Mr Callander,
If I may enter the forum somewhat late, you say that Science provides a worldview, and so it does but it fails to explain its basic position, that is the laws of Physics: put briefly
Why is it so?
Why are the laws of physics?
Until Science can explain itself- and I do not believe it can- then it is not a coherent worldview. (This is not original by any means Paul Davies writes at length about this) The idea is that science is a closed system that nature is all there is, so it should in principle be able to explain itself. (and should also be ‘falsfiable’ in the Popper sense)
Is there any material you can show me on this?
Then and more generally Dawkins in the God Delusion (ch 5) makes much of multiverses to explain away the Anthropic principle, is there any material someone can show me on this. The entry on Wikiepedia isnt very helpful save that it states multiverse doesn’t explain that principle (though you need to follow a few links to get there)
Chapter 7, “The ‘Good’ Book and the changing moral Zeitgeist”, is a big chapter in “The God Delusion” in which Dawkins draws in a big breath in order to blow the religious off their perch, certainly as far as the morality of their religion is concerned.
Whilst I say the “religious”, Dawkins apart from a few desultory asides directed at Muslims and Jews has Christians and their ‘Good’ Book firmly in his sights. The use of, and highlighting of “Good” in Good Book is a rhetorical device for the Bible in Dawkins’ mind is anything other than good, especially when it comes to morality – it is an obnoxious and weird book (p237), a “tragi-farce of God’s maniacal jealousy against alternative gods”.
The chapter is really about morality and Dawkins’ purpose is to demonstrate that the Bible is an unsatisfactory source of morality and in fact morality (as opposed to immorality) hasn’t much to do with the Bible at all.
The chapter considers morality in four parts: a survey of the Old Testament, a survey of the New Testament and a survey of what he calls the moral Zeitgeist (Zeitgeist being German for “spirit of the times”). The chapter concludes with a rear guard action to turn the argument, “but weren’t Hitler and Stalin atheists”.
I’m sure Onfray (“The Atheist Manifesto”) Hitchens (“God is not Great”), Sam Harris (“The End of Faith”) as well as Dawkins in “The God Delusion” have the same template for reading the Old Testament, for they all pursue the same journey with the same stopping points.
In my experience the OT is a rather hefty piece of multifaceted literature, covering a lengthy period of time, with different literary genre.
However, in Dawkins’ hands it a breeze to get through the flat monochrome terrain of the OT. It’s quite simple. I counted 9 stopping points.
In order:
Noah
Race forward to Sodom and Gomorrah
Jump to Judges 19 and the Levite and concubine in Gibeah
Back to Abraham passing his wife off as his sister on a couple of occasions followed up by “the infamous tale of the sacrificing of his son Isaac”
Forward again to Jepthah and his daughter in Judges 11
Back to Moses and the Golden Calf in Exodus 32
Forward again to the destruction of the Midianites in Numbers 31 and back a step to Numbers 25
Finally a list of crimes warranting the death penalty in Leviticus
Thus can the OT be dealt with.
And the conclusion Dawkins draws?
God is obscenely jealous concerning himself while the OT heroes are no role models for morality and certainly the Bible “is not the sort of book you should give your children to form their morals” (p247).
When he turns to the New Testament he asks, “Is the New Testament any better”, and despite some kind words for the sermon on the mount, the answer is “no!”. Jesus, “if he existed”, is faulted for poor family values but in Dawkins’ eyes it is “the ‘atonement’ for ‘original sin’” that seals the NT’s fate. “NT theology”, thunders our Bible critic Dawkins, “adds a new injustice, topped off by a new sadomasochism whose viciousness even the OT barely exceeds (p251)”, The “atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity…..(is) barking mad (p253)”.
Dawkins then takes a little excursus on “Love thy Neighbour” (he only quotes the KJV - the quaint language offers added incentive for derision) to cut the Bible’s injunction to “love your neighbour” down to size, quoting a John Hartung, some theological giant in Dawkins’ eyes to the effect that the Jews, Jesus included, really meant love your fellow Jews” (so much for the parable of the Good Samaritan). Apparently Jesus was all for Jews and it was Paul who invented the idea of taking the Jewish God to the Gentiles (forget Matt 28:19, 20).
Well what can we say about Dawkins analysis?
Several things, in point form:
1. Dawkins shows no comprehension whatsoever of the Bible’s plot line
2. To the extent that Dawkins quotes sources, they are liberal sources, the ubiquitous Bishop Spong, Richard Holloway, retired Bishop of Edinburgh, Geza Vermes, you get the picture.
3. So no attempt to interact with orthodox Christians whether theologians, layfolk or a John Stott.
4. No appreciation of the different types of literature in the OT
5. Does he really think the settlement of the promised land or the goings on in Sodom and Gomorrah serve as the basis for Biblical morality?
6. Actually he gets one thing right, contra the liberals, the atonement does lie in the centre of Christian doctrine, though we would wish to add other things concerning the nature of God, the nature of man and the problem of evil.
7. But also in him is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 6:9,10 (Matthew 13:14,15, Acts 28:26, 27 and John 12:40).
8. And because this is so, this chapter will have cheered the hearts of all who hate the truth of God as revealed through the Bible and supremely so in the doing and dying of God’s only begotten Son, Jesus of Nazareth.
Having safely disposed of the Bible as a source of morality, Dawkins turns to the question of “whence our morality?”. And he happily informs us that there is consensus on this subject, a widespread understanding of right and wrong, and not only that, but we are now all rather more moral than we once were: slavery abolished, women have the vote, racism a thing of the past, concern for the environment, etc and none of it, he avers, is due to religion.
And why so - well you have to read him. I found this part of the chapter so naïve, so unconvincing. It’s amazing what you can brush under the carpet: so nothing to say about the break down in law and order, nothing about the increase in child abuse, pornography and paedophilia, high rates of abortion and suicide, mental health problems. The man lives in a dream world (or should that be the dreamy spires of Oxford?).
If Dawkins is rough on the Bible and Christians, he has a feather like touch for fellow atheist Joseph Stalin (Stalin “was an atheist”…. individual atheists may do evil things but they don’t do evil things in the name of religion” – what a let out!) and that’s where the chapter ends, watching his own back.
His closing shot is, “why would anyone go to war for the sake of an absence of belief”. That a clinching argument? Pardon me! Not so fast Dawkins! People go to war for all manner of beliefs - some religious and some otherwise, some worthy and some shoddy, atheists included.
Chapter 8 tomorrow DV – “What’s wrong with Religion? Why be so hostile?”
(Having read Dawkins et al, all saying much the same thing about the Old Testament especially, we do need to address apologetically the subject of how to read the OT, as well as defending its historical trustworthiness, a matter drawn into question by all of them. The evidence of the recent appearance of all these books is that we must continue to address this particular subject.)
Australian Philosopher David Stove wrote “Darwinian Fairytales” just before he died in 1994 and it has just been reissued. I imagine there are some who contribute on this form who sat under him at either UNSW or Sydney University. It appears that he thought the Darwinian explanation of evolution a very good one but also said that “Darwinism says many things , especially about our species, which are obviously too false to be believed by any educated person….”
Anyway he has my interest, more particularly so since I see Richard Dawkins has a starring role in the book. I haven’t got that far yet, but you can be sure I will.
However his second essay in the book, “Where Darwin first went wrong about man”, certainly piqued my interest and I thought highly enough of the argument to share it with you.
Stove begins with Darwin’s problem 20 years before the publication of “The Origin of the Species”, having been convinced of evolution, how to explain it. It was reading the Rev TR Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population” that did the trick.
What Malthus postulated on the basis of looking at populations of viable seeds produced by a single pine tree and of the eggs produced each year by a single adult female cod was the proposition that in all species, man included, the tendency to increase in numbers by reproduction is so strong and constant that, wherever there is food for a possible pine, cod or human, there is, or else soon will be, an actual pine, cod or human. (Some calculations undertaken by Malthus showed that in a very short period of time there would be enough cod to fill every ocean and enough pine trees to cover all soil, if every egg, every seed survived and reached full reproductive potential)
Now in Darwin’s hands this proposition got combined with the observation that every organism is always different in some respect from every other and further that some at least of these variations are transferable to offspring.
If the population of pines, cod or humans is pressing on the food available, then every new generation must always find that the places at the table are full or nearly so. So there will be competition for places and it will be those best equipped for success that will find themselves at the table.
And so Darwin had his explanation of evolution, the origin of new species.
Now the point of Stoves’ essay is that this scenario may hold true for cod and pines, but not so for humans! He calls neo Darwinism (not sure why he adds “neo”) “a ridiculous slander on human beings”! It may be “a very good approximation to truth and completeness for many of the simplest organisms” (and believes this to be so), but it “is an extremely poor approximation in the case of our own species”. And again, “the general biological principal (of evolution) comes steadily closer to being true, the further one departs from the human case”.
Well how does Stove justify such an assertion?
“Human life is full of opportunities for reproduction which the supply of food would permit, but which are not taken in fact”.
How so?
Well consider the following points he makes:
If a family consists of a father, mother, sons and daughters, then there are multiple opportunities for reproduction not taken up because of the aversion to incest, thus the Malthus-Darwin principle is false.
But in addition to the aversion to incest, infanticide, abortion and contraception are all practiced on “an enormous scale”.
Add in male homosexuality, marital fidelity, waiting to marriage before engaging in sexual activity
Add in celibate priests, religious orders, soldiers, periods of sexual abstinence (even allowing for lapses)
Add in persons engaged in intense and prolonged thought, artistic genius – Stove has an impressive list of men of genius who had no children
And not only all these instances, but additionally, it is almost certain that amongst those who do reproduce, they do not do so to the limit of the food supply!
So Stove’s conclusion?
“Malthus’ principle is not true without exception in the case of other species (think of failing populations in the wild), but in the case of our own, it is extravagantly wide of the truth.”
“Darwin’s explanation of evolution, then, contains as an essential element a proposition which is false in the case of man…… it means that Darwin’s explanation of evolution, even though it is still the best one available, is not true.
Chapter 8 is entitled, “What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?”
This is the chapter in which Dawkins tells us why religion is such an evil thing. He focuses mainly on the Christian religion and its followers, though taking a few swipes at Islam as well.
Before reviewing the chapter two general points first.
Sam Harris, Michal Onfray and Christopher Hitchens spent considerable effort, pages and pages, thousands and thousands of words on the historical record of Christianity, all three finding Christianity to be entirely scrofulous (a Dawkins word), murderous, perfidious and any other like adjective. Dawkins bypasses all this choosing instead to focus on the iniquities of present day Christians choosing the “fundamentalist” stream as his exemplar and by implication condemning all Christians. He simply cannot find it in himself to extend any praise to any Christians, no acknowledgement of the sort reported in The Age today where Galarrwuy Yunupingu, NT Aboriginal leader and former Australian of the Year, is reported to call for a return to mission-style days when aboriginal children were housed in dormitories, fed, showered and schooled.
“The missionary days were good. The missionaries looked after the kids much better than the Government does today”, says Mr Yunupingu.
The second point is that Dawkins’ examples of fundamentalists are all drawn from the American religious right. Those frequenting this forum don’t necessarily identify either with fundamentalism or the religious right, but let me assure you apart from Rob Callander and maybe a few others, all of you are fundamentalists as far as Dawkins is concerned, that’s right Gordon Cheng is a fundamentalist- just checking to see if he is reading anything other than Lambeth Ideas.
I think most of us will be squirming as we read some of the antics that Dawkins’ fundamentalists get up to and say. We need to remember religion has a much higher profile in America. I have been in parts of America were you simply wouldn’t find anyone mowing lawns Sunday morning because just about everyone is in church and the ones that aren’t, are lying low. Inevitable people in majority situations are not so careful what they say, as we know from annual vestry meetings, etc. For our part, in the wider Australian community, being a minority oftentimes barely tolerated, we are much more circumspect about what we so, actually we resemble more rabbits in burrows but I won’t go there today.
Meeting Dawkins on his own terms, I think some of the examples he cites give cause for concern because they could hold true in Australian Christian circles.
Earlier I was challenged by a YEC for my own self-characterisation as a non dogmatic old earth creationist, willing to accord evolution a place at the table, at least in micro form. Dawkins quotes the example of a Christian who studied and earned higher degrees at Harvard under Stephen Jay Gould, doyen of American palaeontologists and an evolutionist. The Christian walked away from it all because of his understanding that the Bible as the Word of God taught a young earth, saying “I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science”.
Dawkins also records him saying, “if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate” (You can find all this p 284f)
Just leaving aside the hint of ambivalence in “seems to indicate”, I find this statement disturbing. I would say he was a poorly taught Christian, not because he is (obviously) wedded to 24 hour “days” in Genesis 1, but because he could treat so lightly the revelatory power of God’s creation. God has given us two books, the inscripturated Word and the embedded Word of creation. They cannot be in disagreement. God cannot be divided, He cannot lie, He cannot deceive. If there is an apparent discrepancy in true Calvinist fashion we will affirm the Scripture as the spectacles, and yet we understand that over time earlier understandings of the meaning of scripture have been replaced in the light of acquired knowledge. Thus Christians both according to the appearance of things but also noting that the Scripture speaks of the setting and the rising of the son (and whether or not they had heard of Plato) actually thought the sun went around the earth and indeed made it tough for the scientists who said, “not so!”. But in time, the Church did come to accept the earth rotates around the sun, rather than the reverse.
I am an old earth man because that’s what credible science says. If it is shown scientifically that the earth is 10,000 years old, I’ll jump ship – simple as that.
Dawkins’ argues for evolution with no place for God. In former times Old School Presbyterians - think Princeton, Charles Hodge, BB Warfield - accepted evolutionary thinking on the basis that it represented the best scientific thought of the day, but of course theistic evolution (and regardless, as Dawkins himself acknowledges, evolution has nothing to say about the origins of life itself, nor for that matter the purposes of life). Listen to the Princeton divine, AA Hodge on the matter: (Hodge was another of your typical 5 point Calvinists who affirmed both the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture)
“Evolution considered as the plan of an infinitely wise Person and executed under the control of His everywhere present energies can never be irreligious; can never exclude design, providence, grace, or miracles. Hence we repeat that what Christians have cause to consider with apprehension is not evolution as a working hypothesis of science dealing with facts, but evolution as a philosophical speculation professing to account for the origin, causes, and ends of all things” (quoted in “The Princeton Theology 1812-1921, p 235, an anthology compiled by Mark Noll)
Living on 2008 we now know that evolution is no longer the impregnable fortress it once was. And so with integrity, despite Dawkins et a, I am able to describe myself the way I have in respect of these matters.
Well there are as I say other things Dawkins quotes concerning “fundamentalists” that if he reports correctly, I for one wish to distance myself from. The problem with Dawkins is that he tars every Christian with words and actions of some very outlandish examples of Christians. The way he treats Mother Theresa is disgraceful.
I will now turn to an analysis of Chapter 8 and request that this thread not be turned into a YEC/TE slanging match despite whatever provocation I have given, because the powers that be will DEAD HORSE the thread.
Hi Guys, are you still with me or have I bored you silly?
Chapter 8 of Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”, “What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?” begins by Dawkins defending himself against the charge of fundamentalism – he does this because his attack on religion will be done via the Trojan horse of fundamentalism and he has apparently been accused of an equivalent “atheistic fundamentalism”. As I point out in the previous post all Christians will be tarred with the “sins” of the despicable fundamentalists (some are real sins and some plain goofiness). You will find no stories of virtuous Christians in this chapter, all presented represent some concoction of charlatans, deviants, rogues with evil intent, mendacious fools, bigots and so on.
I think I will concede Dawkins’ argument of not being a fundamentalist – he says he isn’t because the real fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book, something which tops everything else, whereas Dawkins believes not because of a holy book but because of evidence, “it really is a different matter”, says Dawkins. I will concede his argument for the reason that my Macquarie Dictionary links the word to religion.
However, in describing and quoting fundamentalists, Dawkins seems to share a lot of their characteristics as he describes them: words like obsessive, persistent, aggressive, extreme, intolerant all come to mind and certainly when it comes to the text of Scripture none can be more literalist than Dawkins, except perhaps Hitchens, Onfray and Harris – you get the picture.
Apart from a few rather desultory pages given to religion and the death penalty (fundamentalists for it, Dawkins against) and homosexuality (fundamentalists against it, Dawkins for it), the bulk of this chapter is given over to the issue of abortion. Dawkins, it appears, isn’t too fussed by abortion. The criteria for assessing whether or not to abort seems to be “who suffers the most?”. This criterion enables him to dispose of the moral issue in these words, “given that the embryo lacks a nervous system, shouldn’t the mother’s well developed nervous system have the choice?”. Such moral perception!
I’m afraid I find it very hard to have any respect for this man who can treat so tritely, with such immaturity and ignorance one of the great moral failures of our society beginning with the abandonment of the age long, widely embraced, religiously sanctioned principle that sex as a beautiful gift of God for procreation and pleasure reserved exclusively for marriage, a failure ending in the abortion of 90,000 to 100,000 unborn children in Australia alone every year, year after year.
Well, Dawkins proceeds to quote the more bizarre fringes of the pro life movement. Bizarre I grant you, representative of Christian thinking and action. No way!
Some of the material in this chapter is disgraceful. In Victoria we have religious vilification legislation (which we prefer we did not have). Dawkins vilifies Christians. He produces one example of a Christian who murdered an abortionist. Are there others? Certainly can’t remember any such reports, nothing to square off against 90,000 to 100,000 abortions per year in Australia. Yet on p 301 he brackets “the Christians (plural) in America who blow up abortion clinics” with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He then repeats the dose by linking the motivations of the 2005 London Islamist bombers who killed 50 and wounded 100’s others to those of “the Christian murderers of abortion doctors”.
Having wound himself up to this extent, Dawkins completes the chapter by condemning all religion, not just extremist religion but moderate religion as well for “(t)he teachings of ‘moderate’ religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism (p306)” Therefore the only course of action “is to abandon the principle of automatic respect for religious faith”.
And sad to say, I can hear the great majority of his readers so ready to be duped, so uncritical and so full of venom toward the Christian faith in particular (I grew up amongst such people, I know what I’m talking about!), I hear them saying, “He’s right, they deserve no respect!” and so in the next chapter he will call into question the right of the religious to bring up their own children.
I think I will concede Dawkins’ argument of not being a fundamentalist – he says he isn’t because ... [he] believes not because of a holy book but because of evidence, “it really is a different matter”, says Dawkins. I will concede his argument for the reason that my Macquarie Dictionary links the word to religion.
Well I wouldn’t concede. It’s not that he believes because of evidence but that he believes because of evidence he chooses to believe. The rest he ignores, as is demonstrated clearly in his argument likening Christians to Islamist terrorists. To the extent that he refuses to consider and deal with evidence that contradicts his belief system (and that is a considerable amount of evidence) he is behaving irrationally. Also, that a dictionary links ‘fundamentalism’ to ‘religion’, substantively defined, does not mean that it can’t be linked to other belief systems such as, say, Marxism, which function as de facto religions.
We should not allow others to dictate to us the meaning of words like ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘religion’ or ‘science’ or any other word. Those with an agenda to push have a tendency to choose what they will accept as the meaning of a particular word according to their need of the moment and then choose another meaning at some other moment.
In the USA some are arguing that because the teaching of evolution in schools promotes atheism (and it does) then the State, by requiring that evolution is taught, is indulging in Constitutionally prohibited sponsorship of religion. To escape that charge atheists have begun to say that atheism is not a belief about God (i.e., that He doesn’t exist) but an absence of belief in God and therefore, they say, atheism is not religious. Yet, also in the USA, an atheist prisoner took a state to court arguing that atheism is a religion and thus the state should be required to allow him to set up an atheist discussion group within the prison in the same way that other religious groups are allowed to organise Bible studies and church services, etc. He won.
The word ‘fundamentalist’ has changed its meaning in the last 100 odd years and now, among other meanings, refers to someone who intolerantly holds to certain beliefs despite all evidence to the contrary. So it is appropriate to call Dawkins an atheist fundamentalist. Perhaps the Macquarie Dictionary will soon catch up to current usage.
I think I will concede Dawkins’ argument of not being a fundamentalist – he says he isn’t because ... [he] believes not because of a holy book but because of evidence, “it really is a different matter”, says Dawkins. I will concede his argument for the reason that my Macquarie Dictionary links the word to religion.
Well I wouldn’t concede. It’s not that he believes because of evidence but that he believes because of evidence he chooses to believe. ....Perhaps the Macquarie Dictionary will soon catch up to current usage.
Rest easy Janice, I can go either way, I did say he exhibits similar characteristics to those he describes and choses to call (religious) fundamentalists.
I wouldn’t call him irrational.
Rather, I think he is a bigot, he is blind to his own prejudices, certainly smug and selective in his choice of evidence in a rather nasty kind of way - probably without realising it which means that on top of everything else he is a fool, profoundly so. You would never on the basis of this book describe Dawkins as a fair minded man.
I think we are seeing a man as much badly rattled as angry which is a point I will come back to later.
Hi Guys, are you still with me or have I bored you silly?
David, when I log onto the forums, I look first to see if you have posted something new. I am always glad to read your posts. When I get around to reading Dawkins, I know your analysis will help me to assess him without getting too cross!
If Dawkins rejects the appellation of “fundamentalist”, would “fanatic” be a fair alternative? Someone once told me a fanatic is one who won’t change his mind and can’t change the subject… (although RD protests he will change his mind if he sees the evidence.)
Moving into Chapter 9 “Childhood, abuse and the escape from religion”, I notice that the chapter begins with another anecdote. Dawkins has filled the book with anecdotes, reported speech, quotes from all over the place. He has been most assiduous in collecting material that bears unfavourably upon religion and its adherents, chiefly related to Christians. Whether he has done all the trawling or been fed the stories by others is unclear. But through this vast accumulation of debris he makes his obsession abundantly clear. I have yet to find any comment or story that is remotely favourable to Christians. In this respect “The God Delusion” is an astonishingly malevolent tour de force.
When it comes to describing his own vision of progress through science the most charitable thing that can be said is that he is touchingly naïve as when on p294 he extols embryonic stem cell research for “its huge potential for medical science” when he as a scientist should know that the only promise for cures lies through post birth “adult” stem cells. Similarly, when it comes to his discussion of euthanasia and abortion he demonstrates what I can only describe as a wilful disregard his failure to treat the moral complexities of both issues at all seriously. The scorn and derision Dawkins heaps on legitimate concerns concerning the protection of human life whether antenatal or near the end is disgraceful, but I’m afraid fairly typical in our morally debased (scrofulous!) culture.
I apologise for my nit-picking and annoyance about these things, but he has really got up my nose!
Now to Chapter 9 and thankfully only one more to go after that.
Mr Palmer
thank you , what you have done is very helpful but it woud be even more helpful if (assuming you have the time) you were to provide links to sites or other references that prove that Dawkins is wrong (e g the stem cell point you make in your last post)
Chapter 9 opens with a painful story of the forced conversion of a Jewish boy by the Catholic Church in 19th century Italy. This story is used to make various points including this one:
“Third is the presumption whereby religious people know, without evidence, that the faith of their birth is the one true faith, all others being aberrations or downright false”
We must say as Christians that this is precisely what we think (my apologies to any who demur) – there is no getting around the point Dawkins is making. If it is a criticism, which surely it is, we must allow it to stand, though not the pejorative, “without evidence” - that’s just Dawkins sinking the boot in.
But what Dawkins does not and will not acknowledge is that he too can be tarred with his own brush – try replacing “religious” with “atheist” and leave out the pejorative. OK, I know he will claim that his upbringing was not atheist, but I can claim my upbringing was not religious but extremely hostile in the person of my father especially to religion.
Here on p314 is yet another of Dawkins’ fallacious arguments and the book is FULL of them:
“But how could the martyrs Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer let themselves be burned rather than forsake their Protestant Little-endianism in favour of Catholic big-endianism – does it really matter all that much from which end you open a boiled egg?”. Ridiculous analogy.
Anyway I press on, ignoring the temptation on p315 re Dawkins’ view of the inability of a child to enjoy religious sensibilities.
The chapter deals at length with child abuse by RC clergy and religious orders, both sexual and physical..
On the latter point I well remember my (secondary) school days in the second half of the 1950’s at Trinity Grammar School, Summer Hill – teachers coming to class with a cane tucked into their gown or disappearing to fetch a cane as required. I can’t remember a caning doing us much harm. I learnt early to go early if a number were to be caned for it usually took a teacher a few swipes to get strength and accuracy into each cut. I remember a fellow student, John A… I believe, a boarder, being which provided a natural advantage for increased mischief, got off to a flying start one term, going for 50 cuts in the term but falling short when the teachers cottoned on to what was going on. And then there was Squeak, the French teacher, who made the serious blunder of promising six of the best to his 12 6th Form French students if they did not cease squeaking (in fact it was my friend David C…., secreted in a cupboard at the back of the classroom, doing all the squeaking, well most of it). Unfortunately Squeak had to retire to the Masters Common Room through exhaustion with only half the boys canned and his reputation left in tatters – but I digress.
Dawkins expends considerable effort (pages of it) on hellfire. We barely mention hell fire but the pagans know all about it (and may indeed quiver in their boots over it). There are stories of Christians losing their faith and we just have to accept that and recognise the force of the parable of the sower and the accompanying quotation from Isaiah 6. The boy at Trinity who led me to faith in Christ at age 15, by his 40’s was telling me that he had moved on to a great new life.
From these stories, Dawkins goes on to raise the issue of the right of parents to raise their own children in a religion affirming context, and advances his argument through third persons and stories of Incas sacrificing their own children, Amish taking their children out of school, female circumcision and then pages and pages on a Government funded Christian School in the north east of England. Somehow he has got hold of lots and lots of statements from School staff advancing the claims of YEC. With apologies to every YEC who reads this blog, and assuming Dawkins is reporting correctly, I cringed reading this material. I’m sorry but I really believe the YEC position is an apologetic disaster, certainly as expressed on the pages of this book. Having said that, other matters like the historicity of Noah and the flood gets dragged in which I for one affirm. So scandalised and affronted about summarises my experience reading this material.
In this section Dawkins’ sarcasm and intolerance knows no bounds. Thus Sir Peter Vardy, chief benefactor of the aforementioned school (which incidentally by all accounts I’ve read, but not mentioned by Dawkins - is a model school) is faulted for “a less credible desire to impart his personal religious convictions upon them (ie the school’s children)”. Just replace the word “religious” with “atheist” or “science” and you have Dawkins to a tee. In my view Dawkins has seriously held up this school and those associated with it to ridicule.
There were things in this chapter that I didn’t disagree with and certainly not his plea that the Bible should NOT be cut out of education (because of its literary value, kind of him). Christians are not always wise, can say and do foolish, even wicked things and if Dawkins makes us face up to these things well and good.
My wife and I have just finished watching the DVD of the 1994 BBC production of Middlemarch and like all those period pieces it is all about sex (ah, the sexual frisson brought about by adherence to the Bible norm, sex belongs within marriage – modern drama can’t match it!), avarice, roguery (Dickens) and hypocrisy, which always involves Christians, often but not always clergy. May God deliver us from hypocrisy!
Dawkins never goes as far as to suggest children should be removed from parents who provide their children with a religious upbringing but he comes darn close to it.
I always think the Reformed tradition gets it about right. We baptise our children in accordance with covenant theology, we count them as Christian even as we seek to nurture and teach them in the Christian way and yet we acknowledge that in the years of discretion they must made public profession of faith for themselves to be counted as Christ’s followers. In the Presbyterian Church we look for that profession, it must be credible and it must be public, and then of course the life must follow.
Mr Palmer
thank you , what you have done is very helpful but it would be even more helpful if (assuming you have the time) you were to provide links to sites or other references that prove that Dawkins is wrong (e g the stem cell point you make in your last post)
Mr Kirsop,
My comment re stem cells is based mainly on reports in Newspapers of progress and without exception they involve so called adult stem cells, plus a conversation with Dr Nicholas Tonti Filippini a couple of weeks ago. Nicholas is senior lecturer at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family here in Melbourne and a member of the Governmental ethics committee which has set the guidelines for embryonic stem cell research. You shouldn’t infer from my comment that embryonic stem cell research has been abandoned.
Regarding sites and links with references re Dawkins and other atheists:
Once I finish “The God Delusion” - there are a mere 30 pages (1 chapter) to go, I intend going back through all the reviews, etc of their books collected over the past 2 years - I have two lever arches full, plus reread Lennox’ God’s Undertaker, has science buried God?” which is a major review of Dawkins by a fellow Oxford don, plus the Australian philosopher, David Stove’s “Darwinian Fairytales” which I am steadily working through plus several other things including the detailed notes on the other four atheist books that I have read, so yes I expect to complete a significant piece of work fully referenced much along the lines of my extended paper on climate change found here (you can see how I have referenced that document). My aim in all of this is educational/apologetic - so I see my Committee involving itself doing seminars, writing inserts for weekly church bulletins, maybe some public debating as well.
However, I’m involved in other things and so I won’t be all that speedy, but would be disappointed if not complete sometime June/July this year.
This is my last post on Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”. Thank you for staying with me.
Dawkins has some unfinished business in the final chapter of “The God Delusion”.
“At one time or another”, religion, he says, has “been thought to fill four main roles in human life: explanation, exhortation, consolation and inspiration”.
The role of religion in explanation has “now (been) completely superseded by science” (the gist of chapter 4) whilst in chapters 6&7;he has covered the subject of exhortation, ie “how we ought to behave”. You will recall I was somewhat underwhelmed by those chapters, but Dawkins presses on for in this chapter he deals with consolation and inspiration.
His way into consolation is to draw a parallel or rather a natural progression from a child’s imaginery friend (he offers Christopher Robin’s secret friend Binker as an example quoting some verses from “Now we are six”) to an adult’s belief in God. So on page 351, “Gods and binkers have in common the power to comfort, and provide a vivid sounding board trying out ideas”. So much for God.
Well what’s Dawkins’ consolation? Frankly, he flounders gaining rhetorical effect through denouncing various religious practices like purgatory – I can go along with that - only to make the simple equation, science=consolation, and to this add a piece of fuzzy hopefulness:
“The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.”
And so indeed may the feted, talented, privileged Professor Dawkins in the dreamy towers of Oxford, but most people find life not to be quite as simple: it is certainly wise to seek to make our lives “wonderful” and “meaningful” but bad things happen in life not always of our own making, but then sometimes of our own making. What then Professor Dawkins? Silence only is the stern reply …………………..
As far as inspiration is concerned. Yes you guessed it, science again.
So mathematically “The God Delusion” can be reduced as follows:
Religion does not equal explanation; Science does equal explanation
Religion does not equal exhortation; Science does equal exhortation
Religion does not equal consolation; Science does equal consolation
Religion does not equal inspiration; Science does equal inspiration
QED
(I certainly don’t intend belittling science for it has wonderful power to open up the wonders of God’s creation . But inspiration or consolation when in a tight spot? I don’t think so!)
I am pleased I left “The God Delusion” to last. It is by far the best written of the atheist books. Dawkins is intelligent, witty, he could have gone down paths the others did – dredging the history of the West and then put every bad thing down to Christianity – but did not. He has thought deeply and at points makes us (me) uncomfortable, but then I understand human fallibility and we Christians have bucket loads.
To me Dawkins lives very much in a rarefied intellectual setting, disengaged from the reality of ordinary people’s lives.
Dawkins fails because God is reality, His Word cannot be so lightly dismissed, the historical evidence for the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus is strong, “who made God?” is an ignorant question and I for one am glad that God in His mercy set His love upon me , and called me to faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus, into the company of the redeemed of every nation down through the centuries of time who confess with one heart and voice:
“Worthy are you, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they existed and were created.” (Rev 4:11)
Why does Dawkins not understand these things, why in Biblical terms, despite all his learning, is he a fool? (Ps 14:1)
The only answer I know is that given to the Prophet Isaiah:
“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I! Send me.
And he said, Go, and say to this people:
Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.
Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
I intend taking a break, but will follow the programme I outlined in a post in response to Mr Kirsop.
My aim in all of this is educational/apologetic - so I see my Committee involving itself doing seminars, writing inserts for weekly church bulletins, maybe some public debating as well.
David - thank you for digesting all this for us. I look forward to availing myself of what you produce in more permanent (and referenced for Mr Kirsop!) form.
The opinions expressed in this forum belong to the individual posting the message and may not represent the view of the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church. Click here to read the Posting Policy.
Everyone is welcome on our forums, but please keep comments on-topic and civil. Any flaming or general nastiness will be deleted. No unsolicited advertising is allowed. All comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc. related to the forums should be directed to Robert Moller. Click here to read our complete Posting Policy.
Get the latest Sydney stories, Culture and Indepth on your mobile device. Visit sydang.mobi
