Book review: Believing in Dawkins, by Eric Steinhart

Eric Steinhart is one of my favorite philosophers. His last book “Believing in Dawkins: The New Spiritual Atheism” (2020) is a love letter to Richard Dawkins, but not only. The spiritual atheism of Dawkins and Steinhart is very close to my religion, and I highly recommend this book.

To Steinhart, “believing in Dawkins” means continuing Dawkins’ work and making it more consistent and complete. It means “correcting his mistakes, making his larger ideas mutually consistent, completing his arguments, filling in the details of his sketches.” Steinhart develops a philosophy of spiritual naturalism, inspired by Dawkins but not attributed to Dawkins, to show “that the jobs once done by God can be done by natural entities.”

Eric Steinhart is a great writer but his book is not always easy to read because he is a professional philosopher with a predilection for philosophical depth and thoroughness. He builds a consistent and very intriguing philosophical system inspired by Dawkins, but you will have to read some passages twice or more.

The work is monumental like the Sagrada Familia, the Barcelona basilica imagined and partly designed by Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí was a genius, but he left the design of the Sagrada Familia incomplete for other architects to build upon. In fact, the basilica is not finished yet and perhaps it will never be.

Similarly, Steinhart continues Dawkins’ works, correcting omissions and mistakes on the way, to build a sanctuary where spiritual naturalists and atheists can feel at home.

Powerful principles or “cranes” are at work in physical reality to “lift matter to greater heights of complexity” (look at the cover picture of the Sagrada Familia). The cranes are strictly natural (there’s no supernatural God here) principles and processes based on physics, biology, and evolution, often still unclear. For example, whatever “converts entropy into complexity” is still unclear.

At the highest heights of the sanctuary, where science becomes metaphysics, many supernatural concepts of religion are reintroduced as natural concepts.

Steinhart shows that Dawkins is open to the idea that there could be God-like beings in the universe. Dawkins is also open to the simulation hypothesis, the idea that God-like beings beyond our universe could have engineered our universe. See Chapters 9 (Little green Gods) and 12 (Sims City) of my book “Tales of the Turing Church” [*]. In Steinhart’s words:

“Dawkins uses the simulation hypothesis to distinguish between things that are gods and things that are merely godlike. If we are living in a simulation, then it was created by some superhuman agents. They would be superhuman but not supernatural. Dawkins thinks our universe is probably filled with superhuman alien civilizations. He thinks they would deserve to be called godlike. Nevertheless, he says they would not be gods. Dawkins writes that the difference between gods and godlike aliens lies in their histories. If something is a god, then it is superhuman but it did not evolve. If something is godlike, then it is superhuman and it did evolve. Godlike beings include the omega points of Kurzweil and Tipler. If they exist at all, they emerged through long processes of gradual evolution — so they are not gods.”

To me, what the Gods can do is more important than how they became Gods. So, since they can do all the things that Gods can do, I just call them Gods. “If it walks like a duck…” and all that. To me Dawkins’ gods are Gods, and I find the atheism of Dawkins and Steinhart indistinguishable from my religion.

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The picture of God that I sketched in the last Turing Church podcast episode is different from the simulation hypothesis, but doesn’t contradict the idea that God is a natural god. See “Tales of the Turing Church” for more pictures of a natural God.

To me, “supernatural” is a contradiction in terms, because if you define nature as all that exists, then everything is natural and there’s no supernatural. So of course God is natural, but it will likely turn out that we must radically extend our picture of nature. In an extended picture of nature, there’s plenty of room for God-like beings and works.

Among “the jobs once done by God [that] can be done by natural entities” there is life after death. Dawkins “frequently affirms that there is no life after death”, but Steinhart shows that this is inconsistent with Dawkins’ own convictions. Dawkins “should have argued that false religious theories of life after death can be replaced with more plausible scientific theories of life after death” [**].

Steinhart describes two plausible scientific theories of life after death: promotion to the higher level of reality of the simulators, and revisions of entire lives in new universes, each better than the previous life and universe. Worth noting, promotion could preserve memories and implement “the ancient idea of the resurrection of the body.” These theories of life after death are only sketched in this book, see Steinhart’s previous book “Your Digital Afterlives: Computational Theories of Life after Death” for more. See also my review of “Your Digital Afterlives” in “Tales of the Turing Church” (Chapter 12).

In summary, Steinhart builds a thorough and philosophically consistent spiritual naturalism, inspired by Dawkins, which offers the main mental benefits of religion. I like (actually I love) philosophy, but I try to keep mine as simple and working-class as possible, because many people don’t have the patience (or the time) for too much philosophical sophistication. I think the two approaches are complementary. So I use the term “religion” for the spiritual naturalism of Dawkins and Steinhart, and I use the simple term “God” now and then.

Perhaps my religion is closer to the atheism of Steinhart and Dawkins than to traditional religions. But while they don’t miss any opportunity to proudly and “virtuously” identify as atheists, I call myself a believer!

Let’s go to Burning Man!

According to Steinhart, spiritual naturalism “supports spiritual transhumanism.”

Steinhart argues that festivals like Burning Man are powerful rituals for spiritual naturalists and transhumanists.

The Man is your old self, explains Steinhart. “From the ashes of your old self, your new self will rise again. You have the freedom to reshape your life.”

But Burning Man is also a symbol of the idea that you will be replicated in some future universe.

“When he burns, he dies; but he will be born again next year. When the Man’s arms are raised, they are raised in victory… The Man will literally be resurrected.”

[*] My book “Tales of the Turing Church: Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology” is available for readers to buy on Amazon (Kindle | paperback).

[**] In his essay “The Surprising Spirituality of Richard Dawkins,” Steinhart says:
“Dawkins usually denies life after death. Most atheists and naturalists do the same. And, when they deny it, they’re being illogical… Dawkins in fact has all the principles he needs to develop a full-bodied theory of life after death. That he fails to do this testifies to a way that he was blinded by religion. Nevertheless, many entirely naturalistic theories of life after death are entirely consistent with science.”

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Cover picture from Wikimedia Commons, picture from Wikimedia Commons.