I just finished reading Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. Let me start by saying that I quite enjoyed the book. That said, I'm not sure I had the same reaction to it that most others would have.
Richard Dawkins's book could have easily been titled, "Well, That About Wraps It Up For God." Dawkins, in a few hundred pages, obliterates all of the major arguments for religion. All of his reasoning has been presented by others many times before. However, Dawkins either restates or quotes others as appropriate to make The God Delusion a one-stop-shop refutation of god and religion.
I suspect that, for those people just crawling out from under the smothering blanket of religion, Dawkins's book elicits euphoria. When the contradictions of religion are so plainly exposed, the conflicted proto-atheist's cognitive dissonance melts away.
I remember what this sense of liberation felt like when I first felt it, even though my early christian indoctrination was far from complete (a topic of a future post). I can only imagine the high that a reformed baptist must feel. I imagine it would be like a Quentin Tarantino-style happy ending to 1984:
O'Brian: "Until you accept that 2+2=5, there can be no hope for you, Winston. Tell me, what does two plus two equal?"
Winston: "Two plus two equals. . ."
Samuel L. Jackson: "Two plus two equals FOUR, motherfucker!" *pistol whips O'Brian*
Okay, so perhaps that's a not quite how a reformed baptist would feel. Sadly, a reformed baptist probably faces ostracism from the people he loves: family and former fellow church goers alike. But the fact that many people are willing to choose ostracism over continued cognitive dissonance should be an indicator that there is some benefit.
But I've been an atheist for a long time time. Its novelty has worn off. I don't get the high anymore. I don't define myself in terms of being "non-christian" any more than I define myself in terms of being "non-french-poodle." Not believing in god isn't something I think about. I just don't believe.
What Dawkins's book did for me was to remind me of my obligations:
1. I have an obligation to myself to defend my human freedoms from those who seek to legislate religion.
2. I have an obligation to support other non-believing individuals by publicly identifying myself as a kindred non-believer.
3. I have an obligation to society to actively oppose any dogmatic belief that threatens my society's survival, or which threatens the quality of life for members of my society.
Maybe someone can help me come up with a better list of non-believers' obligations?
Dawkins points out that theocracy is waxing in many parts of the world: including the US, UK, and pretty much all of the muslim world. This cannot be allowed to stand. He also points out that atheists aren't as small a group as many people think. We might just have a bit more political power if we were to stand up for ourselves.
I suspect that many longer-term atheists such as myself are largely complacent. Most of us just don't find religion, or those who would argue for it, very interesting or engaging. Some of us have probably been cowed by the social pressure that teaches us that religion should be inherently respected, even if we don't believe in it. So, we are content to say nothing, or allow the younger atheists to say it for us in ways that aren't always productive.
So, for those who know me, it's no shocker that I've been an atheist for a long time. For those who don't, let there be no doubt: I'm a rational atheist and intend to remain so until overwhelming scientific evidence says I should be otherwise.
I'm still working out how best to oppose the rising political theocracy in my nation of birth.
Monday, January 29, 2007
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5 comments:
However you decide to oppose the theocracy, I will take up arms at your side. Huzzah!
Thanks, I knew I could count on you, Devin. I think probably the best way to oppose the rising theocracy is to get rational thought into the hands of indoctrinated children.
I think part of the problem is the separation of american society. As society divides itself up into smaller and smaller insulated enclaves, it becomes harder to inject sanity into these groups.
The christian right has been doing everything they can to drop out of secular society. Now they are big enough that they're no longer content to isolate their kids by homeschooling them. They are trying to move their pre-enlightenment thought back into mainstream secular society.
Unfortunately, liberals have been (perhaps too) ready to protect the liberties of those who would seek to curtail liberty for all.
My friend over at Antibogon has, in the best spirit of blogging, aggregated a number of links and provided eloquent commentary on American neo-fascism.
Dawkins makes it too easy for himself; His dismissal of the argument from design is based on the fact that it simply and un-necessarily pushes back the causal question. “If God created the universe, then what created God?” But he fails to address the fact that on can similarly ask “if physics explains the unfolding universe, then what explains (or causes) physics?”
The answer that physics is itself uncaused (or that it causes or explains itself) is no more satisfactory that the conclusion of the argument or design that god is an uncaused first cause or prime mover.
He bases his borderline atheism on the unlikeliness of god’s existence, but he glosses over the fact that time; space matter energy and DNA are all extremely “unlikely”.
Imagine if, instead of arguing for the implausibility of god, he were arguing for the unlikeliness of good, evil, beauty, love etc (all of these are interchangeable when it comes to scientific basis or lack thereof).
There are plenty of concepts which exist (even, one would imagine, for him) which cannot be explained in scientific terms.
…or are Dawkins and the rest of the Penthean reductionists really prepared to follow the death of {notions which cannot be explained by science} all the way down the rabbit hole.
We’ve come a long way from let Newton be and all was light; scientific absolutism has taken its share of hits over the years, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, Cantors theory of non-denumerability, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle all chipped away at science’s conviction.
Every proof for the existence of god has been shown to be either unsound or invalid…true, but so has every proof of causality in general.
Anonymous, I think that Dawkins actually did do a reasonably good job of addressing the question of causality.
No, he didn't give a cause for the origins of the universe. No, he didn't give an explanation for the origins of physics. He didn't need to. The intent of the argument was to illustrate the flaw in the theist argument of causality (i.e. that god caused the universe).
He was rather honest in saying that we don't have the answer to what caused the universe. His argument is that, if you are going to hypothesize a cause for the universe, god is a pretty unwieldy and complex hypothesis.
Dawkins didn't argue that we fully know the origins of the universe. Nor does he attempt to prove that god couldn't have done created. He's merely pointing out that the god theory is highly unlikely and would require an exceptional amount of evidence to prove--more evidence than other natural explanations.
Incidentally, Carl Sagan presented an example of the type of evidence that would be required to prove the existence of god in his book Contact (sadly, the whole concept was left out of the movie).
Here's the spoiler: The hyper intelligent aliens turn the protagonist onto the idea that they've found non-random, intentional sequences of numbers in another number similar to pi.
That's the best hypothetical proof for god I've ever heard--presented by one of the most respected atheists of all time.
If we ever find a message encoded in the mathematical constants of the universe, I'll be the first to admit that there was probably some intelligent design going on in our universe.
Despite what is such an obvious way for god to prove himself to us (much more convincing than a burning bush), the christian fundamentalists don't seem to hold much stock in math...
As for scientific absolutism, I'm not sure that the term isn't an oxymoron. Honest scientists value doubt more than conclusions. There are many things that aren't currently understood in scientific terms. That doesn't mean that they can't ever be.
That's why we have science: to keep asking the questions. Anything else is just a wild-assed guess. Tell me, why is Zoroastrianism a less credible hypothesis than Christianity again?
Nope, science is a framework for objective discovery. Any idiot can invent fiction and present it as fact.
The problem I've always had as an athiest isthat I cannot mannage to take religion of any sort seriously - at least intellectually. Certainly religion is an important social phenomenon. It is just that intellectually any religion is little more than an elaborated off shoot of astrology.
The point missed by anonymous is that rationality and its intellectual child, science, is progressive and offers testable and refutable arguements. With theism all discussion stops with the word god and backs up as various thiestic imaginings become unquestionable dogma.
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