This is an edited and expanded version of my Goodreads review of Robert Sapolsky's "Determined." It's expanded, not just because I do that at other times with some Goodreads reviews where I want to go more in depth but also because for what I believe is a first, I hit Goodreads' 5,000-word limit. I wanted to be that thorough in showing how Sapolsky is not just wrong, but per the old physics phrase, Not.Even.Wrong.
So, the more complete murdering happens here.
Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will by Robert M. Sapolsky
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I began with an in-depth precis or overview,, having read his "Behave" before, knowing his bio, having read a Freedom from Religion Foundation interview of him and more, I can offer an overview, complete with a start-off set of links for friends interested in some of the philosophical issues.
Precis/overview
The fact that Sapolsky engages in Dan Dennett skyhooks on page 3, strawmanning on page 5 and says he's like Sam Harris on page 6 (while wrongly insinuating Harris is a *practicing* philosopher or neuroscientist when he is neither) should tell you just how craptacular it is. (That's as he, per the index, can't at all cite an actual neuroscientist and one of the best of the past 40 years, V.S. Ramachandran. Some of the movement syndromes etc discussed by Sapolsky are right up Ramachandran’s alley.)
Feb. 5: Up to 2500+ words of notes with straight reading just to page 65 and grokking around the middle of the book after that. I think Little Bobby's bar mitzvah-age break with his childhood Orthodox Judaism is a major explainer of why he is an evangelist (sic) for determinism. (Before anybody makes assumptions, if this book were by Bobby Scalia, the son of Opus Dei [or nearly so] Catholic parents, and he spit the bit on confirmation, you'd be reading the same snark, but the same snark with the same serious insight behind it.)
(And, yes, he eventually admits that, in the first paragraph of chapter 12, where he says:
This book has a goal — to get people to think differently about moral responsibility.
Fine: Then be Sam Harris and write a book on an ethical naturalism-based approach to ethics. You'd still be wrong, Bobby, but in different ways.)
In any case, adult Robert is "good" about playing forensic psychology on others, so turnabout is fair play! And, yes, this would be a big deal for an Orthodox teen, vs Conservative, let alone Reform. Sapolsky says he was raised totally observant, so we can even call this a psychic break, perhaps. And, lower down here, as I ran out of room at Goodreads, per the FFRF piece, yeah, there will be more comment on his forensic psychology. See the double asterisk below. **
The "why" of that?
Little Bobby, little sad-tromboning Bobby (warning: LOTS of snark and even outright sarcasm ahead), per adult Robert, determined that problems of fairness and similar in treatment of humans, REQUIRED that determinism, not free will, be the baseline. I am reminded of Jehovah's Witnesses founder Charles Taze Russell, who, because he couldn't accept literalist Christian hellfire, revived or revitalized (not invented) the idea of annihilation of souls of the evil instead. (And sadly, Bart Ehrman recently may subconsciously written his second most recent book for that reason, I speculate.) If I'm throwing people under the bus, well, two birds with one throw.
There's SEVERAL problems here.
Two biggies. They're both philosophical.
Side note: The philosophical problems Sapolsky exhibits in general, and in specific vis-a-vis Hume, are nothing new. They were already in exhibit in Behave.
So, we'll start with the first biggie, as he already exhibited it there.
I realized that little Bobby Saplosky, in trying to make an adolescent belief (or fear?) into a scientific theory, shows he doesn’t know philosophy in another way, as this is a crass violation of St. David of Hume’s famous “is ≠ ought” dictum. Sublinked there, G.E. Moore's open-question argument has more modern food for thought, and ties in with comments I had on "Behave" where I thought Sapolsky was flirting with scientism.
One more connection to Hume?
Sapolsky talks about people acting as if they have free will, then says "priming" them with deterministic ideas lessens that belief.
Have you ever heard of anybody, even the most ardent double-predestination traditional Calvinist, acting as if life is all determined? Nope.
Even if the actual free will is not at a conscious level, it's there. And, in a recursive loop, we prime ourselves to that end. David Hume, long before AA, first touted the idea of "act as if." We do exactly that — with free will, not determinism.
The second philosophical biggie?
Sapolsky's worry about what is known as "retributive justice" (on which he petard-hoists later, anyway) and how it has to require determinism is all wet. If he really dove into some philosophical ethics (he makes a weak pass at that in "Behave"), he would know that.
Specifically, on page 5, here, we have: “(P)unishment as retribution is indefensible.”
Agreed!
You know wrote a whole book questioning traditional ideas on both retributive justice and distributive justice?
A philosopher named Walter Kaufmann.
And, to put it bluntly? Sapolsky's comment above, and little Bobby's teenaged Humean misfire aside, folks, that’s strawmanning. Whether Sapolsky meant it as such, I don’t care; he shows even more that he’s in over his head philosophically, so is not deserving of the most charitable interpretation. Per the likes of Kaufmann’s “Without Guilt and Justice” retributive justice, to properly label it, is indefensible on ethical grounds whether determinism is true, classical free will is true, or my theory of some sort of psychological constraint + the non-existence of CONSCIOUS free will WITHOUT that meaning determinism as the alternative answer is true. Plenty of utilitarians, like a Peter Singer, will refute Sapolsky as well. Arguably, per Kaufmann’s book, which was in part a riposte to John Rawls, retributive justice is also indefensible, as I see it, on political science and similar grounds, again, whether or not Sapolsky is right about determinism. See below at the asterisk for more.*
==
Full long! review starts here.
First, I’ll be honest. This is a book I was prepared to not like a lot, and to read and review critically, in advance, based on various advance observations I had read about it.
I had already blogged about it, based on reviews, and also based on knowing that his previous book, “Behave,” had a fair amount of muddled and muddied thinking.
And Sapolsky gave me plenty of ammunition from the start.
First, the subhed: “A science of life without free will.” As there is no science that proves determinism (other than quasi-proof in a tautological sense for methodological materialists, but even that’s not proof and it’s not even a quasi-proof of “determinism” as normally understood in the world of philosophy, contra Sapolsky, Jerry Coyne, British astronomer Coel and others), there is also no “science of life without free will.” There IS a "scienTISM of life without free will." My blog post linked above talks more about this tautology-based definition of “determinism.”
As for determinism in an actual sense? On page 3, we jump right in to the Dan Dennett world of skyhooks, not cranes. Or, since Sapolsky repeats the old story about “all turtles,” we’re in that land.
Even though this is not as dense as his previous book, when I hit that, I had two thoughts:
1. We’re probably right there at a 3-star ceiling; how much lower will it go?
2. We may get quickly into the land of “grokking” or even to the land of “DNF.”
There you are.
Then, just two pages later, we have: “(P)unishment as retribution is indefensible.”
And, folks, that’s strawmanning. Whether Sapolsky meant it as such, I don’t care; he shows even more that he’s in over his head philosophically, so is not deserving of the most charitable interpretation. Per the likes of Walter Kaufmann’s “Without Guilt and Justice,” linked above, retributive justice, to properly label it, is indefensible on ethical grounds whether determinism is true, classical free will is true, or my theory of some sort of psychological constraint + the non-existence of CONSCIOUS free will WITHOUT that meaning determinism as the alternative answer is true. Plenty of utilitarians, like a Peter Singer, will refute Sapolsky as well. Arguably, per Kaufmann’s book, which was in part a riposte to John Rawls, retributive justice is also indefensible on political science and similar grounds, again, whether or not Sapolsky is right about determinism.
It’s also a case of putting the cart before the horse. Sapolsky appears to take a political science position he doesn’t like on ethical grounds and then try to use that as a proof or warrant of this thesis about determinism. (Kaufmann gives good thought-experiment quasi-empirical warrants for his thesis, doing things in the correct order.)
Page 6, in a footnote (and just after seeing a Tweet-response by John Horgan about that fact) is that Sapolsky talks first about philosophers like Galen Strawson and Gregg Caruso (both of whom I’ve read) rejecting free will on philosophical grounds, then saying he isn’t like them, but that “(his) views are closest to those of Sam Harris, who, appropriately, is not only a philosopher but a neuroscientist as well.”
Oh, shit, we’re now officially in 2-star at best territory. (Weirdly, Horgan told me he liked the book.) Harris is not a good, or really an actively practicing, philosopher. Ditto on neuroscience. What he IS, is a political agitpropper.
To the degree Harris IS a philosopher, on ethics, he’s an ethical naturalist. And, I think the book that Sapolsky meant to write is a book of ethical naturalism, and somehow he thinks that ethical naturalism requires determinism. (It doesn’t. It’s also more wrong than right, and had Sapolsky written that book, it would also surely be highly wrong, just not in the Not.Even.Wrong space of the book he actually did write.)
Also, at the body text for that footnote, Sapolsky then hedges his bets with:
“This book has two goals. The first is to convince you that there is no free will, or at least that there is much less free will than generally assumed when it really matters.” Those are two different things. For instance, Daniel Wegner says there is no conscious free will, in a great book, without precluding unconscious free will, or without assuming that, at the consciousness level, this is a twosiderism issue and “no free will” = “yes determinism.” More in-depth, Wegner talks about free will as an emotional state, at least in part. See this in-depth review of mine about "The Illusion of Conscious Will." Arguably, that doesn’t preclude some sort of determinism, but it does put the onus of proof, both in philosophy and evolutionary biology, on the determinism touters.
And, speaking of that, since I’ve already accused Sapolsky, on good grounds, of strawmanning, I’ll now accuse him of question-begging, since that IS the background to his thesis.
Back to the strawmanning on page 9, on his “second goal.”
“It’s been a moral imperative for me to view humans without judgment the belief that anyone deserves anything special.” It’s a good sentiment. And, as I noted above, it’s TOTALLY not dependent on the “free will vs determinism” debate. And, besides strawmanning, this again proves Sapolsky is WAY over his head on what’s really Philosophy 101.
This is illustrated further in his “four views” on pages 10-11. These are a sterile subset of the richness of discussion on the issue, and ignore the idea of subselves, subconsciousnesses, etc.,
At this point, I did a couple of things.
First, I posted a “currently reading” on Goodreads.
Second, re me mentioning him above, I checked to see if he cited Wegner. He does, but ONLY in conjunction with Sapolsky’s thoughts on the Libet experiments, and not at all for Wegner as Wegner. He also cites not at all friend Massimo Pigliucci, who like Sapolsky, has a PhD in biology … and one in philosophy as well.
Next, to the issue of definition of terms, and tying back to Sapolsky’s hedging of bets? In saying “mu” to the sterile old “free will vs determinism,” I have talked EXTENSIVELY about what I call “psychological constraint.” Sapolsky cites “priming” as a first-level example of this. I have cited more serious examples, like how a history of childhood abuse increased a tendency toward adult addiction.
This is NOT NOT NOT determinism, though, despite Sapolsky’s attempt to claim it is. And, to tie this back to philosophy, and specifically linguistic philosophy? I refuse to play his language game and accept that it IS determinism. And, other than trying to prove a childhood belief, I think this is the second biggest, second most “core” level wrong of the whole book.
That said, that led to two more things.
One is the likelihood that this book hits DNF territory. (I eventually slogged 3/4 through.)
The other goes back to Page 9 and the “part two” of why this book. A fuller version of that quote above is:
“As noted, I haven’t believed in free will since adolescence, and it’s been a moral imperative for me to view humans without judgment the belief that anyone deserves anything special.”
So, whether he’s conscious of it or not, we have Sapolsky admitting that this entire book is motivated by belief first (and followed by what I’ve already identified as strawmanning, and am sure I’ll find cherrypicking on the science side, next, since I’ve already found definitional cherrypicking on the philosophy and psychology side) and everything else second. In other words, by page 9, we have two admissions, whether conscious or not, that the cart has been put in front of the horse.
At this point in my reading I hit the point where I started thinking about "sad-tromboning little Bobby Sapolsky," with the links above. Soon after, with the philosophy links above, I started thinking about how how's probably getting determinism and ethical naturalism mixed up.
But, I want to go further off that FFRF interview.
In it, he diagnoses religious leaders as being schizotypal neurotics? It’s poor forensic psychology. It also ignores that, per twin studies and other things, schizophrenia is clearly not totally genetic. It also probably, on the non-genetic side, is not totally environmentally deterministic. It surely has bits of WEIRDness. The biggest picture, per that piece, is that I think he wants to posit a deterministic background for religiosity, and if we’re going to practice forensic psychology, then what’s sauce for the goose also is for the gander. I charge this is directly related to his childhood break with his Orthodox upbringing.)
As I indicated in my blogging, and, to go beyond that, this is like Pascal’s Wager, free will version. Nope, Bobby, neither I nor the rest of the world “have to” believe in determinism.
Nor do we have to accept that your childhood religious break warrants bad philosophical scrivening. See the JW snark up top.
At this point, I'm about 60 pages in, knowing we're in 1-star territory because I can't vote lower (Storygraph lets you) and we're at the (in)famous Benjamin Libet and Libet experiments.
Next? Well, citing Libet, of course, and claiming that what Libet founds proves that free will is a myth when it actually does no such thing. First, see what I said about Wegner and conscious will. Second, per this Academia piece, Libet himself did not oppose free will (and as a presumable extension, did not see his experiments as refuting it). Libet there also talks about “natural law determinism,” which seems to be his phrase for what I call tautology-based determinism up top. That said, contra both that person and Sapolsky, Libet as experimenter, tho not as scrivener, has been at least somewhat dethroned. See here.
That said, contra that author as well as Sapolsky, as a “mu-er” to “free will VERSUS determinism” and as a supporter of Idries Shah’s “more than two sides” idea, I support randomness as part of volition being injected into the mix. And, indeed per the disdain that Sapolsky has, and that Mr. Johnson appears to have, for “randomness” as an “Option 3” on this issue (shades of Idries Shah!) that’s indeed part of what Libet was probably measuring, per that link off my philosophy blog.
Sidebar: Alan Johnson, the Academia author, focuses on Sapolsky's logically bad argumentation, citing him for engaging in several classical informal logic fallacies. I think he does do that, but beyond that, there's a "framing" issue and the psychology I mention at top. Interestingly, Mr. Johnson appears to not have heard of Kaufmann or anyone like him.
Moving forward as I grok. Yes, the insula evolved for diagnosis of physical disgust. Yes, it may have later been hijacked for moral disgust. Sapolsky ignores one thing that undercuts him there, though, and that is that many items of moral disgust are culturally based and thus controlled by cultural evolution. Even if cultural evolution is considered “deterministic,” it’s not the determinism of the simplistic type, nor even of his type of simplistic determinism + psychological constraint. In additional, cultural evolution evolves, in part, because of conscious decisions. People can choose not to adopt trends, or even to adopt countertrends. New world religions replace old ones. Bacon? Not disgusting to a Christian, though it was to a Jew. And, most hardcore physical disgust items — feces, vomit, etc. — don’t generally have moral values attached. And, most morally disgusting items, also contra Sapolsky, don’t make people want to vomit. Rather, they often invoke or perturb non-disgust emotions such as anger.
There’s an additional side problem here. Sapolsky often, in talking about issues in this chapter, references behavioral psychology, on things like priming. Just one problem: Behavioral psych, like other branches of psych, has a replication problem. I’m sorry, TWO problems: In the person of Dan Ariely, it also has an apparent fraud problem. So, scratch any inductive reasoning in this book that leans too heavily on behavioral psych. See here. (Sapolsky cites Ariely’s muse Kahnemann once in the index, Ariely not at all. Beyond all of the above, from what I know about priming, he overstates its long-term effects.
What I am really reminded of here in reading this whole chapter is “feedback loops,” especially when he talks about hormones. CONSCIOUS (yes) decisions to exercise, hike, paint / play music / do other hobbies, meditate, journal, etc., are all undertaken in part by most practitioners as stress reducers. And you know what? They work! We’re more than our hormones, Bobby.
HERE IS WHERE I HIT THE WALL at Goodreads!
So, let's continue!
On to the chapter about “grit.” Sapolsky appears to be a black-and-white thinker here: it’s either all free will, or nothing. He doesn’t riff on Dennett’s idea of subselves to also hint at “subwillers.” As noted above, he doesn’t at all bring in Daniel Wegner for the idea of unconscious will, or the hinted-at idea of Wegner, and the stressed idea by me, that we need to say “mu” in the Buddhist sense to the whole free will “versus” determinism nonsense. As for Jerry Sandusky not being to blame? Contra the psychologist Sapolsky excoriated for saying that, why not? At least in Sapolsky’s black-and-white world. We see how he blanches.
The second of two chapters on chaos? Sapolsky says that chaos may not be predictable, but it’s still deterministic. First, is all chaos deterministic? (Ultimately, per the Big Bang theory, nothing’s fully deterministic, Little Bobby, whether you like that or not.) Second, to do a 180 on Dennett’s “The Varieties of Free Will Worth Having,” per Little Bobby’s rejectionist 13-year-old mind, a non-predictable determinism seems like a variety of determinism it might not be worth having; it also (see definitional issues above) conflates physical determinism and philosophical determinism. (Insert point here that Sapolsky seems much more of an ev psycher than he did in Monkeyluv and somewhat more than in Behave.) There’s also the issue that not every philosopher thinks one has to revert (sic) to chaos theory to prove, or even to defend, free will of some sort. Also, no, ontology is not “about determinism.” (eyeroll) It’s certainly not about determinism in the philosophical sense. Insert note about scientism here. Sapolsky goes further down that road in strawman arguments against philosophers who won’t accept his stance. Shock me.
Next, the two chapters on emergence issues. I am “shocked” that Sapolsky nowhere references friend Massimo Pigliucci, and doubly so here, since Pigliucci trumps him with dual PhD’s, one in evolutionary biology and the other in … philosophy! Massimo is also at least as much an anti-ev psycher as I am, and big into eco-devo, which I think Sapolsky very much is not. He is also a proponent of cultural evolution.
The second chapter on emergent properties is the biggie. It’s the biggie first because it’s where the rubber of Sapolsky’s willfulness hits the road. Quotes? “A lot of people have linked emergence and free will; I will not consider most of them because, to be frank, I can’t understand what they’re suggesting and to be franker, I don’t think the lack of comprehension is entirely my fault. As for those who have more accessible explored the idea that free will is emergent, I think there are broadly three different areas in which they go wrong.”
Problem 1, he says, ties back two chapters previous. Sapolsky again says that someone like Christian List basing free will on anything like chaos (interesting how Sapolsky focuses just on chaos and not the semi-parallel complexity science) are confusing unpredictability for nondeterminsm. I’ve already dealt with that one up above. We move on. Problem 2, he says, is “weak emergence” vs “strong emergence.” For support of his dismissal of strong emergence, he cites physicist Sean Carroll, not a philosopher, and philosopher David Chalmers, laughed at by many other philosophers for his p-zombies, the “Hard problem of consciousness” and other things that made him Massimo’s whipping boy, with more here from Massimo. INNNterestingly, firm materialist Sapolsky ignores that Chalmers is a panpsychist. Problem 3? “(W)here a final mistake creeps in is the idea that an emergent state can reach down and change the fundamental nature of the bricks comprising it.” I’ll switch from bricks to Roman concrete. Recent research has shown that the chunks of lime in Roman concrete are there deliberately, and that when water invades any cracks in the concrete, they actually promote its healing. So, I reject his analogy.
Chapter 9 is about quantum indeterminancy. Guess what? Sapolsky hedges: “Laplacian determinism (he referenced Laplace early on, and this makes clear he conflates physical determinism with philosophical determinism to come up with a tautological pseudo-philosophical determinism.) really does appear to fall apart down at the subatomic level; however, such eensy-weensy indeterminism is vastly unlikely to influence anything about behavior.”
Gig’s up.
First, “vastly unlikely” is not impossible.
Second, it’s a form of blame-shifting again. Sapolsky has spent whole chapters talking about how human evolution is determined, period and end of story. Not only does the “everyday” quantum world say otherwise, but the quantumness of the big bang says so in spades. Here, I’m reminded of Steve Gould, a good leftist himself and concerned about morality, fairness and humanist issues in general, who said that, if we rewound the clock of Earth and evolution, it would certainly come out differently.
Third, specifics? The quantum world produces cosmic radiation, among other things. Radiation which, randomly, can cause genetic mutations.
Third, part two? He admits that Browning motion undercuts genetic determinism.
Chapter 10 is a follow-up to extend quantumness to discussions of consciousness, etc. It too has three problems that Sapolsky alleges. Problem 1 is almost strawmanning by extension. One doesn’t have to be a determinist to reject John Eccles' epiphenomenalist dualism, Roger Penrose’s microtubules or other things. Problem 2 strawmans to a degree as well, namely about quantum “smearing” at higher levels. In all, though, this chapter wasn’t speaking to me, as a quantized world isn’t a primary non-deterministic argument of mine. (Remember, for the purposes of undercutting Little Bobby and adult Robert, we just need to poke holes in his rigid determinism; we don’t have to prove free will.)
The “interlude” to part 2? The big takeaway: “(I)f you base your notion of being a free, willful agent on randomness, you got problems.” Actually, Bobby, YOU got problems. In my world, that’s called “blame shifting.” Since you’re trying to prove determinism, all I have to do is show that stochastic variables (to use the more proper term), whether subatomic, atomic, at higher levels of purely physical interaction, even without the stereotypical butterfly wings of chaos theory, refute determinism. Oh? They do. Your hand-waving aside.
Next, the chapter about running “amok.” After saying in the Interlude that whatever the Libet experiments prove doesn’t matter, because it’s all a set of connected “-ologies,” Bobby now cites them again. Contain Whitmanesque multitudes, Bobby? Which one determines the others?
The main thrust of this chapter is about atheism, but has little to do with free will “versus” determinism. Also, if I'm half right in thinking Sapolsky is misfiring and writing a book about determinism when he should really be writing a book about ethical naturalism? Atheism has nothing to do with that, either. And, under “highfalutin philosophy” (his phrase), are atheists really as deontological about fairness and harm avoidance as the religious? I doubt it; one footnote covers multiple paragraphs of ideas. And, I’m not even sure what being deontological would mean vis a vis harm avoidance! Anyway, the general thrust of the chapter seems to be that you don’t need god to be good. Agreed! And, you have atheist free-willers as well as atheist determinists like Sapolsky and atheist option-3 or no-twosider people like me. You have religious determinists (talk to a traditional Calvinist about double predestination or Muslim about kismet, Bobby), religious free willers, and I presume religious option-3 people. Again, none of this connects to his thesis. The chapter then gets worse in a way. Rather than putting Option 3 (which is itself broad) into a third dimension, Sapolsky puts it as one tight category, and in the world of religion, associating it with apatheists vs atheists and religious, calls this group a “trough” of less prosocial people. He says he knows of only one research survey to that end, but leans into it. In short, people like me are, in some ways, the truly bad people to him, since we're the people who don't engage in black-and-white thinking.
The latter part of the book has nothing to do with determinism. It’s really Sapolsky’s indignity over retributive justice played forward. See what I said above about Kaufmann covering both retributive and distributive justice’s problems in general. I don’t need to read Oliver Wendell Holmes “three generations of imbeciles are enough” in the Buck case, people’s bloodlust, past generations’ misdiagnosis of causes of mental illness and more. They’re interesting, but have nothing to do with the subject at hand.
Finally? The people he asked to be manuscript readers, per the Acknowledgements? In addition to Slamming Sammy Harris and Gregg Caruso, sympathetic scientific names like Sean Carroll and Jerry Coyne pop up. Not a single philosopher who might be challenging.
==
* Some further comments about retributive and distributive justice, and also back-thoughts to Kaufmann's book.
Retributive justice, while it is primarily thought of in terms of the criminal justice system, is not always so. Blood feuds and such qualify as well, obviously. So too do many religious actions as punishment for non-criminal behavior, such as shunning or excommunication. And, it's a part of evolutionary biology, the "tit-for-tat" of reciprocal altruism when somebody doesn't reciprocate. So, tis true that it may have deterministic roots, but again, cultural evolution determines what is judge of more severe and less severe punishment, both within one cultural strain as it evolves and across cultures. (We don't cut off hands for theft any more, but also in the ancient world, not all other societies cut off hands for stealing a loaf of bread, unlike medieval and early modern Europe.)
Distributive justice is things like social welfare safety nets. These aren't a modern invention; just the broadness of them is. In Europe, albeit not so much the US, governments were more involved with them in the past at many times; discussion and theorizing on a government's role, versus that of churches, moved back and forth in different countries during late medieval and early modern times. Outside of old Europe, especially England/Britain, and its colonial offspring, I have no idea how this might have gone back and forth. That is, in the Gupta Empire, was the state, or Buddhist monasteries etc., more responsible for such safety nets?
That said, Kaufmann misses a beat here. He unconsciously hints (or seems to) that ultimately, our ideas of both retributive justice and distributive justice are just that — Ideas, as in the Platonic sense. Maybe he didn't think that through, but it sure comes off that way. Of course, that's ironic for Kaufmann, who in several of his books likes to talk about the prophets of the Tanakh talking about "justice rolling down" and variants on that trumpet, usually at the expense of Christianity. See my review of Stanley Corngold's bio of him.
** On the religious leadership as schizotypalism and his forensic psychology? I pull this quote from FFRF (who also once tried to claim Abraham Lincoln was an atheist, so the fact that this was an acceptance speech for Sapolsky getting their "Emperor" award isn't much):
What is perfectly obvious here is that this entire picture applies just as readily to our western cultures. Western religions, all the leading religions, have this schizotypalism shot through them from top to bottom. It's that same exact principle: it's great having one of these guys, but we sure wouldn't want to have three of them in our tribe. Overdo it, and our schizotypalism in the Western religious setting is what we call a "cult," and there you are in the realm of a Charles Manson or a David Koresh or a Jim Jones.
Really?
First, it's not limited to "Western religion." I highly doubt Sapolsky is a BuJew trying to protest Buddhism, but both Buddhism and Hinduism are littered with similar cultic figures. After all, "guru" has a denotative as well as connotative meaning, coming from that world!
Second, that could be seen as psychopathy just as much if not more than schizotypal personality disorder.
We then go to:
There's a remarkable parallelism between religious ritualism and the ritualism of OCD. In OCD, the most common rituals are the rituals of self-cleansing, of food preparation, of entering and leaving holy places of emotional significance, and rituals of numerology.
Many religious rituals aren't repetitive in the way of OCD, first. Second, boy, no wonder Little Bobby skipped his bar mitzvah if part of this, even was in his mind at age 13.
Finally, on all of this, I don't know if Sapolsky self-identifies as a Gnu Atheist, but with his scientism, his hostility toward religion rather than benign neglect, and his claim that most religiosity is mental illness, he sure walks, talks and quacks like a Gnu Atheist duck.
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