A Bad Idea?: October 1517 Archives
Richard Dawkins is brilliant, educated, credentialed, articulate and persuasive, and consequently so is his book "The God Delusion". If you are an atheist looking for some scientific criticisms of the concept of God, this book is for you. If you are a Christian, wondering what 'they' have come up with lately, this book will also interest you. On the other hand, if you are a seeker of truth - the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" - there is little here of value.
Dawkins presents this book as a scientific work, written as a scientist. Yet the domain of science is the natural world, not a supernatural one. Science has nothing meaningful to say, now and for the foreseeable future, in the domain of theology. A scientist would know this. Still, to be fair, Dawkins was trained as a Zoologist who earned a D.Sc. (a curious scientific degree that seems to be left over from the Enlightenment), and his field is not constrained by the rigors of logic and mathematics, as is physics, chemistry, cosmology, etc. That's why some say it's not properly called a science at all; rather a craft. I loved "The Selfish Gene", but now I find myself embarrassed for him.
What little science there is in this book comes from the study of animals. To Dawkins, man is merely an extremely sophisticated animal endowed only with more; more intelligence, more language, more tools, etc. To those who believe in God, man is not merely an animal for he is endowed with a soul. Dawkins may be right that we have no souls and are only animals, but this is not a scientific fact; it can't even become a valid scientific question. In any event, knowledge of the animal kingdom can only take one so far when it's applied to humans.
Looking underneath Dawkins' pseudoscience, I found a pervasive sentiment; rebellion. To be a Christian, I must acknowledge that I fall short of what's required of me by God; I am a sinner. If I can't tolerate the idea of being a sinner, I have only 2 choices. One, do no sin, which is difficult if not impossible. Or, reject God and thereby reject the rules which label me a sinner. Once there is no such thing as sin, there can be no sinner. This is an atheist's freedom. And their power? Once there is no God, there can be no revelation, leaving it to the individual atheist to be the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong in the universe. This is, of course, a violation of the 1st commandment: 'I am the Lord God. Not you.' Now that's a lot of freedom, and a lot of power; it's no wonder folks like Dawkins find atheism so seductive.
Intellectually, atheism is one answer to a perennial question; if not God, what? There is no demonstrably correct answer to this question so it ends up as a matter of opinion, or perhaps choice.
Historically, you won't find many atheistic cultures; they don't seem to last. The few that have tried it barley made it a century or 2. In Dawkins' terms, atheism seems to be selected against, and the route they take is pretty clear: Since there is no God, there can be no 'personal' afterlife, so the greatest possible evil to befall a person is death. Once a society no longer holds values worth dying for, it's hard for its members to see why they should sacrifice anything at all. And why should they? In those utterly human moments when we ask, "Is this all there is?", the atheist's answer is "There is nothing more than you. So yes, this is all there is." Not a very satisfying answer, is it?
Anyway, this book is a lucid presentation of Dawkins' beliefs, and as such is an excellent read. Just don't expect too much enlightenment from it, and don't expect any science.
"Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." George Washington
Fun Facts to know and share:
From 2001 thru 2003, while ORACLE's stock lost %54 of its value, CEO Larry Ellison's total compensation was $746,748,000.
As of June 30, 2006, there was $36,593,331,930 worth of US coins in circulation.
In 2005, when the GNP was $12.4 trillion, the Chicago Board of Trade traded over $45,000,000,000,000 ($45 trillion) worth of Federal Government Debt.
