fanaticism

• Only religious faith is a strong enough force to
  motivate such utter madness in otherwise sane and
  decent people.
• War against terror
• No different than killing doctors who perform
  abortions
• If religious faith must be respected then we must
  respect suicide-bombers

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Chapter 9 Childhood, abuse and the escape from
religion
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Childhood, abuse and the escape from religion

• The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
• Child was secretly baptized
• Abducted under papal law
• One true faith
• Faith vs good of the child

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Physical and mental abuse

• Being fondled by the priest simply left the
  impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as
  yucky while the memory of my friend going to
  hell was on of cold, immeasurable fear.
• Hell Houses

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In defense of children

• Nicholas Humphrey
• Children, Ill argue, have a human right not to
  have their minds crippled by exposure to other
  peoples bad ideas no matter who these other
  people are.
• What to think, not how to think
• Worshiping the sun
• Female circumcision
• No adult woman who has somehow missed out on
  circumcision as a child volunteers for the
  operation later in life

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An educational scandal

• Funding for creationism
• Emmanuel College
• Stephen Layfield head of science
• the bible can provide us with a true acount of
  earth history
• An attempt to subvert evidence-based science
  education and replace it with biblical
  scripture.

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Consciousness-raising again

• Labeling of children
• Feminism
• Origin of cosmos, life and morals
• Holy Cross Girls

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Religious education as a part of literary culture

• Biblical literacy is essential for the
  appreciation of English literature
• Greek and roman gods
• Weddings and funerals

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Chapter 10 A much needed gap?
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Chapter 10 A much needed gap?

• A god-shaped gap in the brain?
• Or could we fill the gap with something else?
• Four main roles of religion in human life
• Explanation (science)
• Exhortation (moral instruction)
• Consolation
• Inspiration

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Binker

• A. A. Milne
• Imaginary friend phenomenon
• Binker for life
• Pedomorphosis
• Retention of childhood characteristics
• Gradual delay of binker termination

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Consolation

• Emotional need for God
• Direct physical consolation
• St. Bernard
• Consolation by discovery of a previously
  unappreciated fact or a previously undiscovered
  way of looking at existing facts
• Death of a war hero
• Happy for those who are terminally ill

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Inspiration

• Rhetoric rather than logic
• Lucky to be alive
• The atheist view is correspondingly
  life-affirming and life enhancing, while at the
  same time never being tainted with self-delusion,
  wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of
  those who feel that life owes them something.

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The mother of all burkas

• Science widens the window
• Visible spectrum
• Middle world
• Environment of savannah programmed and debugged
  software
• where the very improbable could safely be
  treated as impossible.
• Queerer than we can suppose
• A model of the real world
• Assist survival

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The mother of all burkas