Dawkins on the Pillory

“Most of what is unusual about a man can be summed up in one word: 'culture.'” (Pg. 189) For once, I agree with Dawkins.  Culture does not allow man to properly analyze the common misperceptions that are considered 'culture.'  The perception of belief in a higher being, a God, is precisely what Dawkins and I believe impairs humans from seeing science in an impartial way. 

In search of further scientific opinion on the subject of whether God exists and whether culture truncates intellectual growth, I found a rather interesting spectrum.  On Richard Dawkins’ scale of Atheism or Faith, people are classified into seven categories depending in whether they believe in God and how much they actually think that a superior being exists.  A seven is considered a person that is certain that God doesn’t exist; on the other hand, a one is someone who is convinced that God exists.  One can take the example of the book God is Dead, by Ron Curie Jr. where the reality that God existed, came to Earth and then died destroys every aspect of society as we know it.  Of course this book is fictitious, but it promotes the idea that society couldn’t survive with the idea that God is there.  People wouldn’t have panicked if they didn’t know that God had died, but in telling them that the superior being is dead, society loses all sense of right and wrong.  Dawkins (in The Selfish Gene) says that culture provides humans with what they think can be a driving force.  But in reality, he sustains, culture can be a distraction from actually progressing in purely factual biology. 

“Fashions in dress and diet, ceremonies and customs, art and architecture, engineering and technology, all evolved in historical time in a way that looks like highly speeded up genetic evolution, but has really nothing to do with genetic evolution.” (Pg. 190)  Dawkins thinks that people see evolution reflected in fashion.  This may be true in some cases, but that which he deems wrong with a condescending tone is in reality very similar to what he had said in earlier chapters.  He had stated that when animals decide to do something generic, like look for food in a group instead of alone, they are following the orders of genes.  So what separates the genes that decide that it is better to eat amongst friends and family from the ones that decide to build a taller building so that lions can’t catch us?  What Mr. Dawkins apparently doesn’t notice, is that his examples directly disprove his theory.  Furthermore, he relies on the reader not paying close attention to every sentence that he wrote, because if they did, they would notice that he contradicts his previous ideas constantly.  The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong.” (Pg. 199) This sentence hints that the reason that these geniuses’ meme-complexes live on today is because of their genetic complex.  This is false, the ideas people have live on because they are worth listening to, not because they are just better, or different.  This may just be an illustration of my need to ascertain certain goals with these occasional blog entries— no I don’t just do them because I have to— but I think that it is our obligation to criticize and maybe even denigrate the author in order to properly analyze the work.