Many of the reviews of the first episode of Richard Dawkins' Channel 4 series, The Genius of Charles Darwin, which finished last Monday, were critical of Britain's most prominent atheist for being unable to resist having a go at creationists and other religious believers. I watched the series, but reading these reviews I couldn't help wondering if the reviewers had seen the same programme. Dawkins was repeatedly praised for his eloquent exposition of Darwin and his theory, but simultaneously marked down for introducing his own atheistic point of view.
My advice to these reviewers is: watch again; you're critiquing what you think Dawkins said, based on your opinion of his views. As the man himself stressed again and again, go and look at the evidence. It's true that there was a certain slant to Dawkins' telling of Darwin's story, but at no point in that first episode did he proselytise atheism, least of all to the schoolchildren he took fossil-hunting on a beach.
Dawkins' insistence on evidence became more apparent in the second and third episodes, and we saw precisely why it was inevitable that he would slant the series the way he did: he believes that an understanding of Darwinian evolution will lead to atheism, and it would have been disingenuous not to have included that point of view.
As for highlighting the creationist nutjobs, they may indeed be few and far between at present, and it's obvious that anything he says to one of these hardcore creationists is not going to sway them one iota. But by challenging them on TV, as he did here, he's showing many more people (those watching the programme) how wrong the creationists are.
Consciousness raising - it's a strategy that stands a good chance of success. Get the moderates on the side of rationality, so that they will understand why so-called creation science has no place in school science lessons, and actively oppose it (rather than leave it be, like those wishy-washy science teachers Dawkins spoke to in the final episode).
It's been suggested[1] that theology isn't actually a subject at all. But if that's the case it has a huge advantage over many other disciplines: being qualified in theology gives you the authority to speak out on subjects that have nothing whatever to do with the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
The muddle-headed cleric was interviewed for about eight minutes in advance of a debate in the House of Lords. The essence (indeed the whole) of his thesis was "something must be done."
I've nothing against people having opinions, but when they appear on national media to speak on a particular topic, I expect them to have some established expertise, authority or at least relevant experience that will add to the debate. But just because Dr. Williams is a nice chap with a posh voice - that's not a good enough reason to put his views on the nation's premier morning news radio programme. If you listen to what he said in those eight minutes, you'll find he said nothing new or useful.
1. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006), 57
Last Wednesday's episode of Old Harry's Game on BBC Radio 4 almost features Professor Richard Dawkins as a character - but he's there in spirit, as it were.
(Edith is in Hell after being murdered by person or persons unknown. She's struck a deal with Satan - she will write his biography in return for him finding out who murdered her. As the clip begins, she's doing a bit of background research.)
It's easy to counter arguments if you simply redefine the terms...
Jason interviewed PZ Myers recently as well, and they talked briefly about The God Delusion. I wouldn't recommend it as the audio quality is abysmal (poor phone line?). But if you're still curious, have a good pair of ears and a quiet place to listen, the audio is here:
Since my rejection of the God Hypothesis -- at age 14 or 15 -- I had, and still have, one major problem with the whole business of religion (and Christianity in particular, but that's probably because I was brought up Anglican).
My mother wanted me to be confirmed as a member of the Church of England. I had in previous years shown signs of a religious turn of mind, though I don't think her insistence that I went to Sunday School had much to do with that. Mum has herself been a Sunday School teacher, and so I was sent to the Sunday School at our local Methodist church, which took place after the church service. We were an Anglican family, but my parents didn't like the local Anglican church as it was too 'high'. It was also farther away.
I don't think Sunday School had any effect on me whatever. I can remember only three things about it. The first, and most lasting, is that there was an older boy in the group whose presence there seemed quite incongruous, as he was an obnoxious bully.
The second thing I remember was a temporary teacher we had one Sunday who, after the 'lesson' (of which, naturally, I remember not a thing) he attempted to be 'matey' with us by asking if we'd been watching anything good on 'telly' -- a slang word for TV that my parents abhorred. I remember being quite shocked (yes, I was that prissy back then).
The third memory is of an actual lesson. Maybe because it was in the form of allegory the lesson has stuck with me. It was a story about some crabs, who went to special classes every Sunday to learn how to walk forwards instead of sideways. With practice these crabs became quite good at walking forwards. But their teacher discovered that during the rest of each week they continued to walk sideways, only walking forwards during their Sunday lessons, and she admonished them for not taking their new expertise into their everyday lives.
And that's it. With some suitable prodding I could perhaps remember something else about my Sunday School classes (which seemed to go on for years and years), but for now that's all I can recall. Eventually I stopped going. I don't remember what prompted the end of my attendance.
It was much later that my mother suggested I be confirmed, which caused me to voice the doubts that had surfaced gradually since I stopped going to Sunday School. Nevertheless I agreed to attend 'catechism class' one-on-one with our local vicar.
It became fairly clear to me during my confirmation classes that my doubts about the existence of an all-powerful, all-seeing, invisible supreme being who could hear my thoughts were not going to be refuted by anything the vicar was likely to say to me. The clincher was his woolly-minded agreement to confirm me even after I told him that nothing he had said to me or given me to read had lessened my doubts. I politely declined his offer.
But I wanted to believe. The vicar's inability to provide a sound reason (such as, for instance, evidence) for belief in God left me with the conviction that clerics were not best placed to provide rational arguments and I should look to philosophy. So I read Descartes. He seemed to be promising a reasoned proof of the existence of God, and I was quite impressed by his methodology. His argument, however, stank. And so I moved on. But every 'proof' I encountered from then on was no such thing, only making me surer than ever that the whole God-thing was a man-made artefact conjured out of an understandable fear of the unknown.
I'd thought about the question a great deal. I'd done some research. I considered that I'd given the God Hypothesis a fair hearing, and it had failed to deliver. That, I thought, was the end of it.
But it wasn't. There remained this one problem. I don't pretend to be a great philosophical thinker. My research wasn't exhaustive. So I don't consider that I've covered every aspect of whether or not God exists. But I do consider that I investigated the question sufficiently enough to come to a conclusion, a conclusion with sufficient probability of being correct -- of being true.
The problem that remains is this. With moderate thinking and rudimentary research I came to a conclusion that I think anyone would come to if they had done the same. Yet millions continue to believe (or at least say they believe) in the existence of God. Not only that, but they also subscribe to some very specific and often idiotic notions about this supposed deity. Just look at scripture and you'll find some very weird things. Which scripture you look at doesn't really matter, but that brings me to the next absurdity. Which particular set of idiotic notions do you subscribe to if you're of a religious bent? They can't all be right, because they patently contradict each other.
It's not just the millions of believers that cause me concern, it's also the smaller number among my family, acquaintances and colleagues. They appear to hold beliefs about the nature of existence, the nature of the universe, the nature of physical reality, that are fundamental to how one conducts oneself in life. How can you expect to have a rational conversation -- about anything -- with someone who believes things that are so obviously irrational?
I do wonder how many professed Anglicans actually believe in the personal God of the Bible. I even wonder if Archbishop Rowan Williams believes in the personal God of the Bible. As the established church, the Church of England seems to me such a watered-down version of faith -- as if those who write 'C of E' on their census forms have less conviction than those who write 'Jedi Knight'.
There's not much chance of finding out, either. 'Faith' in England is seen as a personal matter, not to be discussed in polite society (except maybe on Sunday, at church, and then only on special dispensation, with a kind of hesitant apology). And yet the established church pervades UK society, nonetheless. Tune in to the BBC's Today Programme on Radio 4 every weekday and you'll hear Thought For The Day, which more often than not is an irrelevant collection of platitudes laced with the arrant nonsense of some kind of professed faith.
I'm glad we're at last seeing some attempt to expose the irrational aspects of faith. The publication of Richard Dawkins' bestseller The God Delusion has brought media attention to those who do not believe in God, and it has given discussion of atheism much-needed perceived legitimacy. Such discussion in the UK has generally been fairly mild, in comparison to some truly awful TV discussions in the US that you can find on YouTube -- especially those broadcast on Fox. Cringe-making for other reasons is this brief interview of Richard Dawkins by Bill O'Reilly of Fox News:
Professor Dawkins does well not to grab his interviewer warmly by the throat in an attempt to throttle some sense into him.
(One of the things I find particularly annoying about debates between atheists and theists -- especially the evangelical Christian kind of theists -- is the evangelists' fall-back position. After unsuccessfully attempting to debate atheists using various invalid arguments, such as the Argument from Personal Experience, or the Argument from Design, the evangelist will say something like this: "All you need to do is accept the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Saviour -- then you will be given all the proof you need." It's a sort of trap. Accept something without evidence. Believe it. Then you will be given proof. But of course at that stage you're already a believer. What need have you of proof? That is the very definition of faith. It's also a delusion.)
It's been a few months since I discovered RichardDawkins.net, but it didn't take me long to add the site to my newsreader, and not much longer to register for the discussion forum (though to be honest I haven't been very active there). But I did make a 'new visitor' post, and was delighted with the welcome I found. For anyone reading the posts here at Evil Burnee who is curious how I came to my present position on the issue of faith, I can do no better than repost my first message (from 17 December 2006) on the RD.net forum.
After years of silent scepticism (mostly out of 'respect' for close family members who profess religious belief in varying degrees) I've become more and more appalled by what is perpetrated throughout the world in the name of faith.
Though I was brought up as 'Anglican' I harboured doubts about the whole business of God and faith, until it became time for me to be 'confirmed'. For me this was rather late, at age 14 or 15 (I don't remember exactly when), but I was doing physics and chemistry at school, and was aware of some incompatibility with what I was being asked to believe. But I dutifully went each week to our local vicar for one-on-one 'catechism classes' -- with the result that each week I became more and more confirmed in my belief that it was all bunk. Our vicar was patient with me, and attempted to answer my queries and counter my doubts. But it was clear to me by then that I could not in all honesty declare a belief I didn't have.
So I consider my confirmation classes a success -- in convincing me that my doubts were legitimate, and freeing me from the skygod's oppression. From then on I was happy to apply reason and logic to any of life's problems, without recourse to a supernatural overseer. But it was a private matter; I saw no reason to declare my rejection of unquestioning faith. Those who know me are aware of my thinking on this, but I don't tout it around.
I wonder just how many of us -- closet atheists -- there are.
I watched Jonathan Miller's TV series A Brief History of Unbelief when it was first broadcast, but only recently have I been able to see the second part of Richard Dawkins' Root of All Evil? I was aware of Dawkins' views (I remember seeing the broadcast of his Richard Dimbleby lecture, and cringing as he talked of spoon-benders while the camera cut to another Dimbleby in the audience), and I shared the unease others have expressed at his 'militancy'.
I'm now about two thirds through The God Delusion, and I now see that what I thought of as militancy is actually a healthy disrespect for blind faith, and I agree that from holy wars to religious schools, it's time to make our views known, to counter the tacit assumptions about the 'sanctity' of religious belief.
My awareness that there was any kind of organised collection of like-minded people in this sphere came when I discovered Derek & Swoopy's Skepticality podcast. Now I also listen each week to the Point of Inquiry podcast, and have recently subscribed to Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazines.
Coming across The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has been the latest discovery in a refreshingly eye-opening journey.
While many of us in Britain have looked on in horrified fascination at the Intelligent Design debate currently in full swing in America, we may have become a little complacent that something like it is unlikely to happen here. But slowly, insidiously, it is happening here. Supporters of Intelligent Design are attempting to have Intelligent Design taught in UK school science classes. Search around a bit and you'll find plenty of evidence for this (though none for the theory itself).
I maintain that Intelligent Design -- as promulgated by such organisations as the dishonestly-named Truth in Science -- isn't actually a theory. Any argument that attempts to 'explain' observed phenomena by invoking a supernatural entity, about which we can know nothing, isn't explaining anything.
The ID-ists' arguments, when challenged by those who back evolution as a science-based or evidence-based theory, seem to be a combination of the following:
"You say ID is based on faith, but so is evolution. Evolution is based on assumptions about 'the unobservable past', and is therefore not scientific -- not susceptible to observation and experiment."
"You say that ID cannot admit of evidence because a theory that is faith-based springs from the pre-supposition that there is a creator/designer. But evolution is based on the pre-supposition that there isn't a designer."
These arguments appear to be attempts to place ID on an equal footing with evolutionary theory. But is seems to me that in order to assess the equality of these views one must look at the reasons for the respective pre-suppositions (if you accept that they are pre-suppositions).
On what basis can one 'pre-suppose' that
there is a creator, or
there is no creator?
(Note that these are mutually exclusive.)
Even if you find no evidence for a creator, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But as Richard Dawkins lucidly demonstrates in The God Delusion, the existence of a creator is extremely improbable.
The ID-ists' tactics more often than not are to try to turn the evolutionist argument back on the evolutionists, without actually answering any of the evolutionists' criticisms. It's a tactic that can be effective -- until recognised, when it becomes obviously transparent.
This table-turning is likely to happen to the argument about 'Middle World' perceptions, which explains why so much of modern scientific thinking seems to go against common sense. An ID-ist's attempt at refutation might go something like this: "Just as our middle world perception cannot comprehend the very large or the very small, it also cannot comprehend the very transcendence of the other-worldly -- such as God. A rational approach to theism, therefore, is simply not valid."
The very large and the very small, however, are susceptible to rational analysis, whatever our common-sense perceptions tell us, whereas the transcendence of a creator is not, remaining an assertion of faith, without evidence.
Intelligent Design isn't a theory -- it's an intellectual cop-out.
Paul S. Jenkins, writer, podcaster and tech-enthusiast (and atheist and skeptic) lives and works in Hampshire, UK. Notes from an Evil Burnee is his blog about things skeptical.
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