Contra Dawkins, Part 2

Part II: Defining the debate

No one could accuse Richard Dawkins of subtlety. So, perhaps, it’s a bit much to expect him to be good at the detailed historical, textual and philosophical analysis that is required to properly understand Einstein's views on religion. Nevertheless, one should reasonably expect that, when it comes to defining key terms in the God debate, Dawkins should be capable of giving reasonable, un-contentious definitions. Or, at least, if he does give a contentious definition, he should be conscious enough to realise that some defence of that definition is required. After all, those who have read The God Delusion will know that Dawkins is all about ‘consciousness-raising’ (pp. 1-4; 114-9; 146; 337-40). In order to raise other people's 'consciousness’ about the world, you have to be pretty aware yourself. Unfortunately, as I have pointed out in a previous post, when defining or using key terms, Dawkins exhibits a complete lack of awareness of just how controversial his use of these terms is.

The most important terms that Dawkins uses in his book are:

(1) God,

(2) Faith,

(3) Reason,

(4) Religion, and

(5) Science.

How Dawkins uses these terms determines how he reacts toward theists in The God Delusion and his other writings. It shapes his entire attitude toward theistic belief. But his definitions of these key terms are, at best, vague and, at worst, intellectually dishonest. We’ll look at each of these terms below and discuss how some of them relate to each other.

God:

Dawkins defines ‘God’ as “a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us” (p. 31). Considering our prior discussion about the problems with anthropomorphising God, to describe God as ‘superhuman’ is not particularly helpful. Zeus, of Greek mythology, is a 'superhuman'. Clark Kent, in the DC Comics, is a 'superhuman' (in disguise). God, as understood in classical theism, is 'supernatural' is the sense of existing 'above' or 'beyond' nature. In fact, even the use of terms like 'above' is slightly misleading, as God does not exist in space-time, and 'above' or 'beyond' are spacial terms. However, given the inherent limitations of human languages, these terms are usually used to illustrate God's transcendence. Consciously or unconsciously, Dawkins ignores the fundamental distinction between 'the gods' of polytheistic religions and the God of monotheism. By continuously comparing God to 'the gods' and referring to 'the gods' as 'supernatural', when, in fact, the gods of polytheism are nature gods - reflecting the unique powers of different parts of the cosmos, Dawkins incorrectly places God in the same category as 'the gods'.

Just as troubling is the fact that Dawkins leaves out several core attributes of God as defended by classical theists: eternality, simplicity, self-existence, omnipotence, omniscience and immateriality. Later, in chapter three, Dawkins mentions omniscience and omnipotence as characteristics of God, but he doesn't discuss the other attributes. Understandably, Dawkins must discuss religion in a way that encompasses as many viewpoints as possible. However, excluding bizarre and unusual views such as Mormonism’s embodied god, self-existence, immateriality, simplicity and eternality are each core aspects of the historical conception of God in monotheistic philosophical schools. Virtually all the greatest theistic philosophers and theologians would have included them in their descriptions of ‘God’. This is crucial because, as I have again shown in a previous post, when Dawkins tries to argue that any Creator-God “must be complex”, he seems to be presupposing a conception of God, as a being with physical parts. As Plantinga notes in his review of The God Delusion:

According to [Dawkins’] definition [of complexity] (set out in The Blind Watchmaker), something is complex if it has parts that are “arranged in a way unlikely to have arisen by chance alone.” But, of course, God is a spirit, not a material object at all, and hence has no parts…Given materialism and the idea that the ultimate objects in our universe are the elementary particles of physics, perhaps a being that knew a great deal would be improbable – how could those particles get arranged in such a way as to constitute a being with all that knowledge? Of course, we aren’t given materialism. Dawkins is arguing that theism is improbable; it would be dialectically deficient in excelsis to argue this by appealing to materialism as a premise (‘The Dawkins Confusion’, p. 22).

If Dawkins is not thinking about God a physical being, it is impossible to see how the concept of ‘improbability’, could possibly apply to God. Is he suggesting that God's thoughts are complex? Even if that were correct, complex thoughts are not mathematically improbable in the same way that the eye, the cell or DNA is - that is to say, in a way that can actually be calculated. Complex ideas are not improbable in the way complex organs are. One can only assume that Dawkins is conveniently smuggling the idea of physical complexity into his conception of God. No wonder he didn’t include immateriality or simplicity in his definition - that would have completely undercut his argument!

Dawkins has no excuse, here. The concept ‘God’ has been discussed widely by theistic philosophers and theologians for millennia. As it is the theistic conception of God that Dawkins is attacking with such gusto, Dawkins cannot simply create his own definition and ridicule that. To do so is to burn a straw man.

Additionally, there is little-to-no difficulty in finding detailed discussions of what theists historically have meant when they use this much over-worked term 'God'. For example, William J. Wainwright’s essay ‘Concepts of God’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006; rev. ed. 2012) would have been a good place to start and Brian Morely’s essay ‘Western Concepts of God’ (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.a.) is a very useful overview of the topic. Richard Swinburne’s The Coherence of Theism (Clarendon Press, 1977; rev. ed. 1993) is a substantial modern discussion of the topic. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, Pt. 1 includes extensive discussion of the concept of God from a Medieval perspective, as does the Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. 1. Catholic philosopher Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange provides one of the most detailed (and difficult) discussions of the topic in his modern classic God: His Existence and His Nature, Vol. 2. E. L. Mascall similarly provides a more accessible discussion in his book He Who Is: A Study of Traditional Theism, as does Prof. A. E. Taylor in his essay 'Theism' in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.

Also, there are some good resources that specifically deal with the idea of ‘divine simplicity’, which Richard Dawkins ridicules, but fails to understand properly: Peter Weigel’s essay ‘Divine Simplicity’ (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.a.); and Thomas Aquinas’ discussion of the topic in the Summa Theologiae I.3 are easily accessible and explain, specifically, the Medieval understanding of divine simplicity. These discussions should put to rest Dawkins’ simplistic assertions the God must be complex.

‘Religion’, ‘Reason’ and ‘Faith’:

Early in The God Delusion, Dawkins is at pains to distinguish between ‘supernatural religion’, of which Dawkins strongly disapproves, and ‘Einsteinian religion’, which Dawkins sympathises with (pp. 12-19). The former includes belief in a supernatural Being. The latter does not, and essentiallt involves the 'worship', vaguely defined, of nature's paradoxically-labelled 'genius'. Of course, these labels only work if Dawkins is right about Einstein being a pantheist and pantheism being no more than sexy atheism. As we’ve seen Einstein was not a pantheist, and his admiration of God was not identical with his admiration of nature, but rather an extension of his admiration of nature. Perhaps, then, we need to distinguish between ‘supernatural religion’ and ‘Dawkinsian religion’?

At any rate, Dawkins definition of ‘supernatural religion’, which apparently implies ‘theistic religion’ – though also including polytheistic religion, as Dawkins has constant difficulty distinguishing between the two – includes at least two key features:

(1)   the claim that there is a ‘God’ (poorly defined, as we have seen), and

(2)   ‘faith’ (also poorly defined, as we shall see).

The relationship between God and faith, Dawkins thinks, is that confidence regarding God's existence is primarily, if not exclusively, dependent on 'faith'. Dawkins’ definition of and attitude toward ‘faith’ and ‘religion’ is summed up in the following quote from The God Delusion:

The dictionary supplied with Microsoft Word defines a delusion as 'a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric disorder'. The first part captures religious faith perfectly. As to whether it is a symptom of a psychiatric disorder, I am inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, when he said, 'When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.' (p. 5).

I don’t think anyone, except the most worshipful of Dawkins’ readers, could really consider this a fair definition of ‘religious faith’. Considering the fact that Dawkins attacks faith as foundational to theistic religion, it is significant to see whether Dawkins definition of ‘faith’ is the same as the one used by the most influential religious thinkers in history. After all, someone attacking ‘capitalism’, who defined the term as ‘the belief that you should be a greedy, money-grubbing @#*%$’ and refused to recognise that capitalists do not hold or try to defend such a belief, would be guilty of serious intellectual dishonesty.

Unfortunately, Dawkins does not consider it relevant that religious believers, when they use the term ‘faith’, are using it in a very different way to him. In a public debate, he dismissed Oxford mathematician and philosopher Prof. John Lennox’s objections to Dawkins’ use of the term. Lennox was attempting to show that religious believers value faith as a form of trust, not blind acceptance. He used the analogy of trusting in one’s spouse, asking Dawkins: ‘You have faith in your wife, don’t you?’ Dawkins dismissed Lennox’s point as ‘semantics’. Dawkins was more right than he realised. How you define terms is a core part of ‘semantics’ and semantics is very important to public debate. The French philosopher Voltaire once said, “If any man would debate with me, let us first define our terms.” Indeed, despite his dismissal of Lennox, I suspect Dawkins knows the importance of semantics, because he refuses to consider any definition of ‘faith’ that doesn’t accept that it is intrinsically opposed to reason. Why do that? Because his claim the religious faith is borderline insane, is based on his definition of the term. Change the definition and Dawkins would have to work a hundred times harder to defend his claim that religion is fundamentally irrational. It would mean proving religious faith is irrational, rather than just defining it as such.

So, what is ‘faith’, how have theistic scholars typically defined it and (most importantly) what is its relation to ‘reason’? As above, there were plenty of resources for Dawkins to draw from had he been so inclined. Again, Richard Swinburne has provided a perfectly good summary and discussion of the issues in Faith and Reason (Clarendon Press, 2005). Online resources were available, too, such as the Catholic Encyclopedia. James Swindal’s overview essay ‘Faith and Reason’ (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001) discusses the many and varied attitudes toward faith and reason within theistic philosophy.

Swindal summarises:

Religious faith is of two kinds: evidence-sensitive and evidence-insensitive. The former views faith as closely coordinated with demonstrable truths; the latter more strictly as an act of the will of the religious believer alone. The former includes evidence garnered from the testimony and works of other believers. It is, however, possible to hold a religious belief simply on the basis either of faith alone or of reason alone.

Dawkins considers only the latter ('evidence-insensitive') use of the term faith, ignoring or unaware of the fact that the prevalent view of faith throughout religious history is actually the former ('evidence-sensitive'). This is evident from a study of Paul Helm’s useful compilation of theistic writings Faith & Reason (Oxford University Press, 1999), another resource Dawkins could have used, but didn’t. Many theistic philosophers and theologians throughout history have had a very high view of reason and have typically maintained that religious faith (or, at the very least, certain aspects of religious faith - e.g., the existence of God) must be rationally defended. This is evident in Thomas Aquinas’ famous view of philosophical discourse as praeambula fidei – a ‘preamble to faith’. It is also evident in Anselm of Canterbury's famous motto fides quaerens intellectum - 'faith seeking understanding'. Figures like Origen of Alexandria or Augustine of Hippo would have agreed, broadly, with Aquinas and Anselm on this point. Jewish scholars like Philo of Alexandria, Saadia Gaon or Moses ben Maimon would also have accepted the importance of giving a rational defence and/or exposition of their beliefs. So, too, would have Muslim scholars like Avicenna (Ibn Sina), al-Gazahli, or Averroes (Ibn Rushd). To this we can add the names of Boethius, John Philoponus, John Damascene, al-Farabi, al-Razi, Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, Francisco Suarez, Rene Descartes, Joseph Butler, John Locke, Samuel Clarke, Sir Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Moses Mendelssohn, William Paley and many more. This is not to say, of course, that they regarded reason as standing in judgement over (what they believed to be) divine revelation, exactly, but, rather, that they believed that reason could arrive at many truths also affirmed by divine revelation. (Think of this as a kind of independent verification - not necessarily needed, but valuable nonetheless.)

The confidence of these individuals in the power of reason to arrive at the existence of God would, no doubt, have been bolstered by the fact that God's existence was affirmed through philosophical arguments by ancient Greek philosophers such as Xenophanes (fragments only),  Plato (Laws, 893–96), Aristotle (Physics; Metaphysics), Plotinus (Enneads), Proclus (Elements of Theology; Platonic Theology), etc. In fact, Augustine of Hippo wrote in his Confessions that he converted to Christianity only after studying Platonist (probably neoplatonist) philosophers, because it was through studying Platonist philosophy that he understood how God could be immaterial and how he might address the problem of evil.

Additionally, passages of the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) claim that it is possible to see that God exists via observation of nature (e.g., Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20). Many Jewish and Christian philosophers reasoned, therefore, that if it is possible to infer that God exists from the observation of nature, then is is possible to express this seemingly intuitive apprehension in the form of a philosophical argument or arguments. Because of passages like these, attempts by a minority of theologians to reject Greek natural theology, on the grounds that this idea was foreign to the Jewish-Christian thought, lacked rhetorical force.

The idea that faith and reason are incompatible or in strong tension is a relatively recent development in religious thought, e.g., such irrationalist philosophies as fundamentalist fideism and Kierkegaardian existentialism. Such consciously irrationalist approaches to theistic faith have been directly influenced by scepticism regarding the ability of the human intellect to reason to metaphysical truths - specifically, the scepticism of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. (Interestingly, this scepticism regarding theistic arguments is actually based in doubts about the human intellect's capacity to know anything with confidence about the nature of reality, rather than on some renewed confidence in reason following the rise of modern science. Much atheist rhetoric on this point has history backwards: the Medieval theologians (such as Maimonides, Aquinas and Duns Scotus) often had a much higher regard for the power of human reason than influential early-modern philosophers like Rousseau, Montaigne, Hume and Kant.)

Unlike some modern religious thinkers, the best and most influential theistic philosophers today do not accept a fideist or existentialist view of theistic belief. Instead, Christians like Alvin Plantinga (author of: God, Freedom & Evil and Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion & Naturalism), William Lane Craig (author of: Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth & Apologetics and The Kalam Cosmological Argument), J.P. Moreland (author of: Consciousness & the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument), Alexander Pruss (author of: The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment), John Haldane (co-author of: Atheism & Theism), Brian Davies (author of: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion and The Reality of God & the Problem of Evil), David Bentley Hart (author of: The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss), Keith Ward (author of: God, Chance & Necessity and The Evidence for God) and Richard Swinburne (author of: The Coherence of Theism and The Existence of God) have worked across the last several decades to revive and strengthen the rational case for the existence of God. Similarly, Islamic philosophers like Majid Fakhry (author of: A History of Islamic Philosophy and Averroes: His Life, Work and Influence), Seyyed Hossein Nasr (author of: Knowledge & the Sacred and Religion & the Order of Nature) and Cafer S. Yaran (author of: Islamic Thought on the Existence of God) have each defended the rationality of theistic belief. It is not difficult to find Jewish thinkers similarly committed to the rational defence of theism, e.g., Jonathan Sacks (author of: The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning). Dawkins, however, shows little-to-no familiarity with the substance of their works.

Of course, whether any of these great thinkers (ancient, medieval or modern) are right that belief in God is rational can be debated. But they cannot be dismissed as ‘dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads…immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature’ (The God Delusion, p. 5) – whatever the hell that means, exactly.

The real ‘methods that took centuries to mature’ were, actually, methods of philosophical argument. Indoctrination isn’t so sophisticated that it requires centuries to get it right. The Nazis and Communists were remarkably effective in indoctrinating, actually brainwashing, children in a relatively brief period of time. Feminists and other radical leftists have used this same trick to great effect in today's universities. Nor is it so effective that it completely prevents mature adults - as opposed to children, who are naturally more naive and impressionable - from thinking, provided they actually want to go out and research the topic properly. (Or stay-in and research the topic properly, if you prefer.) Intellectual laziness, I would argue, is far more destructive of rational discussion – for both theists and atheists – than is being a ‘dyed-in-the-wool faith-head’. In fact, I doubt it would have been possible to simply brainwash ‘God-think’ into such great thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, Augustine, Anselm, Avicenna, al-Ghazali, Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Galileo, Johann Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, etc. They all, in one way or another, applied their considerable intellects toward reasoning to the existence of God. They were not content with simply accepting their beliefs on blind faith.

‘Reason’ and ‘Science’:

One more comment about ‘reason’. Throughout The God Delusion and other writings, Dawkins treats ‘reason’ as if it is synonymous with ‘science’, and 'science' as if it is synonymous with 'naturalism'. Very early on in his book, Dawkins makes this claim, which sets the tone for the rest of the book: “'the God Hypothesis' is a scientific hypothesis about the universe, which should be analysed as sceptically as any other” (p. 2). To assume that to fail to treat the ‘God hypothesis’ as scientific is somehow to not treat it sceptically or rationally is, and should be seen to be, an obvious mistake. Dawkins here fails to acknowledge that there are other areas of human knowledge dealing with the nature of reality apart from science, e.g. the disciplines of logic, metaphysics, the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, ethics, etc.

What’s more, this failure to acknowledge the importance of philosophy appears to be deliberate. On several occasions since the publication of The God Delusion Dawkins has stated his view more explicitly. He views philosophy as ‘obscuritanist’, as he put it in a discussion with Lawrence Krauss in their propaganda film The Unbelievers. There he accused agnostic Sir Anthony Kenny, one of England’s preeminent philosophers, of obscuring the facts, because he interrupted Dawkins several times during a debate with former Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams. After his initial put-down of Kenny, Dawkins went on to say that, after all, that’s what philosophers do, they obscure the facts. (In reality, if you watch the debate, Kenny is actually trying to clarify certain issues that Dawkins – in his superior wisdom – had succeeded in muddling completely.)

You can only really take seriously the idea that philosophy is naught but ‘obscuritanism’, if you assume that there are no areas of human knowledge that cannot be reduced to purely empirical study. If science, or empiricism, has limits, then philosophers have the right to discuss issues that go beyond, or are foundational to, an empirical investigation of the world. That is, after all, the historical domain of philosophy. Biologist Sir Peter Medawar’s most philosophical work The Limits of Science (Oxford University Press, 1988) shows clearly that empiricism cannot exhaust the questions that people can reasonably ask – including 'transcendental questions', such as whether God exists. More importantly still, E.A. Burtt’s classic The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Doubleday, 1932) describes in detail how science depends – and has always depended – on various metaphysical (i.e., philosophical) assumptions that cannot be verified by the methods of empirical science.

Dawkins’ desire to dismiss philosophy stems not from his love of reason, which too often is more rhetorical than real, but from his scientism – which he wrongly confuses with reason, because he already assumes materialism. If materialism is true, and matter is all that really exists; then science, which is the empirical description and mathematical modelling of the structure and development of material reality, could potentially explain everything that exists. But when Dawkins dismisses as ‘obscuritanist’ arguments by philosophers and theologians that allege to show that materialism (or naturalism) is not true – i.e., that there are actual aspects of reality that science cannot discover or study – he is really arguing in a circle. He only thinks they are ‘obscuritanist’ because he presumes they distract people from the ‘real business’ of explaining reality in purely physical/material terms. But the claim that science can explain everything that exists – i.e., that materialism is true – is not an empirical claim, but a metaphysical claim. If it is true, then its truth must be shown by metaphysical argument, not arbitrary appeals to scientific hegemony over reason.