Dawkins’
Delusion
The
God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, Bantam Press, 2006.
Richard
Dawkins is well known through his books and television programmes as an ardent
advocate of atheism and, for a committed Christian, this book makes for unhappy
reading. For
example when we read that: The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most
unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust,
unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a
misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal,
pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. It
hurts. Dawkins
claims that he does not go out of his way to offend or hurt anybody; he simply
thinks that religious faith should be subject to criticism just as much as any
other issue, and not be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect.
He
ignores the fact that this respect has been earned over centuries of good work
that has been done by religious bodies in the fields of education, healthcare
and spiritual welfare.
But
spiritual does not figure in Dawkins’ vocabulary.
He has no conception that there might be a parallel, spiritual world that
lies close to and sometimes breaks through into ours.
As he says: anyone knowledgeable about psychology will never be
convinced by any personal experience of God, like a vision or word of prophecy.
Such phenomena are illusions or hallucinations arising from the complex
working of our brains, so all the mystics right through history like the author
of the Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich and John of the Cross up to
Thomas Merton were deluded.
Then there is the phenomenon of the imaginary childhood friend such as Binker,
immortalised by A.A.Milne in Now we are Six.
Dawkins speculates that this could be retained in adulthood by the
gradual postponement, over generations, of the moment in life when children gave
up their binkers replacing them by a god.
The trouble with this theory is that children still have them.
One of our sons had a little elf that went with him everywhere.
But
despite the ill-mannered, hectoring tone, there is much in the book with which
one can agree. For
example he condemns the violence visited upon humanity by military expeditions
like the Crusades and the Conquistadors.
Also the excesses of the parties involved in sectarian conflict in places
like Ulster, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan and India, where the underlying causes may
be political or economic, but religion provides the labels that identify the
sides.
Dawkins
builds his case by discussing Great scientists of our time who sound
religious but who usually turn out not to be so when you examine
their beliefs more deeply. This
is certainly true of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking; also the present
Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society Martin Rees, and the
obstetrician Robert Winston.
These men may marvel at the wonders of the universe but they do not
believe in the supernatural.
Dawkins
identifies three, contemporary British scientists whom he describes as genuinely
religious, meaning Christian, namely Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne and
Russell Stannard. He
left out R.J.
Berry. He is a British
geneticist,
naturalist
and Christian and was professor of genetics
at University College London between 1974-2000.
He was president of the Linnean
Society, the British Ecological Society and the European Ecological Federation.
Berry has spoken out in favour of evolutionary or theistic creationism, which is not the sort of creationism that holds that the earth is only 6,000 years old, but that describes an approach to the biological world that accepts the scientific concepts of evolution while retaining the belief that the world is ultimately the result of divine creation. He also served as a lay member of the Church of England's General Synod and president of Christians in Science. In 1984 he was one of 14 signatories to a letter to The Times in which they stated:
We gladly accept the virgin birth, the Gospel miracles and the resurrection of Christ as historical.
All were professors of science in British universities, and six were
fellows of the Royal Society.
However Dawkins quotes the results of surveys of the religious beliefs of
members of the Royal Society and of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences which
show that the overwhelming majority are atheists.
Much has been made by Christian apologists for the theory that the universe is so complicated that it must have had a designer. Dawkins says that the appearance of design is not evidence for it, and a designer God cannot be used to explain organised complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right.
That is,
‘Who made God?’.
For
Dawkins, God is too improbable.
No chance! The
only tenable explanation of how we come to be where we are is evolution by
natural selection which, he insists, is not a matter of chance.
Except that it works via gene mutations, which are random events
and therefore a matter of chance, most of which are deleterious.
And this is followed by the random reshuffling of chromosomes,
combined with the exchange of corresponding portions of chromosome pairs which
sometimes, randomly, break and rejoin during the process of cell
replication. So much
for natural selection having nothing to do with chance.
Nevertheless
it is the best, physical theory for explaining the process of development of the
living world. It
just doesn’t begin to explain how life started, which is one reason why we
need God.
Another
line of attack used by Dawkins is to show that we cannot get our morality from
religion, in particular, from Scripture.
He goes on a ramble through the Old Testament picking out choice examples
of immorality like Lot and his daughters, the Levite and his concubine in Judges
19, the dissembling of Abraham with his wife Sarah, and his willingness to
sacrifice Isaac, although here God was testing Abraham.
Then there was Aaron and the
golden calf, Moses and the slaughter of the Midianites, Joshua and the razing of
Jericho. Today we
would class these last two examples as ethnic cleansing; and that is what God
wanted. But it is
absurd to suggest that successive generations would take any of these examples
as rôle models for their moral behaviour.
The
New Testament fares little better in Dawkins’ hands in the search for a moral
code. He draws on
sundry authorities who assert that the commandments love thy neighbour
and do not kill referred specifically to Jews only.
But it is clear from the parable of the good Samaritan that that
is not what Jesus had in mind, for the Jewish priest and the Levite who passed
by on the other side were condemned for their lack of love for the injured
traveller. It was
surely the Ten Commandments that instilled in us our love of justice and
forbearance. The
first four refer to our relationship with God.
Next, according to Jesus the Sabbath was made for man, which translates
into meaning no one should have to work seven days a week.
Honouring one’s parents was always seen as a duty in civilised
communities. And if
people did not commit murder or adultery, or steal or lie about their fellows,
the world would be a much better place.
Finally, coveting your neighbour’s ox or donkey is always good for a
cheap joke, but fancying your neighbour’s wife or husband or partner has
caused tremendous social and economic distress.
Too
much of this book is taken up with Dawkins’ pet hobby-horses.
He
has a way with words. He
seizes on a phrase or word like consciousness-raiser or Zeitgeist and
keeps bringing it up like a cow chewing the cud and rambling on about it in a
tedious fashion that has little bearing on the subject of the existence of God.
This book will leave a nasty taste in your mouth, but it will not
discourage a committed Christian.
Brian
Newsom.