Richard Dawkins Review - New York Review of Books

Interesting review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion at the New York Review of Books by H. Allen Orr:

A Mission to Convert

The book is attacked on many fronts - my favourite -  the one that made me smile - is the accusation that it's middlebrow.  The reviewer is correct in this I think - and it's one of the things that I didn't care about it - but then I don't think H. Allen Orr and I are the target demographic. 

Here's a couple of concurrent good paragraphs from the review:

"The reason Dawkins thinks he has something to say about God is, of course, clear: he is an evolutionary biologist. And as we all know, Darwinism had an early and noisy run-in with religion. What Dawkins never seems to consider is that this incident might have been, in an important way, local and contingent. It might, in other words, have turned out differently, at least in principle. Believers could, for instance, have uttered a collective "So what?" to evolution. Indeed some did. The angry reaction of many religious leaders to Darwinism had complex causes, involving equal parts ignorance, fear, politics, and the sheer shock of the new. The point is that it's far from certain that there is an ineluctable conflict between the acceptance of evolutionary mechanism and the belief that, as William James put it, "the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe." Instead, we and Dawkins might simply be living through the reverberations of an interesting, but not especially fundamental, bit of Victorian history. If so, evolutionary biology would enjoy no particularly exalted pulpit from which to preach about religion.

None of this is to say that evolutionary biology cannot inform our view of religion. It can and does. At the very least it insists that the Lord works in mysterious ways. More generally, it demands rejection of anything approaching biblical literalism. There are facts of nature—including that human beings evolved on the African savanna several million years ago—and these facts are not subject to negotiation. But Dawkins' book goes far beyond this. The reason, of course, is that The God Delusion is not itself a work of either evolutionary biology in particular or science in general. None of Dawkins' loud pronouncements on God follows from any experiment or piece of data. It's just Dawkins talking."

I love that line:  It's just Dawkins talking. 

He's right and it's one of the reasons the book has the feeling of ephemera - it won't last.

Certainly not in the same league Dawkins wonderful 'The Selfish Gene' - and that's a shame.

Alluding to Orr's first paragraph above I wish that certain Christian creeds had been able to get past the shock of Darwinism - it's refusal to engage with the realities of our time, (the equivalent of saying the Earth doesn't revolve around the Sun), are a hindrance to thought, religious or not, everywhere.  In the review H. Allan asks why the book was written - this is why I think - Dawkins' fear - not of religion; but of the corrosive effects the anti-evolution brigade has on critical thinking - something, it goes without saying, we need now as much as we ever did.

I wonder:  should religion be viewed as many do technology; a neutral 'force' that humans can use for good or ill?

Religion is different in the sense that from what I see it has a biological basis - or least spirituality does - there's a 'component' or area, (whether actual in terms of being located in a specific region or 'virtual' in the sense of a various of neuronal systems working together), that enables or I would even say creates that mystical feeling - that combined with like-minded upbringing, (perhaps by relatives that have the same predisposition towards the mystical), gives us religion. 

So in that sense it's not a 'delusion' - it's real.  One of the best examples of this I've seen in recent media is the German film 'Requiem'.  A young university student raised in a strict religious family who suffers from terrifying epileptic attacks stops taking her medication - and begins to believe that she is being possessed by demons.  The film is very effective in demonstrating that whether or not these demons are real, existent observable and recordable phenomena is immaterial - they're real to the girl and her family and her church.  If there's no one else in the room of a possessed person, other than those who believe - than how can one say the events are not real?

Right, that's enough rambling for now.  Let us look at that photo of the Sun setting on Mars that starts this post. 

I love it.  So desolate.  So lonely.

The thing is, if humankind never existed - the Sun would still have set on that landscape - it doesn't know that we were ever here. 

And someday we'll be gone and there'll be no one to remember us.

Dawkins and sunsets Previously on LTA:

Richard Dawkins on The Late Late Show - RTE

Belfast Sunset

Glasgow Sunset

Taos Sunset

Comments

[Jama]

Why oh why did you add that link to Twenty Major's blog? I was taking it all so seriously and then I read that. I nearly peed my pants. I decided to condense my thesis on religion to the following comment:

Religion cannot be a “neutral force”. By its nature, regardless of what form, it requires the believer of the religion to judge those who do not believe in said religion’s doctrine. And it becomes the goal of the believer to “convert” or “save” or even “kill” the un-believer. It’s like a gun. I have heard countless times, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” But, what is the sole purpose of a gun, if not to take life. By its design, it cannot be neutral. I probably won't get any kudos for that comment. :) But, my point is that even the nicest Christian or Catholic or Muslim or whatever you may meet is still wondering if you have experienced the love of Allah or El Shaddai or Yahweh or who ever. Maybe that's what's missing in the debate between atheists and the religious. Neither will allow the other to live and let live for each will always think the other is a fool.

[Jama]

And P.S. Some of the greatest 'Ah-Ha' moments for myself are those times when I'm flying and I look down at the world and realize just how beautiful it is, how much potential it has and humans have and how much time I waste worrying about the silliest things.

[Phil]

Jama, for once I am not going to shout loud curses at you.

You are right - religion is not neutral. If it were, why believe in the first place?

However, some of the points I tried to make in earlier ramblings were along the lines of what Mr. Orr states - I can accept scientific fact, such as evolution, and still believe that there is a God behind it.

Mr. Dawkins' (again, in my humble opinion) comes off as an egotistical blow-hard, who insinuates you are an idiot for believing in such a thing.

Even in that photo of desolation, there is awesome power in it's beauty - that's something I hang my hat on.

[Jett Loe]

Ah yes but of course Mr. Phil 'beauty' is a human construct. Perhaps creatures from another world would not even be able to conceptualise 'beauty' - and if they did have something analogous their ideas of beauty would be very different.

[Jett Loe]

And yes Dawkins does come off as a dick.

[Jama]

Oh, Phil. You can shout loud curses at me. I'll just smack you with a juice carafe and knock you over.

Thank you, Bas!

[Phil]

Jett - True...but being human is what sets us apart from other creatures (that we know of)...being a unique character of humans, generally speaking (yes, I suppose the smell of hamburger could be considered "beautiful" to a dog, but he doesn't have the congnizance to realize it). So why are we so unique (on our planet)? Why "just us"?

Jama - Damn you!!!

[Jett Loe]

Why does there have to be a reason behind 'just us'? Many folks think this question comes from humans propensity to find causality in things - our desire to find causes behind all things, (which in some of its silliest manifestations one finds in superstition - that black cat crossing the road is the reason for a happy occurrence later in the day, (in Ireland black cats are lucky - the opposite of the States).

As for unique - I don't know - anybody who's seen the Steve Ballmer 'monkey-boy' dance knows we're just another one of the species of apes on this planet :-)

[Jama]

Ah, yes Jett but now you move into the mystical with comments about causality. Synchronicity or signs from God, however you want to explain it, does have a deep effect on people, including myself. "There are no accidents" is the title of a book I was once given and though most of it is silly, one does have to wonder if there isn't some kind of force moving us, and it is as you said in your initial post that to the individual the experience is real, and in that sense not a delusion.

We are goofy little monkeys, we do want to feel unique and we won't want to feel alone so we worry and we fuss and hurt ourselves and each other. It's weird and there are no answers so I think I'll just go get a coffee and put it down for awhile. Monkeys love coffee.

Phil- HI-YA!!!! I am a kung fu master. You will not defeat me.

[Phil]

I guess the bottom line is you can go 'round and 'round with the subject. Like Jama says, either you feel it or you don't -

And you are certainly correct in that upbringing has a lot to do with it...it definitely sets the foundation - but unless you have your own experiences to reinforce it, I don't think it would stick (or, at least be nothing more than a casual acknowledgement).

When Jama mentions "synchronicity", I have some pretty profound instances that have made me believe what I believe - and I've recently had my doubts, believe me....

Complex stuff, to be sure, but again the whole "atheism" thing is the same "cause-and-effect"....finding proof as to why we shouldn't believe in God.