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- Richard Dawkins is the Professor of Public Understanding of Science at
Oxford University.
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- “A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our society accepts
– the non-religious included – is that religious faith is especially
vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick
wall of respect…” (p 42)
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- Conscientious objector status during wartime
- “You can be a brilliant moral philosopher with a prize-winning doctoral
thesis expounding the evils of war, and still be given a hard time by a
draft board…yet if you can say that one or both of your parents is a
Quaker you sail through like a breeze no matter how inarticulate and
illiterate you may be on the theory of pacifism or, indeed, Quakerism
itself.” (p 43)
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- In 2006 the US Supreme Court ruled a New Mexico church exempt from a law
against taking hallucinogenic drugs.
Members believe that they only can understand God by drinking tea
containing dimethyltryptamine.
- “Note that it is sufficient that they believe that the drug enhances
their understanding. They do not
have to produce evidence.
Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that cannabis eases the nausea and discomfort of cancer
sufferers undergoing chemotherapy.
Yet…all patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes are
vulnerable to federal prosecution (even in the minority of states where
such a specialist use is legalized).” (p 44)
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- IMPORTANT: Dawkins is only referring to supernatural gods as delusional.
- It seems to me that God means something different to every person.
- A good way to categorize distinctions is between pantheistic Gods,
Deistic Gods, and Theistic (personal) Gods
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- Theist: “believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his
main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around
to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial
creation. In many theistic belief
systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or
punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets
about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of
doing them).” (p 39)
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- Deist: “believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose
activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe
in the first place. The deist God
never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in
human affairs .” (p 39)
- Pantheist: “don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word
God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or
for the lawfulness that governs its workings.” (p 39-40)
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- Dawkins describes an atheist as “somebody who believes there is nothing
beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative
intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that
outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural
phenomena that we don’t yet understand.” (p 35)
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- “There exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately
designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.”
(p 52)
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- “Any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything,
comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of
gradual evolution.”
- “Creative intelligences, being
evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot
be responsible for designing it.”
- “God, in the sense defined, is a delusion; and, as later chapters will
show, a pernicious delusion.” (p 52)
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- Dawkins focuses his critique on these 3 religions because they are
likely the most familiar to his readers.
- Judaism: “originally a tribal cult of a single, fiercely unpleasant God,
morbidly obsessed with the smell of charred flesh, with his own
superiority over rival gods and with the exclusiveness of his chosen
desert tribe.”
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- Christianity: “…Christianity was founded by Paul of Tarsus as a less
ruthlessly monotheistic sect of Judaism and a less exclusive one, which
looked outwards from the Jews to the rest of the world.” (p 58)
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- Islam: “Muhammad and his followers reverted to the uncompromising
monotheism of the Jewish original, but not its exclusiveness, and
founded Islam upon a new holy book, the Koran or Qur’an, adding a
powerful ideology of military conquest to spread the faith.” (p 58)
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- The burden of proof is on the person presenting a hypothesis, not on the
skeptic.
- Bertrand Russell: “If I were to suggest that between Earth and Mars
there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit,
nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to
stipulate that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most
powerful telescopes. “But if I were to go on to say that since my
assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part
of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking
nonsense. ”(p 75)
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- Bertrand Russell (continued): If, however the existence of such a teapot
were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday,
and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to
believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle
the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age
or of the inquisitor in an earlier time.”(p 75)
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- NOMA was a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould: It refers to the idea that Science is
set up to answer certain types of questions and religion is set up to
answer different kinds of questions.
These areas of study do not overlap.
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- “This sounds terrific – right up until you give it a moment’s thought.”
- “What are these ultimate questions in whose presence religion is an
honoured guest and science must respectfully slink away?” (p 79)
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- “It is a tedious cliché…that science concerns itself with how questions,
but only theology is equipped to handle why questions.”
- “Perhaps there are some genuinely profound and meaningful questions that
are forever beyond the reach of science…But if science cannot answer
some ultimate question, what makes anybody think that religion can?”
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- Dawkins questions the idea that we should hand religion the job of
telling us what is right and wrong.
Which religion would we turn to anyway? They aren't exactly unanimous. Certainly Deuteronomy and Leviticus
must be mostly ignored unless we want to start stoning people to death
for “gathering sticks on the Sabbath and for cheeking (their) parents”
(p 81)
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- “A universe with a supernaturally intelligent creator is a very
different kind of universe from one without.”
- The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific
question, even if it is not in practice – or not yet – a decided
one. So also is the truth or
falsehood of every one of the miracle stories.” (p 82)
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- The first 3 of his 5 proofs are different varieties of “infinite regress
- the answer to a question raises a prior question, and so on ad
infinitum.” (p 100)
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- 1. “The Unmoved Mover. Nothing
moves without a prior mover. This
leads us to a regress, from which the only escape is God. Something had to make the first move,
and that something we call God.” (p 100)
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- 2. “The Uncaused Cause: Nothing is caused by itself. Every effect has a prior cause, and
again we are pushed back into regress.
This has to be terminated by a first cause, which we call God.” (p 101)
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- 3. “The Cosmological Argument.
There must have been a time when no physical things existed. But, since physical things exist now,
there must have been something non-physical to bring them into
existence, and that something we call God.” (p 101)
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- All three arguments rely on an infinite regress – from which God is
supposedly immune. “Even if we
allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an
infinite regress and giving it a name…there is absolutely no reason to
endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to
God…”(p 101)
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- 4. “The Argument from Degree. We
notice that things in the world differ.
There are degrees of, say, goodness or perfection. But we judge these degrees only by
comparison with a maximum. Humans
can be both good and bad, so the maximum goodness cannot rest in
us. Therefore there must be some
other maximum to set the standard for perfection. And we call that maximum God.” (p 102)
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- “You might as well say, people vary in smelliness, but we can make the
comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable
smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker,
and we call him God.” (p 102)
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- 5. “The Teleological Argument, or Argument from Design. Things in the world, especially living
things, look as though they have been designed. Nothing that we know looks designed
unless it is designed. Therefore
there must have been a designer, and we call him God” (p 103)
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- This argument is the only one regularly used today. To many it seems like “the ultimate
knockdown argument”.
- “Thanks to Darwin, it is no longer true to say that nothing looks
designed unless it is designed.” (p 102)
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- “Many people believe in God because they have seen a vision…with their
own eyes. Or he speaks to them
inside their heads. This argument
from personal experience is one that is most convincing to those who
claim to have one. But it is the
least convincing to anyone else, and anyone knowledgeable about
psychology.” (p 112)
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- “The human brain runs first-class simulation software. Our eyes don’t present to our brains a
faithful photograph of what is out there…Our brains construct a
continuously updated model…Optical illusions are vivid reminders of
this.” (p 113)
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- These illusions are included to “demonstrate the formidable power of the
brain’s simulation software. It
is well capable of constructing ‘visions’…To simulate a ghost or an
angel or a Virgin Mary would be child’s play to software of this
sophistication.” (p 115)
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- On Sept. 11th, 2001, many religious people imagined they saw
the face of Satan rising with the smoke.
This superstition was backed with a widely circulated photo that was published on
the internet.
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- “Constructing models is something the human brain is very good at. When we are asleep it is called
dreaming; when we are awake we call it imagination or, when it is
exceptionally vivid, hallucination…children who have ‘imaginary friends’
sometimes see them clearly, exactly as if they were real. If we are gullible, we don’t recognize
hallucination or lucid dreaming for what it is and we claim to have seen
or heard a ghost; or an angel; or God; or – especially if we happen to
be young, female and Catholic – the Virgin Mary.” (p 116)
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- Pascal presented the decision to believe in God as a bet. “If you gain, you gain all; if you
lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is” –
Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662)
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- Why is belief so important? What
about doing good deeds. Why
wouldn’t the God value skepticism and honest seeking over blind faith?
- How would a non-believer force themselves to believe? They would only be able to feign
belief. Wouldn’t they lose the
wager anyway because an omniscient God would see through their ruse?
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- When making this wager how does one choose which deity they decide to
believe in? What if they choose
Yahweh and it ends up that the God is actually Baal. What if Baal ends up being just as
jealous as Yahweh? In that case
maybe Pascal would have been better off not wagering, then wagering for
the wrong God.
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- Pascal said that we have nothing to lose by believing. What about all the religious dogma
that must be followed? For
example, no work on Sabbath, or dietary restrictions.
- There are so many examples of how religious belief can have significant
costs, some will be discussed later in the presentation.
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- Theists say that complex organisms could never arrive by chance,
something must have designed them.
- Dawkins agrees that complex organisms couldn’t arrive by chance, and
explains that evolution doesn’t claim that they could.
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- The theist say that the only resolution to the problem of chance is a
designer. But the designer is not
a solution to the problem of chance at all, in fact, the designer only
makes the problem worse.
- Anything capable of designing something improbable would be even more
improbable.
- The only solution so far has been gradual evolution, little tiny,
slightly improbable steps up mount improbable.
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- Irriducible complexity refers to the argument that there are systems
that couldn’t have evolved all of a sudden to serve a particular
function. For example an eye
either works or it doesn’t, there are no intermediate steps.
- There are new ideas for irreducibly complex systems being proposed all
the time and so far no one has been able to identify a truly irriducibly
complex system.
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- Hypothetical (but entirely typical) conversation: “A creationist
speaking: ‘the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog is
irreducibly complex. No part of
it would do any good at all until the whole was assembled. Bet you can’t think of a way in which
the weasel frog’s elbow could have evolved by slow gradual
degrees.’ If the scientist fails
to give an immediate & comprehensive answer, the creationist draws a
default conclusion: ‘right then, the alternative theory Intelligent
Design wins by default’. Notice
the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be
right.” (p 152)
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- When apparent gaps in science are found, it is assumed that God can fill
them by default.
- Theologians worry, because as Science fills more & more gaps, God
will have less & less to do.
- Scientists are frustrated, because they want to revel in mystery. Instead, they have to be careful when
they don’t have an immediate answer in case a theologian try to use the
gap in knowledge to knock down an entire theory and replace it with some
form of the God Hypothesis.
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- Natural Selection does a fantastic job of explaining how life developed
on this planet, but it doesn’t explain how life got here in the first
place.
- “We exist here on Earth.
Therefore Earth must be the kind of planet that is capable of
generating and supporting us, however unusual, even unique, that kind of
planet might be.” (p 162)
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- Our planet is in the “Goldilocks Zone” - just right for liquid
water. And it is uncommon in
that it doesn’t have a binary sun which would cause it’s rotation to be
very chaotic. It also has a
single relatively large moon which stabilized it’s axis. Jupiter helps intercept asteroids
that could otherwise collide with Earth.
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- 2 explanations have been presented to explain why Earth is uncommonly
hospitable to generating life.
- One is that God created the Earth, placed it inside the Goldilocks
zone, and orchestrated all the other details for our benefit.
- The other is that however unlikely it is that life exists, it obviously
is possible, because we are here talking about it.
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- “Science invokes the magic of large numbers. It has been estimated that there are
between one billion and 30 billion planets in our galaxy and about 100
billion galaxies in the universe…a billion billion is a conservative
estimate of the number of available planets in the universe.” (p 165)
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- Suppose that the probability of the equivalent of DNA/RNA arising was
one in a billion. With those odds
there would be one billion planets in the universe that could generate
life.
- But it only needs to have happened once, and the anthropic principle
states that it must have happened once, because we are here.
- Design certainly does not work as an answer to how life got here,
because it raises more problems than it solves.
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- The anthropic principle is also used to explain that since we are here
to talk about it, we must live in a kind of Universe (however rare or
improbable) that has everything it needs to make life possible.
- This also seems to be an extremely improbable event.
- There are 6 fundamental constants that are the same throughout the
universe. If any of these
numbers were even slightly different, the universe would be very
different and presumably unfriendly to life.
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- An example would be the strong force (.007). This is the force that has to be
overcome when an atom splits.
- This seems to be the perfect number for chemistry to be possible.
- If the strong force is too small (.006), then the universe would contain
only hydrogen. If it were too
large (.008), all the hydrogen would have fused into larger elements.
- It seems that all six of these constants reside within the ‘Goldilocks
Zone’ of being tuned ‘just right’.
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- “Science explains complex things in terms of the interactions of simpler
things.” (p 176)
- In order to explain how this universe came to have the constants set
perfectly to allow for life to exists we need to have a theory that is
very simple.
- “Any God capable of designing a universe, carefully and foresightfully
tuned to lead to our evolution, must be a supremely complex and
improbable entity who needs an even bigger explanation than the one he
is supposed to provide.” (p 176)
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- Natural Selection raises our consciousness to the power of ‘cranes’ that
are capable of slowly climbing up gradients of improbability. Developing complexity from simplicity.
- Theoretical physicists are inspired by the theory of Natural Selection
in their search for how our universe developed into a universe that is
friendly towards life.
- One theory is the multiverse theory.
This would allow for the magic of large numbers to work in
explaining how we happen to find ourselves in a universe friendly to
life.
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- “Time and again my theologian friends return to the point that there had
to be a reason why there is something rather than nothing. There must have been a first cause of
everything, and we might as well give it the name God. Yes I said, but it must have been
simple, and therefore whatever else we call it, God is not an
appropriate name (unless we very explicitly divest it of all the baggage
that the word ‘God’ carries in the minds of most religious
believers)...” (p 185)
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- Because religion exists everywhere on Earth, it needs a large theory to
explain it.
- Religion consumes massive amounts of time & energy. Thousands have succumbed to torture
for their loyalty to a particular religious belief. People are persecuted by zealots for
having imperceptibly differing views.
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- Religion devours resources:
medieval cathedrals could consume a hundred man-centuries for
construction.
- Devout people die for their deities and have killed for them. They’ve also whipped their own backs
or taken vows of lifetime celibacy or lonely silence.
- What is all this for? What is the benefit of religion?
- Darwinian Natural Selection seeks out and eliminates waste.
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- When we see processes that are wasteful (i.e. the peacock’s tail) we try
to find out what benefit they could be serving that could possibly
justify all that they cost.
- There are some possible direct advantages of religion to the individual.
- Theories of direct advantage to the individual don’t seem to be big
enough to explain why religion is so ubiquitous.
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- Sometimes moths will fly directly into candle flames. It looks like they are committing
suicide. If you ask: ‘why are
these moths committing suicide?’ You’d be asking the wrong answer. The question you would want to ask is
‘what process that is normally advantageous, is misfiring in this
situation?’
- Until recently, the only night lights were starlight and
moonlight. Moth’s use these to
navigate in a straight line, but sometimes it can go wrong.
- The act of moths flying into a candle is NOT an evolutionary trait, it
is a negative by-product of their night time navigation.
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- “We observe large numbers of people…who hold beliefs that flatly
contradict demonstrable scientific facts…People not only hold these
beliefs with passionate certitude, but devote time and resources to
costly activities that flow from holding them. They die for them or kill for
them…baffled, we ask why. But…we
may be asking the wrong question.
The religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate
by-product of an underlying psychological propensity which in other
circumstances is, or once was, useful.” (p 202)
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- What is the advantageous primitive trait that misfires sometimes and
generates religion?
- Our species survives by the accumulated knowledge and experiences from
previous generations.
- Children whose brains have a rule-of-thumb that tells them to listen
to their parents & people in authority without question will have
an advantage over children who don’t.
- But as with moths, this can sometimes lead to negative by-products.
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- Computers also do what they are told.
An inevitable by-product of this is being susceptible to
viruses.
- A by-product of obedience, is gullibility. It makes the mind susceptible to
viruses. Children then pass the
viruses on to their children, along with the good advice.
- There are many other theories of why religion evolved, including many
‘religion as a by-product’ theories.
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- Unless there is something seriously wrong with a person, they would
always feel intense empathy for a child in pain, or for a victim of
some catastrophe. But where did
this sense of empathy come from?
What moves someone to adopt a child, or to send money to victims
of a tsunami half a world away?
- Dawkins outlines four Darwinian reasons for altruism, generosity &
morality between individuals.
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- 1. Genetic kinship – if you take care of your children & close
relatives, your genes will survive.
- 2. Reciprocation – the giving of
favors in anticipation of receiving favors in the future.
- 3. The benefit of acquiring a reputation of generosity & kindness.
- 4. Advertising dominance by giving gifts that less dominant would be
unable to give.
- Attracting mates through costly superiority demonstrations such as
ostentatious generosity.
- “Through most of our prehistory, humans lived under conditions that
would have strongly favoured the evolution of all four kinds of
altruism.” (p 251)
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- Our sexual impulse accomplishes the task of reproduction. This is an impulse that doesn’t
disappear when reproduction isn’t possible. Women on birth control don’t lose
their sexual impulse.
- We are programmed with altruistic urges also. Our impulse to help a child in need
doesn’t disappear simply because the child in need isn’t our own.
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- Dawkins has had this question asked of him many times.
- His immediate temptation is to ask the questioner if they really are
only good because they are trying to gain God’s favor and reward, or to
avoid his disapproval and punishment.
- “If people are only good because they fear punishment and hope for
reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” – Albert Einstein
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- Some believe that without God, there are no absolute standards of
morality. That only religion can
provide standards for good and evil.
- How can you be a good person if you don’t know for sure what is right
and what is wrong.
- “Is it always wrong to put a terminally ill patient out of her misery
at her own request? Is it always
wrong to make love to a member of your own sex? Is it always wrong to kill an
embryo? There are those that
believe so, and their grounds are absolute. They brook no argument or
debate…Fortunately, however, morals don’t have to be absolute.” (p 265)
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- In Britian, Private homosexuality was a crime until 1967
- Jerry Falwell: ‘AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it
is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates them.
- Pakistan’s penal code prescribes the death penalty for the crime of
blasphemy.
- In liberated Afghanistan, there is still an article of the constitution
that the penalty for apostasy is death
- Apostasy doesn’t hurt anyone, it is simply a thought crime
- Consider the bombings of abortion clinics in the US.
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- There are two ways scripture could be a source of morals.
- 1. Direct instruction (the ten commandments)
- 2. Role models
- Both routes, if followed literally, “encourage a system of morals which
any civilized modern person, whether religious or not, would
find…obnoxious”.
- “A frighteningly large number of people still do take their
scriptures…literally.” (p 268)
According to a Gallup poll, its approximately 50% of the US
electorate.
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- Sodom & Gomorrah: 2 male angels were sent to warn Lot to
leave. The men of Sodom demanded
that Lot send out the angels so they could (know them). Lot refused, but offered them his
daughters to ‘do ye to them as is good in your eyes’ (Genesis 19:7-8)
- Abraham was ready to sacrifice Isaac, and an angel stayed his hand.
- Modern theologians protest that these stories should not be taken
literally, but many people take every word of their scripture as
literal fact. And they have a
great deal of political power over
the rest of us.” (p 275)
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- But if we’re not to take these stories literally, how should we take
them? As allegory? Allegories for what? Surely nothing praiseworthy. As a moral lessons? What morals could possible be derived
from the appalling stories of the Old Testament?
- “We do not derive our morals from scripture. Or if we do, we pick and choose among
scripture for the nice bits and reject the nasty. But then we must have some
independent criterion for deciding which are the moral bits: a criteria
which, wherever it comes from, cannot come from scripture itself and is
presumably available to all of us whether we are religious or not.” (p
275)
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- Is Moses a moral role model for our time
- “The book of numbers tells how God incited Moses to attack the
Midianites. His army made short
work of slaying all the men, and they burned all the Midianite
cities. But they spared the
women and children. This
merciful restraint by his soldiers infuriated Moses, and he gave orders
that all the boy children should be killed, and all the women who were
not virgins…No Moses was not a great role model for modern moralists.”
(p 277-278)
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- The slaughter of the Midianites is nothing short of genocide. It is no different then Hitler and
Saddam Hussein.
- Unfortunately it is not the only story of genocide in the old
testament. There are many
more. In one story, they
soldiers weren’t even allowed to spare the animals.
- Again, the point is not that religious leaders of today think in these
terms, the point is that we don’t derive the morality of today from the
Old Testament. It comes from
somewhere else.
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- It is undoubtedly the case that we do not get our morality from the
bible, but where then?
- There is a surprising consensus of right and wrong that prevails
throughout cultures. This
consensus has no obvious correlation with religion.
- All civilized nations (civilized does not include places like Saudi
Arabia) have stopped viewing women as property. Women can vote, and have the
equivalent vote as a man.
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- In our society, Abraham would certainly have been charged with child
abuse, and if he had carried out his intention to sacrifice Isaac,
would have been convicted of 1st degree murder. According to the mores of his time,
however, he was acting admirably.
- Regardless of our religiosity, we have all massively changed our views
of right and wrong. What is the
nature of this change?
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- The German word Zeitgeist means the spirit of the times. And it is used to illustrate how our
morality changes, in a positive direction over time.
- This is a quote from Abraham Lincoln – a man entirely ahead of his
times regarding right and wrong.
- “I am not…in favor of bringing about in any way the…equality of the
white and black races…I am not…in favor of making voters or jurors of
negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with
white people…there is a physical difference between the white &
black races…while they do remain together there must be the position
of superior and inferior…”
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- If heard today, the person saying those words would be considered a
horrible bigot. But in Lincoln’s
time this was completely normal sentiment.
- There are numerous examples of slowly evolving, gradual improvement in
the way we judge right and wrong.
These examples can be found all over, from the way we treat
animals, to the way we view others.
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84
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- Atheists are often called just as fundamentalist as the religious
fundamentalists.
- But, fundamentalists know they are right, because the bible tells them
everything they need to know.
Just one book – almost 2000 years old, tells them everything
they need to know. If you
question something in the bible, you are automatically wrong. There is no room for argument.
- Atheist ‘belief’ is an entirely different matter. There is evidence to back up their
belief.
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85
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- Dawkins likens his belief in evolution to his belief that New Zealand
is in the southern hemisphere.
He has seen it in multiple sources.
- Books that show evidence for any new science are peer reviewed, and if
contradictions or inaccuracies are discovered, they are inspected and
corrections are made.
- By contrast the bible is certainly not consistently ‘peer
reviewed’. In fact questioning
contradictions or inconsistencies in the bible can get one into a lot
of trouble.
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- Scientists pride themselves on their ability to change their minds if
evidence contradicts their theories.
- Fundamentalist religion actively
teaches us to never change our minds.
It teaches us to never ask questions. “It subverts science and saps the
intellect.” (p 321)
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87
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- Pat Robertson:
- “[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services
and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the
face of ministers.”
- [Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to
have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism –
everything that the bible condemns.”
- He allegedly blamed Hurricane Katrina on the decision to have Ellen
Degeneres host the Oscars.
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88
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- “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit
atrocities.” – Voltaire
- “Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.” – Bertrand Russell
- The cause of religious extremism is not psychosis. The problem is that the extremists really
believe that what they are doing is good. They are taught – from the cradle -
that they must have total, unquestioning faith.
- As long as we believe that religious faith is something to be respected
and admired, we are condoning the faith of people like Osama bin Laden.
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89
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- In a lecture in Dublin, Dawkins was asked what he thought about the
widely publicized sexual abuse cases by Catholic priests. He replied that “horrible as sexual
abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguable less than the long-term
psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the
first place”. (p 356)
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90
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- Pastor Keenan Roberts runs a Hell House in Colorado.
- Children come to watch a play of sinners going to hell.
- The plays start out with actors pretending to be sinners engaged in
horrible sins like homosexuality or abortions. It then continues with the sinners
dying and going to a hell. The
hell includes horrific screams and the smell of sulfur.
- Dawkins asked what Keenan thought about children having nightmares
from this. ‘I would rather for
them to understand that Hell is a place that they absolutely do not
want to go.’
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91
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- “Our society, including the non-religious, has accepted the
preposterous idea that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny
children in the religion of their parents, and to slap religious labels
on them – ‘Catholic Child’.” (p 382)
- Imagine referring to a ‘Republican Child’
- Dawkins pleas that we raise our consciousness and correct people when
we hear them labeling children.
Children are too young to decide their religion.
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92
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- …As I was walking from my office to my house, I realized there was
this little teeny-weenie voice whispering in my head. I’m not sure how long it had been
there, but it suddenly got just one decibel louder. It whispered, ‘There is no
God.’ And I tried to ignore it
but it got just a teeny bit louder. ‘There is no God. There is no God.
Oh my God, there is no God.’…And I shuddered.
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93
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- I felt I was slipping off the
raft. And then I thought, ‘But
I can’t. I don’t know if I can
not believe in God. I need God,
I mean we have a history’…‘How do you get up? How do you get through the day? I felt unbalanced…I thought ‘okay,
calm down. Let’s just try the
not-believing-in-God glasses for a moment, just for a second. Just put on the no-God glasses and
take a quick look around and then immediately throw them off.’ And I put them on and I looked
around. I’m embarrassed to
report that I initially felt dizzy.
I actually thought, ‘Well, how does the Earth stay up in the
sky? You mean we’re just
hurtling through space? That’s
so vulnerable!’...And then I remembered ‘Oh yeah, gravity and angular
momentum is going to keep us revolving around the sun for probably a
long, long time.’
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94
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- Consolation can exist in two forms:
- Direct Consolation: A man stuck on a bare mountain for the night may
find consolation in his large, warm St. Bernard and his brandy barrel.
- Consolation by revelation of a previously unknown fact or a different
perspective: A women whose husband died may find consolation in
discovering she’s pregnant, or that he died a hero.
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- Regarding direct physical consolation, a person could find consolation
in the strong arms of God, even if they were imaginary.
- Scientific medicine can also offer comfort, probably better than a
brandy casket could.
- With regard to the second type of consolation, it’s easy to believe
that people could greatly consoled by religion. People caught up in a disaster
frequently report that they are comforted by the idea that it is all
part of God’s plan.
- Of course, even if religion is consoling, that doesn’t make it true.
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96
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- Mark Twain: ‘I do not fear death, I had been dead for billions and
billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest
inconvenience from it.’
- Poll’s suggest that 95% of people believe they will survive their own
deaths.
- Dawkins wonder if all of these really believe it. Wouldn’t more people be excited if
they found out they were dying?
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- Many people say that they don’t understand how someone can not believe
in God, because without God, their life would have no meaning.
- Of course again, just because a hypothesis would give a positive
result doesn’t make it true.
- Life is what you make of it. If
you want a meaningful life, make sure you live a life that provides
meaning. The cool thing is that
you get to decide for yourself what you think is meaningful.
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Notes
