Abbas Raza of 3 Quarks Daily recently interviewed Richard Dawkins. The setting was informal and as Abbas points out in the comments, the interviewer didn’t quite know what to do with his hands (next time get a table on which you can rest your elbows, Abbas). Note what Dawkins says toward the last part of the interview regarding religion as the fountainhead of creative inspiration – my thoughts exactly. I thoroughly enjoyed the give and take on a wide range of issues, some quite unexpected although there was no mention of souls 1 and 2. I will now wait for Dean to point out all the flaws in the discourse.
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14 responses to “More Dawkins”
I am a bookworm from Japan. I read mainly I-Novels etc.
If you have no objection, I would really like you to make a link to my page.
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Actually, I enjoyed quite a bit of this interview, without having conniptions. It certainly presented a more curious, less intensely focused side of Dawkins. Maybe I’ll read his book about Origin of the Species when it comes out next year. A few impressions, including the inevitable quibbles:
Abbas’ second avenue of inquiry, regarding his observation of series of conflicting scientific opinions about nutrition, was a good one, and I was surprised that Dawkins’ response focused on the vulnerabilities of science as an enterprise, the pressure to publish, and the difficulty of constructing a reliable study whose results could be unambiguously interpreted. These are sensible explanations, but I would have expected him to place some burden on lay consumers of scientific information to understand how science happens and thus why the policy consequences of the results of a study or sequence of studies might be only narrowly confined. A further burden, of course, would be to prepare to deal with persistent uncertainty.
I was also impressed with the discussion of the probability of the origin of life, particularly Dawkins’ speculation that if ours is the only occurrence of life, then any theory of the origin of life would be inadequate, because it would likely fail to entail a level of improbability tantamount to impossibility. It was striking to hear the ease of the slip from almost infinitesimally slight probability to categorical impossibility. It sounds like a momentary lapse in rigor, a shift in discourse from the mathematically precise to the humanly practical.
But as they began to approach one of the topics more popularly associated with Dawkins, the discussion of children as “dualists” by virtue of their ascription of desires, but not bodily functions, to dead animals, I heard murmurings of the familiar ideologue. If Abbas accurately described the experiment from which this finding was elicited, then I don’t agree that the children’s responses necessarily indicate they are dualist believers in body and spirit (or “agency,” as the interlocutors put it). That inference suggests that “to want”—as when a dead frog, plainly unable to hear, nevertheless wants to go home—entails a subjective desiring soul. I think what might prompt a child, or anybody, to impute desire in these circumstances, has something to do with the conceptual and linguistic character of desire (perhaps also of “home”). Wanting to go home is a phenomenon as much of language as of the mind or emotions. There can be wanting absent a wanting agent.
The business about “what if Bach had been an atheist” was silly, at once naïve, cynical, and nonsensical. It reminded me of National Lampoon’s American history textbook parody, in which the questions following the mock chapter include, “What if George Washington had been born a horse?” So the Rutgers professor’s question wasn’t well phrased, but Dawkins clearly didn’t take it in the intended—pardon the pun—spirit, which was to get him to talk about how religious devotion might materialize in art, if at all. Dawkins merely asserts that religion, like other forces, “inspires” some great art, and that an atheist Bach might have written a “better” work. If that’s so, then perhaps a more devoted Bach might also have written a “better” work. We get nowhere.
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Whew! I am glad that you enjoyed the discussion enough that we don’t have to launch into another interminable backing and forthing on this matter. I do think that Abbas did a very good job in creating a relaxed atmosphere which is why Dawkins too was laid back throughout.
As for the question, “What if Bach had been an atheist” being silly, I agree. Yet I hear this counterfactual query popping up again and again from the artistes’ corner. But where Dawkins and I agree is not necessarily the relative merits of the Milky Way vs God Almighty in inspiring poetry, painting or sonatas. As you know well since your first encounter with me on this matter, I never quibble over whether it is an angel or an angle that leads to an aesthetic outpouring. It was what he said later. That many artists created their masterpieces as commissioned works to fulfill the public religious needs of rich patrons and churches. So what we find in the archives of art / music history were not necessarily the private religious expressions of the artists themselves . We should remember that when we assign divine inspiration to divine art. Never underestimate the aesthetic impetus of filthy lucre.
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That comment, Ruchira, regarding the creation of great work “inspired” by a paycheck, was what I was referring to when I characterized the discussion as both naive and cynical. Cynical, because it painted with too broad a brush. The burden would be on Dawkins, I think, to demonstrate that “many” such works arose primarily out of financial dealings. There are lots of great, fun examples–Monteverdi moaning about this or that patron’s failure to compensate, Beethoven doing the same–that give a needed perspective to the entire process of artistic creation. I think we can at best sustain, however, that these works were provoked, certainly not entirely inspired, by the promise of money. (Would Dawkins write his books for free? Do they turn out as they do solely because he gets paid?) That’s why the remarks were also naive, because they present such a one-dimensional, cause-effect approach to artistic creation.
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Certainly it is not always the case – most artists do love what they do. But to say that a particular piece could not have been created without religious inspiration is nonsense and just as presumptious as Dawkins’ statement about monetary reward. While it may be cynical to assign purely pecuniary motives to all art, it is equally naive to invoke the divine to justify works of sublime beauty. Of course Dawkins won’t write his book if he is not paid. Scientists take out patents of their seminal works. Only, no one claims that elegant scientific insights are “divinely inspired” while devotees often do that for art.
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I may be going out on a limb here, but would like to point out that the Bach analogy of creating work under ‘divine’ inspiration does have other valid parallels.
One of the doyens of Carnatic music M.S. Subbulakshmi, always credited her singing success to deep devotion and religiosity. Carnatic music is largely invocatory/laudatory repertoire to Hindu deities, so the influence of religion as inspiration even in the rendition of the compositions cannot be denied. There is an added dimension to the song when the singer is fully focussed on the deity of choice that cannot be invoked for a purely agnostic performance (and I speak from experience here ;) ) A similar case exists for classical dance styles like Bharatanatyam, again with heavy religious elements in the compositions.
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Sujatha,
I am not denying that much of classical music and art is historically focused on religion and deities. That was the tradition – lacking any other explanation for life and the universe. And some artists were genuinely inspired by their devotion although I don’t believe all were, given that there was a “market” for such art.
The question that Dawkins asked was whether in the absence (ignorance) of god/religion, if the artist was similarly focused on other “mysteries” (he said the Milky Way), they too could become the source of inspirational, goose bump generating, tear inducing, euphoria triggering artistic responses. I myself don’t see why not. It is a matter of mind over matter (or deity)- what the artist feels strongly about and what popular culture promotes that is at the heart of our aesthetic expressions and tributes. After all, similarly great works of art are produced about carnal love and longing, patriotism and nature. I don’t believe that religion occupies any special “artistic” corner in our neural network. After all, a Christian artist would not feel the same heart melting emotion that you (or the melodious Subbulakshmi) feel at the invocation of Nandalala and vice-versa for you, regarding the sufferings and love of Jesus – the religious too pick and choose their own deities. Why not something else – equally sublime? It is what is at the center of one’s emotional focal point that contributes to harmonious mental balance (spirituality?) and hence art .. and science.
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I really must get around to listening to the whole conversation of Abbas with Dawkins (so far, have managed to listen to only about 5 minutes of it, piecemeal, between morning chores.)
I think there is a difference between composition as creation vs. performance as creation. The intersection between religious devotion and performance of the music/dance in the cases I cite enhance the audience’s experience, rather than detracting from it- the performer’s religiosity is not something to be blindly discarded as irrelevant to the beauty of the performance, being its very source.
To use a non-religious example, it’s stunting the flamenco dancer if she has never felt the depth of passion that she is attempting to portray in her performance. Her baseline is perhaps carnal or romantic love, when she dances her steps and it will lack the requisite ‘something’ if it wasn’t a deeply felt emotion.
The fact that experiences other than religious/spiritual can generate great art and performances is not, in my opinion, a valid reason for throwing out religion as inspiration. (Does Dawkins want to throw the baby out with the bathwater? I will have to see the entire interview for any clues to his thoughts on it.)
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Dawkins does not (as far as I can tell) throw out the bath water or the baby. (We always get heated up about religion). He doesn’t deny that religion IS the passion behind much artistic output so far in human history. What he questions is whether religion as the artistic “passion or inspiration” is any different from other passions leading to beautiful creations. This was in answer to the question whether Bach could have been the musician he was if he was an atheist. Dawkins said “yes,” provided he had felt just as deeply about something else as he presumably did about god. The debate is really not about whether religion DOES evoke artistry but whether it is the only emotion which is the impetus for superior art. I am on Dawkins’ side on this one. Atheists and agnostics are capable of equally great art and literature as the theists; they just believe differently. To argue therefore (as many do)that “no religion = no great art,” does not hold up to scrutiny.
Dawkins is not arguing that one doesn’t need “passion” for great creativity. The question is whether the object of that passion necessarily needs to be of a divine nature. Neither he nor I thinks that it is the case. Otherwise, much of primitive and far eastern art which are paens to the wonders of nature would be dismissed as “bad art” lacking in passion and wonder because no god or personal deity figures in them.
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Point taken, Ruchira. Inspiration is inspiration, no matter what the source, leading to great art whether it comes from deep religiosity or passion or even lucre.(Dean, I expect you to clobber me on the head for that one!)
Incidentally, Madalyn Murray O’Hair went to great extents to show how many of the best classical composers were in fact, atheist or agnostic at best. You may be surprised as the names on her list, but it doesn’t include Bach.
Since I haven’t yet got around to listening to the rest of the interview with Dawkins, it may be a while before I find that uninterrupted chunk of time. I did find this recent Beliefnet interview where Dawkins explains his take on the inspiration behind great works of art etc. a quick read.
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Thanks for the link to Atheist Musicians. O’Hair may be stretching things a bit because she does point out that some of the musical luminaries named were attracted to other forms of theism than Christianity. Hence even if they were not “Christians,” they may not have been altogether atheists, although some surely were. Still the point is clear that sublime art was created by artists who did not necessarily buy into the subliminity of their subject. The point in the article that caught my eye was the following:
This is what Dawkins and I were saying about great art work as a result of lucrative commissions. A few hundred years ago art, literature and music in Europe as well as in India were overwhelmingly religious in nature, religion being the dominant narrative of life. Artists had to create for the market. Doesn’t mean that every genius who painted or sang had to believe in the underlying message of their creations.
Also, what inspires secular art – the impressionists, abstractionists, the majority of exquisite Chinese and Japanese paintings or ancient cave paintings of the primitive man? Man will always be inspired artistically whether or not god (or gods) looms in the background.
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A final chime-in several days late: It’s one thing to suggest that Bach’s presumed religious inspiration was relevant to the resulting music, another that there are other sources of inspiration that can result in equally good music, whatever the measure of goodness of music might be. I thought I heard Dawkins intending the former—take Bach, substitute Milky Way for God, same result (not note-for-note, but in terms of the work’s greatness)—but Ruchira maintains it was the latter. That position seems almost entirely uncontroversial and, for Dawkins’ purposes, perhaps even trivial. I suppose there are devotees of fiercely religious etiologies who hold that even the most secular of composers is informed unwittingly by some divine genius, but they must be fairly rare and extreme. Why would Dawkins so passionately lash out at an exceptional case like that?
Sujatha, I owe you for the great example of Carnatic music, but I would challenge your hyper-relativism regarding inspirations. Automobiles are automobiles in my book. They all, Porsches and Hyundais alike, run about the same, have ugly red plastic taillights, and are a pain to keep up. Nevertheless, I get great pleasure listening to a long-running Los Angeles radio show about cars on KPFK Saturday mornings, in which the hosts banter endlessly about fine distinctions among cars, market dynamics, design trends, racing, car shows, and other aspects of the industry. The show is remarkably intelligent, yet for me cars pretty much remain a fungible resource. Not so inspirations. Teasing out the distinct inspirations, intentions, motivations, and muses of works by different artists (or different works by the same artist) can be tremendous fun and intimately connected to eliciting meanings of works. But for some readers, viewers, and listeners, it can be of no moment whatsoever. This fact doesn’t render inspirations fungible.
Now it may be the case that at some physical, biological, neurological level all of these varieties of inspiration are identically expressed in the human organism. Inspiration by either God or that other almighty, the dollar, entails the flick of a couple cerebral switches and, voila!, the work emerges. Dawkins’ view is, I gather, a far more sophisticated version of this scenario. But neither would this render inspirations fungible, despite its economics-like tidiness, for it only depicts the creation or appreciation of a work of art in operational terms, as if all painting were, fundamentally, paint-by-numbers. Great painting, great music, great poetry, and all great works of art are troubled by inherent ambiguities, contextual effects, slip-ups in execution…in other words, imperfections which, ironically, also provide the occasion for a work’s greatness. Dawkins’ view suggests that “equally” great works can be achieved formulaically, but the commensurability he must assume among them to sustain such a view reduces greatness to a mere new car accessory, whitewalls or a moon roof. Put another way, by positing an equivalence among varieties of inspiration he transmutes an aesthetic question into a scientific one. That’s a legitimate move, but not to provide an answer to the aesthetic question.
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By “relevant” in the first sentence above, I meant “irrelevant.”
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An extremely stimulating exchange.
This brings to my mind one of the earliest efforts to define art – art, ancient Greeks believed was “divine madness”. The effort here is to define the process of creativity. The “divine madness” here is another term for inspiration, which in turn, refers to an experience that could not be comprehended by the rational and intellectual faculties of man. The term divine was used for want of a better term to describe the unknown source/base of “inspiration’.
i fully agree with those who assert that religion need not be that fountainhead for all inspiration, thoughit is also true that religion and the supreme being concept have been a huge source of inspiration for art. Keats emphatically believed that art and even scientific innovation were impossible without that 1% inspiration. Without that, the 99% perspiration was rendered useless. But were his poems religious in nature? Far from it. His source of inspiration was life and nature. is it possible to see these as separate from religion and God? I think yes.
It’s only a certain category or form of art which are God/religion centric
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