NHBaritone got to the heart of this,

‘And it is a distraction to place God in the center of a debate about harm and benefit, when that same God has been used to justify relentless harm and a sense of self-righteousness no atheist can muster.

Instead, it is easy to believe that there is no God and to instead assert that the human spirit can rise to meet challenges when clear and rational thinking merge with passion.’

It makes a lot of sense that an ant man like Wilson would see evolution from a cooperative model. I must have learned evolution from free market capitalists or something because I sure remember the emphasis being on competition. His Holiness the DL must have got the same lesson plan that I got.

olrlox, thanks for the Tennyson.

I have not read the Dalai Lama’s book but it sounds off to me that he would criticize Darwinian Evolution for leaving out cooperation and altruism when in fact it does not. I don’t think it’s correct to characterize DE as “tooth and claw” alone.

I went to the source( Darwin) where you will find that he talks about cooperation amongst ants as well as primates. He even speaks of interspecies cooperation, though instinctive, such as between ants and aphids.

In “The Decent of Man” Darwin addresses man as social….“selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherences nothing can be effected. A tribe possessing the above qualities in a high degree would spread and be victorious over other tribes; but in the course of time it would, judging from all past history, bein it’s turn overcome by some other and still more highly endowed tribe. Thus the social and moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused throughout the world.”

But that is Darwin. Darwinian Evolution, if I am not mistaken, encompasses more than what Darwin wrote and much work has been done on altruism and cooperation.

E.O. Wilson in his preface to Darwin’s Origin of Species : “If groups of cooperating individuals are better than solitary animals at obtaining food, building shelters, repelling enemies or ( red tooth and claw, I grant) exploiting others, then the species will evolve toward the formation of social groups. Such has been the case, for example, in coral ants and human beings”

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation’s final law –

Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shrieked against his creed.

–Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Of course, survival of the fittest means most appropriate to the environment, not neccessarily the most vicious. It is a popular and widespread misunderstanding, but not one active in the scientific community:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052701056.html

In the Dalai Lama’s book, The Universe in a Single Atom, he makes what I think is an interesting critique of Darwinian Evolution by pointing out that besides the tooth & claw survival of the fittest model of evolution many species suvival relies on their ability to cooperate both umong their own species as well as with other species. Thus he suggests altruism can be as important to survival as success in battle. Looking at the human race and our weapons of mass destruction one might even consider altruism the most critical characteristic to develope for survival.

For my own sake, I have listened. Four hours of Garry Wills, Dawkins and the Bishop of Oxford and countless hours of Hitchens taking on all comers. I’ve replayed the original show times four times, specifically to make sure that I have parsed Glaude’s argumentation and listened to AKMA/ Callahan twice. I’ve read Dyson, Lazare, Eagleton, Gottlieb, Angier, Midgley, (I know I am missing some…) reviewed Kant and Spinoza and any number of wiki entries. And, of course, 300+ comments of knowledgeable ROS listeners and Nick’s Blog. The Dalai Lama is on my library list, right after Angier’s Canon. I’ve even dug out my Shambhala texts and started a re-read of “The Varieties of Religious Experience.” W.W.W.J.D?

All of it, for my sake. Most of it challenges the framework of my belief system. I suppose if I was sensitive about my belief system and didn’t want it challenged, I would have been wise to skip these threads.

Allison worried about all this early in the thread when she asked: “Why are we so afraid that what we believe might be false? What’s at stake? This fear is at the heart of a lot of conflict. Why do we prioritize our belief systems over living creatively with others?”

My answer: Because the universe will crush you if you’re wrong. It is important, ultimately, because we have to act. We find ourselves locked in the flow of time in a place of immanent danger. We must do something, so we have to decide something is true.

In that context, I have little doubt that I would chose Lydon as friend over Hitchens. Not because I think that pre-existing spiritual postures make for guaranteed success or failure. Rather, because Hitchens invites me to attend a lecture while Lydon invites me to a conversation.

However, if, in the course of that conversation, I am told to just shut up, then it may well be that there is no difference at all.

When a rival wins over the object of our affection, we tend to obsess more over the rival than the person we coveted…it had to be some kind of trickery or deception employed by the rival…otherwise a reasonable person would have made the right choice. As we squint through the prism of self-interest, we lose sight of the fact that by choosing our rival, that person might have made the best choice for themselves.

I am flabbergasted that so many of you, with a strait face, can purport to know a deeper understanding of life than Isaac Newton (who was religious) or MLK, or JFK! Yes…I grant you…you may have gained a deeper understanding of your life, but…

It’s one thing to challenge someone on a specific belief, like abortion, it’s quite another to question the whole freak’n framework of a person’s belief system! Because that is ultimately what we are talking about here…people…individual people…with an elaborate collection of disparate beliefs…built up over a life.

The real child’s play is to cleverly cavort in the la la land of generalizations…it’s easy for Christopher Hitchens to cast a wide net and revel in a masturbation of wordplay…but I guarantee you…in the grind of life on the ground…Christopher Hitchen’s is no more ahead of the game than Christopher Lydon.

And that’s what I want you to answer for me…if it’s so important for you to convince us that religion is bad, than tell me once and for all, how that math works out here, in our face – Christopher Hitchen vs. Christopher Lydon?

If ROS does goes away (and I could tear up right now thinking about it) I only hope we will all move on without taking our intellectual-selves too seriously…otherwise we stand a real chance of deducing ourselves into a spiraling stupor.

I’ve been blogging on ROS for a couple of years now, and it’s been a deep enriching experience, but the evolution of my mind has been simply that…my mind.

If there has been any overriding theme to my writing during this time, and one overall reason I took to blogging here, it’s that categories don’t mean shit. If you ever read anything I’ve written and liked it, did you care whether I was woman, guy, white, black, tall, gay, short, American, Ivy league, Corporate, bartender, deaf, middle class, atheist, or Christian…I assume you could give a flying f*ck what my category was, as long as I had something to say…and I can only hope (whether ROS survives or not) that that is a lesson we all take from the “Open Source” experience.

“The road of life is rocky and you may stumble too,

So while you point your fingers someone else is judging you”

-Bob Marley