The godless delusion, flights of fancy and pointless questions
I expected all of Dawkins’ claims in his book, The God Delusion, to be strongly evidence-based. But a large part of it is devoted to general speculation and flights of fancy based on no evidence whatsoever.
He admits that the fine-tuning of the universe is remarkable and looks designed (it really does). His solution: the multiverse (no evidence).
Dawkins admits it is very difficult to explain how living matter could have arisen from non-living matter (it is probably impossible — or at least the probability is vanishingly low). His explanation: billions of earth-like planets (no evidence).
Natural selection appears to be his god, so he tries to explain the adaptive advantage of religion in terms of it piggy-backing on the adaptive advantage of children’s acceptance of their parents’ directions. (Wildly speculative — he surely knows that millions have become theistic believers in adult life). Then there is cultural evolution and the whole business of memes (wildly speculative and no evidence).
So what good arguments does he have? The damage theists have done. He tries to show that atheists like Stalin — he doesn’t deal with Mao or Pol Pot — weren’t monsters due to their atheism; Stalin, however, certainly tried to spread atheism by every means at his disposal.
And then there’s Hitler. Dawkins really wrestles trying to get across the myth of Hitler’s Catholicism — a rather pathetic effort.
Would I be right in thinking that some of Fr Con’s attackers were baptised?
With regard to damage done, maybe it would be fair to call it quits between atheists and theists; the body-count would be much higher for atheists, but when the theists were at their worst the weaponry was more primitive.
When it comes to good done, there is no contest; the theists win hands down unless you are the kind of person who can go to the absurd lengths of trying to blacken Mother Teresa. And don’t bother bringas ing up the recent scandals in the Catholic Church; they don’t prove much except that we are all prone to evil.
I don’t want to get into the whole intelligent design and irreducible complexity business, though.
Having read Michael Behe (Dawkins gave him a bit of a rub, but then ad hominem arguments are a common part of his armoury), William Dembski and others, I don’t think it can be as easily dismissed as Dawkins seems to suggest.
As for questions like “who designed the designer?”, I used to think they were great questions when I was young. Now I know they are pointless.
Nobody, atheist or theist, can answer them. For both atheist and theist something must have been always there as it is inconceivable that nothing could produce something, and don’t insult my intelligence by talking about quantum fluctuations in a vacuum.
For materialists like Dawkins, this something would have to be material and extremely complex and therefore highly improbable. Not being a materialist, I come at the matter from a different angle; an angle that Dawkins would not even dignify by arguing against it, except in the most superficial and dismissive way.
Having studied the origins of Christianity, I have concluded from the historical evidence that a real historical person called Jesus Christ did appear alive after he had been crucified. I have also made an extensive study of miracles (dismissed by Dawkins on the basis of Hume’s statement which basically says that miracles don’t happen because they can’t happen — no need to bother looking at the evidence) and found many of them to be entirely compelling.
So there you have it. Jesus is my authority based on rational evidence that it is entirely convincing for me. I pray for Dawkins — not necessarily that he will come around to my way of thinking but that he will enjoy true life here and hereafter.
Now I’m going to phone Fr Con to see if I can borrow his bullet-proof vest.
Oliver Broderick
Ashe Street
Youghal
Co Cork
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