Having said all this, there were issues of import buried beneath the invective; the pity of this program was that the legitimate criticisms and concerns Dawkins articulated were shouted down by his own loud and bitter polemic. The parade of fundamentalists, bigots, and isolationists whom Dawkins paraded before the camera did serve to remind all people - but especially people of faith - of the dangers posed by arrogance, hubris, and conceit. But the underlying premises upon which Dawkins operated - that the phrase "intelligent person of faith" is an oxymoron, and that religion actually has anything to do with God - not only portray his own bigotry, but undermine the valid points he did raise.
So, what were my impressions of this program? Briefly, my thoughts below:
- Dawkins focused on the "easy targets". As indicated above, Dawkins paraded one extremist after another before the cameras in order to buttress his argument that religion is not only a nest of rabid radicals, but that it breeds generation after generation of the same. Perhaps more significantly, he only presented one "moderate" in more than two hours of television - the Anglican Bishop of Oxford. In other words, Dawkins made no attempt to seek out or present the views of moderates who would provide countervailing evidence to his central thesis. Hardly what you'd call intellectual honesty from someone who spends a lot of time banging on about his reasoned atheism; but, more disturbingly, it is indicative of an intellectual laziness that does both science and faith a grave disservice.
- Dawkins tarred everyone with the same brush. Related to the above point, the effect of Dawkins' slanted presentation was to tar all persons of faith with the same brush: not only are we ignorant fools believing absurd fairy tales, we're actually incapable of both reasoned analysis and/or reasoned behaviour. In short, we're all potentially dangerous, potentially violent, and certainly imbecilic, irrationals. Not only is this supposition patently false and offensive, it is indicative again of Dawkins' own intellectual laziness and bigotry.
- Dawkins made no reference to the debate between moderates and fundamentalists. Conveniently for Dawkins' presentation of all persons of faith as irrational extremists, he made no reference to the strong and ongoing debate within all faiths between moderates who see faith as a process of growth, exploration, and freedom, and those fundamentalists who regard faith as a matter of rules, fear, and obedience. The significance of this is that Dawkins can't actually show that many millions of people are not the wild-eyed berserkers he portrays them to be, or that they are engaged in an ongoing effort to prevent faith from being hijacked by extremists - because if he did, his whole thesis would collapse. In other words, Dawkins was intellectually dishonest by omission.
- Science and faith. Related to the above point, Dawkins was very careful not to present those scientists who are not only people of faith, they are actually confirmed in that faith by their work as scientists. In part, this is because Dawkins wants to present science (and scientists) as a field (and people) free from the "infection" of faith; but mostly because Dawkins wants to present science and faith as diametrically opposed to one another, because that suits his purpose of presenting science as reason and faith as irrationality. But he makes no mention of prominent scientists like Paul Davies who are definitely theists; nor does he mention the contributions to science made by Father Angelo Secchi SJ, for example; nor does he even acknowledge that the modern science of paleontology was effectively founded by English country parsons who were passionate about natural theology! Interestingly, he did not even make mention of the observation by fellow physicist and atheist Stephen Hawking that the only people who agree with him these days are theologians.
- Confusion of terms. Dawkins seems incapable of understanding that faith does not involve a "suspension of disbelief" as he contends, but does involve the necessity of holding different concepts or perspectives in tension. In other words, at its core, faith is a mystery, and the essence of all mysteries is a preparedness to embrace ambiguity, to enter into that which cannot be empirically known. Christians (or Jews or Muslims) cannot "prove" God exists any more than atheists can "prove" God doesn't exist; but this does not involve a suspension of disbelief, it involves holding in tension what can be empirically proven and what can be spiritually experienced.
- Confusing religion with God. As noted above, one of the mistakes Dawkins makes is to imagine religion has anything to do with God. In other words, Dawkins seems to suggest that the extreme elements within religion demonstrate that God does not exist by virtue of the very irrationality of those extremisms. Aside from being circular arguing, and aside also from the fact that since he cannot actually prove God doesn't exist Dawkins is reduced to attacking religion as a proxy for God, Dawkins cannot seem to appreciate that religion is not about God or from God; rather, it is the human response to God and the possibility of God. Therefore, that there are flaws within religion - as within any other human endeavour, such as science - is only to be expected. But those flaws say nothing about God, nor even about whether or not God exists.
- Intellectual fraud. Despite Dawkins' protestations that science is the realm of reason and enlightenment, science is replete with cases of intellectual fraud. Among these are the notorious Piltdown Man, cold nuclear fusion, and molecular scale transistors. Happily, these were exposed by other scientists, pointing to one of the strengths of the scientific method: peer review and review committees. But the mere fact of these frauds demonstrates that Dawkins' contention that there is something about religion which is inherently dishonest and which promotes intellectual dishonesty is itself completely dishonest.
- The basis for belief. Dawkins asserts that persons of faith simply "make a decision to believe" in the existence of God or the veracity of scriptural texts. This gross generalisation betrays Dawkins' complete ignorance about the process by which people come to faith; he seems to assume that people just wake up one day and decide that they will believe in God or accept a particular text as authoritative. But for many people, the process that leads to belief is painful or traumatic, precisely because they don't want to believe in God, but some inner conviction militates against this, no matter how hard they try to ignore it. It only requires a careful reading of C S Lewis' Surprised by Joy to appreciate how utterly absurd Dawkins' flippant remark in this respect is.
- Selectivity. Dawkins accuses moderates of "fence sitting" and selective use of scriptural texts to reinforce their delusions of intellectual respectability. But this is exactly what Dawkins does to reinforce his gripes against faith: he selects those passages from the Bible that speak about killing and death and capital punishment to justify his claim that God is a vicious, homicidal fiction. Curiously, he never mentions the 2,000-odd references to justice for the poor and marginalised that Christ spoke in the Gospels; or the many passages in the Books of Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, or Micah which condemn the powerful for victimising the helpless. Ultimately - and ironically - what Dawkins' does is replicate the same mistake the fundamentalists make: he selectively hurls proof texts at his opponents to justify his own prejudices.
- Reason for belief. Dawkins asserts that people of faith venerate scriptures that teach hate; that they stubbornly and intransigently indulge in hidebound belief for belief's sake; and that people should do good things for their own sake instead of because they want to suck up to God. Once again, all these bigoted statements do is highlight Dawkins' own ignorance of the religious impulse. With the exception of literalist fundamentalists, persons of faith do not venerate scriptures of their own accord; that would be idolatry, raising those scriptures to the same level of God. Scriptures are "venerated" because they form authoritative texts depicting the human response to the possibilities of God throughout human history. Moreover, belief is not indulged in for its own sake; it is an approach to life, an approach that encompasses moral, theological, rational, and social dimensions that are reflective of the relationship between humanity and the divine. Finally, "sucking up to God" simply is not the reason most people of faith act morally; they do so because they believe it reflects the love which God has for humanity. "Sucking up" is simply Dawkins' puerile and childish attempt to denigrate this sense of the human-divine relationship.
Was there anything in Dawkins' program that was legitimate? Yes; he made a number of important observations about the distortions and abuses of faith that must be guarded against: intellectual dishonesty; authoritarianism and isolationism; the corporatisation of faith; the hijacking of faith by nationalism; the failure to act decisively against the abuse of children; arrogance and self-righteousness. But these are abuses and distortions are not limited to faith; they are dangers that are latent within any human enterprise. More importantly, Dawkins' ranting and self-important posturing only serves to undermine the legitimate criticisms he does make. Combined with his own methodological laziness and intellectual dishonesty, they make for an end product that comes over more like a childish rant than a reasoned or considered critique.
More's the pity.
Talk to you soon,
BB.
Quote for the Day: A fanatic is someone who sticks to his guns, regardless of whether they're loaded or not. (Franklin P. Jones)
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