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If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I’m a fan of Richard Dawkins. I adore his scientific literature; I rage at the myriad slanderous attacks thrown at him; I swoon over his intellectual courage; and I admire his sheer level of attainment and his devotion to a life in search of truth and genuine meaning. However, though I usually have little sympathy for the accusation, based on his ‘God Delusion’ book, that he’s an incompetent (amateur) philosopher – I feel I must acknowledge that his standard certainly drops in his essay: ‘Atheists for Jesus’.
It’s not the fundamental sentiment that I think is in error. Dawkins’ essential point is that, out of a selfish and amoral naturally selected set of sentient beings, some (i.e. humans) have gained the ability to act unselfishly in a way that is genuinely not in service to their genes, and moreover – a subset of them (the ‘super nice’ in his phraseology) – do so to such an extent that they rightly warrant the title of ‘saint’ (or ‘sucker’ some might say). Jesus, according to Dawkins, is a rather prominent example of a ‘super nice’ being. He states that:
“What was interesting and remarkable about Jesus was not the obvious fact that he believed in the God of his Jewish religion, but that he rebelled against many aspects of Yahweh’s vengeful nastiness. At least in the teachings that are attributed to him, he publicly advocated niceness and was one of the first to do so. To those steeped in the Sharia-like cruelties of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, to those brought up to fear the vindictive, Ayatollah-like God of Abraham and Isaac, a charismatic young preacher who advocated generous forgiveness must have seemed radical to the point of subversion.”
It’s not here that I disagree with Dawkins. By the standards of his time and place, assuming the accounts of his more charitable actions are true, Jesus would rightly be counted among the ‘super nice’. Dawkins then moves on to his second point – the apparent cruelty of natural selection – and the necessity of an ultimately selfish attitude (from a gene’s eye view) in order to survive in a primitive brutish wild world. Though he acknowledges that there are evolutionary pathways to reciprocal altruism and certain degrees of social cohesion, he points out that these can’t be pushed to the level of the ‘super nice’. In brief, there are no means by which acting in a ‘super nice’ fashion could ultimately be functioning in an evolutionarily selfish capacity – from a brutish, natural selection based, point of view: to be ‘super nice’ is to be of lesser fitness:
“Human super niceness is a perversion of Darwinism because, in a wild population, it would be removed by natural selection …from a Darwinian point of view, human super niceness is just plain dumb.”
This is, of course, all true. If a wolf were to ‘attempt’ a ‘super nice’ strategy, it would certainly put him at a disadvantage against his peers. If, for example, he spent his time distributing food among the starving woodland creatures; or protecting them from attack, while receiving nothing in return, he would surely fall behind his brothers and sisters who spent their own time hunting and conserving energy. Where Dawkins goes wrong, I think, is in his deduction from these two facts – that to be ‘super nice’ is irrational.
Dawkins is a smart man. He’s a supporter of the Great Ape Project[1]; he acknowledges the moral necessity to be vegetarian[2]; he utterly opposes the ridiculous notion that if God is dead, everything is permitted (i.e. if we merely evolved, we’re ethically free to live as brutes) – in brief, he’s not the kind of man to easily fall prey to the naturalistic fallacy: that what is natural is therefore necessarily right – that what is is what ought to be. As such, I’m sure Dawkins’ use of the word ‘irrational’ is more for effect than an actual reflection of his genuine thinking. Nevertheless, it is a damaging word to use, even purely for impact. The notion that the morally just, the ‘super nice’, are inherently irrational renders the position unattractive to those who wish to live a rational life. Indeed, it runs counter to Dawkins’ own warnings about the severe danger of believing on faith. It’s almost as if he has adjusted his entire thesis from “believe reasonably, not faithfully” to “don’t believe bad things faithfully, but go right ahead for nice beliefs”. Indeed, this worrying notion is supported by his subsequent discussion of how religions, like the advertising industry, manage to propagate memes virally – and how this might be augmented in service of spreading ‘super niceness’. Having for so long stuck to a fine philosophical challenge against the irrationality and immorality of faith, Dawkins seems to undermine himself by seemingly legitimising it when it comes to nice beliefs he’s in favour of. What’s the obvious problem here? Why not downgrade our criticism of religion from a challenge to its faith-based fundamentals to a mere quibble with the details of its negative claims? Well, because the religious and we have different definitions of what is a nice belief and what isn’t. If it’s ok to believe things faithfully when those things are nice, then what possible counter has Dawkins got to the religious belief that a newly fertilised human egg deserves the same rights as a full grown; sentient; sapient man? Certainly in the religious mind this is a nice belief: they’re protecting someone’s immortal soul for God’s sake! (Literally). Can Dawkins bring them down with accusations of irrationality? No, because he’s claimed that his own faith based ‘nice’ belief (in being ‘super nice’) is irrational. Can he suggest that the pro-life attitude of the religious believer is not really nice? On what grounds? Why is their faith not legitimate while his is? It’s not enough to say faith is ok when you’re believing nice things. If faith is the wrong way of coming to beliefs in one case, it’s the wrong way of coming to beliefs in all cases.
So is it irrational to be ‘super nice’ (which given a proper definition appears to be to live a morally just and considerate life; and to maintain the effort to do so wherever humanly possible – something few people can genuinely claim)? Well – the entire assumption in favour of that claim is the notion that what is evolutionarily beneficial in a state of nature[3], is what is rational – and whatever isn’t is irrational. Or at the very least – any behaviour that doesn’t serve to ultimately benefit the evolutionary fitness of your genes – is irrational behaviour. This, of course, includes ‘super niceness’. But why would one think that? The rationality or irrationality of behaviour is contingent on its intended goal. If my goal is to get fit, running everyday is rational behaviour – it would only become irrational if running everyday was counter to my end of ‘getting fit’, or was counter to another goal of equal or higher importance to me. In the same way, if my goal is to commit suicide, it’s rational for me to ingest tablets that will commit fatal damage to my body’s ability to function. Perhaps the claim then would be that in order for an end (rather than a means) to be rational, it must ultimately conform to genetic selfishness. If so – again, why? Simply because behaviour up to this point has been dictated as such, doesn’t mean that it should be so, from a rational or moral perspective. It’s not ordained from on high – and logic doesn’t dictate it. Indeed, even nature never intended it, so to speak, in its utterly non-teleological state. It simply is (or was) the case before we developed the ability to cognitively take on ends that ran counter to it. The mere fact that we couldn’t do this before has no bearing on whether or not we’re rational – or right – to do so now[4].
So can we rationally live morally, nicely, even ‘super nicely’ – even though it would lower our survival fitness to do so in a state of nature – and even though others inevitably will refuse to do so? Yes we can. How? Because we, and we alone[5], are capable of setting our own ends. Ends that run counter to our own survival, or our reproductive ability. We can do this because we can reason, not despite it. It’s my rational ability to infer your; or your baby son’s; or the wretched slaughterhouse pig’s suffering, from my own – coupled with my knowledge of my own desire to not suffer – along with the end that where preventable none should suffer unnecessarily, which comes out of my evolved sense of empathy – that leads me to behave in such a way that would prevent your suffering, even at the cost of my own.
To give a non-moral example, there is Dawkins own case:
“The most transparently un-Darwinian misfiring is contraception, which divorces sexual pleasure from its natural function of gene-propagation.”
However, it’s not the contraception that’s a misfiring – it’s the sexual pleasure. The ‘error’ is not one’s use of contraception, which is rational behaviour in service of the end of avoiding pregnancy and the heavy requirements that go along with it – an end one is perfectly rationally capable of holding despite its contradiction of inferred evolutionary ‘function’. If anything could even come close to being called ‘mistaken’ or ‘irrational’, it’s one’s body’s automatic reward of pleasure for doing something that’s evolutionarily unfit – however even this becomes patently nonsensical when we remember that nature (and your body with it for that matter) is intention-less, as are genes, and that neither are tied up with logic. Is it irrational to exploit this natural ‘mistake’? No – at least no more irrational than it is to exploit the functioning of one’s colour perception to distinguish between notebooks when that functionality were originally ‘intended’ for picking out fruits; or to exploits one’s ability to do sums in order to study calculus despite the fact that that capacity may have spawned from a need to track offspring. Even if love is partially just an exploitation of emotions originally intended to get us shagging – that alone doesn’t entail its irrationality.
Perhaps our altruistic sentiments – our ability to empathise – have selfish gene origins. No: they definitely do – there’s no question about it. However having awoken to sapience: to the ability to reason to the full extent of the word; to consider far into the future; to divorce our considerations from our immediate desire to survive and reproduce, there is no more shame, and no more irrationality, in our use of those altruistic functions in rational application to our own post-state of nature ends, than there is in using any of our evolved features and functions, to do anything. We alone – with our unique capabilities – are able to choose to acknowledge ethical requirements, and to live a moral life. Of all known species, humans alone have the freedom to choose to be ‘super nice’ – and to reiterate: this is so because of our rationality, not despite it. We don’t have to resort to faith in order to coerce or manipulate people into living an ultimately irrational lifestyle – we can instead, as we should with all things, turn to reason in order to persuade people to fulfil their own human potential.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_project#Great_Ape_Project_.28book.29
[2] http://www.pointofinquiry.org/richard_dawkins_science_and_the_new_atheism/
[3] The state of a non-human animal, seemingly incapable of genuine rational reflection and ethical consideration, driven predominantly or wholly by impulse and emotionality (which itself is driven ultimately by genes).
[4] I.e. Now that we do have the cognitive ability to reason in light of foresight, and take account of considerations beside our own immediate survival and reproduction.
[5] …At least in scale.
Just so’s you know – I’m not dead, and I WILL be writing more. Maybe something about everyone being unemployed; perhaps something about why it’s reasonable to believe evolution despite lacking expertise. I don’t know – it’s just not ready yet!
Whatever the case: watch this space – it sparkles.
PS. If you have some musical taste, look up M83 and Asobi Seksu, my two most recent favourite bands. If you’re into Razorlight; Coldplay; Keane or Neyo, don’t worry about it.
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