Dawkins dissed again and again (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, April 23, 2014, 17:42 (3650 days ago) @ David Turell

I've listened to the Dawkins lecture. It's mainly a repeat of his arguments in The God Delusion. He still praises the elegance of evolutionary theory as if it offered all the answers, sticks to gradualism, though this has come under increasing fire, insists that the theory favours atheism ... although he admits that many religious people including the Pope have accepted it (of course he doesn't tell us how it can fit in with theism) ... and again dismisses design on the grounds that the designer would have to be even more complex than the design. I accept this point, but it doesn't invalidate the complexity argument. The question then becomes whether we can assume there is no form of intelligent existence beyond our own. Dawkins in The God Delusion expresses his hope that eventually all the things we don't understand will be embraced "within the natural". (Natural, admittedly, is a flexible term, but his whole approach is materialistic.)Dismissing design because you think and hope there will be another explanation seems to me as unscientific as embracing design because you don't think there can be another explanation.-He comes up with the usual sneer at all the past gods that people are now "atheistic" about (just as some theists might sneer at all the different theories of abiogenesis), but he seems not to realize that all god figures are approximations ... simply our attempts to identify (maybe anthropomorphize, or maybe dream up) whatever as yet unknown power(s) led to our existence. By picking on the soft target of individual religions, he can raise easy laughs, and play with the word "atheism", but one would have hoped for something more discerning at this level. There is a similar superficiality in his use of polls. I think he said 73% of scientists were atheists, and he wouldn't be surprised if the "intelligentsia" in other fields came up with similar figures. Firstly, if you set store by polls, you hold a poll, you don't anticipate the results according to your own prejudices, and secondly what grounds are there for assuming that what he calls the "intelligentsia" have any more access than anyone else to the ultimate truths that NONE of us know (e.g. the origin and nature of life and consciousness)? I remember ... alas only vaguely ... the story of how western experts brought new farming techniques to a region in Africa, where the natives had been using their traditional methods for centuries. Within a few years, the land was useless. I wish I could remember the details, but in all walks of life we see experts making an unholy mess of what they touch. Of course this is not to decry all experts, but my point is that the views of the "intelligentsia" about God can hardly be regarded as a reliable yardstick when there is so much that remains unknown.-As in The God Delusion, Dawkins tries to belittle agnosticism. In this context he mentions Darwin, and even quotes him as saying he had never been an atheist. It's the first time I've heard Dawkins acknowledge this fact, and it's a pity he didn't also mention Darwin's insistence that his theory is compatible with religious belief. Dawkins manages to gloss over all the implications with a digression about Aveling and Marx, and then goes on to associate the agnostic's non-belief in God with tooth-fairy and teapot agnosticism, as if somehow these are on the same level. Perhaps he simply cannot conceive of Darwin or anyone else genuinely being uncertain about the existence of God and therefore leaving the question open. His approach is amusing for a sympathetic audience, but I find it as blinkered as his views of evolution, different forms of gods, and the "intelligentsia".
 
If, however, American society is indeed as hostile to atheism as he says it is, I would certainly support his "coming out" campaign. And perhaps it needs militancy if it is to overcome the prejudices of a predominantly religious society. But militancy breeds militancy, and it seems to me that rational arguments might in the long run pay greater dividends than Dawkins' generally polemical and in my view extremely superficial approach to the subject in both his book and his lecture.