Hello.

Firstly, Richard Dawkins is great. I love reading his books and find him for the most part a very fascinating and charming man. If I was forced by some supernatural creature to criticise Dawkins personality or else die, all I would say is that his choice of pose for most photographs is a tad too 'Brent'.

That said, I will now like to express as thriftily as I can what I consider to be the criticism to which Dawkins has no answer, regarding his philosophy.

Evolution: All animals are as they are because this is how they have adapted to survive.

Humans (also animals) have developed religious belief.

Richard Dawkins says this is because the humans have been poisoned by religious ideas, or religious 'memes' as he puts it.

Now, regardless of the fact that there is not the slightest bit of evidence today for memes, what he is saying is that human free-will has been exploited by religious crazies, and what he hopes is that human free-will can one day overcome this through education and we will all one day be enlightened athiests.

My issue is with this belief in free-will. There is no evidence for it. Nobody knows if they do the things they do because they choose to, or because it was the only thing they were ever going to do, like any other animal - a situation arises and the human or hamster in question will respond to it as nature intended. It feels like we make our decisions, it feels like we think, like we decide, but do we not just end up doing what comes naturally? It cannot be proven that our free-will is anything other than an illusion. But Richard Dawkins talks confidently about how we can choose to take control of our lives. This is blind faith

I am an athiest, pretty much, but then a man with my genetics and upbringing predictably would have been, just as a man from the slums of Rio would believe that there was a God, though perhaps not now as Holland have just gone 2-1 up against Brazil in the World Cup quarter finals.

There is no proof of free-will. Everything is as it is because that is how it was always going to be since the big bang started it all, religious belief included. It might be this way because of free-will, but prove it to me. You can't.

Richard Dawkins faith in free-will is as blind as a Christians to God.

Cecco

If free will is proven to be untrue, and determinism correct, which I personally don't think is the case, would we have to then accept that a murderer was going to murder no matter what? So maybe he's really not responsible for his actions, he was destined to do it all along, how can we punish him?

Free will vs. determinism is an interesting debate, I think essentially it's still very much up in the air, so someone who espouses determinism could very likely be as faith based as you claim free will is.

Practically we must attribute actions to free will, otherwise how can society work? How do we determine responsibility for evil actions, such as murder and rape?

I have never heard of Dawkins declare belief in free will at all. In fact all I've heard him say on the matter is "I'm not interested in free will" and how it's a philosophical problem and not a scientific one. He's uninterested in it and doesn't seem to be bothered either way if it exists or not.

What have memes got to do with free will?

I myself do care. I think resentment and pride, and any genuine ultimate "deserving" of anything makes no sense at all if there is no free will.

I think the compatibilist definition of free will is completely devoid of any meaning or value at all since it's merely the blatantly obvious fact that some people are more coerced or less coerced in what they do than others. I think that the kind of free will that is incompatible with determinism and is supposed to make us will ourselves freely - when we are already in the process of 'willing' and we'd have to be the cause of ourselves in order to do so - is utterly ridiculous and completely lacking in any evidence to back up such ridiculousness (as far as I know). I subscribe to hard incompatabilism/pessimism on the free will matter - I don't believe in free will whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic.

I think free will Vs determinism is an obviously false dichotomy since whether actions are determined or undeterminded where does the free will come in? If the future is completely fixed you are unfree but if physics are more random and probabilistic how does that give you any more freedom whatsoever than if they were fixed? Is a lottery free because it is random?

If free will isn't true (and as I said, I don't believe it is) we obviously still need to lock up dangerous criminals, etc.. Because things would be even worse if we just let them all roam around free whether they are really free or not.

It's a good thing Hitler didn't win the war whether he really had free will or not! Etc.

EvF

regarding memes, richard dawkins says we can take control of our destiny (which is the definition of free-will) by actively educating athiest thoughts/memes to our children.

his belief that we can do this is blind faith.

determinism vs freewill is a v interesting debate, but lets keep the discussion to dawkins' belief that we can change ourselves.

My boyfriend and I were talking about free will the other night. We at least have the illusion of freewill, we cannot know whether or not we are actually free and we probably aren't. At least the illusion is important-- if someone could tell us what exactly we were going to do we would probably try as hard as we could not to end up that way. (and what Eilonnwy said, we have to presume free will or people would start saying that they killed that person, because they had to and shouldn't be punished.)
Determinism makes more sense to me, but I couldn't care less about what it actually is.

We should be open to the idea that we can change ourselves, so that we can. If we think we have no free will-- some people might just sit on there butts all day.

Just because someone may have had to kill someone in that exact situation doesn't mean they can't learn from it and not do it again in future - and nor does it mean they can necessarily be trusted to not kill again (since they are the sort of person capable of doing so, evidently): So it's good to lock the murderer up both to keep them away from others and to 'teach them a lesson' so after they are released many years later they may (hopefully!) have learned a thing or two. This applies with or without free will so I don't see why we need to pretend we have it at all. In fact pretending we have it could lead to unjust behaviour because the moral judgement is not based on reality.

EvF

EvF Wrote:In fact pretending we have it could lead to unjust behaviour because the moral judgement is not based on reality.

That's an interesting idea, but I'm kind of confused. So, let's say this guy wants to kill that loser of there. He thinks "we have freewill so it's okay if I kill that loser." I feel like I'm missing some middle parts. "We have free will so... something something.. it's okay if I kill that loser." because he could decide to or not to do it again? If we have free will no one is going to argue that we can't lock a guy up for murder, right? So, if he kills the loser he'd get punished and hopefully wouldn't decide to do so again.

But if everyone agrees that determinism, won't some people say that the murderer had no choice in the matter shouldn't be locked up? (I keep typing 'punched' instead of 'punished'.) Regardless of the reasons that it would still work to lock someone up for murder in a deterministic world wouldn't some people still say that? Of course, I don't know, I'm not those 'some people' if there are any.

You are all changing the topic!

Do we agree that Dawkins is showing blind faith?

religion can't be educated out of us any more than sexual lust can be.

(July 2, 2010 at 12:34 pm)Cecco Wrote: You are all changing the topic!

Do we agree that Dawkins is showing blind faith?

religion can't be educated out of us any more than sexual lust can be.

Dawkins does not show 'blind faith'

Religion can be shown to be wrong in many aspects, the problem with making the knockout blow is the constant shuffling of the goal posts, until we have a frodoesgue view of god where it CANNOT be proven by its very nature. Making for a very sneaky target.

Some people may be too stupid, others too stubborn yet others too deluded to accept science as a reasonable alternative to their god of choice but better education does limit the impact of myths. So I'm hopefull that the effects of religion can be mitigated world wide with better education.

By the way sexual desire can be educated out of you

http://www.koreanbuddhism.net/hwadu/cont...=24&page=1

EvF said that Dawkins' never said anything about believing in free will. (I do not know.) but talking to people about religion may well change their minds. It may be that it was already going to happen, but if someone doesn't start the chain, it won't.