Comment by jdw64
15 hours ago
What matters is that the writer of this article is also intelligent enough to present perspectives that I myself had not considered.
But perhaps he felt disappointment at seeing a flawed side of someone he once regarded as a hero, and that disappointment turned into aggressive criticism.
I also felt uncomfortable with this article partly because I once liked Dawkins myself. So perhaps my response was also a kind of defense born from fandom.
That is not a purely rational response. It is an emotional one.
In the end, not everything in the world can be reduced to understanding.
I think about the role passion plays in science when thinking about emotional vs. rational responses. I think passion is what fuels those emotional responses. To be dispassionate, one is ready to throw away their heroes and hypotheses with ease. Which is logical and what we’re taught: let new information change your models.
But even if it causes us to drag our heels and feel deep emotion when something we wanted to be exciting and true was just invalidated, it drives our impulse to dig deep and not give up or skip over a potential discovery.
I think Vulcans from Star Trek are what you get when your science lacks passion. Thorough, consistent, systematic. Subtly mocking the lesser humans for their impulse to explore that perfectly mundane star system.
I think where my mind is wandering with this is that some of our emotional responses act as a sort of cultural friction. We should be able to give up on Dawkins if the facts call for that. But it’s probably valuable for us to be stubborn about giving up on things we believe in.