Jeremy Paxman interviews Professor Dawkins about The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins' asserts that belief in god is irrational and inflicts great harm upon societies.
Showing posts with label The God Delusion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The God Delusion. Show all posts
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Stephen Law Book Club: The God Delusion, chpt 1.
Stephen Law discusses The God Delusion (one chapter each week)
Chapter One: A deeply religious non-believerI won’t recount the contents of each chapter, as I am assuming you will have read them. Instead I will pull out a few points I think of particular interest. Much of this first chapter is devoted to explaining that while scientists will sometimes talk about God – e.g. Einstein and Hawking both do – they use the word in an unusual way. Einstein, as Dawkins clearly, shows, did not believe in any sort of personal God or creator/designer God, and was perhaps something of a Spinozistic pantheist.
Dawkins next turns his attention to the special reverence and privilege that he believes attaches, quite undeservedly, to religious belief.
More...
Friday, February 08, 2008
Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" book to MPs pledge - 1st Anniversary
I wrote to Peter Klaver about the upcoming 1st anniversary (on 31st March 2008) of the successful "The God Delusion" book to MPs pledge. Peter & I assisted James Christie, the creator of the pledge, to promote it to Athiests, Humanists and non-believers.
I wrote an article about our March 2007 campaign:
http://hassers.blogspot.com/2008/02/pledge-to-send-every-mp-copy-of-god.html
It would be good if you could write a blog post here too.
Regards, Chris Street
Peter Klaver replied today:
Hello Chris,
Thanks for the reminder of the book pledge anniversary. It was quite a bit of work but very nice to be involved in that project. It was even nicer that it was so successful, for a large part thanks to your efforts. The sign-ups charts clearly shows that. Various stages can be distinguished on it. Initially the sign-ups streamed in spontaneously, then leveled off. The various pledges I extracted from humanist groups at the end of February and beginning of March kept us on schedule for a while but then we started to fall behind again. Until the dramatic last-week reversal of fortune.
And boy oh boy, were the religious crowd intensely negative throughout. The online posting system on the book pledge page often reflected the degree of mild shock of believers who saw their beliefs questioned (and that was still mild compared to the hate mail James Christie received). They weren't very used to that and some of them were unable to cope in any other way then with variations of 'How dare you question what are my deeply held beliefs' or just the usual dishonest creationism to throw against science. With regard to how we dare question their beliefs, the answer is simple and best summed up in the well-known quote from Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. That is something the believing crowd will have to get increasingly used to, as atheism hasn't let down its momentum after the book pledge finished.
One of the signs of atheism maintaining and growing its strength was a local rerun of the book pledge. In Northern Ireland where I live there was an action to hand copies of TGD to all parties at the Assembly at Stormont. All accepted the books, except the rabid Protestant DUP:
http://www.freethinker.co.uk/?p=30
It gathered up a nice bit of publicity for Humani. So here's to hoping things will continue to go well on the non-believing front in 2008.
kind regards,
Peter
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Pledge to send every MP a copy of The God Delusion
General pledge information
On 24th March we had some 520 pledges. After many phone calls, on Friday 23rd March 2007, a week before the pledge closed, I finally persuaded the BHA, NSS and RichardDawkins.net to send a mailshot to their members asking them to pledge. The effect was dramatic - the target of 645 pledges was achieved on the 25th March at 00:52 am. Over 250 more pledges were made in that last week (see graph). By the closing date 31st March we had 826 pledges.
As a result the pledge, which looked like failing by 100 pledges (with only 30 pledges in the preceeding week), succeeded in the last week. Now every UK Member of Parliament has a copy of the book!
I got a phone call from James Christie from Africa (were he had been seconded for several weeks) on Sunday 25th March at 3pm congratulating me and Peter Klaver on our success in the pledge.
On 26th March, Richard Dawkins 66th Birthday, I emailed him a card of congratulations (below).
On 27th March I met Richard Dawkins in person after the wonderful "We would be better off without religion" London debate. He said he would be willing to attend the House of Commons with me to present MPs with the book. This event never happened due to difficulties in organising even one MP to receive the book (Parliament was in the Easter Recess).
On 28th March Richard Dawkins won the Galaxy Prize for Author of the Year for The God Delusion.
In the annual survey of MPs' holiday reading by the bookshop chain Waterstone's, a new mood of religious scepticism seems to have taken hold of Labour MPs, who have made The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, their first choice. This follows the loss of Tony Blair, who looked to God as the ultimate judge of whether it was right to invade Iraq.
For me the month of March 2007 was a time of extraordinary excitement. It seemed to me 'History in the Making'. It was touch and go that the pledge would succeed. I know that my efforts (and many others) and those of co-promoter Peter Klaver in N Ireland, James Christie (the creator of the pledge) and of course the 826 pledgers themselves - were directly responsible for bringing this important book to the attention of British MPs.
| Creator | J Christie |
|---|---|
| Date created | 23rd January 2007 |
| Date closed | 31st March 2007 |
| Status | closed; successful |
| Number of signers | 826 / 645 (128.1% of target) |
| Estimated signers by deadline | 826 (128.1% of target) if signup rate continues as in last week |
| Categories | Democracy and government |
Pledge “church-and-state”
Deadline to sign up by: 31st March 2007
826 people signed up (181 over target)
Country: United Kingdom
"I will arrange for my MP to receive a copy of Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" but only if 645 other people (one per UK constituency) will do the same for other MPs."
— J Christie
During February and March I was very active, with Peter Klaver, in promoting the Pledgebank pledge.On 24th March we had some 520 pledges. After many phone calls, on Friday 23rd March 2007, a week before the pledge closed, I finally persuaded the BHA, NSS and RichardDawkins.net to send a mailshot to their members asking them to pledge. The effect was dramatic - the target of 645 pledges was achieved on the 25th March at 00:52 am. Over 250 more pledges were made in that last week (see graph). By the closing date 31st March we had 826 pledges.
As a result the pledge, which looked like failing by 100 pledges (with only 30 pledges in the preceeding week), succeeded in the last week. Now every UK Member of Parliament has a copy of the book!
I got a phone call from James Christie from Africa (were he had been seconded for several weeks) on Sunday 25th March at 3pm congratulating me and Peter Klaver on our success in the pledge.
On 26th March, Richard Dawkins 66th Birthday, I emailed him a card of congratulations (below).
On 27th March I met Richard Dawkins in person after the wonderful "We would be better off without religion" London debate. He said he would be willing to attend the House of Commons with me to present MPs with the book. This event never happened due to difficulties in organising even one MP to receive the book (Parliament was in the Easter Recess).
On 28th March Richard Dawkins won the Galaxy Prize for Author of the Year for The God Delusion.
In the annual survey of MPs' holiday reading by the bookshop chain Waterstone's, a new mood of religious scepticism seems to have taken hold of Labour MPs, who have made The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, their first choice. This follows the loss of Tony Blair, who looked to God as the ultimate judge of whether it was right to invade Iraq.
For me the month of March 2007 was a time of extraordinary excitement. It seemed to me 'History in the Making'. It was touch and go that the pledge would succeed. I know that my efforts (and many others) and those of co-promoter Peter Klaver in N Ireland, James Christie (the creator of the pledge) and of course the 826 pledgers themselves - were directly responsible for bringing this important book to the attention of British MPs.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Borders Tags Atheist Book with 'O Come All Ye Faithless' Cards
reposted from: http://richarddawkins.net/article,2041,n,n
Chris Street comments are in bright green;
Chris Street comments are in bright green;
highlights in yellow blockquotes.
by The Christian Post
Reposted from:
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071217/30535_Borders_Tags_Atheist_Book_with_'O_Come_All_Ye_Faithless'_Cards.htm
A controversial Christmas card reading "O come all ye faithless" has been strongly criticized by Christians as an "ill judged and insensitive joke." Borders book stores began giving away the card free with every copy of Richard Dawkins' well known atheist work, The God Delusion, this Christmas.
The Rev. Jonathan Edwards, general secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. said the idea was "crass."
"I am quite sure that Borders intended their Christmas card as a joke. However, I personally find it an ill-judged and insensitive joke," he said, as reported by Baptist Times.
He continued, "Christians have always been used to being punch bags but I would have hoped that, in a society in which we are seeking to show respect to all people and beliefs, we might have grown out of this kind of nonsense."
He was supported by Justin Thacker, head of theology at the Evangelical Alliance, who said, "It won't surprise me if this spectacularly fails. Christmas still holds a high place in people's hearts - I think a lot of people will be offended by it."
Borders has responded to the criticism by issuing a statement which said it "did not intend it as anti-Christian or a swipe at the Christian faith," and said that it "apologizes to any of our customers who feel it was that," according to Baptist Times.
The book store described the card as a "continuation" of the debate on atheism that had come as result of the book, which was a bestseller for Borders this year.
"Our customers are intelligent, curious people who enjoy exploring all types of books and music. Naturally, some of the thousands of books and music selections we carry could be considered controversial or objectionable depending on individual views, tastes and interest," Borders said in a statement.
"However, Borders stands by its commitment to let customers make the choice."
The Evangelical Alliance's Thacker noted, "I think the atheists will love it because it's bashing Christians around the head. It's another thing to take a Christian festival and abuse it.
"Borders wouldn't do this to any other religious festival. Borders [has] made a strategic mistake and Christians will boycott it."
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071217/30535_Borders_Tags_Atheist_Book_with_'O_Come_All_Ye_Faithless'_Cards.htm
A controversial Christmas card reading "O come all ye faithless" has been strongly criticized by Christians as an "ill judged and insensitive joke." Borders book stores began giving away the card free with every copy of Richard Dawkins' well known atheist work, The God Delusion, this Christmas.
The Rev. Jonathan Edwards, general secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. said the idea was "crass."
"I am quite sure that Borders intended their Christmas card as a joke. However, I personally find it an ill-judged and insensitive joke," he said, as reported by Baptist Times.
He continued, "Christians have always been used to being punch bags but I would have hoped that, in a society in which we are seeking to show respect to all people and beliefs, we might have grown out of this kind of nonsense."
He was supported by Justin Thacker, head of theology at the Evangelical Alliance, who said, "It won't surprise me if this spectacularly fails. Christmas still holds a high place in people's hearts - I think a lot of people will be offended by it."
Borders has responded to the criticism by issuing a statement which said it "did not intend it as anti-Christian or a swipe at the Christian faith," and said that it "apologizes to any of our customers who feel it was that," according to Baptist Times.
The book store described the card as a "continuation" of the debate on atheism that had come as result of the book, which was a bestseller for Borders this year.
"Our customers are intelligent, curious people who enjoy exploring all types of books and music. Naturally, some of the thousands of books and music selections we carry could be considered controversial or objectionable depending on individual views, tastes and interest," Borders said in a statement.
"However, Borders stands by its commitment to let customers make the choice."
The Evangelical Alliance's Thacker noted, "I think the atheists will love it because it's bashing Christians around the head. It's another thing to take a Christian festival and abuse it.
"Borders wouldn't do this to any other religious festival. Borders [has] made a strategic mistake and Christians will boycott it."
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
BOOK REVIEW - For the God Question, a Biological Perspective
reposted from: http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-02/review.html
Chris Street comments are in bright green;
highlights in yellow blockquotes.
The God Delusion. By Richard Dawkins. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, New York, 2006.
ISBN-13: 978-0-618-68000-9. 406 pp. Hardcover, $27.
The book’s success certainly tells us something about the unique abilities of its author, Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, who has made his name as a distinguished biologist and literate explainer and defender of evolution, is, as a public person, also legitimately deserving of his publisher’s moniker as “the world’s most prominent atheist.”
The two—scientist and atheist—don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but Dawkins here meshes his scientific knowledge and scientific worldview with a welcome freshness and directness in examining all aspects of the “god” question, a matter often treated with kid gloves and a philosophical abstruseness intended, if not to be understood, at least not to offend. Dawkins works very hard to be understood, bringing his considerable knowledge, insight, and clarity of expression to his cause.
Dawkins also hopes not to offend—I think he really does try to couch his arguments to appeal to the higher impulses of intelligent believers. But not giving offense is not the highest item on his agenda. In fact, society’s “hands-off” attitude toward religion, an “undeserved respect” by which generations of people have been raised to give religion a free pass, allowing it to avoid the no-holds-barred critical scrutiny all democratic societies apply toward politics and everything else, is one of the things Dawkins very much wants to change.
“I am intrigued and mystified by the disproportionate privileging of religion in our otherwise secular societies. . . . What is so special about religion that we grant it such uniquely privileged respect?”
A number of other such big consciousness-raising themes resound throughout these pages.
1.Atheism can no longer be marginalized and ignored. It is a respected intellectual tradition. Atheists and agnostics far outnumber Jews and even most other religious groups. Dawkins hopes to raise the consciousness of people who have had religion pushed on them and wish they could leave that tradition: “To be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one,” he writes. “You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.”
2.The God hypothesis is a scientific question, one that can, in principle at least, be answered empirically with a yes or no result. The existence of God is thus subject to legitimate scientific scrutiny, bringing to bear all we are learning in the research laboratory to a question that used to be considered one of opinion only. “The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientifically question, even if it is not in practice—not yet—a decided one,” he writes. Did Jesus have a human father? Was his mother a virgin? Did Jesus come alive again, three days after being dead? “There is an answer to every such question, whether or not we can discover it in practice, and it is strictly a scientific answer.”
3. Evolution by natural selection is the creative force that provides all the biological complexity we see on Earth. This “illusion of design” fools those unfamiliar with evolution (the majority of people, unfortunately) into thinking a master designer must be at work. Biologists know that no such hypothesis is needed.
4.Arguments for God’s existence all have pungent counterarguments. Dawkins himself spends some time on a number of them: The Argument from Beauty, The Argument from Personal “Experience” (the most convincing to those who have had one, “the least convincing to anyone else, and to anyone knowledgeable about psychology”), The Argument from Scripture, The Argument from Admired Religious Scientists, Pascal’s Wager, and Bayesian Arguments.
He has fresh things to say about all such arguments. How do you account for inspired works of art, the religious mind asks? Answers Dawkins: “Beethoven’s late quartets are sublime. So are Shakespeare’s sonnets. They are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn’t. They do not prove the existence of God; they prove the existence of Beethoven and Shakespeare.” “Visions” and other personal experiences of God seem astonishing to the beholder, but “the formidable power of the brain’s simulation software . . . is well capable of constructing ‘visions’ and ‘visitations’ of the utmost veridical power.” He cites data showing that an overwhelming majority of members of the National Academy of Sciences and Fellows of the Royal Society are atheists. So much for admired scientists sharing the religious sensibility.
As for scripture, which means so much to so many, Dawkins cites chapter and verse of utter contradictions and the calls to violence and child-abuse and murder and wonders if religious people have even read the book they admire so highly. Even so, it doesn’t really matter. “Although Jesus probably existed, reputable biblical scholars do not in general regard the New Testament (and obviously not the Old Testament) as a reliable record of what actually happened in history, and I shall not consider the Bible further as evidence for any kind of deity.” He quotes the “farsighted words” of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote to John Adams, “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” (One of his subthemes is that the founding fathers of the American republic were not the “Christians” imagined by today’s religious right but something very close to deists, agnostics, or, yes, even atheists.)
Dawkins saves his biggest guns for the most powerful argument of all, one that doesn’t depend upon personal subjectivity: The Argument from Improbability. Some observed phenomena about life is correctly extolled as statistically improbable. Theists think the argument falls in their favor. Dawkins sees exactly the opposite. The argument, in his view, “comes close to proving that God does not exist.”
In a core chapter “Why There Is Almost Certainly No God,” he calls the argument the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. This is reference to the amusing image attributed to the physicist Fred Hoyle. Hoyle said the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would assemble a 747 airliner. It is the creationist’s favorite argument, and it seems powerful to those uninformed by natural selection. This is where Dawkins finds that biologists seem to have something up on some physicists who may understand natural selection intellectually but apparently not viscerally. Suggests he: “Perhaps you need to be steeped in natural selection, immersed in it, swim about in it, before you can truly appreciate its power.”
The argument, Dawkins says, “could be made only by somebody who doesn’t understand the first thing about natural selection: somebody who thinks natural selection is a theory of chance whereas—in the relevant sense of chance—it is the opposite.” In fact, as he sets out to show in the chapter (I think successfully), “Darwinian natural selection is the only known solution to the otherwise unanswerable riddle of where the information content [in living matter] comes from.”
The insights of evolution make biologists wary of the way that the idea of chance is so often misinterpreted. “A deep understanding of Darwinism teaches us to be wary of the easy assumption that design is the only alternative to chance, and teaches us to seek out graded ramps of slowly increasing complexity,” writes Dawkins. “The illusion of design is a trap that has caught us before, and Darwin should have immunized us by raising our consciousness. Would that he had succeeded with all of us.”
He notes that the “scientifically savvy” philosopher Daniel Dennett has pointed out that evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: “the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. . . . You’ll never see a pot making a potter.” But as Dawkins points out over and over throughout this book, the incremental processes of evolution through natural selection do just that. “Darwin’s discovery of a workable process that does that very counter-intuitive thing is what makes his contribution to human thought so revolutionary, and so loaded with the power to raise consciousness.”
Again Dawkins clearly summarizes the point: “Chance and design both fail as solutions to the problem of statistical improbability, because one of them is the problem, and the other one regresses to it. Natural selection is a real solution. It is the only workable solution that has ever been suggested. And it is not only a workable solution, it is a solution of stunning elegance and power.”
Along the way Dawkins brings a biologist’s unique perspective to some pesky problems, such as the anthropic principle. Physicists seem to get tied up in knots writing about the anthropic principle, perhaps fearing that it provides fodder for the design hypothesis for the universe. The idea that the universe is apparently finely tuned for life as we know it (us) to exist—six constants have to be pretty much “just so”—is loved by what Dawkins calls “religious apologists,” a fact he finds strange. “For some reason that makes no sense at all, they think it supports their case,” he writes. “Precisely the opposite is true. The anthropic principle, like natural section, is an alternative to the design hypothesis. It provides a rational, design-free explanation for the fact that we find ourselves in a situation propitious to our existence.”
The anthropic idea—more or less that if the conditions weren’t right we wouldn’t be here to speculate about it—“has a faintly Darwinian feel,” Dawkins finds.
“What the religious mind fails to grasp,” he writes, “is that two candidate solutions are offered to the problem. God is one. The anthropic principle is the other. They are alternatives.”
The God solution seems deeply unsatisfying. “A God capable of calculating the Goldilocks values for the six numbers would have to be at least as improbable as the finely tuned combination of numbers itself, and that’s very improbable indeed.” He calls it the “Divine Knob-Twiddler” argument, and again sees that our tendency to resort to it “may have something to do with the fact that many people have not had their consciousness raised, as biologists have, by natural selection and its power to tame improbability.”
I found on every page of The God Delusion passages worth underlining that I want to turn to again and again. Dawkins has created here something not just for the nonreligious and those leaning that way—a powerful call for the respectability and intellectual validity of nonbelief—but a book also full of substance for any scientifically inclined reader. It repeatedly calls forth the powers of natural selection to provide understanding and insight into a natural world that deserves our highest and clearest levels of inquiry and curiosity.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Won't anyone stand up for God? by Daily Mail
reposted from RichardDawkins.net
Thanks to Linda Ward Selbie for the link.
Reposted from:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=466794&in_page_id=1879
Atheists are on the march. The idea of God is under fire. The practice of religion is being condemned as a major source of evil in the world. The latest assault comes in a book entitled God Is Not Great by polemical writer Christopher Hitchens.
The work, subtitled The Case Against Religion, is already on the bestseller list of The New York Times. It arrives hot on the heels of The God Delusion, another bestseller from Professor Richard Dawkins. Both authors are militant atheists who want to destroy the faith of believers.
Dawkins expressed the hope that 'religious readers who open this book will be atheists when they put it down'. Hitchens states boldly: 'Religion is man-made. Religion poisons everything.'
Of course, it is not difficult to convince us that religions can generate evil and violence, confronted as we are by the threats of Islamist Jihadist terrorists who wish to destroy the West. In the other extreme, we see American fundamentalists who eagerly await Armageddon and the eternal fire that will consume everyone but themselves.
Both authors have a field day pointing out the intolerance, savagery and barbarities that have been sanctioned by Church or Mosque through history - the wars of religion, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the hangings and burnings of heretics and witches and even of those who merely dissented. Religion all too easily gives rise to violence, as testified by the recent history of Northern Ireland.
It is true that churches have often aided and abetted tyrannical regimes and repeatedly tried to suppress freedom of thought and scientific inquiry. In much of the world they still oppose birth control or stem cell research. All this illustrates man's propensity to behave with a fanaticism that is neither Christian nor Islamic teaching. But not only religion has done this.
Just as much carnage has been committed for the sake of nationalism or racism. And atheism: the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, both atheist, were responsible for murder on an even greater scale. It is a mistake to attribute to religion itself the behaviour of some of its extremist adherents.
All this denouncing leaves unspoken the vast amount of good done from religious motives, including the private deeds of generosity and self-sacrifice which are never reported.
The next prong of the attack is on the Scriptures. Hitchens is a far better informed critic than Dawkins, whose book declines in places into near-hysterical propaganda.
The Old Testament is easy meat for destructive criticism. It contains the largely invented stories that sustained a primitive, hard-pressed nomadic tribe whose God Dawkins describes as 'a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak'.
Just for good measure he adds: 'A misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal megalomaniac and capriciously malevolent bully.' Does he think anyone believes in a God like that today?
It is not difficult to show the absurdities of the Old Testament myths: Genesis, for example, where Adam, having been created by God hungry for knowledge, is then banished for trying to obtain it.
The stories in Genesis and Exodus, like Jehovah's obliging parting of the Red Sea and stopping of the sun in its tracks to enable the Israelites to complete some slaughter, are read nowadays by most thoughtful people as the myths they clearly are.
Myth-making is as old as man and inevitably also enters into the New Testament in such stories as the Annunciation and the Nativity, both of which are noticeably absent from two of the Gospels (the earliest, Mark, and the most sophisticated, John).
Hitchens is well aware of current New Testament scholarship which acknowledges that the canon of 'authentic books', which was fixed after nearly three centuries of argument, is a man-made selection of much modified texts.
They were based on other texts that have been lost, which in turn depended on oral traditions which are not verifiable.
Thinking Christians would no more take every word of either Testament literally than they would offer up burnt offerings or take their moral teaching from Deuteronomy and stone adulterers to death.
But Hitchens and Dawkins fulminate as though every believer has to accept wildly improbably episodes as 'gospel' along with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, which are the heart of the matter.
Their indignant denunciations of the Bible would be more appropriate in America, where a supposed 53 per cent of believers take Genesis as the literal truth of how the universe was created - only 6,000 years ago or so, they believe.
Having put the Bible in the recycle bin, Hitchens might have asked how it differs from ancient Greek texts of similar date and doubtfulness.
Does he refuse to read the Iliad and the Odyssey because Homer's existence is uncertain historically, as is the siege of Troy? Does he reject the axioms of Euclid because he may well never have existed but was the pseudonym of a committee of mathematicians? Having, they believe, demonstrated the unlikelihood of God, atheists have to show how much more reliable it is to believe in science as the answer to all our uncertainties.
Science is far from complete - there is so much we still don't know - but their assurance is that one day we will. We will attain that Holy Grail of the physicists sought by Einstein: the Theory of Everything.
Meanwhile, we have enough to go on without needing to presume a God as ultimate Creator.
Now most of us believe in science. We are happy to pay homage to the saints of scientific breakthrough - to Pythagoras and Archimedes, to Galileo and Newton, to Darwin and Einstein, Crick, Watson and the rest, remembering always that their work was bound to be superseded by those who came after. The final Theory of Everything seems as far away as it ever did.
That is why such huge, basic questions asked by our ancestors are still being raised: Why are we here? Why is the universe? As the philosopher Leibniz put it most starkly: 'Why is there something, rather than nothing?'
Science cannot answer 'why' questions, only 'how' questions. The explanation of how we got here is currently Darwin's evolution of species by random mutation and natural selection. Only the wilfully blind would reject that - but we still want to know why it started.
Cosmologists have made great strides in plotting the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to its present state. But we still want to know why there was a big bang.
As for the other great question - what is the point, or purpose, of it all? - the current answer from science is that there isn't one. Dawkins again: 'The universe has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.'
So atheism is a belief in pointlessness. As Hitchens observes, the views from the Hubble telescope are more awe-inspiring than any medieval vision of Hell.
A Black Hole is as sobering a concept as the voice of God coming from the clouds on Mount Sinai. And the intricacy of the double helix or the human genome are as great a marvel as the most heart-stopping landscape on Earth or cloudscape in the Heavens.
But they are all pointless, without purpose. Our existence on what as far as we know is the one blue planet in trillions that nurtures and protects human life is the result of the most exquisite fine-tuning of forces such as gravity.
Every year we are seeing proved how easy it is to upset this tuning through climate change. We know how fragile the future existence of humanity could be.
But, say the atheists, it all came about by chance, thanks to millions of amazing coincidences, without any God-like creating principle behind them. Strictly speaking science invites us to believe not in a God but in the gambler's goddess - Lady Luck.
Luck or not, here we are to ask why and what for. No wonder there are, in spite of everything, many reputable scientists who do believe in God and maintain there is no contradiction between that and their belief in science.
Atheists have to face the conundrum: why do so many people believe in God when there is no God to believe in?
Their usual answer is that they are all deluded wishful thinkers who invent a God because they are scared of dying and want to imagine life after death.
Hitchens distrusts faith of any kind - 'we distrust anything that contradicts science or reason'. But reason only takes us so far. We do not live by reason alone. We rely also on intuition, imagination and faith.
Without faith - belief beyond evidence - life would be unlivable. Imagine taking a journey without faith - faith in an unknown driver, faith that there will not be an accident. You would never leave home.
Dawkins calls non-thinking faith 'evil' but current cosmologists are required to believe that the universe must be full of Dark Matter which they can neither see nor measure. What an act of faith that requires!
So it ill behoves scientists to ridicule faith as a basic fact of human nature. And of course, as the only ground for belief in God or salvation. No one can prove or disprove it. Atheism as a world view, as a philosophy to live by, is full of holes. It leaves unanswered and unanswerable our questions about the mystery of our existence.
So I am astounded that in the face of so much aggressive atheist attack no one in the ranks of believers or in the Church has stood up to reply.
Why has no one joined in the battle against these warriors for atheism? Where are the Defenders of the Faith that they ridicule?
Are our bishops and cardinals, our preachers, imams or rabbis too supine, too complacent or too scared to argue back? Have they no arguments?
In the past there have been eloquent fighters for Christian belief: churchmen such as Cardinal Newman and Archbishop Temple, writers like G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis, of Narnia fame. Where are their successors?
I know of only one: Oxford professor of theology Alister McGrath - who is also a bio-physicist - who has made a substantial refutation.
In a little book called The Dawkins Delusion he takes apart the arguments of his fellow Oxford professor and chides him for his unscholarly ignorance of theology. But though excellently argued, this is hardly likely to become a bestseller. Where are the intellectual guns of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England?
The Pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote intelligently combative books. Why does he not show that the Papacy can argue as well as act as a figurehead?
The Church of England, mired in a squabble over homosexual priests, should wheel out its guns on a more important front.
This lack of response is dangerous, especially in the eyes of young people seeking enlightenment. It looks as though the battle will be conceded by default.
Speaking up for faith should not be left to the lunatic fringe - such as the American televangelists who declared that 9/11 was God's judgment on America for tolerating abortion, or to the Fatwaissuers of Islam who threaten the life of Salman Rushdie for even questioning the Koran.
Apart from fanatics of all religions whose rigid minds leave no room for questioning, we live in an age of doubt and scepticism.
It is not enough for complacent pastors to feed their dwindling flocks with anodyne repetitions of old platitudes and the assurance that God is in his Heaven waiting for them personally. People are too educated and sophisticated for the old messages.
What are needed are speakers and writers of vision ready to address with open mind the questions and difficulties that would-be believers meet in their spiritual searches. And to show up the blind spots and black holes of both religion and atheism. It is time for some honest debate.
Reposted from:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=466794&in_page_id=1879
Atheists are on the march. The idea of God is under fire. The practice of religion is being condemned as a major source of evil in the world. The latest assault comes in a book entitled God Is Not Great by polemical writer Christopher Hitchens.
The work, subtitled The Case Against Religion, is already on the bestseller list of The New York Times. It arrives hot on the heels of The God Delusion, another bestseller from Professor Richard Dawkins. Both authors are militant atheists who want to destroy the faith of believers.
Dawkins expressed the hope that 'religious readers who open this book will be atheists when they put it down'. Hitchens states boldly: 'Religion is man-made. Religion poisons everything.'
Of course, it is not difficult to convince us that religions can generate evil and violence, confronted as we are by the threats of Islamist Jihadist terrorists who wish to destroy the West. In the other extreme, we see American fundamentalists who eagerly await Armageddon and the eternal fire that will consume everyone but themselves.
Both authors have a field day pointing out the intolerance, savagery and barbarities that have been sanctioned by Church or Mosque through history - the wars of religion, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the hangings and burnings of heretics and witches and even of those who merely dissented. Religion all too easily gives rise to violence, as testified by the recent history of Northern Ireland.
It is true that churches have often aided and abetted tyrannical regimes and repeatedly tried to suppress freedom of thought and scientific inquiry. In much of the world they still oppose birth control or stem cell research. All this illustrates man's propensity to behave with a fanaticism that is neither Christian nor Islamic teaching. But not only religion has done this.
Just as much carnage has been committed for the sake of nationalism or racism. And atheism: the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, both atheist, were responsible for murder on an even greater scale. It is a mistake to attribute to religion itself the behaviour of some of its extremist adherents.
All this denouncing leaves unspoken the vast amount of good done from religious motives, including the private deeds of generosity and self-sacrifice which are never reported.
The next prong of the attack is on the Scriptures. Hitchens is a far better informed critic than Dawkins, whose book declines in places into near-hysterical propaganda.
The Old Testament is easy meat for destructive criticism. It contains the largely invented stories that sustained a primitive, hard-pressed nomadic tribe whose God Dawkins describes as 'a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak'.
Just for good measure he adds: 'A misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal megalomaniac and capriciously malevolent bully.' Does he think anyone believes in a God like that today?
It is not difficult to show the absurdities of the Old Testament myths: Genesis, for example, where Adam, having been created by God hungry for knowledge, is then banished for trying to obtain it.
The stories in Genesis and Exodus, like Jehovah's obliging parting of the Red Sea and stopping of the sun in its tracks to enable the Israelites to complete some slaughter, are read nowadays by most thoughtful people as the myths they clearly are.
Myth-making is as old as man and inevitably also enters into the New Testament in such stories as the Annunciation and the Nativity, both of which are noticeably absent from two of the Gospels (the earliest, Mark, and the most sophisticated, John).
Hitchens is well aware of current New Testament scholarship which acknowledges that the canon of 'authentic books', which was fixed after nearly three centuries of argument, is a man-made selection of much modified texts.
They were based on other texts that have been lost, which in turn depended on oral traditions which are not verifiable.
Thinking Christians would no more take every word of either Testament literally than they would offer up burnt offerings or take their moral teaching from Deuteronomy and stone adulterers to death.
But Hitchens and Dawkins fulminate as though every believer has to accept wildly improbably episodes as 'gospel' along with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, which are the heart of the matter.
Their indignant denunciations of the Bible would be more appropriate in America, where a supposed 53 per cent of believers take Genesis as the literal truth of how the universe was created - only 6,000 years ago or so, they believe.
Having put the Bible in the recycle bin, Hitchens might have asked how it differs from ancient Greek texts of similar date and doubtfulness.
Does he refuse to read the Iliad and the Odyssey because Homer's existence is uncertain historically, as is the siege of Troy? Does he reject the axioms of Euclid because he may well never have existed but was the pseudonym of a committee of mathematicians? Having, they believe, demonstrated the unlikelihood of God, atheists have to show how much more reliable it is to believe in science as the answer to all our uncertainties.
Science is far from complete - there is so much we still don't know - but their assurance is that one day we will. We will attain that Holy Grail of the physicists sought by Einstein: the Theory of Everything.
Meanwhile, we have enough to go on without needing to presume a God as ultimate Creator.
Now most of us believe in science. We are happy to pay homage to the saints of scientific breakthrough - to Pythagoras and Archimedes, to Galileo and Newton, to Darwin and Einstein, Crick, Watson and the rest, remembering always that their work was bound to be superseded by those who came after. The final Theory of Everything seems as far away as it ever did.
That is why such huge, basic questions asked by our ancestors are still being raised: Why are we here? Why is the universe? As the philosopher Leibniz put it most starkly: 'Why is there something, rather than nothing?'
Science cannot answer 'why' questions, only 'how' questions. The explanation of how we got here is currently Darwin's evolution of species by random mutation and natural selection. Only the wilfully blind would reject that - but we still want to know why it started.
Cosmologists have made great strides in plotting the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to its present state. But we still want to know why there was a big bang.
As for the other great question - what is the point, or purpose, of it all? - the current answer from science is that there isn't one. Dawkins again: 'The universe has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.'
So atheism is a belief in pointlessness. As Hitchens observes, the views from the Hubble telescope are more awe-inspiring than any medieval vision of Hell.
A Black Hole is as sobering a concept as the voice of God coming from the clouds on Mount Sinai. And the intricacy of the double helix or the human genome are as great a marvel as the most heart-stopping landscape on Earth or cloudscape in the Heavens.
But they are all pointless, without purpose. Our existence on what as far as we know is the one blue planet in trillions that nurtures and protects human life is the result of the most exquisite fine-tuning of forces such as gravity.
Every year we are seeing proved how easy it is to upset this tuning through climate change. We know how fragile the future existence of humanity could be.
But, say the atheists, it all came about by chance, thanks to millions of amazing coincidences, without any God-like creating principle behind them. Strictly speaking science invites us to believe not in a God but in the gambler's goddess - Lady Luck.
Luck or not, here we are to ask why and what for. No wonder there are, in spite of everything, many reputable scientists who do believe in God and maintain there is no contradiction between that and their belief in science.
Atheists have to face the conundrum: why do so many people believe in God when there is no God to believe in?
Their usual answer is that they are all deluded wishful thinkers who invent a God because they are scared of dying and want to imagine life after death.
Hitchens distrusts faith of any kind - 'we distrust anything that contradicts science or reason'. But reason only takes us so far. We do not live by reason alone. We rely also on intuition, imagination and faith.
Without faith - belief beyond evidence - life would be unlivable. Imagine taking a journey without faith - faith in an unknown driver, faith that there will not be an accident. You would never leave home.
Dawkins calls non-thinking faith 'evil' but current cosmologists are required to believe that the universe must be full of Dark Matter which they can neither see nor measure. What an act of faith that requires!
So it ill behoves scientists to ridicule faith as a basic fact of human nature. And of course, as the only ground for belief in God or salvation. No one can prove or disprove it. Atheism as a world view, as a philosophy to live by, is full of holes. It leaves unanswered and unanswerable our questions about the mystery of our existence.
So I am astounded that in the face of so much aggressive atheist attack no one in the ranks of believers or in the Church has stood up to reply.
Why has no one joined in the battle against these warriors for atheism? Where are the Defenders of the Faith that they ridicule?
Are our bishops and cardinals, our preachers, imams or rabbis too supine, too complacent or too scared to argue back? Have they no arguments?
In the past there have been eloquent fighters for Christian belief: churchmen such as Cardinal Newman and Archbishop Temple, writers like G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis, of Narnia fame. Where are their successors?
I know of only one: Oxford professor of theology Alister McGrath - who is also a bio-physicist - who has made a substantial refutation.
In a little book called The Dawkins Delusion he takes apart the arguments of his fellow Oxford professor and chides him for his unscholarly ignorance of theology. But though excellently argued, this is hardly likely to become a bestseller. Where are the intellectual guns of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England?
The Pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, wrote intelligently combative books. Why does he not show that the Papacy can argue as well as act as a figurehead?
The Church of England, mired in a squabble over homosexual priests, should wheel out its guns on a more important front.
This lack of response is dangerous, especially in the eyes of young people seeking enlightenment. It looks as though the battle will be conceded by default.
Speaking up for faith should not be left to the lunatic fringe - such as the American televangelists who declared that 9/11 was God's judgment on America for tolerating abortion, or to the Fatwaissuers of Islam who threaten the life of Salman Rushdie for even questioning the Koran.
Apart from fanatics of all religions whose rigid minds leave no room for questioning, we live in an age of doubt and scepticism.
It is not enough for complacent pastors to feed their dwindling flocks with anodyne repetitions of old platitudes and the assurance that God is in his Heaven waiting for them personally. People are too educated and sophisticated for the old messages.
What are needed are speakers and writers of vision ready to address with open mind the questions and difficulties that would-be believers meet in their spiritual searches. And to show up the blind spots and black holes of both religion and atheism. It is time for some honest debate.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins - £4.49
A must read for all Humanists!The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins - paperback is £4.49 (retail price £8.99) available from:-
- WH Smith bookseller (2 for 1)
- Waterstones
- Amazon
- Chris Street - at Dorset Humanists meetings
Saturday, May 12, 2007
New Atheism encourages what it disavow
Yelling insults won't reduce the appeal of extremist religious belief. We need to be more shrewd about this peculiarly modern phenomenon.
May 10, 2007 11:30 AM | Printable version
Well, I suppose you could say I asked for it (email me if you have been converted by Richard Dawkins from a believer to an atheist) - and I've had plenty of emails. They make interesting reading but the pattern is not one that surprises me hugely. With one exception, my correspondents all said they were agnostic and Dawkins' The God Delusion has made them into atheists. There was one Muslim from Singapore who said the book had actually converted him from belief to atheism - Richard Dawkins will be glad to hear.
But for the most part, agnostic to atheist is a significantly different proposition to Dawkins' declared aim of converting religious believers into atheists. So I stand by my conclusion that this genre of New Atheism will not achieve its declared purpose - it will not roll back the rise of a particular form of extremist religious belief which - and here Dawkins and I can agree - is a threat to peace and tolerance.
What Dawkins and his fellow atheists do achieve is morale raising among American atheists. Emails and posts portrayed a picture of beleaguered victimhood - of atheists "branded as moral degenerates" for their views, as one email put it. This is how American this debate sounds; I really don't believe in the UK that atheists are a persecuted minority; the British are pretty phlegmatic about faith, they prefer religion private so no one bothers an atheist or a religious believer unless they insist on banging on about their beliefs.
On the other side of the Atlantic, it may well be a different picture and if so, I'd be the first to argue for tolerance and respect for atheism. I don't much like the kind of political culture such as in America where it is close to impossible to admit you're an atheist. If Dawkins has helped America to more acceptance of such a position, all to the good. But I also raise the concern that his form of atheism is mimicking the kind of intolerant bigotry we've seen in the past from the religious. As one person put it, it's payback time - atheists are simply giving back what religions have handed out for centuries. Well, exactly. And what's the point of that?
Once you get past a lot of the abuse on Comment is free, there's an important debate that fascinates people about the nature of religious belief. Faith has clearly failed to explain how the universe works and science has succeeded, but faith hasn't withered away. As one person put it, "is there only one kind of truth - one that is provable and scientific and that is the one by which religion must be judged" and they concluded by asking "what about other kinds of truth - such as artistic, emotional - which we find valuable and enriching?" What science can't satisfactorily answer - or express - for many believers and non-believers alike is that search for meaning, human connectedness and elusive human experiences such as peace. Nor does it provide any map for the development of greater insight or compassion. Dawkins may say he finds all that in science - good for him. For many of the rest of us, science doesn't - and perhaps traditional religion doesn't either - so we're still looking.
What surprises me - and perhaps by now, it shouldn't - is how any criticism of Dawkins prompts such a vociferous response. Yet I acknowledged plenty of common ground; much of the political charge sheet of the New Atheists against a Christian fundamentalism in the US is deeply disturbing. I share the New Atheists' horror at the mad beliefs about the second coming and the end of the world; I totally agree that the religious right should not be able to impose their beliefs on science education - intelligent design, creationism and all that hocus pocus.
But I differ on tactics, and I do so because it seems to me that extremist religious belief is a peculiarly modern phenomenon driven by the trauma of globalisation and modernity. We need to be much more shrewd about how we handle religious extremism. In many contexts - particularly Islam - it has become a political identity. Religion has re-emerged in the wake of the failure of secular political movements such as communism and socialism. The disorientating pace of social and economic change exacerbates people's need for security and certainty. Yelling scornful insults at this swelling band of benighted believers will only encourage them to draw the wagons up tighter around the laager.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Pledge to send The God Delusion to MPs - Guardian review
03:34pm
Dr Richard Dawkins wants atheists to have a collective voice. Photograph: Martin Argles
Every MP in the country is to receive a copy of Richard Dawkins' latest book The God Delusion following a grassroots effort by humanists who want to challenge state privileges given to religious groups.
The campaign, organised through the community action website, Pledgebank, is an attempt to demonstrate how widespread secular and atheist views are in this country. It comes in response to Prof Dawkins's rallying cry in the book for atheists to be more vocal.
"The reason so many people don't notice atheists is that many of us are reluctant to 'come out'. My dream is that this book may help people to come out. Exactly as in the case of the gay movement, the more people come out, the easier it will be for others to join them.
"Being an atheist is nothing to be apologetic about. On the contrary, it is something to be proud of, standing tall to face the far horizon, for atheism nearly always indicates a healthy independence of mind and, indeed, a healthy mind."
Pledgebank works by hosting pledges from people who want to recruit others to achieve a common aim. James Christie from Fife posted the original pledge: "I will arrange for my MP to receive a copy of Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, but only if 645 other people (one per UK constituency) will do the same for other MPs."
Having achieved enough fellow pledgers, copies of the book are now being sent to MPs. Most are due to arrive on Monday.
Mr Christie said he was initially moved to set up the pledge because his "blood boiled over" when he heard about efforts by the Catholic church to be exempted from adoption rules banning discrimination against gay couples. "The unashamed manner in which they asked, with no sense that they were exploiting their privilege and expecting favourable treatment - it reeked of disdain and arrogance," he said.
But he said the issue is much broader. Religious groups are given other state privileges such as funding for faith schools, the presence of bishops in the House of Lords and tax breaks. (Mr Christie said the pledge was not initiated by the book's publishers, Bantam Press, and although he approached them for help they declined to become involved.)
Liberal Democrat Evan Harris, who is Prof Dawkins' MP, said he thought MPs would find the book useful. "It would be valuable if more politicians realised that there is a large group of secular people who don't believe that religion and the state should mix," he said.
"The government increasingly wants to recognise religions as separate communities which is both dangerous for social cohesion and tends to over-represent their interests."
Prof Dawkins, who has been nicknamed "Darwin's rottweiller" for his vigorous defence of evolutionary theory, also added his name to the list of pledgers, although he said that by the time he signed up, Mr Harris's name had already been taken.
"If some respectable percentage of MPs read the book, I naturally hope that it will change the way they think. It would be especially nice if it changes their approach to education and 'faith schools'," he said.
"[Atheists] are a very significant minority in Britain, but we have far less influence than much smaller minorities because we are not organised."
"Organising atheists has been compared to herding cats, for the obvious reason that they are intelligent and independent-minded," added Prof Dawkins. But as he wrote in The God Delusion: "Even if they can't be herded, cats in sufficient numbers can make a lot of noise and they cannot be ignored."
****** some Comments ******
Wow, this is fantastic news. I highly doubt it will actually make a difference, but just the fact that it's been organized and undertaken is heartening.
Something like this needs to happen even more in America.
Posted by YellowRex on April 12, 2007 3:21 PM.Sign me up, Dawkins! Religion is a total con-job. It enables the manipulative to establish a hierachy to prey upon the weak minded and superstitious. From the Druids to Jonestown; it's the same old pathology.
Posted by Level7 on April 12, 2007 5:33 PM.Regardless of whether you are an atheist or you believe in some god somewhere, true intelligence is indicated by the ability to keep an open mind and listen carefully to the view points of both sides, and independance is the ability to then form your own opinions and keep them to yourself, and not to try and force them onto others by going on a door to door or internet blogging spree handing out your own version of "Watch Tower". Otherwise, surely at this point you become the same as religions, and all religions have there fanatics that can evoke unrest and in the worst cases wars. The true meaning of intelligence is to maintain that open mind and if you much preach anything, preach reason and preach fact.
Posted by tagreath on April 13, 2007 12:53 PM.Surely the issue here is that if people wanted to read a book, they would buy it. Just because you send them a copy doesn't mean they're going to read it.
Another issue: that whatever people believe in, be that atheism, or religion, it is their right to believe in that and we shouldn't be starting a campaign against that. Religion has a HUGE part to play in stopping indoctrinating others too i.e. the watchtower etc. Yet i don't think atheists should be creating their own army to go to a kind of war. It won't work, i haven't read the book myself, i don't particularly know what i believe but i don't believe we should, as a society, be campaigning to change or indoctrinate other people. Even our MPs.
@ kennedyrocks
"Surely the issue here is that if people wanted to read a book, they would buy it. Just because you send them a copy doesn't mean they're going to read it."
Think of sending the book in terms of writing a letter to your mp. The difference being that you found that someone else had made your points more thoroughly and convincingly than you could have done yourself, so you use their words to let your mp know how you feel about a topic.
"Another issue: that whatever people believe in, be that atheism, or religion, it is their right to believe in that and we shouldn't be starting a campaign against that."
The campaign isn't about challenging people's right to believe whatever they want, and it's certainly not the aim to indoctrinate anyone. The point is to promote critical thought and reason. Also to draw attention to the disproportionate level of respect and deference currently accorded to beliefs the moment they qualify as religious beliefs (in particular the 'big three').
Posted by bitbutter on April 15, 2007 7:50 PM.I didn't like the God Delusion as much as The Blind Watchmaker. The latter makes the argument for atheism much more clearly, in one offhand comment buried in the middle of a chapter on Lamarckism, then the book does. But, he's a celebrity, and every idea has to have a celebrity to be recognised.
Anyway, I don't think it matters whether or not the MPs read the books. In fact, it may even be better if they don't. The real effect will hopefully be to set their electoral instincts twanging, by indicating that there are a lot of people out there whose votes might just be swayed by policies that keep religion out of the governance of the state.
At the minute, conventional wisdom is that there are votes to be lost in opposing religion, but none to be lost in indulging it. Thus the shameful anti-secular behaviour of politicians of most every stripe. The book giveaway seems a highly reasonable way to begin upsetting that conventional wisdom.
Posted by AHUK on April 16, 2007 7:48 PM.reposted from: Guardian
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments
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