Agreeing With Richard Dawkins

Many of us, including some atheists, have found Richard Dawkins's position on religion too extreme even to approach in discussion. Scientific American, though, was able to find him a debating partner with whom he could at least converse. The article is "Should Science Speak to Faith?" I probably don't need to tell you the converse question was never raised.

Lawrence M. Krauss, a cosmologist/astrophysicist who like Dawkins is a "prominent defender of science," is definitely more moderate on the issue than Dawkins. Rather than suggesting, as Dawkins has, that religion is the root of all evil and should be wiped off the earth, Krauss merely thinks religion is a matter of irrational ignorance and misconceptions. He's not quite sure that religion is inherently bad. For that Dawkins thinks he's rather soft on religion, but they seem to be able to get along anyway.

We learn in this discussion that Dawkins has moderated (wink, wink) his famous statement in the NY Times that "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)." Here's how he softens that, as he warns Krauss about "how easy it is to be misunderstood."

"That sentence has been quoted again and again in support of the view that I am a bigoted, intolerant, closed-minded, intemperate ranter. But just look at my sentence. It may not be crafted to seduce [people into agreement], but you, Lawrence, know in your heart that it is a simple and sober statement of fact. Ignorance is no crime. To call somebody ignorant is no insult. All of us are ignorant of most of what there is to know."

So he really only meant ignorant, and not all that other awful stuff (except in the case of people who have actually studied the matter and therefore cannot retreat into that safe place--presumably we are still stupid, insane, or wicked.) Anyway, he was misunderstood. His views are far kinder and gentler than most of us had supposed.

Should science speak to faith? Here's part of what they had to offer, beginning with Krauss:

I was recently asked to speak at a Catholic college at a symposium on science and religion. I guess I was viewed as someone interested in reconciling the two. After agreeing to lecture, I discovered that I had been assigned the title Science Enriching Faith. In spite of my initial qualms, the more I thought about the title, the more rationale I could see for it. The need to believe in a divine intelligence without direct evidence is, for better or worse, a fundamental component of many people’s psyches. I do not think we will rid humanity of religious faith any more than we will rid humanity of romantic love or many of the irrational but fundamental aspects of human cognition. While orthogonal from the scientific rational components, they are no less real and perhaps no less worthy of some celebration when we consider our humanity.

Dawkins: As an aside, such pessimism about humanity is popular among rationalists to the point of outright masochism. It is almost as though you and others at the conference where this dialogue began positively relish the idea that humanity is perpetually doomed to unreason. But I think irrationality has nothing to do with romantic love or poetry or the emotions that lie so close to what makes life worth living. Those are not orthogonal to rationality. Perhaps they are tangential to it.

Faith, like romantic love, poetry, emotions, and other "irrational and fundamental aspects of human cognition" is orthogonal or tangential to rationality. "Orthogonal" in this context means uncorrelated or unconnected; "tangential" means that they touch at only the most infinitesimally small point. I once wrote a short story about someone who was a thoroughgoing naturalist in the same sense as Dawkins and Krauss. He really lived out the view that the world is matter and energy and nothing else but what arises from them; he didn't put a lot of importance on love or faith either. It's called Only Natural, and it's probably my best response to what I think is a terribly thin and misguided view.

Still, I vigorously agree with what Dawkins said near the end:

"I recently had a televised encounter with the veteran British politician Tony Benn, a former minister of technology who calls himself a Christian. It became very clear in the course of our discussion that he had not the slightest interest in whether Christian beliefs are true or not; his only concern was whether they are moral. He objected to science on the grounds that it gave no moral guidance. When I protested that moral guidance is not what science is about, he came close to asking what, then, was the use of science. A classic example of a syndrome the philosopher Daniel Dennett has called 'belief in belief.'

"Other examples include those people who think that whether religious beliefs are true or false is less important than the power of religion to comfort and to give a purpose to life. I imagine you would agree with me that we have no objection to people drawing comfort from wherever they choose and no objection to strong moral compasses. But the question of the moral or consolation value of religion—one way or the other—must be kept separate in our minds from the truth value of religion. I regularly encounter difficulties in persuading religious people of this distinction."

So do I. Belief in belief is silly. If Christian beliefs' only value is that they are moral, they fall through the trapdoor called "what then is morality?" If the basic Christian beliefs are not true in the same "truth" way that it is true that the moon revolves around the earth, then their consoling value is nothing better than a fraud and their morality is empty. The more Dawkins says this, the better I like it. We need that kind of reality in our faith.

See, it's not just Lawrence Krauss who can find a point of agreement with him!

Posted: Thu - June 21, 2007 at 08:41 AM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

Agreeing With Richard Dawkins

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson