I was much happier with what they were doing before they got sucked into the whirlpool of furious madness and nonsense. Well, “Freedom Evolves” excepted, maybe.
If getting people to stop having religious hangups with science will make a larger
set of people reading such material how is that not a good thing?
Your question apparently presumes falsehoods about my views :-(
If I may attempt an interpretation, Tim is saying that the Great Minds should be busy thinking Great Thoughts, and that they should leave the swatting of religious flies to us lesser folk.
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.
I was much happier with what they were doing before they got sucked into the whirlpool of furious madness and nonsense. Well, “Freedom Evolves” excepted, maybe.
Your question apparently presumes falsehoods about my views :-(
Clarify please? What presumptions am I making that are not accurate?
If I may attempt an interpretation, Tim is saying that the Great Minds should be busy thinking Great Thoughts, and that they should leave the swatting of religious flies to us lesser folk.
“Why Richard Dawkins Doesn’t Debate Creationists”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhmsDGanyes
Yudkowsky proposes that we let them debate college students:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/17f/let_them_debate_college_students/
Uh, I never claimed that getting people to stop having religious hangups was not a good thing in the first place.
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.