Delusions and Divisions

I just finished reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. (Houghton Mifflin, 2006).  Dawkins is an Oxford don who specializes in evolutionary biology.  He is also perhaps the world’s most outspoken and notorious atheist. 

Dawkins has authored many popular books championing Darwinian evolution.  Probably his best known are The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker.  The God Delusion, however, is something quite different.  Instead of merely arguing the scientific evidence in favor of Darwinian evolution, as he does in his other books, Dawkins makes a frontal, take-no-prisoners assault on religion.  Not just extreme forms of religion, not just on simplistic, literalistic fundamentalist forms of religion, not even just on Christianity, but on all forms of religion.

Dawkins is, so to speak, one of the founders of the so-called “new atheism.”  There is of course nothing new at all about atheism; it has been around for centuries.  But it has mostly been the subject of rather austere philosophical discussions unknown to most people.  In contrast, the “new atheists” are known primarily for an absolutist, no-holds-barred, in-your-face approach to atheism.  And their books have been best sellers.

Dawkins’ minimum goal with this book is to make the world safe for atheists; his maximum goal is to convert as many people away from belief in God and ideally to do away with religion altogether.  It’s a rather odd goal, don’t you think, “to make the world safe for atheism.”  He seems to have a kind of persecution complex.  In his world, the deck is stacked against atheists.  This might make many religious believers laugh ironically, because they are likely to feel that the deck is stacked against them in this highly secular modern world of ours.  Which is it? 

Is modern culture pro-God or pro-atheist?  I think the answer depends on where you look.  If you look primarily at the private lives of people living in the heartland of the United States, it may seem reasonable to view the world as anti-atheist.  Dawkins points to several anecdotes where children were denounced and rejected by their parents for declaring their conversion to atheism.  On the other hand, if you look at the dual coasts of the United States, and particularly at the ruling intellectual classes in this country (e.g., academia, and especially the main media organs), you are likely to find the direct opposite:  secularism reigns supreme and religion is looked upon with distaste and suspicion.

I have nothing against atheists.  As a skeptic by nature and a former agnostic myself, I view certain types of atheism as a perfectly reasonable approach intellectually in trying to make sense of the world.  I honestly do not understand the antipathy that many people feel toward anyone who declares himself an atheist (as opposed to, say, merely non-religious).  I certainly cannot and do not expect others to have the same experiences that I have had that have convinced me of the reality of God.  And if I had not had those experiences, it’s quite possible that I might have embraced atheism myself by this point in my life.

What I find intolerable in the Dawkins approach to “militant atheism,” however, is the arrogant mockery of all forms of belief.  For example, he quotes approvingly from Robert M. Pirsig, (author of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”):  “When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity.  When many people suffer from a delusion is it is called Religion.”  Dawkins then goes on:

If this books works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down. . . . Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature. . . .  Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan.

This is pure mockery, and throughout the book Dawkins demonstrates an absolute unwillingness to seriously engage any religious ideas.  It’s not entirely clear whom he would identify as “dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads.”  Presumably they are people with little education or critical intelligence.  Doubtless there are many such people in the world, but he seems to suppose that all or most believers would fit into that category.  Dawkins is known for making such statements as:  "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."

He has even called for fellow atheists to mock and ridicule believers in public – presumably to shame them into abandoning their faith.  It seems like a rather counterproductive way of trying to persuade people of your views.

It is worth noting that Dawkins et al. have been criticized sharply even by fellow atheists for this approach, which seems designed to alienate anyone who doesn’t already agree with them.  Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science, has written [here], that the new atheists have done great harm even to their own causes of science and atheism:

The new atheists do the side of science a grave disservice. . . .  These people do a disservice to scholarship. . . .  Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course.  Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing. . . .  I am indignant at the poor quality of the argumentation in Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and all of the others in that group. . . .  The new atheists are doing terrible political damage to the cause of Creationism fighting.   Americans are religious people. . . .  They want to be science-friendly, although it is certainly true that many have been seduced by the Creationists.  We evolutionists have got to speak to these people.  We have got to show them that Darwinism is their friend not their enemy.  We have got to get them onside when it comes to science in the classroom.  And criticizing good men like Francis Collins, accusing them of fanaticism, is just not going to do the job. Nor is criticizing everyone, like me, who wants to build a bridge to believers – not accepting the beliefs, but willing to respect someone who does have them. . . .  The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist. . . .  They are a bloody disaster. . . .

In line with his utter lack of respect for anything that remotely resembles religious faith, Dawkins focuses nearly all his attention on the most extreme forms of Christian (and Muslim) fundamentalism and biblical literalism.  The examples he provides of the evils of religion are the most attackable aspects of religion:  the former televangelist Oral Roberts, for example, who once persuaded his audience to give him $8 million to prevent God from striking him dead!  Or the violent extremism of modern Islamist terrorists.  These are hardly representative of the wide range of religious beliefs in today’s world.  Yet he insists that he is opposed not only to extremism and fundamentalism, but to all forms of religion, no matter how moderate.

He is completely dismissive of (and for the most part completely ignores) all intellectually sophisticated analyses of the Bible or religion.  One exception to this is his superficial analysis of the traditional philosophical arguments on the existence of God, which he dismisses with such descriptions as “vacuous,” “infantile,” and “perniciously misleading.”  His own argument  against the existence of God, on the other hand, he describes as “unanswerable.”  Really?

In sum, The God Delusion is a remarkably poor book.  I am certainly not alone in this viewpoint.

Even his reviewer in the New York Review of Books [here], no bastion of conservative Christianity, concluded that “despite my admiration for much of Dawkins’s work,” The God Delusion is “badly flawed.”  “Though I once labeled Dawkins as a professional atheist,” he writes, “I’m forced, after reading his new book, to concede he’s actually more an amateur.” 

One of the reasons I have discussed this rather poorly argued book at such length is that I believe it should give believers a certain degree of comfort to know that a very intelligent man who was intent on disabusing them of their faith could not do a better job.  (I daresay I might have done a better job myself if I chose to write as a pure skeptic!)  Are there other books on this topic that compare favorably to The God Delusion? Not that I’m aware, if one is considering only direct, polemical attacks on religion.  Christopher Hitchens, in God is not Great, and Sam Harris, in The End of Faith, attempted to launch similar direct attacks, but their efforts are equally superficial as Dawkins’s.  To be sure, there are many other types of more respectable books that attempt to undermine religious faith more indirectly, arguing, for example, that religions are simply human cultural inventions.  A well-known example of this approach is Daniel C. Dennett’s  Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.  (Dennett is often linked to the other New Atheists, but his is a much more moderate approach.)

However, there is another reason why I consider Dawkins and others of his ilk to be particularly pernicious and therefore worth discussing.  Not in their atheism per se, which as a philosophical position is fairly harmless.  No, what is most disturbing about this absolutist approach is how they create unnecessary divisions in society. 

As is becoming increasingly apparent (particularly from the current political cycle!) is that the U.S. is becoming a highly polarized environment – not only politically, but also culturally.  I believe that the political and cultural aspects are closely related to each other, and that they both flow in great part from the modern tendency to view science incorrectly as anti-religion and anti-God.  The common wisdom is that the supposed “war” over science and religion began with the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species.  Supposedly the majority of Christians blindly refused to accept the truth of Darwinism because it contradicted the Bible, and that since then they have become even more blind and more adamant in their obscurantist views, while the scientists have bravely and nobly maintained the truth of evolution and science.  But that is a gross oversimplification – i.e., bad history.

In fact, the divisions between scientists and religionists in the 19^th century were by no means clear cut.  There were many Christian leaders and thinkers in the Victorian Age who not only accepted but endorsed Darwinism, and there were many scientists who rejected it.  More importantly, it was in great part the pro-evolutionists who began to portray themselves as being in a war with Christianity rather than the other way around.  (I hope to discuss this period in a future blog – stay tuned!)

Unfortunately, the myth of the noble fight of science against the religious forces of obfuscation has become so prevalent since the middle of the 20^th century that everyone takes it for an absolute truth, and as a result the battle lines have become hardened on both sides.  As a result, there are too many scientists who assume, uncritically, that there is no way for them to validate any form of belief in God.  (This is beginning to change, but only barely).  Likewise, there are too many believers today who accept the false assumption that there is no way for them to accept both the Bible and science.  Because (they suppose) they cannot be religious and accept the conclusions of science, they prefer to hold on to their religion, which gives meaning to their lives, and reject science. 

Dawkins tells the story of a young man who obtained a degree in geology from the University of  Chicago and then a doctorate in the same subject from Harvard.  He was a promising student who dreamed of teaching and doing research in his chosen field.  Then, as Dawkins tells the story, “tragedy struck.”

It came, not from the outside but from within his own mind, a mind fatally subverted and weakened by a fundamentalist religious upbringing that required him to believe that the Earth . . . was less than ten thousand years old.  He was too intelligent not to recognize the head-on collision between his religion and his science, and the conflict in his mind made him increasingly uneasy.  One day, he could bear the strain no more, and he clinched the matter with a pair of scissors.  He took a bible and went right through it, literally cutting out every verse that would have to go if the scientific world-view were true.  At the end of this ruthlessly honest . . . exercise, there was so little left of his bible that [as he realized]  “I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture.  Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible . . .  It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution.  With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science.”

Like Dawkins, I too consider this outcome a tragedy for the young man – but not for the same reason as Dawkins.  Dawkins, of course, saw the tragedy in the fact that he had been indoctrinated as a youth as a Christian, which led him to abandon his science (and all rationality!) for the Bible.  For me the tragedy lies in the fact that he ever felt it necessary to choose between science and religion – that he had to abandon science for religion or vice versa.  Thousands of other people in the midst of a faith crisis have come to the conclusion that both science and religion can, at least to some extent, be brought together, and that the inherent tension between the two is actually valuable.  Unfortunately, this young man had the view that there was an unbridgeable gulf between the two.  Doubtless he had been brought up to have that view by religious parents, but he may also have been essentially indoctrinated in similar fashion by his science teachers.

We might wonder if he was aware of the many scientists in the world who have been and are believers in God and religion.  If we suppose that his parents indoctrinated him into an absolutist, no-compromise view of the bible, we must realize that that attitude on the part of many fundamentalists developed in great part as a result of the polarization that began in the 19^th century and subsequently took off in even more extreme form in the 20^th century.  There are countless examples from history of growing polarization between groups on intellectual grounds, as one side argues against the other, then has to exaggerate its own ideas in order to strengthen its own arguments against its opponents.  The opponents then must do likewise, of course, and the first group must then counter with even more extreme arguments, until they have completely talked themselves into positions of total and absolute opposition.  This unnecessary enmity has resulted in a strong streak of anti-intellectualism in our society, which is quite harmful, both to the individuals involved and to society as a whole. 

“The God Delusion” was published by a major publishing house and was a best seller.  Books by the other new atheist writers have likewise sold very well, while serious critiques of their books have received much less attention.  To the extent that people are at all aware of attempts to present opposing views, it usually comes in the unproductive context of confrontational televised debates.   Our modern commercial media love confrontation, but such debates (including the countless political debates foisted on us!) are rarely informative and rarely result in anyone changing his or her views.  What they do do is to heighten the sense of opposition, enmity, and polarization in our society.  This is a pernicious influence.  As one of our better-known presidents once said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”