The Boss Delusion

I have just finished reading Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion and have to say I enjoyed it. There was little in there that wasn't familiar and little I didn't agree with. However his style can be counterproductive at times and he comes across as snide and arrogant which I am sure does little for his chances of reaching the faithful and making them question their beliefs.

What occurred to me though was how many of the ideas in the book could be applied to managers and the belief system that supports them. The parallels are no accident, given the emphasis on dogma and hierarchy that is largely inherited from religion, and the disfunction that they both bring about by making it easier for people not to think for themselves has serious consequences.

Comments

[Dave Snowden]

Your linkage with management use of ritual and belief systems (which is well made), might lead logically to a position that Dawkins is in effect attacking religion for something which is an simple part of being human. In effect religion manifests the good and bad of the human condition. Management did not inherit those characteristics from religion, they are innate in most human societies. The evidence is that religion does a better job than most at challenging them, while inevitably reflecting them at the same time.

All of that said, I think anyone who grows up in a Calvinist, or paternalistic religious environment is probably scarred for life and is going to see Dawkins in a sympathetic light.

However Dawkins does himself no favors by setting up an equally polemical and intolerant belief system in counter his biased version of religion and religious claims. You might want to check out the strawman fallacy which is evidenced throughout Dawkin’s book.

His style (and pejorative condemnation of "the other") is reminiscent of an old testament prophet in full flow against the calumnies of the unclean. Replacing one intolerant paternalism with another is hardly progress. In effect Dawkin’s now provides a counter to the religious right in the US, and that is not intended as a complement,

You will find support (and dissent) here

[Euan]

I tried to avoid setting myself up as a Dawkins apologist in the way I wrote the post.

However to claim that religion is somehow an inevitable part of being human is nonsense.

Yes some people feel the need of it and yes it has become part of the fabric of most civilizations but this doesn't mean that there is any evidence for any sort of personified deity, that we can't be moral without being told how to by out of date books, or that religion hasn't been the excuse, if not the cause, for significant chunks of man's inhumanity to man.

[Dave Snowden]

I see that loose logic has come across from Dawkins. :-)

I didn't say that religion is an inevitable part of being human, I said that religious practice inevitably picks up on innate behaviour characteristics of human society. Religion is not the cause of those behaviours, evolution is if anything (although evolution is generally non-causal and complex) and religion picks up on those characteristics like everything else.

A personified deity is not even a requirement of Christianity (in the Dawkins sense of the word) let along religion in general. Neither is the determination of morality of books (check out the faith-works debate at the heart of Catholic-Protestant debate). That was taken forward in Liberation Theology in the middle of the last Century when religion in significant parts of the world was action/works based not passive/faith based. I return to my earlier point about Calvin prejudicing your (and Dawkins) view of the world. Your final paragraph in the comment is a "straw-man", its sets up a view of religion that no intelligent person would support and attacks it.

Your qualification on Dawkins is one I can agree with, and I accept that you are attempting to avoid being an apologist! On the other hand I think the extremism, and the poor logic and stereotyping that is typical of Dawkins’ work plays into the hands of the religious right. I can recommend Alistair McGrath’s book Dawkins’ God as a counter. McGrath has a PhD in molecular biophysics but is also Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford. He has a view on religion that I do not share (the evangelical end of Christianity) but this is a well argued book. He also challenges Dawkins’ concept of memes, and links his work to social darwinism (which is not a good place to be). He points out the flawed analogy between gene and meme and some of the social consequences. Dawkins has been forced to back down from many of his claims about memes in the face of scientific criticism. I think he may have to do the same when it comes to his old testament prophecy.

That said, there is growing evidence that human intelligence is linked to our ability to abstract from the physical world, and that in consequence some form of religious expression is more or less inevitable. However that is an argument for another day.

[Euan]

"I didn't say that religion is an inevitable part of being human, I said that religious practice inevitably picks up on innate behaviour characteristics of human society."

OK so I am more concise than you ...

;-)

If my assertion in the last paragraph is a straw man that "no intelligent person would support"you are excluding the vast majority of religious people on the planet from your definition of religious.

If religion isn't about a deity and isn't about a book and isn't about the institutions set up to maintain the power of both of them then you'll have to help me understand how it differs from the wishy washy humanist spirituality I myself tend towards!

[Dave Snowden]

You are clutching at straws (sic) now Euan. The paragraph above where you claim conciseness actually makes two logically distinct and different statements. The desire to be concise should not override the need to avoid confusion. You have also modified my statement of a "personified deity" to "deity" and my “determination of morality by books” to “books”. Those modifications allow you to make the statement that I am excluding the vast majority of religious people from my argument. Without the modifications (your use of a straw man fallacy) your argument falls. You may not be an apologist for Dawkins but you are starting to imitate his style of argument. ;-)

[Euan]

Just for clarity the [:-)] symbol was meant to indicate that I was winding you up about concision.

When I accused you of excluding most of the planet's religious people I did so without modifying your language in any way whatsoever so goodness where that leaves you with your straw man smoke screen.

Dawkins is a red herring. After all these years and after many reactions to my posts on this blog I haven't yet heard how your own definition of religion differs from this:

religion |riˈlijən| noun the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods

[Dave Snowden]

It may be time for me to blog on religion so point taken. I do have a blog in preparation on Dawkins which will start the process. However I reserve the right to comment on steriotyping.

Also Euan, I am sorry but you did modify the language by only selected one word from a phrase - its summarised above. To belive otherwise would require a considerable act of faith, a willingness to ignore evidence (hang on is this sounding familiar?) Mind you, even without your exclusion you would be wrong. Hindu's the Tao and many other religions do not have books that prescribe moral behaviour or a personal god .....

The Oxford defintion of religion by the way is:

religion

• noun 1 the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. 2 a particular system of faith and worship. 3 a pursuit or interest followed with devotion.

— ORIGIN originally in the sense life under monastic vows: from Latin religio ‘obligation, reverence’.

Note three uses, and the qualifier of "especially"

[Euan]

To be pedantic my comment started with "If my assertion in the last paragraph is a straw man that "no intelligent person would support"you are excluding the vast majority of religious people on the planet from your definition of religious." and this preceded the paragraph where you rightly say I abbreviated your terminology. Therefore I was correct when I said "When I accused you of excluding most of the planet's religious people I did so without modifying your language in any way"

I took my definition from the Oxford dictionary and was careless in omitting the two latter definitions.

[Dave Snowden]

Abbreviation is not modification!
You deserve a job in the spin department of the Prime Minister's Office!

I will let my comments stand

[Euan]

I didn't say that Dave and if you hang on I'll get my kettle .....

[Robert Paterson]

Oh this is fun. There used to be a revew magazine called Books and Bookmen. The editor would get either two sworn enemies or as is the case here two good friends to swing at each other in the letters column. Some would go for for more than a year and were the best part of the magazine - except for the reviews of Sir Ian Moncrieffe. Ian had a set form. He only reviewed biograpghy. He would mention that some chap had a written a book on Dracula, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Bach and then he would sepnd 15,000 words of telling the reader all about how he was related to that person and would chuck in a few funny stories.

Please go on. One day I may drop by and tell you how I am related to Dawkins (: