I don’t have a copy to check, but from what I can remember Dawkins was careful to say that what he was doing is not real science but merely a counter to a hypothetical theist argument along the lines of “If God doesn’t exist, then where do our ideas of God and morality come from?” That is, his claims were no stronger than “It is plausible that it might have happened this way.”
In any case, I have admitted I was wrong about Dawkins. He now seems to me to be a moderate supporter of the ev.psych enterprise, rather than, as I had believed, someone who cringed but kept his mouth shut rather than alienate fellow “Darwinists”.
I was pretty amazed at how Dawkins pussy-footed around his opponents in “The God Delusion”. His claims seemed pretty mild—along the lines of “it is OK to be an atheist”.
He discusses “the important and developing field of evolutionary psychology” directly—on page 208:
“The idea of psychological by-products grows naturally out of the important and developing field of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that, just as the eye is an evolved organ for seeing, and the wing an evolved organ for flying, so the brain is a collection of organs (or ‘modules’) for dealing with a set of specialist data-processing needs. There is a module for dealing with kinship, a module for dealing with reciprocal exchanges, a module for dealing with empathy, and so on. Religion can be seen as a by-product of the misfiring of several of these modules, for example the modules for forming theories of other minds, for forming coalitions, and for discriminating in favour of in-group members and against strangers. Any of these could serve as the human equivalent of the moths’ celestial navigation, vulnerable to misfiring in the same kind of way as I suggested for childhood gullibility.”
I don’t have a copy to check, but from what I can remember Dawkins was careful to say that what he was doing is not real science but merely a counter to a hypothetical theist argument along the lines of “If God doesn’t exist, then where do our ideas of God and morality come from?” That is, his claims were no stronger than “It is plausible that it might have happened this way.”
In any case, I have admitted I was wrong about Dawkins. He now seems to me to be a moderate supporter of the ev.psych enterprise, rather than, as I had believed, someone who cringed but kept his mouth shut rather than alienate fellow “Darwinists”.
I was pretty amazed at how Dawkins pussy-footed around his opponents in “The God Delusion”. His claims seemed pretty mild—along the lines of “it is OK to be an atheist”.
He discusses “the important and developing field of evolutionary psychology” directly—on page 208:
“The idea of psychological by-products grows naturally out of the important and developing field of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that, just as the eye is an evolved organ for seeing, and the wing an evolved organ for flying, so the brain is a collection of organs (or ‘modules’) for dealing with a set of specialist data-processing needs. There is a module for dealing with kinship, a module for dealing with reciprocal exchanges, a module for dealing with empathy, and so on. Religion can be seen as a by-product of the misfiring of several of these modules, for example the modules for forming theories of other minds, for forming coalitions, and for discriminating in favour of in-group members and against strangers. Any of these could serve as the human equivalent of the moths’ celestial navigation, vulnerable to misfiring in the same kind of way as I suggested for childhood gullibility.”