I recently got to a book that I’ve been meaning to read for a long time, but haven’t gotten to. I’ve been a bit afraid to be honest. The book is The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. The difficulty, and fear, is in the fact that if I am to truly understand what he’s saying I must consider the possibility that he’s right, open mindedness they call it. This opens me to the possibility that all that I’ve lived for and believed all my life is a delusion.
However, in this case the fear was certainly unfounded, though at first I was taken aback a bit by his linguistic ability. He is certainly a first rate rhetorician, or maybe more accurately, sophist. When I first read chapter 3, his refutations of the proofs for the existence of God, I did not see any errors in his reasoning. On further reflection, however, I realized that every one of his “refutations” is either provably false, or at least doubtful. More later.
The aspect of his writing that struck me most, however, was his use of invective and pejorative language. He seems to be trying not to disprove the existence of God, but simply to discredit it and make the reader feel that he/she is a fool if they believe in God. He uses some examples of things which most Christians would find abhorrent to show that Christianity is corrupt. In particular things like the use of high degrees of fear to motivate children to accept Christianity. He also seems to attribute evil things that some Christians do to religion itself, not to human failure, and fails to recognize that the three most brutal regimes in the 20th century were all atheist: Hitler, Stalin and Mao. From what I have been told, Mao killed more than 100,000,000 of his own people during his reign, Stalin 10,000,000 or some such thing, and Hitler 6 or 7 million. Some would argue that Hitler was not atheist, but even if you take him out of this group you still have an appalling record of violence.
He also suggests that parents should not be allowed to teach their children to believe in any specific religion because they are too young to make a decision themselves. This I find to be quite preposterous. The notion that a child could grow up in a belief vacuum, being told not to believe anything until they’re older, is ridiculous, and dangerous in my opinion. It is true that there comes a time when most children ought to be given the freedom to question and find their own understanding of their faith, but if he feels that it is illegitimate for a child to believe in God or follow a religion, then what is the point at which they should? He wants to argue that a child doesn’t have the capacity to evaluate the facts and draw a conclusion, but I would suggest that most people never really reach the point where they fully understand Christianity, all the other religions, and atheism and agnosticism and are able to make an informed decision based on all that. Certainly Dawkins himself doesn’t fit that criterea. He demonstrates a remarkable lack of understanding of theology and Christian reasoning.
Hi Tim,
I’ve stumbled onto your blog via a re-visit of Gil Dueck’s blog. It’s been sometime since I’ve read his blog. I use to get into a number of conversations with him.
First of all, I’d like to comment on this statement of yours: “The difficulty, and fear, is in the fact that if I am to truly understand what he’s saying I must consider the possibility that he’s right, open mindedness they call it. This opens me to the possibility that all that I’ve lived for and believed all my life is a delusion.”
I’ve been an ex-theist for over two years now. And I too use to think there would be a lot to lose if I rejected my christian belief. There could be many reasons for this – seeing the christian God as a source for all that is good in the world might be the strongest reason.
But now that I’m an atheist, the christian belief seems to be more like an extra or meta interpretation of reality. And I discovered that most of what I lived for as a christian I still live for, happily, as an atheist. (This could sound like a de-conversion tactic, but it’s not meant to be.)
You say, “they call it” open-mindedness. I thought you might be interested in a youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI) that I think does a really good job on the subject of open-mindedness. I think it also might give you a broader view of what secular parenting is. Secular parenting isn’t with-holding all kinds of influence, it’s with-holding indoctrination. It’s providing a pluralistic education to prepare children for future decision making.
Lastly, you said, “He also seems to attribute evil things that some Christians do to religion itself, not to human failure, and fails to recognize that the three most brutal regimes in the 20th century were all atheist: Hitler, Stalin and Mao.”
I think it’s quite possible that those brutal regimes were also a matter of human failure, seeing as the three you mentioned took not only totalitarian positions but fascist ones at that. It’s difficult for me to see a lack of a theist belief actively contributing or motivating cruelty.
The real issue or question for any institution or nation, I think, is what is the better suited humanistic ideology? Christian humanism? Pluralist or Democratically Secular humanism?
Hi Jerry,
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, I appreciate someone finally posting something. Didn’t know anyone out there was actually reading this.
Well, first to address a couple of your comments, when I mention about atheist attrocities, I’m not intending at all to link the attrocities with Atheism, that is a study far beyond anything I have attempted and I have no judgement on that, only a few not-very-well thought out opinions. I only mention this to point out how absurd the statement that Dawkins makes is, as is the case with much of what he writes. I heard an interesting quote, I think by an intellectual atheist, that said something like “listening to Dawkins on God is like listening to a lecture on biology given by a man who’s only knowledge of the subject comes from the British Book of Birds.” As a student both of philosophy and theology I can attest that this is truly the case.
As for open-mindedness, the video you suggested is certainly a decent brief synopsis of some elementary logic, though its certainly interesting that he uses the example of theists as the ones who are not open-minded. In my experience closed-mindedness is a universal trait of much of humanity, regardless of belief. True open-mindedness is not just, as the video suggests, open to new ideas, but most importantly the courage to investigate the best articulations of the views you most profoundly disagree with. Dawkins is a perfect example of this closed-mindedness. He and his fellow “new athiests” as they call them have become the “new fundamentalists” more than anything. There are definitely very good sources for atheist thought, but they aren’t in that category. Dawkins especially has a faith in science that is completely unproven, and in some cases provably false(Alister McGrath’s “The Dawkins Delusion” is an interesting, yet slightly crass, appraisal of Dawkins’ book). As for myself, I seek to follow the ancient Greek proverb of “know thyself.” In Christianity there are two distinct groups of people: those who understand the arguments presented by theologians as to what Christianity really is, and those who simply live by a blind(ie. ignorant) faith. Unfortunately in the evangelical church the latter is dominant, and very few seek to understand the arguments presented for the truth of Christianity(how many people do you know that have read Aquinas’ Summa Theologica for instance, for myself I don’t know any, or maybe one). In order, therefore, for me to consider Christianity’s truth I must understand the most well articulated arguments for it first. Once this has been accomplished, then to find the most well articulated arguments for atheism, and make my judgement from there. Only in this way could one approach the truth of the matter. Most people do not do this. Most Christians do not even understand their own faith(ask anyone what the Trinity is, or how it is that Christ could be fully God and fully man and you will get blank stares most of the time). Often, then, those people come accross a book that seems to disprove their simplistic understanding of their own faith, and rather than first studying the best articulations of their own faith first, they simply throw in the towel and say “well it must be false then.” This is especially the case in my experience, with people who have chosen atheism based on the invective and rhetoric of Richard Dawkins, whose book is not designed at all to disprove anything about religion, but only to throw mud at it and make people think ‘if I continue to believe in God then I must be an intellectual lightweight.’ This is patently false and one of the things about Dawkins’ book that makes me the most angry.
Admittedly there is an emotional element to my own faith, be it nostalgic, comforting or whatever else you wish to call it, yet having read a few(albeit not the best articulated yet) atheist arguments, the materialist outlook does not present itself to me as plausible. Dawkins, for instance, claims that the majority of leading scientists are atheists, but this is simply not the case at all. One such notable example of prominent theist scientists is Francis Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project, another is Albert Einstein(contrary to what Dawkins says which is completely false to what Einstein actually said. Dawkins severely misrepresents Einstein), and there are many others. Collins is a Christian, but Einstein was more of a philosophical theist, something akin to Spinoza(whom he greatly admired). For them the Divine IS the universe and law therein. Pantheism they call it. I think in some ways this is following Aristotle. Most of the most prominent physicists believe in some form of God, though not always the Christian God. Even Stephen Hawking admits that what caused the Big Bang is something which science in principle cannot speak to. The Catholic church has stated publicly that evolution does not contradict Christian doctrine in any way, though materialism certainly does. Dawkins suggests this is disingenuine, but I think it is more he that is unfair in his criticisms.
The biggest problem, as I see it, is one of method. Dawkins and some other atheists believe(on faith) that there is nothing beyond the physical world. If so, then the scientific method would be the only method by which we could acquire knowledge of the universe. This, then, would support the notion of material predestination and, thought I won’t get into the arguments for it now, would preclude the possibility of free will(I think Daniel Dennet articulated this in one of his books). That said, if that is true, then its true, I just won’t get into it now. However, what method was used to discover the scientific method in the first place? In this case it was logic. Not that this proves the exsitence of God or anything, but at the very least logical and mathematical methods prove that there are methods of discovering truth which do not depend on, or maybe transcend, our sensory experience and observations of the physical world. One might argue that these are abstracted from, and therefore still dependent upon, the physical world, but this is not always the case(as, for example, set theory). Not only that, but in geometry, one can imagine a perfect triangle while knowing that one does not exist in the physical world. Mathematics could not function without such abstractions. Where am I going with this? Hopefully where I’m wanting to. The next step in the argument is that if we can establish that we have other methods with which to acquire knowledge than only the scientific method, what method would one even use to examine the question of the existence of God? Certainly the scientific method is completely useless in this regard since God by definition is incorporeal, and the cause of all things. I guess one could argue that God could be material(such as the ancient Greek gods), but that’s a matter for another day, and I think easily disproved. I think the only method which could address the question of God is logical, in particular the Intelligible Method and the Dialectic method. These two hvae been used throughout the centuries to discover proof for God’s existence(as well as mathematical proofs) and I think in order to address this question one MUST understand these methods and show why or why not they would constitute proof for the existence of God. Dawkins and others like him simply dismiss theology a priori because, of course there is not God, so why would studying Him be of any help? They must first prove the first to make the second part true. They do not even seem to be aware that other methods exist, in particular the intelligible method. This is the method used by Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Aristotle and many others to prove the existence of a god.
Do you believe that there is a proof that God does not exist? Dawkins suggests that the burden of proof is on Christians to prove God, not on atheists to disprove. This is true, but he also suggests that there have not been arguments given for God’s existence, but there definitely have been. If there have been, then it is the atheist burden to refute them, and Dawkins does not do this at all. He mentions 6 or 7 proofs, but they are not fairly articulated(straw man fallacy) and he doesn’t actually disprove them at all.
As for “better suited to humanistic ideology,” my personal belief is that humanism is fundamentally Christian regardless of whether it calls itself secular or not. I don’t mean that it actively participates in any religious doctrine or anything, but the arguments for it have all begun in Christianity. In particular, it depends on the notion of human dignity, which is derived from human doctrine and I think would be difficult to justify without it, give it a try if you’d like. As for pluralism, I think that pluralism is not desirable. It is something that at its core denies the notion of truth and therefore becomes merely a tool for the powerful to exploit the weaker minded. What happens when two distinct moral perspectives come into mortal conflict? At that point power rules out. We are seeing that more and more pluralism leads to conflict, not peace, and it flies in the face of all morality. Not only that, but is pluralism true? Is is truly moral? Within its own arguments it is self-contradictory.
Wow, that was long-winded. If you end up reading this feel free to argue, I’m sure you’ll disagree with a lot of it, but I’d like to know what you’re arguments are. Thanks for the post!