Creationism For Liberals

For all the apologetic excursions that Wright makes in TEOG, I would much prefer reading his analysis of history rather than the wishy-washy books of moderate/liberal theists. I'm not even gonna bother mentioning how awful books by conservative apologetics like Douglas Wilson are.

In terms of beliefs, Wright is an interesting case. He calls himself an atheist (actually, he calls his religious views as "materialist"), yet he believes in an abstract sense of direction in the universe.

Lisa Miller, annoying and wishy-washy liberal spiritualist of Newsweek fame, claims that this book will re-frame how debates on God/religion will be carried out. I for one doubt it. I think that this book will appeal to a very specific group of liberal theists who believe in God, but as you put it, want to look "for ways to remain faithful but still feel smart". I doubt that conservative theists will want to read such a secular history of religion.

And thank you for pointing out that Wright doesn't cover Eastern religions like Hinduism or Shintoism (an obvious flaw right from the get-go). I thought that Wright covered ALL major religions in this book, but apparently, he only focuses on the Three Monotheisms. Why's that? After all, there are 900 million Hindus in the world. And, there are 380 million Buddhists? Why is Wright ignoring such a big part of history? They must have had SOME effect on history...

"Those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans--whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right--surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve."
I am an atheist and was giving credence and enjoying your article until you tried to twist the above. Allah simply means God and there is absolutely no meaning to the above except that Jews, Christians and others who believe in God and do right will be with their Lord. Please, please be rigorous in your work.

I don't recognize the book depicted in this review--and I wrote the book! Within a few days I'll have a reply online that documents Jerry Coyne's flagrant misrepresentations of my argument. It will be posted at www.evolutionofgod.net (which, in the meanwhile, I recommend as a place to read excerpts of the book and excerpts from less tendentious reviews).
--Bob Wright 7/28/09

I would agree that Coyne misrepresents the book as an argument rather than a well-research history. However, I would add, in reply to Bob Wright, that you asked for it, sir, with your "I am not Jerry Coyne" afterword. I still don't understand how that was appropriate to the thesis, and I haven't been satisfied by any of your explanations for it.

An excellent review! I am somewhat taken aback by Wright's defensive and vacuous "I don't recognize the book..." response to Coyne's review. I found it very revealing when Wright was interviewed by Bill Moyers on his Journal, when Moyers pointed out to him that he continuously refers to a directive power "out there" that guides evolution. Moyers asked Wright whether the guidance comes from "out there" or from "within". Wright, flummoxed, replied with, "Oh did I say out there? I find myself saying that too often." I find Wright to be muddled about his principle thesis and incapable of defending his ethereal suppositions. A writer of specious theology perhaps, but certainly an obfuscator of evolutionary fact.

Mr. Wright I have read your book. I have also read Mr. Coyne's review. I recognize your book in this review. Your book is a mish-mash of ideas that you try to put together to argue that evolution (both biological and cultural) has some sort of purpose. Yet you give away the game late in the book by including some examples of highly "evolved" moralities.

These are the Egyptian religion of Osiris, which predates ALL the Abrahamic religions, and the Buddhist tradition of Ashoka the Great, which predates two out of three of the Abrahamic religions.

Can you really have meant to show that morality evolves when the best examples of religious morality you can find existed before the religions that make up the body of your analysis?

I just started reading this review. In the first paragraph, Coyne states that "science has delivered two crippling blows to humanity's self-image"--the first being the overturning of the geocentric view of the universe, and the second being the theory of evolution. In the case of astronomy, it is a little troubling that Coyne is able to repeat this bit of intellectual folklore. As is well known, the "geocentric" view of the universe held in the middle ages represented the belief that Ptolemaic astronomy could be reconciled with the story of creation in Genesis. But as, for example, any reader of Dante knows, the Christian interpretation of Ptolemaic astronomy, in continuing to place the earth in what could be considered a spatial center, certainly did not place the earth in the center if by "center" we mean that which is most important and of highest value. Rather, what spatially looks like the center, in the Christian Ptolemaic view, is in fact the bottom. And at the very center, and therefore the very bottom, what we find is not earth, but hell! So it is clearly not the case that the very idea of heliocentric astronomy did anything to affect "humanity's self image." I'll have to think twice as I read all that Coyne goes on to say about a wide range of topics in the history of religions.

It looks to me like Wright is taking an old Platonic position: that the idea of God(s) is a Noble Lie, a useful and beneficial falsehood. See Plato's Republic, end of Book 3.

As a cardiologist and a physicist who has read Non Zero carefully cover to cover, I can say catagorically that Jerry A. Coyne does not understand it. His comments about Robert Wright's thought process completely misrepresent what Mr. Wright has written. I wonder if Mr. Coyne, has any education in advanced mathematics. While this is not necessary to understand Non Zero, a basic ability to understand mathematical concepts and basic statistical probabilities is necessary. Mr. Coyne does not seem to have this ability. A basic understanding of biology would also be helpful.

Coyne,

I have only read Wright's latest book, "The Evolution of God". From what I can tell, the motive of this review seems to be to be based upon a personal dislike of Robert Wright, not his ideas. Sure Wright makes a few debatable intellectual leaps, but he is honest about them. He is also very careful to play the devils advocate. You give examples to show that Wright is molding information to fit with his teleological worldview, but you are most definitely doing the same thing, fitting information to confirm your view that their is no higher purpose in the universe.

I haven't fully read this review because frankly I only have so much time and I would rather read Wright's book than this review. I stopped reading around the point where he calimed that Wright wrote this book to respond to crtics of Nonzero. Wright wrote the book in order to explore the question of whether Christians, Jews and Muslims could get along. At that point I got bored with the peice and realized that I had only read like 10% of it. What Robert Wrights book shows is that revealed truth is nonsense and that because it is nonsense religious adapt to circumstances so that they aren't the problem that many atheists assume them to be. Religions claim to have the truth and they claim to stick to this truth against all evidence, too many athiests believe these claims are true.

Dr. Coyne's review of Wright's book brings to mind the knee-jerk attack response of many creationists to proponents of evolution: They seize on a few minor data points that stray from an otherwise well-established curve; they unreasonably exaggerate the importance of those particular data points; then they triumphantly proclaim the other side's alleged failure. Sorry, no sale.

(I also agree with Richard Schneider MD: Perhaps Dr. Coyne simply doesn't understand Wright's thesis, possibly because of the ideological blinders he seems to be wearing.)

The exchange above demonstrates, exactly, why the debate between theist and atheist should continue: either one's bias-or shall I say, presumed lack of bias regarding "the God question", are revealed in the comments.

As Einstein said, "blind respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

A remarkable thing has happened: The spirit of Karl Rove inhabited the critical faculties of the otherwise solid Jerry Coyne. Coyne's review shows that not only right-wing nut jobs resort to significant mischaracterization to demolish the arguments of their enemies.

We don't need God [or religion] to encompass either a moral narrative or a "meaning of life". We just need this:

**Genetic/biological predispositions. What are these? Well, of course, no one really knows for certain but it is obvious from cross-cultural ethnological studies that all people seem to have built-in capacites to experience and express a broad range of emotional and psychological states: compassion, empathy, fear, agression. We have a survival instinct. We have sexual libidoes. We have primitive impulses that stem from the reptilian part of the brain. The naked ape parts, as it were.
**Cultural predispositions. Each of us is born into a culture that shapes and molds these biological/genetic tendencies into a veritable smorgasbord of actual brehavior patterns; for 10 to 12 years, in fact, all children in all cultures will become thoroughly indoctrinated to view right from wrong just like Mommy and Daddy do. Most will go to the grave understanding little of how this works. Even fewer will make any significant changes in it.
**Individual autonomy. Yet despite receiving all of this deeply engrained acculturation as youths, we all become adults eventually and have to make our own way into and out of the moral labyrinths. In other words, we all come to intertwine these many, many existential variables into our own individual sense of reality----encompasing, in turn, own own individual moral compass. No two are ever exactly the same.
**Rewards and punishments. These come to play a huge role in how we come to see the moral circumference of the world around us. We act so as to be rewarded by those we love and respect and admire and depend upon. We act so as to avoid sanctions from those we don't. It becomes one contingency laden psychological mishmash of ambiguous and ambivalent frames of mind.
**Political economy. Marx was right. Human social interaction revolves fundamentally around the need to sustain biological existence. We need food and water; we need a roof over our head and clothes on our backs; we need a relatively stable environment in which to reproduce; we need folks who are able to defend us from enemies---inside and out. This is why men and women have always agglomerated into communities throughout history. And that revolves ultimately around power. It matters little what you believe is right and wrong if you don't have the power to enforce and defend it. So, human moral agendas have always reflected the basic interests of those with the most political and economic power.
** Death. In order to understand why we act as we do above the ground you always have to factor in how folks regard the fact that sooner or later they are going to be six feet under it.
So, we don't need God to put together moral agendas. It's just that without God, they are all essentially interchangable. None can be defended as objectively or universally true. Instead, we always have to negociate with others to find a common ground.

Well, Wright says in his rebuttal that the review’s closing paragraphs accurately represent his position. If so, that’s pretty devastating, and tends to confirm Coyne’s overall take. Coyne quotes the following from the book in full, and Wright does not argue that the quote was taken out of context: “If ‘God’ indeed grows, and grows with stubborn persistence, does this mean that we can start thinking about taking the quotation marks off? That is: If the human conception of god features moral growth, and if this reflects corresponding moral growth on the part of humanity itself, and if humanity's moral growth flows from basic dynamics underlying history, and if we conclude that this growth is therefore evidence of ‘higher purpose,’ does this amount to evidence of an actual god?” No -- except insofar as we “conclude that this growth is therefore evidence of a ‘higher purpose.’” Sure, if we conclude that there is a god, then that would amount to evidence of an actual god. But we don’t have any basis to conclude that. Wright’s “therefore” in that sentence is pretty ridiculous – the proposition simply does not follow. Wright objects that Coyne attributes to him views he does not claim to hold, such as a belief in a god or entity or whatever that had or has as its purpose the moral progress that Wright charts. Yet, Wright seems to affirm that this passage is what he thinks and what he’s getting at. Wright wants to say that the answer to his question is yes. He wants to “start thinking about taking the quotation marks off.” That appears to be, going by Coyne’s review, the *point* of the book, more or less, and Wright’s rebuttal does not refute that. So, Coyne does Wright the disservice of taking him seriously and not letting him weasel out of his obvious implications and propositions merely because they are phrased in the form of a question. Wright also doesn’t respond to Coyne’s put-down of his absurd, and, once again, interrogative suggestion that religious faith and scientific conclusions are merely two equivalent flavors of belief – a profoundly aggravating sentiment that nobody actually believes when push comes to shove. (Is my faith that the bridge will hold merely a *different* belief from the engineer's conclusion that it will not?) Wright calls Coyne out for using arguments or evidence in his review that Wright himself highlights in his book, arguing that Coyne was making Wright appear ignorant of such arguments and evidence. If true, that is, at best, sloppy of Coyne, and he should know better – he’s making Wright and the book sound more foolish than they are. The worst part for Coyne is that it doesn’t seem as though they needed any help from him.

Is religion the most important source of morality? NO.

As Einstein may have said, "blind allegiance to religion is the greatest enemy of intelligence."

I stopped reading this review after the going through the cartoon description of the devastating effects of science on religion in the first paragraph. Just another confermation that nobody can be an atheist without embracing some (usually pretty shallow) theology. In the case of the science-religion debate, all atheists seems to be intellectual descendants of Anglo-American (especially Victorian) Protestantism, as if that was the gold-standard of Christianity.

Has Pascal ever been translated into English? Solovev? Rosmini? Kierkegaard?

Most folks, Coyne included, become unhinged when considering the subject of God and religion. Understandable. Coyne views history during the period of the past several thousand years, when religion as we know it took hold, and then identifies the horrible events (the low hanging fruit) that support his view that God and religion are in most every way negative influences. Wright’s book, on the other hand, considers how God and religion evolved during the same period, during which hunter-gatherers evolved into tribes and then civilizations, and makes the case that God and religion has (at least sometimes) served as a bridge between them. God and religion: the source of evil (Coyne’s view), or a bridge between civilizations (Wright’s view). Whatever the merits of Wright’s thesis, I believe Coyne’s real objection to Wright’s book is its underlying assumption, namely, that history (evolution) has a direction. Sure, events occur along the way that create an impression of no direction, even randomness. But even Coyne, an evolutionist, must admit that history is indeed directional.

The relationship between religion and ethics is complex. A religion claiming to be a source of ethics has one very useful feature -- like the civil law, it serves as a mechanism to convert ethical problems into legal dictates. Thus, a difficult ethical question such as "Will killing Mr. X result in the greatest good for the greatest number?" becomes the manageable religious dictate "Thous shalt not kill." Of course, the religious dictate may be arbitrary, or it may stem from a metaphysical theory which will result in ridiculous dictates. Still, some such source of simplified rules and axioms and rules seems necessary to reduce the infinite complexity of ethical considerations to a manageable set of "rules to live by."

This consideration leads to a second difficulty: doing purely secular ethics is at least as problematical as doing theology. If God does not tell us to do the right thing, why should we do the right thing (for that matter, why should we do the right thing because God tells us to -- because we will go to Hell? This is the the logic of the civil law projected on a cosmic background, but at least it is an incentive to good conduct. Purely secular reasons (as opposed to secular incentives) seem flimsy. The greatest good for the greatest number? Why should we care? Because good behavior is "civilized"? Who is to say, and why should we listen to them? Because there is a categorical imperative? Do we know there is such a thing any more than we know if God exists? And if there is, absent incentives based upon it, why should we care?

The problems is that secular reasoning is no more a necessary or a sufficient guarantor of good behaivor than theological reasoning is. And at least religious grounding for such behavior has some historical basis.

For the cynics and skeptics in the reading audience may I recommend Stephen Meyer's SIGNATURE IN THE CELL, for their inspiration, consternation, edification, and perspiration?

Factual error: Constantine did not convert to Christianity after fighting a battle, he converted on his death bed, not before.

Morality based on religion's hope of reward or fear of punishment, isn't moral. The focus should be on the here and now. Whatever comes after, if anything, will take care of itself. I'm a practicing Jew.

"Over its history, science has delivered two crippling blows to humanity's self-image." I assume that by 'humanity' that Mr. Coyne means 'The Church (particularly the Catholic Church). Jewish scholars tended to embrace and incorporate scientific understandings as they came into common knowledge. It is irksome to think, though, that all but Christians are not included in the term 'humanity.'

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