Newsgroup: it.cultura.religioni
Titolo: Il mito del creazionismo in frantumi:  il Darwinismo frantuma l'ID

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,392319,00.html
SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH EVOLUTION PHILOSOPHER DANIEL DENNETT
"Darwinism Completely Refutes Intelligent Design"
Intelligent Design is once again making headlines in the United States. But 
what is the attraction? Daniel Dennett spoke with SPIEGEL about the 
attraction of creationism, how religion itself succumbs to Darwinian ideas, 
and the social irresponsibility of the religious right in America.
SPIEGEL: Professor Dennett, more than 120 million Americans believe that God 
created Adam our of mud some 10,000 years ago and made Eve from his rib. Do 
you personally know any of these 120 million?
Dennett: Yes. But people who are creationists are usually not interested in 
talking about it. Those who are actually enthusiastic about Intelligent 
Design, though, would talk endlessly. And what I learned about them is that 
they are filled with misinformation. But they've encountered this 
misinformation in very plausible sources. It's not just their pastor that 
tells them this. They go out and they buy books that are published by main 
line publishers. Or they go on Web sites and they see very clever propaganda 
that is put out by the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which is financed by 
the religious right.
SPIEGEL: In the center of the debate is the theory of evolution. Why is it 
that evolution seems to produce much more opposition than any other 
scientific theory such as the Big Bang or quantum mechanics?
Dennett: I think it is because evolution goes right to the heart of the most 
troubling discovery in science of the last few hundred years. It counters 
one of the oldest ideas we have, maybe older even than our species.
SPIEGEL: Which is what exactly?
Dennett: It's the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a 
lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. You'll never 
see a spear making a spear maker. You'll never see a horse shoe making a 
blacksmith. You'll never see a pot making a potter. It is always the other 
way around and this is so obvious that it just seems to stand to reason.
SPIEGEL: You think this idea was already present in apes?
Dennett: Maybe in Homo Habilus, the handyman, who began making stone tools 
some 2 million years ago. They had a sense of being more wonderful that 
their artifacts. So the idea of a creator that is more wonderful than the 
things he creates is, I think, a very deeply intuitive idea. It is exactly 
this idea that promoters of Intelligent Design speak to when they ask, 'did 
you ever see a building that didn't have a maker, did you ever see a 
painting that didn't have a painter.' That perfectly captures this deeply 
intuitive idea that you never get design for free.
SPIEGEL: An ancient theological argument...
Dennett: ... which Darwin completely impugns with his theory of natural 
selection. And he shows, hell no, not only can you get design from 
un-designed things, you can even get the evolution of designers from that 
un-design. You end up with authors and poets and artists and engineers and 
other designers of things, other creators -- very recent fruits of the tree 
of life. And it challenges people's sense that life has meaning.
SPIEGEL: Even the spirit of humans -- his soul -- is produced in this 
manner?
Dennett: Yes. As a multi-cellular, mobile life form, you need a mind because 
you have to look out where you are going. You have got to have a nervous 
system, which can extract information from the world fast and can refine 
that information and put it to use quickly to guide your behavior. The basic 
problematic for all animals is finding what they need and avoiding what 
could hurt them and doing it faster than the opposition. Darwin understood 
this law and understood that this development has been going on for hundreds 
of millions of years producing ever more android minds.
SPIEGEL: But still, something out of the ordinary happened when humans came 
along.
Dennett: Indeed. Humans discovered language -- an explosive acceleration of 
the powers of minds. Because now you can not just learn from your own 
experience, but you can learn vicariously from the experience of everybody 
else. From people that you never met. From ancestors long dead. And human 
culture itself becomes a profound evolutionary force. That is what gives us 
an epistemological horizon and which is far, far greater than that of any 
other species. We are the only species that knows who we are, that knows 
that we have evolved. Our songs, art, books and religious beliefs are all 
ultimately a product of evolutionary algorithms. Some find that thrilling, 
others depressing.
SPIEGEL: Nowhere does evolution become so apparent than in the DNA code. 
Nevertheless, those who believe in Intelligent Design find the DNA code less 
problematic than the ideas of Darwin. Why is that?
Dennett: I don't know, because it seems to me that the very best evidence we 
have for the truth of Darwin's theory is the evidence that arrives every day 
from bioinformatics, from understanding the DNA-coding. The critics of 
Darwinism just don't want to confront the fact that molecules, enzymes and 
proteins lead to thought. Yes, we have a soul, but it's made up of lots of 
tiny robots.
SPIEGEL: Don't you think it's possible to leave life to the biologists, but 
let religion take care of the soul?
Dennett: That's what Pope John Paul II was demanding when he issued his 
oft-quoted cyclical in which he said that evolution was a fact, but he went 
right on to say: except on the matter of the human soul. That might make 
some content, but it is just false. It would be just as false to say: Our 
bodies are made up of biological material, except, of course, the pancreas. 
The brain is no more wonder tissue than the lungs or the liver. It's just a 
tissue.
SPIEGEL: Darwin's ideas have been misused by racists and eugenicists. Is 
this also one of the reasons that Darwinism is so energetically attacked?
Dennett: Yes. I think the gentler way of putting it is that the Darwinian 
idea is very simple -- you can explain it to somebody in a minute. But for 
that very reason, it is also extremely vulnerable to caricature and misuse. 
I very patiently teach my students the basics of evolutionary theory and 
then I have to go back and clean up after myself, because they get very 
enthusiastic about it and they keep falling into these misunderstandings. 
Darwinism is mind candy, it's delicious. But the thing is, having too much 
candy can distract from the truth. And that can play into the hands of 
people who are racist or sexist. So you have to maintain a sort of 
intellectual hygiene at all times.
SPIEGEL: It seems that everything -- from adultery to rape to murder -- is 
being analyzed in the light of evolution these days. How can one separate 
serious research from the candy?
Dennett: You have to be a meticulous gatherer of the relevant facts and you 
have to marshal those facts in such a way that you have a testable 
hypothesis that could actually be confirmed or disproved. That's what Darwin 
did.
SPIEGEL: Your colleague Michael Ruse has accused you of stepping out of the 
field of science and into social science and religion with your theories. 
He's even said you are inadvertently aiding the Intelligent Design movement 
as a result.
Dennett: Michael is just trying to put the implications of Darwin's insights 
into soft focus and to reassure people that there is not as much conflict 
between the perspective of evolutionary biology and their traditional ways 
of thinking.
SPIEGEL: And what about the accusation that you are aiding Intelligent 
Design?
Dennett: There is probably an element of truth to it. I've just finished 
writing a book in which I look at religion from the perspective of 
evolutionary biology. I think you can, should, and even must take this 
route. Others say 'no, hands off! Just don't let evolution get anywhere near 
the social sciences.' I think that's terrible advice. The idea that we 
should protect the social sciences and humanity from evolutionary thinking 
is a recipe for disaster.
SPIEGEL: Why?
Dennett: I would give Darwin the gold medal for the best idea anybody ever 
had. It unifies the world of meaning and purpose and goals and freedom with 
the world of science, with the world of the physical sciences. I mean, we 
talk about the great gap between social science and natural science. What 
closes that gap? Darwin -- by showing us how purpose and design, meaning, 
can arise out of purposelessness, out of just brute matter.
SPIEGEL: Is Darwinism at work every time something new is created? Even at 
the creation of the universe for example?
Dennett: It's at least interesting to see that quasi- or pseudo-Darwinian 
ideas are also popular in physics. They postulate a huge diversity from 
which there has, in a certain sense, been a selection. The result is that 
here we are and this is the only part of this huge diversity that we 
witness. That's not the Darwinian idea, but it's a relative. The philosopher 
Friedrich Nietzsche had the idea -- I would guess perhaps inspired by 
Darwin -- of eternal recurrence: The idea that all the possibilities are 
played out and if the time is infinite and matter is infinite then every 
permutation will be tried, not once, but a trillion times.
SPIEGEL: Another idea of Nietzsche's was that God is dead. Is that also a 
logical conclusion reached by Darwinism?
Dennett: It is a very clear consequence. The argument for design, I think, 
has always been the best argument for the existence of God and when Darwin 
comes along, he pulls the rug out from under that.
SPIEGEL: Evolution, in other words, leaves no room for God?
Dennett: One has to understand that God's role has been diminished over the 
eons. First we had God, as you said, making Adam and making every creature 
with his hands, plucking the rib from Adam and making Eve from that rib. 
Then we trade that God in for the God who sets evolution in motion. And then 
you say you don't even need that God -- the law giver -- because if we take 
these ideas from cosmology seriously then there are other places and other 
laws and life evolves where it can. So now we no longer have God the law 
finder or the law giver, but just God the master of ceremonies. When God is 
the master of ceremonies and doesn't actually play any role any more in the 
universe, he's sort of diminished and no longer intervenes in any way.
SPIEGEL: How is it, then, that many natural scientists are religious? How 
does that go together with their work?
Dennett: It goes together by not looking too closely at how it goes 
together. It's a trick we can all do. We all have our ways of 
compartmentalizing our lives so that we confront contradictions as seldom as 
possible.
SPIEGEL: But this compartmentalizing has a positive side as well: Natural 
science talks about life whereas religion deals with the meaning of life.
Dennett: Fine. A boundary. But the trouble is that the boundary moves. And 
as it moves, the job description for God shrinks. I, too, stand in awe of 
the universe. It's wonderful, I'm so happy to be here, I think it's a great 
place for all its faults, I love being alive. The problem is: There's nobody 
to be grateful to. There's nobody to express my gratitude to.
SPIEGEL: But religion surely gives us moral standards and provides guidance 
on how to behave.
Dennett: If that's what religion does, then I don't think it is such a silly 
idea. But it doesn't. Religions at their best serve as excellent social 
organizers. They make moral teamwork a much more effective force than it 
otherwise would be. This, however, is a two-edged sword.  Because moral 
teamwork depends to a very large degree on ceding your own moral judgment to 
the authority of the group. And that can be extremely dangerous, as we know.
SPIEGEL: But religion still helps us to set moral standards.
Dennett: But are we only morally good so that we get rewarded in heaven; so 
that God will punish us for our sins and reward us for good behavior?  I 
find this idea extremely patronizing. It is offensive in that it suggests 
that that's the only reason people are moral. Do we only, for example, 
behave well to get 76 virgins in paradise? That's an idea that many in the 
West would scoff at.
SPIEGEL: Why then do pretty much all cultures have religion?
Dennett: I think the answer to that question is partly historical in the 
sense that traditions that survive evolve adaptations for surviving. So that 
religions themselves are extremely well designed cultural phenomena that 
have evolved to survive.
SPIEGEL: Like a biological species.
Dennett: Absolutely. A religion's design is completely unconscious in 
exactly the way the design of animals and plants is completely unconscious.
SPIEGEL: Do successful religions have similar features?
Dennett: They all have to have features for prolonging their own identity --  
and a lot of these are actually interestingly similar to what you find in 
biology, too.
SPIEGEL: Can you give an example?
Dennett: Many religions started before there was writing. How do you get 
high fidelity preservation of texts before you have texts? Group singing and 
recitation are efficient mechanisms for maintaining and spreading 
information. And then we have other features too, like you really want to 
make sure there are some parts of religion that are really incomprehensible.
SPIEGEL: Why?
Dennett: Because then people have to fall back on rote memorization. The 
very idea of the Eucharist is a lovely example: The idea that the bread is 
symbolic of the body of Christ, that the wine is symbolic of the blood of 
Christ, that's just not exciting enough. The idea needs to be made strictly 
incomprehensible: The bread is Christ's body and the wine is his blood. Only 
then will it hold your attention. Then it will win in competition against 
more boring ideas simply because you can't quite get your head around it. 
It's sort of like when you have a sore tooth and you can't keep your tongue 
off it. Every good Muslim is supposed to pray five times a day no matter 
what.
SPIEGEL: You see that too as an evolutionary strategy to keep the religion 
alive?
Dennett: It's very possible. The Israeli evolutionary biologist Amotz Zahavi 
argues that behaviors which are costly -- which are hard to imitate -- are 
those that can best be handed down because non-costly signals can and will 
be faked. This principle of costly behaviors is well established in biology 
and it is present in religion. It is important to make sacrifices. The 
costliness is a feature you tamper with at your peril. If the imams got 
together and decided to remove that feature they would be damaging one of 
the most powerful adaptations of Islam.
SPIEGEL: By using this type of argumentation, can you predict which 
religions will win out in the end?
Dennett: My colleagues Rodney Stark and Roger Finke have researched why some 
religions spread quickly and others don't. They're adapting supply side 
economics to this and saying that there's a sort of unlimited market for 
what religions can give but only if they're costly. So they have an 
explanation for why the very bland and liberal Protestant religions are 
losing members and why the most extreme, intense religions are gaining 
members.
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for why the belief in Intelligent Design 
is nowhere so widespread as in the United States?
Dennett: No, unfortunately I don't. But I can say, the alliance between 
fundamentalists or evangelical religion and right wing politics is a very 
troubling phenomenon and this is certainly one of the most potent reasons 
for it. What's really scary is that a lot of them seem to think that the 
second coming is around the corner -- the idea that we're going to have 
Armageddon anyway so it doesn't make much difference. I find that to be 
socially irresponsible on the highest order. It's scary.
SPIEGEL: Professor Dennett, thank you very much for this interview.
Interview conducted by Jörg Blech and Johann Grolle


ha scritto nel messaggio
 news:43c099c8$0$47054$edfa...@dread15.news.tele.dk...
tradurre per gli ignoranti come me, no eh?!?
;-) drk

 tradurre per gli ignoranti come me, no eh?!?
Egoisticamente a me non importa, però è bene ricordare che ICR è un
gruppo della gerarchia IT e che quindi o si mette un bel tag nel subject
che indica che l'articolo non è in italiano, oppure, ancora meglio, si
traduce, come ad es. puntualmente fa Annarella.
Namarië
--
                              ±_Elda_±
              All she saw was a silhouette of a gun,
              Far away on the other side.
              He was shot six times by a man on the run
              And she couldn't find how to push through.

 ;-) drk
ehem per sbaglio avevo inserito l'articolo sbagliato.
mi scuso col NG
saluti

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:qk5wf.117589$65.33...@twister1.libero.it...

Cosi' poi lo uccidi, se comprendi appieno cio' che  ha voluto dire....Secondo ma 
lo scrive in inglese  per paura di essere lapidato dal popolo...
Raffaele