[INTRODUCTORY NOTE: Several years ago I was a participant in an atheist/Christian debate forum (shout-out to Arthwollipot). What follows is a copy of a post I made at that time as a result of a challenge I made with one of the atheists.]
A while back I made an agreement with Politas that if he would read Creation as Science by Dr. Hugh Ross (www.reasons.org) I would read a book of his choice. I've just finished The God Delusion by Prof. Richard Dawkins, and I wanted to get my thoughts online while they're still fresh. Dawkins is probably the leading intellectual luminary and evangelical proponent of the atheist movement. I think that I can take his work as the finest general presentation of the evidence (both physical and philosophical) in favour of the atheist position. I must admit that it is very well written, and I agree with much of what Prof. Dawkins has to say.
My reading in science, religions and philosophies is fairly broad. What now amazes me is that nobody has a ‘knockout punch’ as regards the question of “God”. Not the atheists, not the Christians, not the other religions of the world, nor the secular humanists. Everyone can make a case for their position (of varying quality and persuasiveness), but nobody can cinch their case.
Amazing!
Dawkins makes no bones about the purpose of his book. As he puts it: “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it wil be atheists when they put it down. (pg. 5)” Well, I'm a religious reader, and if this book is atheisms best shot, then “Praise God, halleluiah!”, because my faith was actually strengthened by the reading.
I start this report by giving Prof. Dawkins' definition of The God Delusion: “Instead I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: 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.”
Well, duh! By this definition, of course God is a delusion! Dawkins could have ended the book right there at page 31. This definition presupposes (without conclusive foundations, as he later admits) a purely naturalistic origin of the universe, Earth, and life on Earth. Any religious “god” is rendered superfluous and automatically erroneous.
[ADDITION to the original posting: I would also point out that Prof. Dawkins is pulling a bit of ‘bait-and-switch’ with his God Hypothesis by starting out with a god clearly supernatural and presumably transcendent (like the God of Genesis 1), then switching to a ‘god’ that is merely a creature within the cosmos that obviously cannot be the Cause of the cosmos.]
I now come to a place where I heartily agree with Prof. Dawkins. On page 59 he writes, “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 that religions rely upon to impress multitudes of the faithful. Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question with a definite answer in principle: yes or no. …” He goes on to make the additional (and very valid) point that it is improper for religionists to reject or downplay science when it weakens the religious position, but to seize on such evidence when it supports religion.
[ADDITION: Returning to Dawkins' God Hypothesis, we must consider the scientific testability of a super-intelligent, intentional, deliberative, supernatural and transcendent Being. Using the question above regarding the paternity of Jesus, the conclusive determination of a purely human father would—in principle—be easy (“Joseph, you ARE the father!”). But would it be possible (even in priciple) to conclusively establish the paternity of God Almighty as the result of a purely supernatural, miraculous conception? The paternity test would lead to a scientific dead end—as would the Cause of every single one of the other miracles in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Divine miracles are, almost by definition, transient transcendent supernatural intrusions into this universe which preclude direct scientific scrutiny. Unless a well-equiped and prepared team of relevant scientists was on the scene at the very moment a supernatural ‘miracle’ occurred, the scientific trail would, again, lead to a dead end.]
I now come to a place where I definitely disagree with Prof. Dawkins and his reasoning. On pages 72 & 73 he presents as virtually certain that there are vastly superior alien life-forms in the universe, and that those life-forms would be recognized by us as gods. As Dawkins puts it, “In what sense, then, would the most advanced SETI aliens not be gods? In what sense would they be superhuman but not super-natural?”
I'm arguing the Christian Biblical position, so the “sense” that these aliens would not be God is that (unless they were trying to pull a fast one on us) they would not be claiming that they were the eternal, transcendent, Almighty Creator of the universe. They might impress the hell out of us with their super-advanced technology, but eventually we would catch on to their game and figure out their technology. We are not going to figure out God. God's supernatural acts will be permanently—and in principle—beyond our reach. I've also argued on different threads here in the Forum that the odds against SETI are overwhelming to the point of being zero. [NOTE: see my SETI article at SETI for further elaboration]
Dawkins devotes Chapter 3 to “Arguments for God's Existence”, and I must admit that if these are really the best that theists can muster then our position is on very shaky ground indeed. Before moving to Chapter 4, “Why There Almost Certainly Is No God”, I want to touch on a few points. First is “The Argument From Scripture” (pg. 92). Dawkins is totally unimpressed with the Bible in general and the evidence in favour of Jesus in particular. As regards the ‘lunatic, liar or Lord’ trilemma he states, “But even if that evidence were good, the trilemma on offer would be ludicrously inadequate. A fourth possibility, almost too obvious to need mentioning, is that Jesus was honestly mistaken. Plenty of people are. …” This idea is “ludicrously” ridiculous! How can you be “mistaken” about giving sight to the blind; hearing to the deaf; mobility to the lame; healing to the leper; life to the dead or personal resurrection after public execution? You cannot be “mistaken”. You (and/or your associates) can only be lunatics and/or liars. I accept (with due caution) the evidence from Biblical scripture and the secular historical record, even if these are not overwhelming or ironclad.
As for “Pascal's Wager” (pg. 103) I would say that this is not so much an argument for God's existence as an intellectual tool intended to sway the undecided skeptic in favour of God; to be specific, the God of the Christian Bible.
Dawkins ends the chapter with an oblique nod towards science. On page 109 he says, “There is a much more powerful argument, which does not depend upon subjective judgement, and it is the argument from improbability. It really does transport us dramatically away from 50 per cent agnosticism, far towards the extreme of theism in the view of many theists, far towards the extreme of atheism in my view. …” The rest of the paragraph returns to a question that Dawkins feels is a showstopper in favour of atheism: Who made God? He will not entertain the notion that the question cannot be answered in a way that the human mind could possibly comprehend, nor will he consider the possibility that God really is eternally pre-existent. In Dawkins' view there is an infinite regression here, and that's all there is to it. Case closed. God does not exist.
[ADDITION: I would further point out that the atheist naturalists are in exactly the same boat as theists regarding ‘infinite regression’. For example, it has been speculated that our universe is but a single bubble expanded out of an infinite sea of quantum foam. Well, what made the quantum foam? Then, what made the ‘what’ that made the quantum foam? Then what made the what that made the ‘what’ that made…? I think you get the idea. Dawkins has no refuge in infinite regression. Play that card and all sides go bust.]
Chapter 4 begins with the subject of extreme improbability and uses the familiar Boeing 747 ‘made by random chance from a tornado in a junkyard’ example. Dawkins then gives a brief review of evolution with “Natural Selection as a Consciousness-Raiser” (pg. 114). I really have no problem with ‘natural selection’ as long as the menu of options for selection can be accounted for in the nonliving inorganic universe. This brings us to the next section called “Irreducible Complexity”. Dawkins clarifies his position by saying that he is not pleading that life (and its functions) could occur by chance, but rather by natural selection—climbing the gentle-sloped backside of Mount Improbable in an easy stepwise fashion.
He continues: “Creationists who attempt to deploy the argument from improbability in their favour always assume that biological adaptation is a question of the jackpot or nothing. Another name for the ‘jackpot or nothing’ fallacy is 'irreducible complexity' (IC, pg. 122).” On pages 123 & 124 Dawkins addresses IC with a view to refute and dispense with it. However, it is on these two pages that I must charge Prof. Dawkins with being disingenuous by misrepresenting IC. He says, “‘What is the use of half an eye?’ and ‘What is the use of half a wing?’ are both instances of the argument from ‘irreducible complexity’. A functioning unit is said to be irreducibly complex if the removal of one of its parts causes the whole to cease functioning. This has been assumed to be self-evident for both eyes and wings. But as soon as we give these assumptions a moment's thought, we immediately see the fallacy. A cataract patient with the lens of her eye surgically removed can't see clear images without glasses, but can see enough not to bump into a tree or fall over a cliff. Half a wing is indeed not as good as a whole wing, but it is certainly better than no wing at all. …”
The problem here (and I think that Dawkins knows the problem) is that his examples start from the wrong perspective and then head in the wrong direction. He starts with fully developed and functioning systems, and then works backwards to a degraded but still functioning condition. Certainly, half a vision system is better than none where vision already exists and the degradation stills allows some functionality. Certainly, half a wing is better than none where wings already exist and the degradation still allows some functionality. But that's not the point.
Irreducible complexity (I would prefer to call it “Minimally Functional Systemic Complexity”, but IC is catchier) starts from the perspective of natural history before the capability came into existence, and then considers what would have to happen in order to get a ‘Minimally Functional System’. Dawkins mentions flatworms in this section, so I will use an example that many of you may have encountered during public school science classes in your evolutionary biology textbooks: the light sensitive wart on a worm as the first vision system. Now, understand the setting. This hypothetical example starts in that period of natural history in which no creature had sight, even at a rudimentary level. That is, blindness was absolutely universal.
Enter the worm with a (presumably mutated) light sensitive wart. Does this confer survival advantage? At first blush, yes! But wait a moment; things are not as rosy as they may seem. In order for the light sensitive wart (or ‘eye spot’; same difference) to confer any advantage, there must be a (you guessed it) ‘Minimally Functional System’. That is, there must be a light sensitive wart plus a nerve connecting the light sensitive portion of the wart to the worm's brain plus a region of the worm's brain capable of receiving and correctly processing the impulses from the wart plus the instinctual wits in the worm's brain to know what to do with the processed signal for survival advantage plus the whole system must be fully integrated into the genetic code in the worm's gametes plus the genetic change must not be so extensive such that the worm becomes a new species and therefore cannot mate and successfully reproduce so as to pass the new trait on to future generations and other life-forms.
Whew!
It is at this point that we must consider the IC question of what happens if any part of this very first ‘Minimally Functional System’ is missing or defective such that the system does not work from the very start. Dawkins might suggest (I admit that I am speculating here) that the incomplete system would simply await the missing part and then proceed working from there to a more complex and advanced state. But this is evolutionarily untenable, and I think Dawkins knows it. It would be wildly improbable that the correct missing part would ever appear in a non-intentional, non-engineered, non-designed system. If the system is not minimally complete and functional at the very start, then the incomplete system itself and its constituent parts confer absolutely no survival advantage at all, and indeed are a dead load on the creature, and evolution will work to do away with the parts. After all, these parts are taking up space in the body, taking up nutrients without providing any benefit, and taking up space in the genetic code. At the very least there would be absolutely no reason why evolution would work to protect the systemic parts from destructive mutation or other damage. Over the course of multiple generations the system parts would either be lost or disconnected. ‘Time’ is often invoked as the magic elixir guaranteeing the inevitable success of Darwinian evolution. However, at this primative state of existence time is not evolution's friend; time is evolution's mortal enemy. Time is corrosive; time is abrasive; time works to destroy in a universe whose very fundamental laws work towards decay and degeneration.
These considerations would apply to the origins of all the myriad complex systemic functions (and their undergirding molecular components and nanomachines) found in living organisms, primative to advanced. Since there are few—if any—counterparts to these systemic functions in the non-living inorganic universe, each would have to come into existence ex nihilo and in toto as fully functional (if rudimentary) systems purely by blindest chance. Natural selection plays no part here. Evolution plays no part here. Until an ‘irreducibly complex’ ‘Minimally Functional System’ accidentally comes into being, there is no natural selection, no survival benefit, and no evolution. Dawkins admits the problem at the bottom of page 124 and top of page 125, but then dismisses the problem.
Dawkins takes up the questions of origins-of-life and a life supporting planet in “The Anthropic Principle: Planetary Version”. He starts that section with, “Gap theologians who may have given up on eyes and wings, flagellar motors and immune systems, often pin their remaining hopes on the origin of life. The root of evolution in non-biological chemistry somehow seems to present a bigger gap than any particular transition during subsequent evolution. And in one sense it is a bigger gap. That one sense is quite specific, and it offers no comfort to the religious apologist. The origin of life only had to happen once. We therefore can allow it to have been an extremely improbable event, many orders of magnitude more improbable than most people realize, as I shall show. (pg. 135)” Although Dawkins is hopefully optimistic that science will solve the problem of life's origin, I am doing Dawkins no violence here when I say that he really does concede the extremely improbable nature of the origin of life. But the improbable happened, so that's that!
[ADDITION: Dawkins neglects to mention a major problem here for atheistic evolution. That is, that life appeared on planet Earth absolutely as soon as life could physically exist here. So, the critically important ‘Origin of Life’ question (along with the equally important question of the origin of photosynthesis) presents a dual improbability: The extreme improbability of life occurring at all, and the puzzling improbability of the virtually immediate appearance of life—and photosynthesis—under very hostile conditions on early Earth.]
As I've pointed out several times on this Forum, the origin of life is still a great unanwered question of science which may remain unanswered. As Stewart Kaufman of the Santa Fe Institute put it, “Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on the earth some 3.45 billion years ago is a fool or a knave. Nobody knows. Indeed, we may never recover the actual historical sequence of molecular events that led to the first self reproducing, evolving molecular systems to flower forth more than 3 million millennia ago. But if the historical pathway should forever remain hidden, we can still develop bodies of theory and experiment to show how life might relistically have crystallized, rooted, then covered the globe. Yet the caveat: nobody knows. (At Home in the Universe, pg. 31)”
Prof. Dawkins is way out of his element on the astrophysical and geological questions of the origin and development of Earth as a home for advanced complex life. Check out my posts and references in The Shermer Letters subject area of the Forum for a more in-depth consideration of these issues. The huge number of Earth-like planets Dawkins counts on to prove his case disappear by the many small numbers that must honestly be applied to the Drake Equation due to the most recent advances of information in virtually every branch of science. Earth, as it exists, is a wildly improbable reality. [NOTE: again, see my SETI article linked above for further elaboration]
But the main point Dawkins drives home is that the Anthropic Principle is the naturalistic alternative to Theistic Creationism. We are here, so it had to happen. This is also the main theme of the section “The Anthropic Priciple: Cosmological Version”. The proper alignment of the basic constants, laws, and ratios of the universe is inexplicable and extremely improbable, but again we are here, so therefore the improbable happened.
Let's stop a moment for a quick tally. The alignment of cosmic constants to allow life to exist was extremely improbable. The formation and development of Earth to support advanced complex life was extremely improbable. The origin of life itself was extremely improbable. The myriad complex functions of life (genetics, photosynthesis, metabolism, digestion, sight, hearing, etc.) have few if any inorganic counterparts in order to enable natural selection and evolution, therefore each and every one of which is wildly improbable. But it all happened by itself! Ok, let's keep going.
I really cannot do justice here to Chapter 5 “The Roots of Religion” and Chapter 6 “The Roots of Morality: Why Are We Good?”. They must be read to form an opinion. Dawkins says that religion is a misfire of capabilities formed by natural selection for other reasons. Christians say that we have spirituality built into us by the Creator. The “Roots of Morality” turns on the question of animal conduct vs. spiritual connection to the Creator. Animals can conduct themselves well, just as humans can. That's all Dawkins is interested in. But the animals have no spiritual connection to God, nor life after physical death. That's where Biblical Christians stand.
Dawkins has a good long go at the Bible in Chapter 7 “The ‘Good’ Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist”. Basically he just doesn't like God as pictured there, and he doesn't like Jesus either. A rebuttal would be lengthy and I may do one in the Religion section of the Forum. As for the “Changing Moral Zeitgeist”, Dawkins dares to judge the past—and the transcendent—“By the standards of modern morality…(pg. 242).” He does so without giving any credit to the relative safe harbour of Western Christianity which—unlike other cultures—gave birth to our modern science, technology and society. Were it not for that safe harbour, our present day world could very well be locked in pre-scientific ignorance and superstition, pagan/heathen religions, and a chaotic swirl of backwards, oppressive or barbarous social structures.
Prof. Dawkins naïvely assumes modern science and technology as automatic givens, and that rational secular humanism was inevitable at this time. Consider for yourselves where we would be today if Christianity had never occurred. You're fooling yourself if you think the world would be religion free, with all peoples marching arm-in-arm into a peaceful, happy, scientifically rational future while singing rousing choruses of John Lennon's “Imagine”. Quite likely the world would be just as bad off—if not worse—with no hope in sight.
Chapter 8 is “What's Wrong with Religion? Why Be so Hostile?”. Since I am arguing in defence of the Christian position, other religions are going to have to defend themselves against Prof. Dawkins' assaults. But I am also defending the Old Earth Creationism (OEC) position, so the section “Fundamentalism and the Subversion of Science” is truly distressing to me. I know that Young Earth Creationists sincerely believe that they are defending the Faith by taking their stand, but they are actually allowing critics of Christianity to refute the Bible on Scientific grounds, thereby bringing discredit on the Faith. All of this changes with OEC. Christianity—alone among the world's religions, past and present—can put up a real fight in favour of its God by showing how the hard evidence from science is actually in support and confirmation of the Bible. Dawkins finishes the chapter with discussions of other subjects that would need to be addressed in the Religion section of the Forum. [NOTE: please read the Young Earth Creationism article on my home website at Deep Thought 1 ]
I'll get to Chapter 9 in a moment, but want to dispense with Chapter 10 first. Here Dawkins shows that we can gain all the purported blessings of religion (comfort, solace, inspiration, fellowship, etc.) by relying on our own strength and modern science. Certainly God will allow you to live your life as you choose. God has done that throughout human existence with only minimal exceptions and intrusions. How you play Pascal's Wager is your business—right up to the moment you die.
Chapter 9, “Childhood, Abuse and Religion”, is as close to an ‘action plan’ as Prof. Dawkins presents in this book. Now, you'd expect that the world's leading atheism apologist would have a non-theistic equivalent of the Biblical ‘Great Commission’: “Go and make disciples of all nations…”. That is, some plan for doing away with religion and implementing whatever it is that Dawkins feels the world should be.
Dawkins may present such a plan in his other books, but wisely refrains from articulating it in this one. The reason is simple. If you take Dawkins seriously in the statements he makes throughout the book, his Atheist Great Commission would require two main points:
The grand objective would be to use eugenics and selective breeding in order to utterly eliminate in humanity the capability of even framing such a thought as “God”. That is, to form a new species (Homo Sapeins Atheistansis?) utterly physicalist, secularist and humanist in its thought processes.
Am I going too far in my assertions? Not in the slightest! If The God Delusion is to be anything other than mental masturbation, it must have an ultimate goal (an atheist world) and a plan to get there. Since hundreds of millions of Muslims and a similar number of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mormons, etc., etc., would stand in the way of this Brave New World, nothing short of a twenty-first century global holocaust would attain the goal. Once the field is cleared of all religionists, the children of the world (and I do mean all of them) will have to be reared under the strictest of conditioning and monitoring in order to ensure that only those devoid of “a god centre (pg. 169)” survive to reproduce.
Could such a program succeed? Perhaps, but not necessarily. Blame whomever you will, but this world is a royal mess. There is simply no way of knowing who would rise to the pinnacle of power in the New World Order after the holocaust. A latter day Stalin? Mao? Pol Pot? I can pretty well guarantee that it will not be a Dawkins or a Shermer or a Saks. They're too nice. Besides, they can think. They'd be purged out early in the new Regime.
So I end where I began: The God Delusion is a good book, but it does not deliver a knockout punch.
Not even close.
[ADDITIONAL CONCLUSION: I end this article with an additional final observation on the atheist position. If the atheists are correct—there is no deity of any kind, and therefore no afterlife—then humanity is presented profound sociatal and policy implications. If atheism is correct, then modern humans are nothing more than Darwinian animals—mere ‘naked apes’. If we are nothing more than animals, then we are really nothing more than chemicals; with a little neuroelectrical activity thrown in. Here's where things get tricky. You can do anything you like with chemicals—within EPA rules and regulations. There's no such thing as ‘chemical abuse’. There's no such thing as ‘the rights of chemicals’. You can't commit ‘crimes against chemicals’. This means that you can do whatever you want with humanity. The practical outcome of this reality could be anything from a Golden Age of secularist, humanist liberality down to a horror show of mass exterminations and oppressions.
So, in final closing, let us not fool ourselves into thinking that the atheists hold the key to A Better Tomorrow. That key could just as easily reopen the gates of Auschwitz—and hell on Earth.]
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.