Hey mate, were not in Ulster anymore!
My superviser Conor Cunningham has written a BBC2 documentary entitled “Did Darwin Kill God?” This will air 31 March 2009 at 7pm (GMT). The idea of Conor’s documentary is that, from a theological perspective, he hopes to both provide a sharp critique of ultra-Darwinism on the one hand, while also offering a major critique to the Intelligent Design camp on the other.
Conor also has a book on evolution in the INTERVENTIONS series that goes into much more detail. This is slated to come out this Fall.
UPDATE: There is now a podcast on the University of Nottingham podcast site that is an interview with Conor Cunningham about his forthcoming documentary: “A plague on both houses” (mp3 Friday 13 March 2009; 32.1MB, 34.41mins).
Hi Eric,While it was good to see someone trying to take some of the heat out of the argument, I’m sorry to say Dr Cunningham’s program didn’t do much for me. To highlight one gap in his reasoning, he argued that meme theory undermines itself by claiming that all ideas’ survival is independent from their truth. This isn’t entirely true. Some ideas propogate because of their truth, others inspite of their falsity. But how would you tell these two kinds apart? Well you could look for empirical evidence, or you could examine each idea’s explanatory value. Against either of these criteria, meme theory comes off reasonably well, certainly compared to the theory of a sentient, compassionate creator.Good luck with the thesis.
Hi Eric,Also have to say that having just seen the documentary, it seemed quite well argued in the first half, but the second half seemed to be more opinion than fact. Also, I should state my position. I am an atheist.I do agree with the central argument; that a belief in natural selection does not immediately disqualify a belief in God. It also misrepresented Meme theory and implied that a lack of belief in God would leave a vacuum that would be filled by Social Darwinian beliefs (which is just as scary as fundamentalist religious types).Meme theory is extremely simple. Ideas can spread from person to person in the same way as a virus. A meme may be positive or negative, truthful or fallacious … but for a meme to successful, its host must survive long enough to spread and be appealing enough to its host that it warrants transmission. If a meme is a factual meme and provably false, then it usually dies. The flat Earth meme is dead in all those not seeking attention. Religion lives on as a meme, and God as the core meme as there is no proof of the non-existence of God. That does not prove the truth of the meme, nor does it imply the fallaciousness of the belief in natural selection meme. They are as they are and very concisely explains why children of Christian parents are more likely to be Christian than Muslim. Religious mems are superficially very beneficial to people to people even in this day. If you are a child in a mulim country, you better accept the meme or you will be sentenced to death. Accepting opinion as truth is very easy to digest as a child and when the negatives against rejecting or evolving a meme are so strong, what chance does the meme have of evolving? Religion is one of the world’s most successful meme-sets.Meme theory might also suggest why Conor feels the need to argue the compatibility of natural selection with the Abrahanic God and not Zeus or Poseidon. The truth is that no amount of science can disprove the existance of any God, whether that God is rooted in a propogated Meme, or invented on the fly.Memes are not living, nor do they have purpose. They just exist. Anyone can make a new meme. Its easy. The world will end on May 17th 2198. There, a new one. Nobody can disprove it for 189 years. If it doesn’t come to pass, maybe you didn’t interpret the number properly.The selfish Gene has also no intent. Natural selection favous those creatures with the reproductive instinct. The selfish Gene is in each of us, but it is not who we are. It is part of our instinct, but it is the memes that are presented and accepted by us that forms part of who we are. We are the sum total of nature (sum total of ancestors natural selection) and nurture (our meme exposure in our lifetime). We are still individuals, and we have the right to refuse memes. To say that memes and the selfish genes take away free will is a step too far, but it is true to say that certain memes favour violence over empathy.A lack of belief in God does not imply immorality nor does it imply the will to practise social engineering according to Darwinian principles. It is more likely to persuede ifree-thinking ndividuals to move away from survival of the fittest as natural selection is irrefutably inhumane and barbarous; whether it sponsored by any individual or deity. Countless trillions of life forms have died in order to ratchet up to the next more competitive level. The process is elegant, but it is horrific and if the purpose were for man to reach our current evolutionary state so that God’s son might be able to visit. It seems like an awful waste of life to go through such a process to get to such a point.Darwinism explains why we do not need to believe in God, but there are many versions of God that are perfectly compatible with Darwinism. A personal loving God does tend to be rather incompatible with natural selection, and it was a shame that the moral implications of a creator who sponsored natural selection was not touched upon.In the end, it came off as unbalanced. It would have been better to state the case that natural selection and a belief in God or Gods are compatible if an individual selectively read religious texts allegorically according to contractiction at hand.Chris.
Chris and Steve,
Not sure if you’ll come back to this post, but two things. The first is, thank you for taking the time to comment. The second is simply, wait for Conor’s book on Evolution to come out this year (I can guarantee that I’ll be promoting it on this blog). He knows all the intricacies of the meme, selfish gene debate, etc., and wishes he had more time in the documentary to add more of a constructive bit, but there was only so much he could do in a 60-minute documentary — and there was only so much the BBC allowed him to do.
is the book looking like it’ll come out this year?
Mike, yep, it sure is. Conor even has gotten approval from Eerdmans to get a slight rush on it so that it comes out this year. Eerdmans has a really long turnaround time.
That’s good to hear! Looking forward to reading that, hopefully it’s out in time to be my ‘Christmas 2009′ reading!
Hi Eric
I recorded Conor Cunningham’s video, and have only just managed to sit down and watch. I have a postdoctorate in science (microbiology), and am a Christian, and thought that the video was excellent. would have liked a little more to back up some aspects, but recognise that in only a one hour programme, there is a limit to what can be achieved (and the audience would be mainly non scientists). it was refreshing to see and hear an alternative view to Richard Dawkins, which gets so much radio and TV time
is there any way I can be emailed when the book comes out?
Chris