Let’s Dawk: Science and the Supernatural
The hum of the hive-mind. If you thought it was loud at the Guardian, you should try the New Statesman. Or maybe you shouldn’t. You might get tinnitus. Particularly if you read an article by the famous religious leader Richard Dawkins, who leads the world-wide cult of liberal atheism. He’s been writing about the greatest miracle on earth — the Miracle of Human Equality. In fact, this miracle is even bigger than I previously realized:
Human beings have only recently shown how very special they are. Fifty thousand years ago we had the same bodies and brains as today and we probably had language. But we didn’t have much by way of art, and our artefacts were limited to the functional — stone tools for hunting and butchering, for instance. (Apes with big brains: Richard Dawkins on what makes us human, The New Statesman, 6th January 2013)

Pope Richard Dawkins
So Dawkins thinks that it’s only “probable,” not certain, that human beings had language fifty thousand years ago. It follows, then, that he thinks language is a supernatural phenomenon, floating free of biology and genetics. After all, those ancient humans had the “same brains” as we have today. If language depended on the brain, Dawkins would conclude that ancient humans certainly had language. He doesn’t and so, to the chief liberal atheist, language must be a supernatural phenomenon.
Culture must be supernatural too:
That changed around 40,000 years ago, when the archaeological record shows a sudden magnificent flowering of art and even musical instruments. Cultural evolution — which outpaces by orders of magnitude the superficially similar genetic evolution that had given rise to our big brains in the first place — went into overdrive. Next came the transition from the hunter/gatherer to the settled agriculture way of life, soon to be followed by cities, markets, governments, religion and war. The Industrial Revolution expanded cities to megalopolises, propelling our species to worldwide (and potentially disastrous) domination, and even to reach out to the moon and planets. (Apes with big brains)
Heavens! Those huge cultural advances took place without any influence on or from the genes. None whatsoever. It was all done with the “same brain” (contra Cochran and Harpending) even though some of those advances were confined to particular regions and are still unevenly distributed around the world (per J. Philippe Rushton). Science is a European invention, for example, and White Europeans have contributed by far the most to its development. Look at Charles Darwin, the Great Prophet of the Liberal Atheist Cult: he was English, just like his disciple Dawkins. But Darwin would have been very surprised to hear that all groups of human have had the “same brain” for “fifty thousand years.” Read more

The hardcover edition of Cultural Insurrections has been reprinted after being out of print for some time. (There’s also a recent Kindle edition of 




