Books: The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins

[major_clanger]

Possibly the most thought-provoking book I've read this year.

I am an atheist. I don't believe in God, or gods, or supernatural forces. I have been since early in my time as an undergraduate, partly through exposure to the reasoned scepticism of some of my fellow students, and partly through reading books such as Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker. But that book, like many of its ilk, was really aimed at explaining why the Argument from Design was unnecessary and invalid for explaining the amazing complexity wrought by evolution. The God Delusion goes much further than that; Dawkins sets out to show why, in his view, belief in a Creator is not just unnecessary and superfluous but is actively wrong-headed, destructive and above all corrosive to the human spirit. Dawkins doesn't want us to admit to being atheists; he wants us to be proud of it. For, he argues, if we are not, we sell ourselves very short in the argument with those who are religious and proud of it. And why is such an argument important? Because whilst our pride as atheists should lead us to do no more than insist that we choose how we think, very often the pride of the religious drives them to insist that they choose how we think.

It would be difficult to do justice to Dawkins' arguments in anything less than an article-length essay, so I will merely commend this book in the strongest terms to you, irrespective of your religious beliefs or lack of them. I very much doubt that many people who read this will agree with all of it; in fact, I am sure that a fair few of my friends will find much to argue with. But Dawkins very clearly lays out a wide gamut of the arguments about religion; reading this book, irrespective of your beliefs, should at the very least make it a lot easier to have an informed discussion of them.

And for me? Well, having read the book, I went back to my Facebook profile and amended the hitherto carefully-left-blank 'Religious Views' slot to 'Atheist'. And whilst I haven't actually bought the T-shirt, I do now have an appropriate icon.

Comments

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

I think there are good reasons for being an atheist. As a deist, I can nonetheless see why people choose to be atheists and there are compelling arguments for it. There are also compelling arguments for being a deist, which have more to do with meaning than with ontology.

I tend to avoid Dawkins because he's too much of a polemicist and I think he erodes much of his case by attacking paper tigers, but I'm always interested to hear what other people think.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I think you would find the book interesting; he expends most of his effort on the Big Three of the Abrahamic religions, and to be frank many of the excesses committed in their names are by no means trivial.

I expected The God Delusion to make me angry - not at Dawkins, but at his targets. It actually made me thoughtful, which was not what I expected.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

No, they are not trivial. I think it's a function of a certain mentality rather than a product of religion per se, however: the Stalinist purges weren't conducted out of a religious mania, for instance.

And although the Christian church was ultimately responsible for the witch trials, the worst witch hunts in the far north of Europe were conducted where clerical influence was weakest, suggesting that in some areas, the church was a moderating influence on people's urge to gratuitously persecute their neighbours.

And to be honest, paganism isn't exempt, when one starts to consider the Nazis' peculiar Norse preoccupations.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that Dawkins's chief (though by no means only) target is unthinking faith - and you can have that outside religion, particularly in politics. You certainly had it in Nazi Germany - and many Nazis were Christian. However, currently, religion pleads a unique privilege to ignore contrary evidence. Dawkins is happy to admit that he could be wrong, and would change his mind given evidence.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

If he is genuinely happy to alter his opinion given evidence, I'm happy too - as long as his definition of what would constitute evidence doesn't change when it's inconvenient to do so. I have to say, my early encounters with Dawkins' writing (and here I'm talking about 20 years or so ago) do not make me very confident: I suspect that there's a similar mentality on both sides in this instance.

I'd be the first to condemn unthinking faith. But I'd like to see Dawkins pitted against, say, a Jesuit (has he been?) rather than the somewhat low level folk who appear - from reviews, as I have not watched the TV programmes - on the show which features him.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Dawkins claims that he much prefers educated argument, but that it seems very hard to get the likes of Jesuits or bishops to discuss religion with him in public. (He notes that there are exceptions, and in The God Delusion he is very approving of some senior religious figures he has debated with.)

He does state though that he will not now debate with Creationists, on the basis that he has never been up against one who was interested in having a genuine argument. (And I suspect he thinks, probably with good reason, that people who try to set up such debates really just want a punch-up.)

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

The trouble with Creationists is that they make a basic logical error (okay, they make many such errors): disproof of a theory is not sufficient to establish the truth of a rival theory.

Yes, there are problems with the theory of evolution (which I do espouse, BTW), but just stating that there are difficulties with it does not mean that creationism is automatically established. They still need to do the work in setting up the evidence needed for proving Creationism, and they can't do it.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I'd need to look it up,but he's been the only atheist speaker at conferences where there were a dozen Christian speakers, for instance. The Bishop of Oxford is a mate of his. He certainly tackles Aquinus, among others, in The God Delusion.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Maybe religion itself isn't the problem: have you seen this? http://www.mahablog.com/2007/08/17/essentials-altemeyers-the-authoritarians/ (more particularly, the Rule the World game)

(the Mahablogger is herself a non-theist Buddhist)

[andrewducker]

Cheers - that was fascinating!

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I must admit I'm wary of this book. With The Blind Watchmaker, he was on his home ground. The whole intelligent design thing was a denial of evolution based on a mix of good questions--life is complicated, so how could it evolve in time--and pig-ignorant answers. Dawkins was able to explain the answers.

Now he's out of his territory, and I think it shows. Science and Theology have common ground in the nature of rational argument, but I don't think Dawkins has the advantage any more.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

The whole point of the book, above all else, is that the concept of God and religion can and should be subjected to rational, scientific examination. You cannot, really, judge whether or not that argument works, or if Dawkins succeeds in doing just that, without actually reading it.

There are others with a softer approach - try Daniel Dennett - but they are making exactly the same point.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

This is the first time in my life that I have heard a deist make this, ur, ar, not concession, but to say this. I'm impressed.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

My issues with religion are much the same as atheists' issues with religion: most notably that, if there is a deity/deities, and they're supposed to be benevolent, then why do people suffer so? One is forced into positions which are, to say the least, uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, belief is not an opt-in/opt-out phenomenon. You can't choose whether you believe something, although you can choose to a certain extent whether to give it epistemological credence (I believe, but I don't know, for example).

[andrewducker]

My problem with religion is nothing to do with how nice or not nice the creator of the universe is, but purely down to what evidence there is for the existence of said being.

I'm curious as to your definition of the word "believe" above - what do you mean by it that is different from "know"? I certainly use the two fairly interchangeably. Although "believe" is a slightly lesser proposition, they're both levels of epistemological credence.

"I know that Gordon Brown is Prime Minister." versus "I believe that I left my keys on the table."

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Basically every first principle is a matter of belief. For example, "Given two points there is one and only one right line that connects them" is an example of first principle that you take as a starting point but is not amenable to demonstration - and, in fact, admits at least two geometrical systems I know of who start from a negation of the first or second part of it.

Once in a book about Wittgenstein (who goes on at incredible length about this kind of stuff, if you're interested, particularly in "On Certainty") I read this convincing argument applied to Aristotele's first principles. Aristotele IIRC didn't say that "either A or non-A" was true. He said that "whoever does not admit that cannot discourse like a man" or something to that effect. If you do not concede that either a proposition or its negation are true, there is very little rational discussion that can follow, but it is not, surprisingly, in itself a demonstrable proposition. And it can be negated - I suspect for example that any philosophy that posits the ultimate delusional nature of all reality would argue that that is a false dychotomy created by our mind.

Mvennen is right is saying that belief is a subjective fact. Back when I was in high school I had as religious teacher a very honest priest. At one point he told me (and it would have been easy for him to trump my naivete with any argument for the existence of God) that ultimately it came down to this: did I feel in my uttermost being, when say confronted with a spectacular sunset or some such, that there must be something grater than myself?

I thought it out a little and concluded that I did not. That was when I conclusively became an atheist. I do not pretend it wasn't a subjective experience, although I do think that it has good rational arguments backing it up. (There are rational arguments that are not demonstrations, but they don't carry as much conclusive power.)

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Belief shifts into knowledge when enough evidence is presented - and what the nature of this evidence is, and what constitutes 'enough' are matters for consensual agreement within the scientific community.

I don't have enough evidence to convince an atheist of the existence of deity. I have enough evidence to convince *me*, but that's more a question of context and meaning - for anyone who wants to explore this more, there's an interesting text on paganism by an anthropologist called Luhrmann, who joined a couple of covens to investigate pagan belief. She came to the conclusion - which I think is fair - that pagans, like members of other religious belief systems, construct realities for themselves which are highly meaningful, but not open to objective justification.

This is why I don't like dogmatic people. I don't think there's any objective justification for one's spiritual path other than the attempt to make sense of one's own life in what may best be described as a Romantic tradition. But there are subjective justifications - the perception of synchronicities and coincidences, for instance, which serve to shore up belief.

Ultimately, however, I can't just stop believing. In ways, I wish I could. I'm in the odd position of being a deist pagan who has a doctorate in epistemology: I end up being convinced - ultimately - by neither relativism or absolutism, whilst remaining an instinctive absolutist. Scientifically? - if one wanted to pin a label on me, I'd be happy to be described as an empiricist.

[andrewducker]

I actually have very little problem with gnostics - if I hit a certain level of evidence then I'd believe. I have a few friends who have had experiences that caused them to believe in what seem to me to be terribly wierd/whacky things, but I certainly can't blame them for believing them. My problem is largely with people that believe based on hearsay that's not backed up by anything - and this clearly doesn't include you :->

[andrewducker]

If you do not concede that either a proposition or its negation are true, there is very little rational discussion that can follow
A terribly old-fashioned viewpoint that is clearly not true. Take the proposition "The sea is green" - it's not true _or_ false, but rather somewhere in-between. Simple Aristotalean logic is very handy if you're happy to ignore the fact that the universe is much fuzzier and more complex than ontologies can deal with.

did I feel in my uttermost being, when say confronted with a spectacular sunset or some such, that there must be something grater than myself?
As some people would, and some wouldn't, I'd argue that this particular proof tells you rather more about the person perceiving the sunset than it does about the sunset itself - and also that proceeding from "The sunset makes me feel awed and humble." to "There is a God who created the world in seven days and sent his only son to save us all." requires the odd leap in the middle of the argument.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

My problems with theism are three:

A) Whether there is a non-physical existence;
B) What we can infer about the nature or wishes of such entities or entity;
C) How can such an entity, even given that we can establish that it is in fact the Judeo-Christian God, be both omniscient, omnipotent AND benevolent

I think the first point is a matter of personal subjective credence. I have more serious problems with points B and C.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

There are also, of course, the evolutionary and cognitive arguments about the origins of religion. Some, particularly, Boyer's and Mithen's come close to being convincing alternatives to the existence of the supernatural, though as yet neither could be said to have proved their respective points. The current consensus seems to be that religion is a function of our need to talk to everything, including to ourselves and others who cannot hear us, including imaginary friends, gods and ancestors (we are, to paraphrase Pinker, the animal that uses grammar)and being evolved to react to everything as though it had purpose (because that is a survival plus point - waiting around to decide if something has evil purpose is not a good survival strategy.)