This evening I had the pleasure of reading his Edge article on the benefits of religion, where he takes on some prominent new atheists—Myers, Sam Harris, etc. I quote:
When hurricane Katrina struck, religious groups across the country organized quickly to send volunteers and supplies. Like fraternities, religions may generate many positive externalities, including charity, social capital (based on shared trust), and even team spirit (patriotism). If all religious people lost their faith overnight and abandoned their congregations, I think the net results would probably be bad, at least in America where (in contrast to European nations) our enormous size, short history, great diversity, and high mobility make it harder for us to overcome individualism and feel that we are all part of one community. In conclusion, I believe that Enlightenment 2.0 requires Morality 2.0: more cognizant of the limitations of reason, more open to multilevel approaches in which groups are sometimes units of analysis, and more humble in its assertion that the individualist and contractualist morality of the scientific community is right, and is right for everyone.
No, Enlightenment 2.0 requires rationalist task forces as tightly-knit, dedicated, and fast-responding as religious task forces, better coordinated and better targeted, maybe even more strongly motivated, to do every good thing that religion ever did and more.
I think that Haidt underestimates the power of irrationality as a force for evil and chaos, which is a point that people like you make very well. The point he makes well is the power of religion to bring out our “inner bee” and just make us co-operate.
This underlines a point I made earlier about the power of generalists. If Richard Dawkins, Josh Greene, Jon Haidt, Marvin Minsky, Gary Drescher, and Tversky and Kahnemann could put all of their brains together into one big head, they’d have all of your insights plus more.
But they’re separate, isolated specialists, so the world had to wait for a generalist. IMO modern academia’s largest problem is its specialization.
The work of Jon Haidt is very enlightening.
This evening I had the pleasure of reading his Edge article on the benefits of religion, where he takes on some prominent new atheists—Myers, Sam Harris, etc. I quote:
No, Enlightenment 2.0 requires rationalist task forces as tightly-knit, dedicated, and fast-responding as religious task forces, better coordinated and better targeted, maybe even more strongly motivated, to do every good thing that religion ever did and more.
IMHO.
I think that Haidt underestimates the power of irrationality as a force for evil and chaos, which is a point that people like you make very well. The point he makes well is the power of religion to bring out our “inner bee” and just make us co-operate.
This underlines a point I made earlier about the power of generalists. If Richard Dawkins, Josh Greene, Jon Haidt, Marvin Minsky, Gary Drescher, and Tversky and Kahnemann could put all of their brains together into one big head, they’d have all of your insights plus more.
But they’re separate, isolated specialists, so the world had to wait for a generalist. IMO modern academia’s largest problem is its specialization.