The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is an 'Atheism Consciousness-raising book', according to the author. It makes the case for Atheism, saying Atheists should stand up and be counted, and stand against the growing tide (in the U.S. in particular) of irrationality and belief. Although as one of Atheisms most visible proponents Dawkins has 'make converts' to the cause, in this book he is mostly speaking to the converted, presenting the evidence.
The book documents the main arguments in favour of God. These are dismissed fairly abruptly; while a lot of pages are taken up going into them, they are probably not a comprehensive list. A book by a theologian or believer would probably be a better source for such a list. Nevertheless, Dawkins as a scientist does consider and list the opposing arguments. As presented however, they are extremely threadbare and easily dismissed. Mostly they are backed up by a willingness for people to take God (and Theology!) seriously: since so many people believe in God, it must be taken seriously, or so the reasoning goes. Not so: the proofs of Gods existence don't stand up and should be dismissed.
Dawkins makes the case that we should instead of investigating God, investigate why people
believe in God, given the lack of evidence. He gives some good hypotheses in terms of Darwinian thinking: reasons why faith, accepting what your parents said without evidence, has survival benefits, that in other circumstances lead people to believe nonsense stories with faith.
Another under-estimated problem is the different definitions people have for 'God' and 'religion'. Most people from a Christian / Judaic background have a habit of framing belief and Religion in terms of the religion they grew up in. They may accept that you have a different God(s), but still view God(s) as something you pray to, that intercede on your behalf, etc. By confusing all the different aspects given to 'God' in the Christian tradition, they think that if you have 'proved' one of them, all the rest follow. If you prove / claim that something created the Universe, and label that God, then, they imply, there must be one overall, kind, monotheistic God, Jesus died on the Cross for your sins, that God will change the laws of physics to suit you (miracles), etc. Not so: all you have done is label something, not proved your religion. Dawkins (rightly) dismisses Buddhism, etc. as 'principles for living' rather than religions for the purposes of this book, and we need to be careful what we call religion, too.
Dawkins also makes a good case against Agnosticism. He argues we should be more forthright and say we are Strongly Atheistic rather than Agnostic.
Agnosticism was created by Thomas Huxley to explain his beliefs. He defined Athiesm is a
positive belief in the lack of God, a proposition for which there is no evidence. He argued that, until we have proof that God does not exist, scientifically correct to consider ourselves 'sceptics' on this matter, and neither believe nor disbelieve in God. This sounds good, however in Science there are huge numbers of theories that in practice we have no evidence for either way that
Occams razor mows down for us. We don't claim to be agnostic about them, we simply ignore them until they are actually needed to explain something.
Which, given modern science and Darwins explanation of evolution in particular, God no longer is.
The later chapters of the book cover whether, despite the lack of evidence, belief in God or Religion is a good thing, whether religion gives a moral purpose and direction to life, and defines a sense of "Good" that Atheists cannot have. For this he goes through the Bible with a disbelieving eye, pointing to the horrors of genocide that it promotes in the Old Testament, etc. He points out that
we don't actually use the bible for moral guidance, but instead decide our own morality: we pick examples from the Bible a la carte to defend our choices. We don't decide, as an Old Testament interpretation would put it, that murder of an non-Jew is acceptable; that rape of an enemy is acceptable, that killing non-believers and witches necessary. Instead we pick examples to back up what we've decided already. If you're going to do that, stop pretending the Bible is giving you moral guidance and instead accept that
we decide.
Dawkins underestimates the social and ethnic aspects of religion. He is overly critical of religion, blaming it for much of the worlds violence, genocides, etc. It would be truer to say that Northern Ireland, etc. are examples of ethic rather than religious strife. "God says so" is just the ultimate argument.
But conversely religion is a cohesive element in most societies. I suspect that a cause of the growth of christianity in the U.S. is that its proselytising nature goes out to be inclusive in Americas highly mobile society. When work, etc. causes people and families to move across the continent, they will find a church to welcome them into the community. Its against this background that
atheists are the most distrusted minority. Shared beliefs, whatever those beliefs, bring neighbours closer.
James Lovelock, (co-creator with Lynn Margulis of the Gaia Hypothesis) proposes that atheists can treat
Gaia as an alternative religion, something to celebrate and to give moral direction to life. This I have sympathy with, that life is important, and to be celebrated, but not to be confused with something to be prayed to, or imagine that it is biased towards towards our existence.
In these times when people are again using religion as a justification for war, claiming a "clash of civilisations", this is a book worth reading, but beyond deciding whether gods exist we need to understand why people believe.
The Darwinian arguments are as Richard Dawkins points out, just a start, but I think more is needed to explain religion.
Tags review, religion, atheism
