{"id":3222,"date":"2006-10-30T10:17:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-30T10:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=3222"},"modified":"2006-10-30T10:17:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-30T10:17:00","slug":"the-demonic-richard-dawkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=3222","title":{"rendered":"The Demonic Richard Dawkins"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A few years ago I read this very interesting book called ‘Demonic Males’, by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson<\/a>. The basic argument is that much of our (male) aggression is ‘hard-wired’ and shared between ourselves and the chimpanzee. Thus, observing chimpanzee aggression gives insight into the aggression that human beings are capable of. It’s a good book.<\/p>\n

One of the central planks of Richard Dawkins’ objections to religion is the argument that religious belief causes violent conflict. Hence: “\u2026faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness\u2026 Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings\u2026 What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb.”<\/p>\n

One would imagine that even Richard Dawkins would accept that chimpanzee violence is not driven by religious ‘delusions’.<\/p>\n

However, I wonder about the disconnect manifest in Dawkins’ outlook; that is, the way in which this prominent zoological understanding – of which he is surely aware – is bracketed out of his perception of religion. If most of our genetic inheritance is held in common with the chimpanzees; and if chimpanzees, without religion, manifest violence – why should religion be held to be the ‘source of wars and violence’? Why the appeal to ‘decent human feelings’? And where do they come from?<\/p>\n

I just begin to wonder about the level of personal integrity that Richard Dawkins enjoys. What is wrong with him? Why is he so caught up with this issue – what is it that is gnawing away at him, driving him mad like this?<\/p>\n

My suspicion is that he is fighting something in himself. <\/p>\n

He is struggling with demons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago I read this very interesting book called ‘Demonic Males’, by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson. The basic argument is that much of our (male) aggression is ‘hard-wired’ and shared between ourselves and the chimpanzee. Thus, observing … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-PY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}