Richard Dawkins is an atheist; proudly so.
In his book, “The God Delusion”, he sets out first to demonstrate that there is no God and then to show that organised religion continues to be what it has often been in the past: damaging to individuals and society at large.
I agree with much of what Dawkins writes, but not all.
Me
I’m an evangelical Christian. “Evangelical” means “Bible-based”, so I base what I believe and what I do on the Bible. “Christian” means I’m saved from hell by having Jesus take my punishment for me; because Jesus is God, I’m forgiven for my sins but justice is still served.
So why read Dawkins?
I believe what I believe quite firmly, and I’m convinced that if it is true then it should certainly be able to stand up to intellectual attack however well structured and informed such an attack may be.
With that in mind, I wanted to see what Dawkins was writing to think through for myself what it might mean, and to see how strong were the arguments that would lead someone to be so assertively atheistic.
How can you know there is a God?
Dawkins case boils down to the assertion that there are three principal reasons for believing that there might be a God. If you can demonstrate that each of the three reasons is flawed then you have removed the dependence on (and, by association, evidence for) a God, irrespective of religion.
So (Dawkins tells us), the three reasons for believing in a God are:
Logic
Some thinkers over the centuries have concocted intellectual arguments that “prove” there is a God.
Dawkins has a bit of fun at their expense by drawing out the weaknesses inherent in such logic.
For the most part, I confess I’m with Dawkins in much of this area. Some of the “proofs” are simply embarrassing, and certainly do nothing to describe what kind of God there may be.
The conclusion is that logic is a poor tool to use to “prove” that there is a God and it’s folly to try.
Interestingly, the existence of The God Delusion is using logic to “prove” that God doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
For me, logic neither proves nor disproves anything.
Human experience
Many people believe there is a God because of some spiritual experience they may have had.
I’d summarize Dawkins’ response in the words of the late Kirsty McColl: “There’s a guy works down the chipshop swears he’s Elvis”. People can convince themselves that they are Ghengis Khan, Julius Caesar, or Christ. We can all delude ourselves into believing all sorts of things, and have a tendency to personalise things we can’t understand.
The problem with this is that Dawkins is suggesting that people all across the globe have been similarly confused, and that only the atheistic intelligentsia have truly seen the light. I’d suggest that there is a great deal not understood about our world that spiritists, mediums, cults, priests, witch-doctors and countless other people around the globe have some experience of, or insight into. There is a spiritual reality as real as the world around us that we know.
From a Christian point of view that point leaves unanswered the question, “How can we know Christianity is true?” but that’s not the point in question here. (The answer to that question lies, as it does for all religions, in the veracity of the holy book.)
So, Dawkins position of “I’m right and you and you and you and… and you are all wrong” is as intellectually arrogant as it is fatally flawed.
The Universe
This is the only argument he credits with any merit, due to the “illusion of design” suggesting the presence of a designer.
Dawkins provides a brief but eloquent explanation of how the process of evolution is actually good enough to generate the illusion of design over time.
Clearly that process has to reach back in time to a specific point where life began. Dawkins uses the “anthropic principle” to say that although such an event is extremely unlikely, it is nonetheless possible. Given 11 billion years, it becomes more than possible, even probable given the right conditions, and the right conditions are bound to exist somewhere in space because it’s so astonishingly huge.
The very fact that we are here suggests that it happened at least once.
So, if the illusion of design can be explained sufficiently by natural selection and the anthropic principle, you don’t need a notion of a “God” to explain how we all came about. Therefore (he suggests), there is no God. At least, it’s extremely unlikely that there is a God.
You don’t need there to be a God to explain why you’re here. If there is a God, he is so breath-takingly complex then his existence is even less likely than an event under the anthropic principle.
The Anthropic principle must happen at least once; we are here, therefore it happened once. (I confess a slight confusion at this point. The Anthropic Principle would result from some quantum event which, I understand, would require an observer to collapse the probabilities. Who observed it? If there is no God, then the multiverse theories must kick in so that we are just on the edge of a probability curve - but my knowledge is too scant on this to comment further.)
The existence of God remains a true/false question. Dawkins admits in his chapter title that even if you agree with him that still doesn’t actually prove that God doesn’t exist.
Dawkins reckons that if God did exist he would need to be incredibly complex; incredibly far-reaching into every corner of the universe; outside of time. Such a God would be as capable of creating the universe in an instant as he would of bringing it all into being and setting it off 13 billion years ago.
Dawkins logic leads us to the point that it seems incredible that there is a God, but if there were a God then he would have many of the attributes credited to him by Christians.
Dawkins takes the fact that we are here as proof that the improbable anthropic principle held true. There is a parallel argument that could say that the fact that we are here may be taken as proof of the highly improbable assertion that there is a God.
“You give me an improbable but possible version of reality. I give you an alternative improbable but possible version of reality that I find easier to believe. Therefore, you are wrong.”
Dawkins can say this to a Creationist, just as a Creationist can say that to Dawkins.
A Game of Reciprocal Improbabilities:
Player A points out how improbable Player B’s theory is, and then provides an alternative possible, improbable solution which, by its very existence, negates Player B’s theory outright.
Who wants to go first? Atheist or Creatonist?
The Game puts an uncomfortable spotlight on the entire premise that logic and reason are sufficient tools to settle the question of God’s existence. If there were a God, that fact would immediately present a version of reality outside of our understanding, so why should the toolset of this world be considered suitable for analysing the existence or otherwise of another, spiritual world? We can no more employ human reasoning to assess spiritual reality than we can use Newtonian mechanics to analyse sub-atomic activity.
Religion
Over half of the God Delusion book is devoted to trashing the damaging results of religion and much of Dawkins’ writing is true; he give heart-wrenching stories of people being crushed by dangerously stupid religious zealots.
Many terrible things have been done in the name of Christianity for centuries past, and I won’t begin to defend them. Jesus spoke of it when he said, “many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ and I will say, ‘Away from me, I never knew you.’”
Christianity is a term that encompasses all sorts of weird and dangerous stuff, but true Biblical Christianity is about a relationship with God; religious form (church, praying, Bible reading) are after the event and are about wanting to know God better. The damage is done by people who love the religion without having a real relationship with God (at least, not one he reciprocates).
If you think organised religion is damaging or has actually damaged you, then remember this: Jesus said, “come to me you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” Stupid, wicked people hiding behind a religious veneer may have hurt you, but not so with God.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes on him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
