Gunning for God (39 page)

30.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Templeton Prize Address, 1983.

Chapter 4: Can We be Good Without God?

1.
GNG
, p.97.

2.
GNG
, p.109.

3.
GD
, pp.51, 59.

4.
Michael Ruse,
Defining Darwin: Essays on the History and Philosophy of Evolution
, Amherst New York, Prometheus Books, 2009, Chapter 10, p.237.

5.
Peter Singer, “Sanctity of Life or Quality of Life?”,
Pediatrics
, Vol. 72, No.1, July 1983, pp.128–129.

6.
In
50 Voices of Disbelief
, Blackford and Schuklenk, p.171.

7.
Marc Hauser,
Moral Minds
, New York, HarperCollins, 2006.

8.
M. Hauser and P. Singer, “Morality Without Religion”,
Free Inquiry
Vol. 26, No. 1, 2006, pp.18–19.

9.
C. S. Lewis,
The Abolition of Man
, London, Geoffrey Bles, 1940.

10.
For this and Einstein’s stance on religion and science see the definitive work of Max Jammer,
Einstein and Religion
, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1999. The citation here is from p.69.

11.
Richard P. Feynman,
The Meaning of it All
, London, Penguin, 2007, p.32.

12.
Ibid.
p.43.

13.
Dawkins,
A Devil’s Chaplain
, p.39.

14.
Harris,
The Moral Landscape.

15.
Holmes Rolston III,
Genes, Genesis and God
, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp.214–15.

16.
Alasdair MacIntyre raises the question as to which “ought” Hume is talking about, and also whether the transition from is to ought needs great care and is usually fallacious, or whether any such transition is logically impossible. MacIntyre warns about Hume’s well-known inconsistency in other areas (
A Short History of Ethics
, London, Macmillan, 1967, p.174).

17.
We note, however, that this use of the word “naturalism” is, as Raphael has indicated, rather broader than that used by contemporary thinkers, where, in ethics, the term refers to “theories which
define
value terms as equivalent to expressions describing a natural fact, e.g. theories which say that ‘good’ means the same as ‘pleasant’ or ‘desired’” (
Moral Philosophy
, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994, footnote p.18).

18.
Lewis,
The Abolition of Man.

19.
Julian Baggini, “The Moral Formula”,
The Independent
, 11 April 2011.

20.
Harris,
The Moral Landscape
, p.39.

21.
Perhaps Harris is vaguely aware of this himself since, towards the end of his book, he attenuates the claim of his cover sub-title to the lesser and very different “claim that science could have something important to say about values” (
The Moral Landscape,
p.189).

22.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Science knows best”,
The New York Times
, 1 October 2010.

23.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/sam_harris_v_sean_carroll.php?.

24.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-science-of-morality_b_567185.html.

25.
A term coined around the turn of the twentieth century and popularized by the American historian Richard Hofstadter.

26.
Herbert Spencer,
Social Statics
, New York, D. Appleton, 1851.

27.
Michael Ruse,
Can a Darwinian be a Christian?
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p.170.

28.
Ruse points out that G. E. Moore called Spencer’s “is to ought” logic a prime example of the naturalistic fallacy (Ruse,
Can a Darwinian be a Christian?
).

29.
Ruse,
Can a Darwinian be a Christian?,
p.182.

30.
See Jonathan Hodge and Gregory Radick,
The Cambridge Companion to Darwin
, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp.214ff.

31.
Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man
, 2nd ed, New York, A. L. Burt Co., 1874, p.178.

32.
Charles Darwin,
Life and Letters I
, Letter to W. Graham, 3 July 1881, p.316.

33.
See Richard Hofstadter,
Social Darwinism in American Thought
, Boston, Beacon Press, 1955, p.204.

34.
Horgan’s first objection is that he disagrees with Harris about Hume: “Hume was right: The realm of ought is qualitatively different from the realm of is.” For the reference, see below.

35.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/book-review-the-moral-landscape-how-science-can-determine-human-values-by-sam-harris/article1749446/page2/.

36.
There are now various schools of sociobiology, but their primary thesis remains essentially the same.

37.
Jacques Monod and A. Wainhouse,
Chance and Necessity
, London, Collins, 1971, pp.110, 167.

38.
Gaia is the Greek earth-goddess whose name is attached to James Lovelock’s theory of earth as a self-regulating mechanism (
Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine
, London, Gaia Books, 1991).

39.
Gray,
Straw Dogs
, p.33.

40.
Peter Singer,
Practical Ethics
, 2nd ed, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, reprint of 1999, p.331.

41.
William B. Province, “Scientists, Face It! Science and Religion are Incompatible”,
The Scientist
, 5 September 1988.

42.
Alasdair Palmer, “Must Knowledge Gained Mean Paradise Lost?”
The Sunday Telegraph
, 6 April 1977.

43.
Monod and Wainhouse,
Chance and Necessity
.

44.
Materialistic reductionism holds that everything can, in the end, be reduced to nothing but physics and chemistry - that is, to matter and its behaviour.

45.
Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, “Evolution and Ethics”,
New Scientist
, Vol. 108, 17 October 1985, pp.50–52.

46.
Gray,
Straw Dogs
, p.31.

47.
Gray,
Black Mass
, p.26.

48.
Ibid
. p.37.

49.
Ibid
. pp.107, 109.

50.
There is an interesting discussion of the difficulties of explaining altruism within the framework of evolutionary theory in Rolston,
Genes, Genesis and God
, Chapter 5.

51.
Edward O. Wilson,
Sociobiology
, Cambridge USA, Harvard University Press, 1975, p.3.

52.
Holmes Rolston III,
Biology, Ethics and the Origins of Life
, Boston, Jones and Bartlett, 1995, p.96.

53.
Rolston,
Biology, Ethics and the Origins of Life,
p.127.

54.
Rolston,
Biology, Ethics and the Origins of Life,
pp.128, 129. A further investigation of the arguments would take us beyond our present remit and the reader is referred to biologist Denis Alexander,
Rebuilding the Matrix: Science and Faith in the 21st Century
, Oxford, Lion, 2001, ch.11, for an analysis of the empirical and philosophical inadequacies of these arguments from the perspective of a theist who holds to Darwinian theory.

55.
For a critique of sociobiology from an evolutionary perspective, see Langdon Gilkey’s article in Rolston,
Biology, Ethics and the Origins of Life,
p.163ff.

56.
For a critical analysis of an earlier, equally desperate attempt by C. H. Waddington, see Lewis,
The Abolition of Man
, p.29.

57.
Richard Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976, p.215.

58.
Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
, p.ix.

59.
Ibid
. p.205.

60.
See Lewis,
The Abolition of Man
, p.28.

61.
Richard Dawkins,
River Out of Eden
, New York, Basic Books, 1992, p.133.

62.
Steven Rose, who has no quarrel with Dawkins over evolution itself as a biological theory, argues strongly against the reductionism that lies at the heart of Dawkins’ genetic determinism. He thinks that it is simply wrong: “I am distressed with the arrogance with which some biologists claim for their – our – discipline explanatory and interventionist powers which it certainly does not possess, and so cavalierly dismiss the counterevidence” (
Lifelines,
London, Penguin, 1997, p.276). He goes on to say: “The phenomena of life are always and inexorably simultaneously about nature
and
nurture, and the phenomena of human existence and experience are always simultaneously biological and social. Adequate explanations must involve both” (
Lifelines,
p.279).

63.
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Existentialism
, New York, Bernard Frechtman, 1947.

64.
Berlinski,
The Devil’s Delusion
, p.26.

Chapter 5: Is the God of the Bible a Despot?

1.
GD
, p.287.

2.
GD
, p.287.

3.
Leviticus 19:33–34.

4.
GD
, p.292.

5.
“Der freiheitliche säkularisierte Staat lebt von Voraussetzungen, die er selbst nicht garantieren kann.”

6.
“Vorpolitische Grundlagen des demokratischen Rechtsstaates?” in Jürgen Habermas,
Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion
, Frankfurt, Suhrkampf Verlag, 2005, p.106–18.

7.
Arnold Angenendt,
Toleranz und Gewalt
, Münster, Aschendorff Verlag, 2009 p.581.

8.
GD
, p.298.

9.
See the comments on Marc Hauser’s work earlier p.98f.

10.
A very important observation, to the significance of which we must return later.

11.
Dawkins also suggests four new commandments of his own in
GD
, p.300.

12.
Proverbs 17:22.

13.
Luke 2:10 [NKJV]

14.
Libby Purves, “God rest you merry atheist”,
The Times
, 18 December 2007.

15.
GNG
, p.12.

16.
1 Thessalonians 5:21.

17.
Matthew 15:14.

18.
GD
, p.283.

19.
Deuteronomy 7:2.

20.
Joshua 11:5–11.

21.
Deuteronomy 10:18.

22.
See also Christopher J. H. Wright,
The God I Don’t Understand
, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2008, p.92ff.

23.
Deuteronomy 9:4.

24.
Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, “Credo”,
The Times
, 12 August 2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1084389.ece.

25.
Deuteronomy 10:18.

26.
Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:10.

27.
Genesis 15:16.

28.
Deuteronomy 9:4.

29.
Deuteronomy 8:19–20.

30.
Deuteronomy 1:1. See also 27:9; 29:2; 31:1.

31.
Deuteronomy 31:11.

32.
1 Samuel 25:1.

33.
1 Kings 8:62.

34.
“Reading Joshua”, Conference
My Ways Are Not Your Ways
, University of Notre Dame, 10–12 September 2009.

35.
Isaiah 2:4.

36.
John 5:22.

37.
Usually translated as something like: “On the nature of the physical universe”.

38.
“Cues Of Being Watched Enhance Cooperation In a Real-World Setting”, Melissa Bateson, Daniel Nettle, and Gilbert Roberts,
Biol Lett
, 22 September 2006; 2(3): pp.412–414.

39.
H. Butterfield,
Christianity and History
, London, G. Bell & Sons, 1949, Chapter 2, pp. 29, 30, 31, 35.

40.
Ibid
. p.33.

41.
Cited in “The Nation: Looking For a Reason”,
Time Magazine
, 25 July 1977.

42.
See Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent,
Daily Telegraph
, 7 September 2009.

43.
Psalm 96:11–13.