Re: Dawkins Tanner Lectures at Harvard

Jim Hofmann reported:

> The first talk was on "The Science of Religion". I did not get to Boston
> in time to see this one, but Dawkins allegedly argued that religion is
> not itself a direct evolutionary adaptation but rather is a by-product
> of cognitive faculties that are not any more subject to much in the way
> of selective pressure. Steven Pinker spoke about this at some length in
> his commentary.
>

Indeed, religion cannot be useful for anything. It
is only memes that are poisoning our minds. Watch out!
Mr. Whiffle will get you if you don't buy the right toilet
paper, remember "it's sooooo squeezably soft". Thus, the
"toilet paper boogeyman" was born.

By such reasoning,
math, rationality, science, philosophy etc. are just
"by-products of our cognative faculties" and therefore
cannot be useful for anything and have just poisoned
our minds. In some ways, that may be true, but anyway....
Does anyone fear the math boogeyman? "The exam he
gave we could not conceive, oh what, oh what could
these term symbols be?"

by Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
 
Received on Wed Nov 26 18:40:10 2003