Ah, sorry bad phrasing on my part. Withdraw last question, and replace end with following argument “And the set of people who read about science is not large. Getting people to stop having religious hangups with science will make a larger set of people reading such material is a good thing, and people like Dawkins will do that aspect more effectively than if they were simply one of many science popularizers talking to largely the same audience.”
As I understand it, there is precious little evidence of much marginal benefit—no matter who is making the argument. The religious folk realise it is the devil talking, put their fingers in their ears, and sing the la-la song—which works pretty well. Education will get there in the end. We have people working on that—but it takes a while. The internet should help too.
Dennett once explained:
“Yes, of course I’d much rather have been spending my time working on consciousness and the brain, or on the evolution of cooperation, for instance, or free will, but I felt a moral and political obligation to drop everything for a few years and put my shoulder to the wheel doing a dirty job that I thought somebody had to do.”
Someone has to clean the toilets too—but IMO it doesn’t have to be Daniel Dennett.
Ah, sorry bad phrasing on my part. Withdraw last question, and replace end with following argument “And the set of people who read about science is not large. Getting people to stop having religious hangups with science will make a larger set of people reading such material is a good thing, and people like Dawkins will do that aspect more effectively than if they were simply one of many science popularizers talking to largely the same audience.”
As I understand it, there is precious little evidence of much marginal benefit—no matter who is making the argument. The religious folk realise it is the devil talking, put their fingers in their ears, and sing the la-la song—which works pretty well. Education will get there in the end. We have people working on that—but it takes a while. The internet should help too.
Dennett once explained:
“Yes, of course I’d much rather have been spending my time working on consciousness and the brain, or on the evolution of cooperation, for instance, or free will, but I felt a moral and political obligation to drop everything for a few years and put my shoulder to the wheel doing a dirty job that I thought somebody had to do.”
Someone has to clean the toilets too—but IMO it doesn’t have to be Daniel Dennett.