Contra Dawkins, Conclusion

Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion has, according to wikipedia, sold over 3 million copies in English and has been translated into 35 languages. It is by far the most widely-sold (and probably the most widely-read) atheist polemic of recent decades - perhaps of all time. All this means of course that Dawkins is quite influential in the global atheist 'community'. But is his book really any good? The reader should, by now, be fully aware that the answer is 'No'. I've focused primarily on Dawkins' discussion of the existence of God, as this issue is the lynch-pin of his book. Without his conclusion that belief in God is akin to insanity, the rest of his discussion is largely moot. Much of his case for the 'dangerous' nature of religion is based on the assumption that belief in God is fundamentally irrational and, therefore, 'faith', as he defines it, is the enemy of reason and progress.

The problem is, however, that Dawkins' discussion of theology barely rises above the kindergarten level. I was raised in a Christian (Baptist) family, so I know that, when adults try to explain religious faith to children, they tend to 'dumb' it down. That is, they often use anthropomorphic language to describe God and theistic belief. Hopefully, however, the child raised in such a family will come to a more developed, nuanced understanding of that faith as s/he gets older. In this respect, Dawkins, who also grew up in a vaguely Christian (Anglican) family, seems not to have grown up at all. His idea of God remains almost infantile. His understanding of other Christian teachings is only a little more advanced: one might call it 'adolescent'. Furthermore, Dawkins admits that he knows little of other theistic religions (i.e., Islam and Judaism). He states plainly that Christianity is the religion with which he is most familiar. His ignorance of Christian scholarship is evident. One can only imagine what gross distortions of other religions exist in his imagination.

Of course, it is true that such distortions do exist (or have existed) in reality. If you search the history of the worlds main religions, simply looking for people with ideas that are idiotic, searching out quotations to 'prove' the irrationality of theistic belief, then you will find many. That proves nothing, except that some anti-theists are experts at quote mining. Dawkins himself demonstrates a minor talent for such activities. If, on the other hand, you are attempting to understand why intelligent, well-informed, well-educated people might (and often do) choose to believe in God, that requires far more intellectual effort that Dawkins seems willing to expend. Consequently, Dawkins chooses to critique only the more crude, unintelligible examples of religiosity that he can find. So, he thinks he can win a (rhetorical) victory 'on the cheap', so the speak.

I've shown, over the course of my critique of Dawkins' critique of theistic belief, that Dawkins makes numerous errors of fact, logic and interpretation. Some of his errors that I have highlighted include:

1. Misrepresenting the views of Albert Einstein, to give the false impression that Einstein did not believe in God, plus, conveniently neglecting to mention that his own source for Einstein's religious views - Max Jammer's Einstein and Religion - comes to a conclusion that is diametrically opposed to Dawkins' own, rather brief, treatment of the topic. Not surprisingly, Dawkins treatment of the history of the world's major religions in later chapters also tends to take liberties with the facts.

2. Fundamentally misrepresenting the 'Five Ways' of Thomas Aquinas, because he manifestly did not study the writings and opinions of leading Aquinas scholars regarding these arguments. This led Dawkins to accuse Aquinas of numerous errors that Aquinas did not, in fact, commit. This includes:

3. Confusing the first three of Aquinas' Five Ways with the kalam cosmological argument, when they are very different, and...

4.  Confusing Aquinas' Fifth Way with William Paley's biological design argument, when they are very different. In addition to his errors regarding the Five Ways, Dawkins is also guilty of...

5. Distorting the ontological argument, in an attempt to present a reductio ad absurdum of that argument,

6. Making numerous demonstrably false claims regarding the New Testament documents,

7. Misrepresenting Michael Behe's 'irreducible complexity' argument (found in his book Darwin's Black Box), failing completely to engage with the substance of that argument, while at the same time accusing Behe of various fallacies that Behe demonstrably does not commit,

8. Failing to understand, or else deliberately downplaying, just how improbable such things as life-friendly planets and the origin of life actually are, in order to make his explanation of these these things by 'chance' seem more plausible,

9. Continually repeating his erroneous 'complex god' response whenever his own arguments fail to be conclusive, and

10. Accusing theistic scholars of failing to address his 'complex god' argument, when, in fact, they have, while he himself is blissfully unaware of the details of various physicists' and philosophers' arguments regarding the fundamental implausibility of his own chosen alternative: the multiverse.

In addition to these specific errors, Dawkins is, throughout his book, guilty of other, more basic failures, such as:

1. Failing to engage in any detail with the most substantive defenses of theism today, including works such as William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith (and other works), Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God and The Coherence of Theism, or John Wippel's The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (or similar contemporary defences of Aquinas' philosophical theology). 

2. Failing to engage, in any detail, with the most substantive defences of the historicity of the New Testament by conservative Christian scholars today, including books like Craig Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, Bruce M. Metzger's The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development and Significance, and N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God.

3. Failing to take seriously, or even to adequately study, the views and arguments of anyone who substantially disagrees with him, so that, even when he does engage (briefly) with the work of such scholars, it is only to dismiss or ridicule their views.

4. Failing to exhibit any real interest at all in trying to understand the variety of religious opinions of different subjects (such as on the relationship between faith and reason or science, philosophy and theology, etc.), or even any awareness that such a variety exists. (For the most part, when refuting what he disparagingly refers to as the 'religious mind' or the 'theological mind', Dawkins tends to act as though theological opinion is uniform, except when acknowledging differences gives him a rhetorical advantage, such as when he refers to 'serious theologians', when certain professional theologians happen to agree with his own opinions.)

5. Failing to acknowledge the complexity of many of the issues he discusses, except when such acknowledgements enable him to avoid difficult issues, such as when he admits ignorance of chemistry, so as to avoid discussing the extreme difficulties with naturalistic origin-of-life models.

6. Failing to exhibit any more than a superficial understanding of the broader philosophical and theological issues related to arguments for and against the existence of God and related topics - and even attempting to present an argument against the existence of God (the central argument of his book, repeated frequently) that presupposes that God, if God were to exist at all, must be some kind of material being. This is an obviously question-begging presupposition.

Ironically, Dawkins' book is widely regarded as one of the best in recent popular atheist literature. This is probably correct - which only shows just how poor-quality popular atheist literature really is. Bigots have always tried to rationalise their bigotry. Dawkins' book is little more than an attempt to rationalise his own. The only reason I could possibly recommend reading this book is that it provides interesting insights into the way in which many contemporary atheists think - and how they justify (to themselves, at least) not thinking about real theistic arguments, defended by real theistic scholars.

Overall, if I were to rate Dawkins book out of 10, I could give it no more than a 4/10 - a fail, by any reasonable standards. (And I've only focused on his discussion of the existence of God - he makes many more howlers in later chapters.) His understanding of the issues is very poor, and his arguments are worse still. In fact, I would say that the only way someone could read Dawkins' book, and admire the quality of argument found within it, is if that person were even more ignorant of the subject matter than Dawkins himself is - which would be an impressive level of ignorance. Considering his own ignorance of the subject matter, his condescending attitude toward religious theists is perhaps the most repugnant thing of all about the book. Rarely have I encountered a book in which arrogance and ignorance so mutually reinforce each other. Dawkins regards studying the relevant philosophy, theology, religious history, etc. to be a waste of time, because (he says) studying theology before discussing the existence of God would be like studying books on fairies in order to refute their existence - an argument that presupposes the very thing Dawkins is supposed to be trying to prove, i.e., that God is nothing more than a by-product of human imagination and cultural development. Having convinced himself that ignorance of theology and philosophy (and other relevant topics, as well, it would seem) is a virtue, Dawkins can then go on to make error after error about theology, philosophy and religious history, totally unaware of how ridiculous and question-begging his arguments are. His ignorance protects him from realising just how ignorant he is, and his arrogance protects him from bothering to find out: he 'already knows' he's right. Except, he's not and he doesn't.

Fin.