- Re: Dawkins posts something non reactionary. Anyone who thinks race is a useful concept knows no genetic Archived Message
Posted by johnlilburne
on March 2, 2020, 12:44 am, in reply to "Dawkins posts something non reactionary. Anyone who thinks race is a useful concept knows no genetic"
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He's right about race, of course, but I wouldn't call him a reactionary. If anything he's a humanist, which runs against the naturalism he should have embraced, given his background in biology. Some have described humanism as a kind of secular religion. Humanity replaces God; the holy trinity is replaced by a secular trinity of science, reason and truth; and belief in progress (meliorative or utopian) in this world replaces salvation in an afterlife. Dawkins's seeming humanist 'faith', his belief in Enlightenment values, if you like, and their embodiment in the secular west, explains his vehemence against religions, especially non-western religions like Islam, and their belief in the supernatural. If he was a thorough-going naturalist - and accepted the logic of Darwinism - he would accept that we are animals like any other and, ultimately, doomed to the same fate, our dreams about the inevitability of progress or about transcendence an illusion. |