Richard Dawkins and "The Root of all Evil?"

Richard Dawkins and

Like many here, I watched the first episode last night of this TV documentary. I was particularly interested in seeing it as I had discussed a paper he had written, ridiculing religion, at one of the ecumenical staff meetings I attend at a local university (I am there by invitation, as I'm not staff!) More of that below.

I had also listened to Dawkins being interviewed on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2. The Channel 4 people had sent out the title without the question mark and the two men must have spent the first 5 minutes with Jeremy Vine asking how he could justify this title when the worst atrocities the world has ever known were committed by people who were not religious - Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Dawkins got angrier and angrier, insisting they get off this "boring subject" to get back to talking about the programme, but Vine would not let it go. Dawkins had to agree about these worst atrocities, but said that Hitler was a Catholic (did his Catholicism motivate his evil? - I doubt it) and that though Stalin and Mao were atheists, their atheism had no connection with their evil.

So in other words, if you're "religious" and do evil, it's the fault of the religion, but if you're atheist, it's not….. Hmm

Personally, I believe that it's never the core teachings of the religion - even Islam means peace and Jesus spent his time teaching about love and forgiveness. It's always the way that men have either read something literally, misunderstood it, or, have corrupted it and used religion as an excuse for power and tribalism. The conflict in Northern Ireland wasn't about religion (if the terrorists had really been Christians - either Catholic or Protestant) they would have been practising love and forgiveness, not hatred and bigotry. No, as so often happens, it's tribalism and the greed for land.

The fundamentalist thinking that Dawkins encountered last night was scary - oh yes, but it's not the majority world view. As I explained on my thread The Roots of Fundamentalism, it's always born out of fear and ignorance.

In it, I quote from Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who wrote a book called "The Dignity of Difference" and it caused such a storm, he was forced to retract it, then re-write it, leaving out this sentence ".. no one creed has a monopoly on spiritual truth." He was asked, on the thought-provoking documentary "Children of Abraham" last year, what causes the difference between an inclusive religious belief and the closed mind of the fundamentalist and he replied that it all boils down to a key factor in our psychological makeup – insecurity.

"I define fundamentalism as the attempt to impose a single truth on a plural world. And what really lies behind it is fear – a profound insecurity, that makes you feel when you meet somebody who’s not like you, or doesn’t agree with you, that that challenges and threatens your very being.

Aggression is always a sign of insecurity and insecurity is always at bottom, a lack of faith, not the presence of it."

I wish that Channel 4 had called the programme "Fundamentalism the Root of all Evil?" which would have been much closer. Dawkins is ignoring all the goodness that comes out of people's individual practice of their religion. The anti-slavery movement in Britain came out of the church, opposing the government. The idea of setting up charities was also a Christian one.

To get behind the way Dawkins thinks, I just want to share some of the outcome of the discussion I had on the paper: "Snake Oil and Holy Water" by Richard Dawkins at the local university.

An agnostic physicist introduced the meeting and went round the room, asking for various people’s ideas of God and their observations on this paper. He particularly wanted to discuss two themes from the paper. The first:

I once asked a distinguished astronomer, a fellow of my college, to explain the big bang theory to me. He did so to the best of his (and my) ability, and I then asked what it was about the fundamental laws of physics that made the spontaneous origin of space and time possible. "Ah," he smiled, "now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I have to hand you over to our good friend, the chaplain." But why the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef? Of course chaplains, unlike chefs and gardeners, claim to have some insight into ultimate questions. But what reason have we ever been given for taking their claims seriously? Once again, I suspect that my friend, the professor of astronomy, was using the Einstein/Hawking trick of letting "God" stand for "That which we don't understand." It would be a harmless trick if it were not continually misunderstood by those hungry to misunderstand it. In any case, optimists among scientists, of whom I am one, will insist, "That which we don't understand" means only "That which we don't yet understand." Science is still working on the problem. We don't know where, or even whether, we ultimately shall be brought up short.

Interestingly one professor said that he believed that science was only in its medieval stages and had not yet reached the ultimate understanding and that when it did, science and religion would be found to be identical.

I started off by sharing the Christian Science understanding of what God is and then read them these comments of astrophysicist Laurance Doyle from SETI Institute (taken from Science and the Sacred: Separate or Synonymous? on spirituality.com: Video webcast - sadly no longer online)

Quote:
You can be the world's expert, but if the data does not back it up, if you cannot demonstrate the truth of it - you have no final authority. The final authority in science is what the universe has to say about the subject.

I think that's the difference between dogma and belief. A scientist at no point encounters the dogma, or shouldn't (accept the dogmatic response) "I'm sorry, that's just the mystery. You're going to have to accept that on blind belief." That is anathema to science. The scientific process is, question, question, question, and only truth will survive.

"Where science runs into a conflict with the sacred is in not accepting a limited version of the Source – a limited version of Mind. You can’t convince a scientist who works with googleplexes and galaxies and accelerating universes, much less quantum probabilities, that God is a tribal god that will fight. In the scientific community, a colleague of mine said, "You’re not trying to mix religion and science, are you?" I said, "Oh, no, no, no. I’m trying to make religion scientific."….

"The philosophy I have of science is that you’re doing science when you take the evidence of intelligence above the evidence of the senses. The earth used to be thought to be flat. Well, it took evidence of intelligence to say it was round, because the senses say it’s flat."..End of quote

There was a hush in the room and they were all intently listening. The agnostic physicist said to me that he deeply identified with what I’d just quoted.

Einstein came up and it seemed a good opportunity to tell them that it was reported that Einstein used to spend hours studying Mary Baker Eddy’s primary work Science and Health and that he is once said to have remarked to the librarian: "Science and Health is beyond this generation's understanding. It is the pure science. And, to think that a woman knew this over eighty years ago!" They all laughed, but I hope it will give them pause for thought.

Then the conversation moved to:

In any case, the belief that religion and science occupy separate magisteria* is dishonest. It founders on the undeniable fact that religions still make claims about the world that on analysis turn out to be scientific claims. Moreover, religious apologists try to have it both ways. When talking to intellectuals, they carefully keep off science's turf, safe inside the separate and invulnerable religious magisterium. But when talking to a nonintellectual mass audience, they make wanton use of miracle stories--which are blatant intrusions into scientific territory.

The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children. Every one of these miracles amounts to a violation of the normal running of the natural world. Theologians should make a choice. You can claim your own magisterium* separate from science's but still deserving of respect. But in that case, you must renounce miracles. Or you can keep your Lourdes and your miracles and enjoy their huge recruiting potential among the uneducated. But then you must kiss goodbye to separate magisteria* and your high-minded aspiration to converge with science.

*magisterium: teaching authority especially of the Roman Catholic Church (I was relieved that none of the professors knew what that meant either!)

(I felt last night that it was very sad that he had to put those dear people at Lourdes into a programme with evil in its title. They are not mass killers. What evil goes on at Lourdes?)

Back to my discussion. Most people that night felt that Dawkins were incredibly arrogant calling people ignorant just because they believed in miracles. The maths professor said he used to laugh at dowsing until he discovered he could do it!

I took a deep breath and then told them I didn’t have any problem believing in the miracles of the Bible, because, in a small way, I had experienced similar things in my own life. I said that there is a higher reality (that most people are oblivious to) than the physical world and its limitations and that Jesus was totally conscious of this and so was able to transcend all the so-called laws of matter.

I then told them the previous week I met Philip, whose healing I describe on and
who had staggered into a talk about Mary Baker Eddy dying and racked with pain and disability and how he then found he was pain free and the next day his legs were the same length and he could eat anything and instead of death he is alive and kicking!

The agnostic physics professor said: "Well, that’s exactly what Richard Dawkins needs to know. Surely this chap must have X-rays and hospital records? That’s the sort of proof we need. This sort of news shouldn’t just be shared with a small group of academics in this room – the world should be told about it. You Christian Scientists have a duty to let the world know about what is going on."

Love and peace,

Judy

PS: Here is a link by the way to a thought-provoking article about the argument between creationism and evolution (which came up a lot in the programme last night):

Monkeys, intelligent design, or none of the above?
Jeremy Carper
Reprinted from the January 9, 2006, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.