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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
A Richard Dawkins Morning5/03/2008 19:26:02This morning, thanks to the good people at 3QuarksDaily, I went to see Richard Dawkins speak at the New York Academy of Sciences on the 40th floor of 7 World Trade Center (and yes, he did show a slide of the burning towers).  The talk, called "The Purpose of Purpose," seemed to me pretty unremarkable in light of the rest of his past work - he seemed to be rehashing old questions with unclear "purposes" in mind. Basically, he distinguished 2 kinds of purpose: (1) that which emerges through biological processes alone and (2) that which emerges through conscious human thinking. The second, he argued, is an evolved mechanism of the first. Most of us probably knew that already. Human life is filled with "subversions" of purpose type 1 into purpose type 2. For example, our type 1 hunger gets subverted by the processed food industry to make us eat endless junk food. And our type 1 kin loyalty gets subverted by nationalism and tribalism in "fictive kin" networks. The implication is that we have to be careful with how we do the subverting and be aware of the primary purposes type 1 at play. "I am not an enemy of subversion," he made clear. That is, he doesn't just want us to be slaves to biological (for Dawkins, genetic) purposes."Religion," as you might imagine, "is perhaps the greatest of all subverters." But, of course, the question and answer period was lively. He answered with the manner of a man who has heard everything and been asked everything—kind of bored, with ready-made responses. Good ones, though. When I went up to shake his hand at the end he seemed distracted and defensive, as if needing to always be on the lookout for religious crazies that want to cover his head with a bag and throw him in the trunk of their car. I was going to tell him that I study religions, and that despite appreciating his case I happen to like them, but decided not to.
re: A Richard Dawkins Morning - 5/07/2008 14:44:55
re: A Richard Dawkins Morning - 5/08/2008 00:20:26
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