God in the dock

"The God Delusion" has become Richard Dawkins' most famous, infamous and notorious book. It's also easily his worst. Even during my most atheist-materialist period, I didn't like it. It could have needed a better editor, deals mostly with Christian fundamentalism, and really does consider religion to be the root of all evil. For instance, it reduces the Northern Ireland, Bosnian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts to religion. The author is also insensitive to discrimination of Muslims and Jews, as if all religions were somehow politically equal.

[UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY?]

I still don't like the contents of Dawkins' book, but when recently rereading it, I realized that it at least has an enormous entertainment value. Yes, really. The Christian atonement is "barking mad" (repeated twice), religion is tantamount to "choosing to believe that the world...is borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmeralda and Keith", the Reformed Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is introduced, and somewhere along the line, the inevitable "fronkies" makes a guest appearance (fresh out of the fossil series, or was it the world cup?). Unfortunately for the author, I usually laughed *at* him, rather than with him. But hell, at least I was having fun!

There are also the inevitable howlers and gross over-simplifications: Paul wrote the epistle to the Hebrews, Buddhism isn't really a religion, Kant was probably an atheist, the crimes of Stalin had nothing to do with atheism, and yes, the Northern Ireland conflict was at bottom about religion... Finally, there's the silly, self-destructive consistency. Fellow atheists who want to compromise with religious groups for reasons of politic are attacked as "the Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists" (in contrast to the Stalin school, perhaps?), Stephen Jay Gould couldn't possible have believed what he wrote in "Rocks of Ages", etc. Please note that we are talking about compromises between atheists-agnostics and mainline denominations to fight creationism and ID in the United States. One wonders what Dawkins wants his American fellows to do - boldly proclaim that Darwinism is indeed intellectually self-fulfilled atheism and that the atonement is "barking mad"? On a more disturbing note, Dawkins also suggests that being brought up Catholic is actually worse than being sexually harassed or molested by paedophiles, including paedophile Catholic priests. I'm a charitable person, and I shall assume that my dear opponent can't possibly believe what he wrote in this particular chapter...

[THE GOD HYPOTHESIS]

After all the humour, scandal-mongering and blows below the belt are removed, what is left of "The God Delusion"? Believe it or not, but the book does contain a couple of arguments as well. I found them to be very weak, and frequently gasped at my own credulity for accepting some of them a few years ago. One of Dawkins' main points is that the existence of a monotheist creator-god is a "scientific hypothesis", in the sense of being empirically testable. It should (at least in principle) be possible to specify how the universe would look like if God really exists, how it would look like if he doesn't, and then compare the two hypotheses to the actual state of affairs. Fair enough. I noticed already when the book was published, that other atheists were uneasy about this proposition. Small wonder - the ID movement takes the same position, but (of course) from the opposite side of the fence (Dawkins is aware of this). However, it seems that Dawkins' fellow atheist need not have worried. After declaring that The God Hypothesis is testable, the author goes out of his way to invalidate any result that would prove God's existence!

Miracles are declared out of order, since every possible materialist explanation - including hallucinations on a really massive scale - are always more likely than God. Space aliens are also more likely than God (i.e. materialist, "nuts and bolts" space aliens), since a sufficiently advanced technology would be impossible to distinguish from magic. Even a proven miracle would be unacceptable, since purely by chance the atoms making up a sculpture of Mary the Mother of God might all bounce in the same direction, making the sculpture wave its hands at you in seemingly miraculous fashion (yes, the author actually says this - and it's not the first time either. He used the same argument in "The Blind Watchmaker").

Actual experiences of God are out of the question. They are simply delusions, period. The existence of complexity in the universe cannot be explained in terms of an even more complex creator, since that supposedly doesn't explain anything. The extreme improbability of the emergence of life (admitted by the author) is no problem either: we're here, after all, so therefore there simply *must* be a materialist explanation for it, QED. At one point, God is declared to be a "skyhook", while what we really need are "cranes". Since "cranes" are materialist explanations, and since only such explanations are permitted, The God Hypothesis has been ruled out before the investigation has even begun. Materialism, it seems, is impossible to falsify.

Eventually, the author admits one way to falsify materialism: "rabbits in the Precambrian", i.e. anomalous fossils. However, even this can easily be declared in contempt of court, if rabbit fossils would ever be found in Precambrian layers. Here's a materialist explanation: two intelligent space aliens named Esmeralda and Keith had a picnic on Earth during the Precambrian, during which their beloved rabbit-like pet Binker escaped and (purely by chance) became fossilized. Improbable? Vastly so, but it's *still* more probable than the barking mad idea of God creating rabbits ex nihilo during the Precambrian for his own higher amusement. Don't hold your breath for instant conversions in the case of somebody digging up a rabbit chased by a trilobite! Besides, everyone knows that rabbits aren't kosher.

Dawkins' most popular argument, also used in this book, goes something like this: God cannot explain complexity, since any being capable of creating a complex world would have to be immensely complex himself in the first place. Thus, we haven't really explained complexity, but simply moved the mystery one step further back. However, there's nothing inherently illogical about explaining complexity in terms of previously existing super-complexity. True, such a hypothesis doesn't explain where the super-complexity came from, but so what? Maybe it was always there. This response is unacceptable to the author only because he presupposes materialism from the outset. If we assume as our starting point that God doesn't exist, then complexity cannot be explained in any other way than by appealing to a natural process that can evolve complexity from simple beginnings. In essence, Richard Dawkins is cheating!

[MORALITY]

The real disappointment in "The God Delusion" is the chapter on morality. Dawkins is no nihilist, and clearly believes that the good, the moral or the ethical in some sense actually exists. But where does it come from? And, more importantly, how do we know which acts are moral? Here, the author has no answer, and I suspect he might even be aware of it. At one point, he writes that although scientists might not be able to answer moral questions, we shouldn't automatically assume that theologians could do it instead. Thus, he tacitly admits that nobody has an answer, not even the atheist-materialists. Then, Dawkins takes us on a long detour through the Bible, pointing out (quite correctly) that mainline Christians in the modern world no longer believe the sometimes bizarre Biblical precepts, from the genocide at Jericho to die-hard patriarchy (with a few non-kosher rabbits and "barking mad" atonements thrown in for good measure).

However, this begs the question in a very obvious manner. True, enlightened people don't kill recalcitrant Jebusites, nor do they condone rape and pillage, but so what? *Why* are these moral precepts better than those of the ancient Near East? Besides, even Dawkins eventually admits that many people *do* believe in Old Testament morality, or something similar. Why are they wrong? Pointing out the (supposed) evolutionary origins of our moral sense won't do as an answer, since we have already established that people once did believe in OT "morality", presumably meaning that such behaviour might also have an evolutionary origin. Dawkins simply cannot explain why the UN Declaration of Human Rights (unknown to Moses or Australopithecus) is objectively better than...well, Moses or Australopithecus.

At several points in the chapter on morality, Richard Dawkins comes close to moral relativism, which suggests that his inability to find an objective basis for morality is pushing him in the wrong direction. He rejects "slippery slope" consequentialism as an attempt to make utilitarianism absolutist in practice, seems to support euthanasia and "animal rights", and is surprisingly indifferent to paedophiles. At the same time, however, it's obvious from the context that Dawkins *does* regard some actions as either "white" or "black", despite the existence of a greyscale in between. For starters, he considers many religious practices to be all bad! The root of all evil, remember? Thus, his declaration that morality isn't really absolute rings hollow. At least some moral precepts are absolute, even in the mind of Richard Dawkins. But why? That question remains unanswered.

[SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS]

As already pointed out, "The God Delusion" does contain a number of other problems in addition to those mentioned in this review, but the main ones are the author's refusal to prove his point on neutral ground, and his inability to deduce an objective morality from within his materialist system. (I would have to leave the Northern Ireland conflict for another time - or let Alister McGrath take up that particular thread.) It's also fascinating how close Dawkins comes to a reverential, religious feeling towards the cosmos in the last chapter of his book. Perhaps that's why the very first chapter sternly declares that such feelings are not really religious at all...

"The God Delusion" is a pretty good introduction to the current of thought known as New Atheism, both in terms of arguments and in terms of the below-the-belt rhetoric, so in that sense I do recommend the work to anyone interested in, shall we say, really existing 21st century atheism. Besides, Dawkins is a well known person in his own right, and it will be of considerable interest to readers of his scientific works to see how he connects Neo-Darwinism with an atheist worldview. However, since New Atheism apparently isn't my cup of tea (nor my cosmic teapot), I have nevertheless decided to award "The God Delusion" two stars only.

[WHO OR WHAT IS ASHTAR COMMAND?]

Finally, a short presentation of myself. On pages 50-51, Dawkins presents a typology of theist, agnostic and atheist beliefs. Dawkins counts himself in category 6, but strongly veering towards 7. I would count myself in category 3, while leaving open the possibility that pantheism, deism or panentheism might be true rather than theism sensu stricto. Politically, I share many of Dawkins' criticisms of religious fundamentalism, while apparently being more "slippery slope consequentialist" than the author. But yes, I would pass for liberal in the U.S. of A.

To end where I started off, those who love this book for its sheer entertainment value might want to read my "review" of "The Root of all Evil - the Original Program", written at a time when I was more sympathetic to the ideas of Professor Richard Dawkins. Enjoy!

A Parody of Presuppositionalism

;-)