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Michael Shermer
Tuesday 23 September 2008
Michael Shermer interests me for a number of reasons:
1 The Richard Dawkins organisation (RichardDawkins.net) uses Shermer
to chair discussions about the relationship between science and
religion.
2 Shermer is actually in many ways a careful and fair-minded scholar.
3 It was partly on the basis of Shermer´s book ´In Darwin´s Shadow:
The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace´ that I was able with
some confidence to make the points in my open letter to Dawkins (Letter to an Influential Atheist 2003)with which I end this blog entry.
Curiously, rather than answering these points, Dawkins included my
book in the section at the end of The God Delusion headed ´Books
Cited or Recommended´!
The points which Dawkins has never answered and which drew partly on
Shermer´s work may be briefly summarised as follows:
First, despite the assured tone of much of Dawkins´ writing he does
not actually believe that Darwin and Wallace ´solved the mystery of
our existence´ as from time to time he honestly admits.
Second, Dawkins misleads people by suggesting that Darwin and Wallace
set out to solve the mystery of our existence: the truth is that the
puzzle they sought to unravel was more modest.
Third, by repeatedly linking the two men´s names in the way he does,
Dawkins implies that they drew from the theory of natural selection
the same philosophical conclusions as he does: in fact they did not
agree in their estimates of the explanatory power of natural
selection and neither man agreed with Dawkins.
Fourth, in vigorously proclaiming his view that the theory of
evolution has made atheism intellectually respectable Dawkins
misrepresents the story of Darwin´s alleged ´loss of faith´ and
totally ignores Wallace´s insistence on the universe´s essential
spiritual dimension.
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