I'm forcing myself to be disciplined in this series and not go flying off all over the place, so if you'll excuse my absence of inanely irrelevant tangents, I'll try my very best to stay on topic.
I'm frustrated. Why? Because I had such high hopes, and they were dashed, just absolutely dashed. Why were the dashed?
Read on, dear reader. Read on.
I just read The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.
Hold up, Peaches! Don't jump to conclusions. I'm not disappointed because my gossamer visions of the bearded man in the sky have been rent asunder, but rather because I had hoped to read a reasoned, logical discussion about the existence of God. Ernh! Nope.
[Author's Note: Unfortunately, any human writer cannot hope but have their biases enter their writing, but I will try to be objective as possible. That said, I choose not to tell you my personal beliefs on the matter, because I have no idea who you are (I'm looking at you, family members), and anyway, my personal beliefs don't have anything to do with the following discussion, other than they will necessarily and unconsciously color my commentary even though I try not to let them.]
I'll skip the usual complaint about Dawkins's writing (that it's "strident,") and take in stride his sometimes inflammatory comments. After all, evangelists can be just as inflammatory, if not moreso. Dawkins never threatens you with eternal damnation if you don't agree.
No, no, no. The following commentary focuses on my journey through his book, and how many times I spent more time writing my comments in my notebook than I did reading.
First off, you may be asking, who is Richard Dawkins?
Before the beginning, there was the Preface, in which Dawkins makes the point that, without religion, none of the many terrible things that have been done in the name of God/Allah/Vishnu would have happened.
Quibble: Dawkins means organized religion. All of those things happened because of organized religion. If the warrior Popes hadn't been there with their vast networks of churches and the power that comes from central authority, the Crusades wouldn't have happened. If religious leaders with inordinate temporal powers didn't exist to goad their followers on, none of those would have happened. Tiny groups of animist hunter/gatherers have religion, but they don't start holy wars.
He proceeds to lay out the book's program, as all good prefaces do, and makes a great point that atheists are highly discriminated against, that there are probably many more atheists (or agnostics or people with a queasy feeling about their particular religion's doctrine) than will admit to it, because it's such a toxic environment for atheism in America. Major truth, and majorly unfair. According to Dawkins's reference to a Gallup poll in 1999, 95% of people responded that they would vote for a woman (who was otherwise well-qualified, the same as all the following examples), 92% would vote for a black candidate, 79% for a homosexual candidate, and 49% for an atheist candidate.
There is a great deal of prejudice against atheists, and that should change. Of course it should change! Anybody who thinks atheists are inherently immoral or whatever other negative trait typically attributed to being atheist (even *gasp!* being a Communist) are just as intolerant and ignorant as someone who thinks all black men are adulterers or all Latinos are lazy.
So far, so good. Promoting tolerance and exposing a glaring hypocrisy in American society. I'm feeling good, and still have high hopes. He also talks about people indoctrinated by their parents to be Catholic or Muslim or Hindu, and that those people should step outside their faith to read opposing viewpoints. Agreed. There's nothing more annoying than a Christian fundamentalist who says the Qur'an is nothing but lies--when Surah 3:42 says, "Behold! The angels said: 'O Mary! Allah hath chosen thee and purified thee above the women of all nations.'"
Yup. That's right. Didn't know that the Qur'an affirms the virgin birth of Jesus? Well it does. Better not burn that puppy. You're burning the Christmas story.
And so we begin with chapter one: "A Deeply Religious Non-Believer"
Section One: Deserved Respect
The point that Dawkins makes in this section is that just because it's wonderful doesn't mean it has to have a supernatural cause. That's true. It does not necessarily follow that a beautiful garden has a supernatural fairy attendant making the flowers grow (11). He proceeds to mention famous scientists (Carl Sagan, Steven Weinberg, Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Albert Einstein) that did not believe in a supernatural deity.
Quibble: As my politics professor taught me in university (thanks Dr. L!), quoting a human with a viewpoint that coincides with your own (even an extremely well-credentialed expert in their field) is not enough to prove an argument. It weighs heavily in your favor if all the experts in a field agree with you, since they've made a career out of investigating and thinking about the topic, but there are numerous examples of many scientists (or psychologists, or politicians, or popes) finding out they're wrong with time. This is an important point to remember as we continue: name-dropping doesn't prove a point. Even important names, and a lot of them, doesn't prove a point. It points heavily in your favor, but it doesn't prove it. And anyway, you can always procure an expert to say what you want. I'm not saying Sagan and Hawking and Einstein are just any old experts, and I certainly believe Einstein when he tells me E=mc2, and you should, too, but a whole bunch of humans, even smart ones, saying a lamb's tail is a leg doesn't make it so. Go examine the lamb's tail yourself. In fact, Dawkins raises this point himself, in regards to theologians claiming to be experts on the religion/God question (16).
Dawkins defines a few things for us, just so we're all clear.
Theism: the belief that there is 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" (18).
Deism: the belief that there is a supernatural intelligence, "but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place" (18).
Pantheism: the belief that there is no supernatural intelligence, "but use God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings" (18).
Basically, a theist believes in a god or gods that made the universe and continues to meddle in its workings. A deist believes in a god or gods that made the universe but no longer meddles, and a pantheist believes there are no god or gods, but only an inanimate Nature, meaning the laws of the universe.
Tiny Quibble: According to Concise Oxford's English Dictionary, the definition of "pantheism" is: a doctrine or belief that identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God. Just semantics, and not important, really, but that definition does have a more supernatural/mystical feel than Dawkins gives to his definition. Still, not important.
Section Two: Undeserved Respect
Dawkins makes the salient point that people hide under the religious tolerance banner in America. His point in this section is that he doesn't care if people get a little offended with the way he treats religion, because he thinks that too often scientists are forced to bend over backwards or otherwise treat religion with kid gloves, when it shouldn't be.
He gives a few examples, such as the one that giving a religious claim during wartime is the easiest way to become a conscientious objector. Religion is referred to euphemistically in the media, and people often use religious reasons for making laws when the Constitution (supposedly) ensures a separation of Church and State. Also, many people are granted special privileges (his example is a church in New Mexico being able to take illegal hallucinogenic drugs) simply because they believe them to be an integral part of their religious experience.
Quibble: Not a hard-and-fast rule, but anecdotes are also a bit of a sticky wicket, since they can be flung back and forth for either side of an argument. The judges who decided in those cases, who are they? Are they well-respected judges, or are they judges other judges consider a bit wonky? That said, Dawkins is right that people claim crazy behaviors in the name of religious practice. But what sorts of rules can we follow to draw the line? Again, our Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion, so...sorry? There are certain constraints on the freedom of religion the same as there are on freedom of speech (you can't disingenuously yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and you can't kill people because Jesus told you to), so I'm sorry that sometimes American courts (and British ones, since Dawkins is a British citizen) and American media are biased, and we should be aware of our bias against atheists, but sometimes we have to let slide minority opinions we personally feel are wrong in the interest of democracy.
Another quibble: I can hang a sword on the wall, or I can run it through someone's gut. That doesn't make the sword intrinsically evil (although it would be a good idea to keep a sword out of my hands, if I make a habit of the latter). That people get fired up about religion and use it for nefarious purposes is nothing new. That doesn't make religion (as opposed to organized religion) evil. People are selfish and do emotional, selfish, greedy, irrational things. They do them because of money, or love, or religion, or pleasure. But, I'm also not worried, because Dawkins has promised to address the argument that religion isn't so bad. I'm willing to wait for him to develop his argument.
Dawkins asks what is so special about religion that we give it such "uniquely privileged respect" (27). Is it uniquely privileged? And who is "we"? He means Western nations, I'm sure. Although, he gives a great quotation from H. L. Mencken: "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart" (27).
Quibbles aside, I'm still super-excited about the book. We need to actually be tolerant about religion and not just tolerant about our own religion. Yes! Exactly! Dawkins isn't going to pull punches just because people might get offended. Good! Martin Luther King didn't stop giving speeches just because racists got offended. Just because anti-atheists might get offended doesn't mean we have to kowtow to them. And the phrase "under God" should be taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance, because it was added in the 50's, under Eisenhower. (Dawkins doesn't mention that, but I'm sure he would agree.)
Onward!
Chapter two: "The God Hypothesis"
Dawkins writes that whether or not God exists cannot depend on the Abrahamic God, the one god of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Rather, Dawkins has a broader purpose: correctly identify the existence of God as a hypothesis.
Don't get angry quite yet. First, let's define hypothesis (according to the COED, of course): a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.
In that sense, then yes, the existence of God is a hypothesis whose validity can be strengthened or weakened by observable evidence. For some people, this is a very strong hypothesis about the creation of the universe. For other people, it is a very weak hypothesis. But it's still just a hypothesis. No one knows, without the shadow of a doubt, in the same way I know I have ten fingers. (For this reason, many religions put a high and positive priority on faith without evidence.)
A hypothesis is something which scientists give before they gather evidence, perform experiments, or do other research in order to find out whether or not their hypothesis is true or false. This is called a conclusion, as in, "Based on the evidence of having observed and counted five fingers on each of my hands, my original hypothesis that I have nine fingers has been proved false." It's called a posteriori reasoning.
More definitions from my favorite dictionary!
a posteriori: (with reference to reasoning or knowledge) proceeding from observations or experiences to the deduction of probable causes.
It's the Scientific Method, which we all learn in seventh grade (and forget by eighth...?). It's how scientists proceed when filling gaps in our knowledge. It's saying, "We don't know why or how this happens, so let's come up with a hypothesis about why or how it happens, test it, and draw a conclusion."
Also important is that experiments have to be replicated (preferably by other scientists). You have to submit your evidence and conclusions to other scientists. In this way, science is remarkably self-correcting, in a way that religion is most decidedly not. For example, another reputed fingerologist would come and count my fingers. She would also get to ten, which would support my previous conclusion. Part of an experiment is a detailed description of your procedure, step by step, so that other scientists can try it themselves. If everybody gets the same result, hooray! If not, hmm... Let's keep investigating.
Next, Dawkins gives us his scientific hypothesis (remember, "hypothesis" in the sense of something which can be tested and proven to be true or false). He's a scientist, so this makes sense. Whether or not God exists is a huge gap in our knowledge, and so, proceeding as a scientist would, he presents his hypothesis:
"There exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us" (31).
Good, good, and good. We can't move forward if we don't have a hypothesis we can prove true or false. I can write the hypothesis "I may or may not have nine fingers," but that's a poorly written one. It can't be proven true or false. The same with the hypothesis "We actually live in a supercomputer program called the Matrix, which has the exact same appearance as real life." We can't test that, because whether or not we live in the Matrix can't be observed and tested. Because we can't test it (currently...?), it has to be thrown out of scientific discussion. You philosophers and cinephiles can discuss and discuss all you want, but scientists can't. Because it can't be tested. It may or may not be right, but that doesn't matter. It's outside proper scientific procedure.
(That's not to say that we shouldn't investigate it. It may be that, by trying to investigate the matter in a primitive way, we'll stumble upon another, better, way to go about the matter, as often happens in science. Some fringe scientist tries to come up with a way to test a seemingly un-testable hypothesis only to figure out some key piece of information we need to move forward.)
The only way we can test whether or not we live in the Matrix is if living in the Matrix is different from living in the real world.
From this distinction (flashing forward a bit) flows Dawkins's hypothesis and his contention that we need to scientifically examine the God Hypothesis, because it could be that by working on the issue, we'll discover the science we need to investigate it further.
From this distinction also flows a key point in Dawkins's argument: "a universe in which we are alone except for other slowly evolved intelligences is a very different universe from one with an original guiding agent whose intelligent design is responsible for its very existence" (61).
He grants that it may not be so easy in practice to distinguish one kind of universe from the other. Nevertheless, there is something utterly special about the hypothesis of ultimate design, and equally special about the only known alternative: gradual evolution in the broad sense. They are close to being irreconcilably different. (61)
MAJOR Quibble: (Are you quibbling, too?) Ok, ok, ok, so here's where I get supercallifragilistically annoyed. Dawkins is saying that we have to come up with scientific hypotheses about the nature of the universe if we're ever to learn more. So far, so good. Then he gives us a great hypothesis about the existence of all supernatural deities, not just Yahweh/Allah/Brahman. So farther, so better. And then he gives us the above. The two universes, one made by an intelligent creator and one made by gradual evolution, would be "irreconcilably different". Whuh?! How the heck do we test that? We don't have a control universe to compare it to; we don't even have another planet with life on it! (Yet.) We can't test your hypothesis! We have to throw it out! Argh! He admits it isn't easy to distinguish in practice, because it's (currently) impossible. It's the Matrix. How do we distinguish between a universe set in motion by an intelligent creator and one not? We don't have the current technology and scientific theories for the above hypothesis.
But, I'm willing to give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt. He says they're irreconcilably different, so I'll read the rest of the book to see if he pays out on his promise. Less intrepid readers may, at this point, throw the book in frustration, but that's not being fair. He could be taunting us with a seemingly un-testable hypothesis only to provide the proof later. All right. I'm along for the ride, but I'm watching you, Dawkins. Carefully. Don't you keep making logical slip-ups, or I'll write a series of angry blog posts detailing every one of your logical slip-ups and post it for the world to see.
In Addition to the Above Quibble: Dawkins's hypothesis reminds me of a case in natural history that Stephen Jay Gould wrote about in his book The Flamingo's Smile. In the nineteenth century, when Charles Darwin blew everyone's mind with the awesomely explanatory theory of the evolution of the species through the process of natural selection and geologists were finding ancient fossils of trilobites and pterodactyls, many creationists (Christians who believe that the Earth was created 3,000 years ago with all the organisms on it fully-formed from a seven-day--as in literal days of twenty-four hours on the Earth, whereas the Bible doesn't actually specify how long a day in God's life is, and in fact usually mentions that a thousand years for us is but a fleeting moment for God--ZOT! by God) came up with counter-hypotheses about the growing amount of evidence in the geological record for a planet older than 3,000 years.
(Note: You may be wondering where the whole 3,000 year thing came from, since, you may be surprised to learn, the Bible does not claim the Earth is 3,000 years old. Instead, it comes from an archbishop by the name of James Ussher who counted up the generations listed, starting with Adam, that are listed in the Bible and adding up the years Genesis says they lived. Unfortunately, this monk didn't realize that the Biblical Hebrew phrase "father" can mean either a biological father or an ancestral father and a "son" can be a biological son or a distant descendant. Oops. We have no way of knowing if the Bible meant them as literal, biological father-son relationships. It's just one of the many things--like airplanes, chemotherapy, and Cheez-Its--that the Bible doesn't mention. Of course, the Constitution doesn't mention any of these things, either, so don't be too harsh on either of these old parchments.)
One of these creationist hypotheses was that God created the illusion of continuity by creating fossils which had every appearance of being millions of years old but had actually been created by God 3,000 years ago. The man's reasoning was that all processes on Earth are a cycle, and so God had to "break into" that cycle at some point, but any point in a cycle has to have evidence of the previous points in that cycle, and Presto-Chango! fossils were created with the appearance of an age greater than they actually had. Gould elegantly dismisses this argument on the crucial basis of: it's un-testable. If fossils have every appearance of being millions of years old without actually being so, we can't ever know the truth through observation and investigation. Therefore, this elegant hypothesis had to be thrown out of science (but it can still be debated in philosophy classes, alongside whether or not we live in the Matrix).
Now, flashing backwards a little, to section one of the second chapter: Polytheism.
Dawkins makes the point that superficially monotheistic religions like Christianity have three main Dudes (along with Mary and the saints and angels, etc.), and Hinduism, the superficially polytheistic religion, believes that Brahman, Vishnu, Shiva, etc. are all manifestations of one God. His point is that he doesn't care about the particular beliefs of all the various rich traditions of supernatural beliefs in the world. His point is that nothing supernatural exists. At all.
Further, he admits that he will argue most fervently against the Abrahamic God, since he is so prevalent in our society. As Dawkins sums it up: "I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented" (36).
See? We're already back to the more reasonable, logical argument. I knew I should stay with him (even though this section came before the section I complained about, so technically I encountered it first while reading, but never mind that). He's not anti-Yahweh or anti-Ganesh or anti-Allah. He is anti-supernatural.
Definition time!
This is important, so remember it: the COED definition of supernatural is "(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature."
So he is against anything that cannot be eventually explained by science or by explanations outside the laws of nature. That's important. Remember it. That's his stated purpose. That science can eventually discover the workings of any observable phenomena in the universe, and all things can be understood as operating under some law or another of nature. Therefore, he will not accept the answer, "God did it," as to why black holes exist or bluebirds sing or hydrogen atoms have one proton.
In philosophy, this point of view has the fancy moniker "naturalism". That is, "a viewpoint according to which everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted." (COED again, of course.)
(If you're already getting hints about what frustrated me so much about this book, good for you, but we'll delve into that point more deeply later on in the series.)
Are you remembering that? All right, then. Moving on.
Section Two: Monotheism
Dawkins writes that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism share the same god, which they do. He writes that Paul of Tarsus opened up Judaism to non-Jews, thus creating the Christian sect, and that both Christianity and Islam were spread with the sword. He says that he won't even consider Buddhism and Confucianism as religions in his discussion, as they are actually systems of ethics.
Quibble: (It was about time for another, wasn't it?) Buddhism has many different sects, the two main ones being Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, that calling it a system of ethics is just plain wrong. Some Buddhists worship the Buddha as a god, and others worship Buddha along with all the bodhisattvas. And anyway, plenty of supernatural things are described in Buddhist texts, such as, um, I don't know...eternal souls?! When reincarnation is a central tenet of your beliefs, it's sort of hard to dismiss it as a "system of ethics". Do your homework, Dawkins. You owe it to us as the author. If you mess something this simple up it doesn't mean that your entire book is faulty (but that's only true for your book; that rule is inapplicable to any other book in the entire universe!), but it does mean I have to read any of your basic "facts" with a grain of salt. Are you really going to shoulder me with the burden of looking up all the things you say are true? Well, you just did.
Section Three: Secularism, the Founding Fathers and the Religion of America
Dawkins asserts that the Founding Fathers were deists at the very stretchiest, but most likely atheists. He quotes Jefferson and others to show that they were apathetic about a personal God, like the one a theist believes in, and that they would be horrified to see the amount of religiosity in today's America.
Quibble: That may well be, and I would happen to agree that we've mixed religion and politics to our detriment, but do you remember that point I made earlier about not proving something with a panel of experts? Really smart people still don't know everything, and they can even believe wrong things (gasp!). For example, Jefferson believed in slavery. My quibble is that you're supposed to be proving that the universe wasn't created by God, and you're telling me what Thomas Jefferson thought about angels. I don't care what Jefferson thought about angels! For someone claiming to be bound by the strictures of the Scientific Method, you telling me what Mr. Famous-and-Smart-So-and-So thought about God isn't very scientific. Now, if you start telling me what Darwin thought about natural selection, I'll start listening, and avidly. Jefferson isn't even a theologian (who anyway Dawkins says shouldn't even have jobs, since they don't have a field to study), and I don't care if you trot out any number of actual, respected theologians. You said that a universe created by an intelligent being is "irreconcilably different" from one created by gradual evolution. What do I care what the Reverend Famous-Pants or Thomas Jefferson have to say about that? I'm trying to find out what you think, and you're making me frustrated with the wait!
But, it's only the opening quarter of the book. Part of any scholarly work is a "literature review," that is, reviewing what other experts in the field have said, and what the opposing viewpoints and competing theories are. I see your aim, even if I don't think evoking the Founding Fathers (however much I revere them for giving us the Constitution, an old document written in a historical context that still manages to guide our behavior today) constitutes asking the "experts". Where are the cosmologists?
Section Four: The Poverty of Agnosticism
Dawkins makes the amazingly true point that, "there is nothing wrong with being agnostic in cases where we lack evidence one way or the other," and that "agnosticism, of a kind, is an appropriate stance on many scientific questions" (46-7).
Yes! He's absolutely right. When you don't have enough evidence to decide one way or the other, don't decide. Wait for more evidence to come in, and then we can decide why there's a 26-million-year extinction cycle in the history of the Earth. Why decide when we can continue to investigate and get a clearer picture?
Dawkins proposes that God's existence is a question for which we can be agnostic, but not permanently. (In fact, he proposes, as stated earlier, to resolve the question by the end of the book.) There are some things we'll never know, such as if chicken tastes the same as it does to me as it does to you, or if my chicken tastes like your pork. We can't ever know that. But, Dawkins asserts, we can make in-roads as to the probability of God's existence.
Here comes his first major point that gets me back into the flow of the book. We can't absolutely prove that something doesn't exist, but we can prove that it's highly improbable. For example, history offers a few examples of humans insisting something doesn't exist (because they'd never experienced it before), only to find out later that it does exist. Black swans, black holes, and North America to name three. We can prove something exists (not philosophically, no, but get out of here, you existential monkey wrenches), because we can see it or hear it or otherwise detect it with our senses or equipment that enhances our senses.
Not so with proving something doesn't exist. You can have a theory that calls something improbable, and the longer we go without finding that thing, it becomes increasingly likely that it's impossible, but we never actually get our pointer over to "impossible". Just really, really, really unlikely.
E.g. (exempli gratia): Because of the law of gravity, we can say that it is very, very, very, very, extremely, super-extremely unlikely that, when I drop an apple, it will float away. Because the law of gravity is a true physical law, it has predictive power (major points in science!), and no one has ever seen an apple just float away from their hand when they're standing on terra firma. But science still can't say it's impossible.
Important distinction. You'll be laughed out of the University of Science if you seriously propose that the apple will float away, and you can go ahead and run that experiment all your life to prove that it is possible, but the odds are catastrophically against you that you will succeed. No one runs that experiment trying to get those results, because the Law of Gravity makes it so incredibly unlikely.
So what Dawkins is saying is that he has scientific laws that are going to prove God to be so improbable that it would be laughable to keep testing for him (or her, or it). And that, as we continue to investigate, God will become (indeed, already has, for Dawkins) more and more unlikely, until the concept will be as laughable as waiting for the apple to float away.
Excellent. I'm back in the thick of it. Bring on the science!
Dawkins! Why are you letting inconsequential (and erroneous) arguments get in the way of a good lead?
He quotes Bertrand Russell at length about how many people assume that it is a skeptic's responsibility to prove the doctrine false, not the doctrine's responsibility to prove itself true. That's not my problem, so much. Maybe they both have a responsibility to investigate.
My issue is when he references Russell's teapot or the famous Flying Spaghetti Monster. Russell makes the point that if he started saying there was a teapot between Earth and Mars, only too small to see with a telescope, and that if he continued by saying that, because you can't prove that something doesn't exist, it would be rude to assert that the teapot isn't real.
Dawkins is making the point that, like God, we cannot ever prove unequivocally that the teapot doesn't exist (only that it's highly unlikely to exist), and yet nobody even gives a passing thought to the teapot.
Quibble: (You knew one was coming up.) The reason no one takes Russell's celestial teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster real is because people aren't quite so mindless as that. Of course no believes everything ever in the history of ever from everyone's imaginations combined exists simply because we can't absolutely prove that it doesn't. People are more reasonable than that. The celestial teapot and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are not on the same level as the Bible or the Qur'an:
1) because they don't have the same long history and tradition as the holy books or cherished beliefs of a community
2) because people realize Russell just made the example up to prove a point
I realize Dawkins is making an analogy from the teapot to the Bible, in that, in its infancy, the Bible was just a celestial teapot or a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Yes, yes, I realize the point you're making, that just because a belief persists for thousands of years (I'm looking at you, geocentrism) doesn't make it true.
Dawkins ends by reviewing that all he needs to prove is the extreme improbability of God, and again promises to do so.
I'm going to stop going section by section, because it's about time we got to the meat of the annoying-ness.
As we mentioned a lot earlier, Dawkins is a naturalist, in the philosophical sense. To review, that means that he holds the view that "everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted" (quoting my early quotation from COED).
For a naturalist, all observable phenomena have a natural explanation, and he loathes (legitimately) the cop-out of "God did it." Basically, as a scientist, he believes that we should search for new scientific laws when we observe something that follows none of the laws we currently understand. If we see something we can't explain, we have to investigate it. We can't say, "Oh, don't worry about that pulsar. That's God winking at us. End of story."
Dawkins says that "the presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question" (58-9).
Just to be clear, science is (thank you COED!) the "intellectual and practical activity encompassing the scientific study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."
So when Dawkins says that the existence of a "creative super-intelligence" is subject to systematic study using the scientific method, I agree. If we find a creative super-intelligence, we should study it. (If it will let us, since it sounds like it's a lot smarter than us. Maybe the super-intelligent, super-human aliens will just enslave us. All Your Base Are Belong To Us.)
He also makes the point that we should scientifically investigate miracle stories. Of course. Not all miracle stories are miracles. Not all horses are black. Does that mean all horses are not black? No. In the same way, hypothetically, just because some miracle stories are not miracles doesn't mean all miracle stories are not miracles. But should we therefore assume all miracle stories are miracles? Absolutely not, anymore than we would assume all horses are black. There's a matter of degree here, a spectrum as Stephen Jay Gould would call it, that Dawkins is brushing away with a wave of a hand. Dawkins gives the example of the claim that Jesus did not have a human father. Just because we don't currently have enough scientific evidence to decide conclusively about the matter doesn't mean we shouldn't investigate.
I think most moderate people would agree with that. We shouldn't live without questioning. But who thinks we should? He's arguing against a population that probably wouldn't even read his book, so don't insult me by wasting my time telling me why I shouldn't uncritically acquiesce to everything the Qur'an tells me.
So what was that point he made? Not all miracle stories are true miracles. Um...duh. And we shouldn't meekly swallow to the literal letter everything the Bible or any other holy text says. Again: duh. The Bible, for example, speaks in parables like it's its job! The Qur'an is full of metaphorical language! Who, even among the creationists who believe the Earth is 3,000 years old, believes that there was a literal sower and literal seeds from the "parable of the sower" in Matthew?
(For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Gospel of Matthew, from the Bible, Matthew 13:1-9, tells a story about a sower went out to sow seeds. Some seeds fall on a path, and the birds eat them. Some fall on rocky soil, spring up fast, then wither without the depth of soil they need. Some are scorched by the heat of the sun, and some are choked off by thorny weeds. Finally, some fall on good soil and produce lots and lots of other grain.)
Even a biblical literalist is not going around saying that's not a metaphor for different types of Christians. In fact, there's a fancy word for a critical examination of a scriptural text: exegesis. That's what the whole branch of knowledge called theology (whether it's Jewish, Christian, Hindu, or Shinto) is about, and it's full of people critical examining their own religion and others'. But, Dawkins has already summarily dismissed these scholars (except when they agree with him) and made the assertion that science is applicable to religious doctrine.
So, let's review three of his core truths, or axioms:
(Note: an axiom is a "an accepted statement or proposition regarded as being self-evidently true," and there's nothing wrong with having axioms. All belief systems have axioms.)
1) There is nothing in this universe that we can experience that cannot be explained by scientific understanding and the laws of nature.
2) Science can and should investigate claims made by religious groups, whether they are miraculous visions or miraculous events.
3) A universe with a supernaturally intelligent creator is "irreconcilably different" from a universe without such a creator.
Examine those more closely. The first two combined form circular thinking, and the third is un-testable. Because Dawkins presumes that all things observable are the result of natural causes, then anything we observe therefore has a natural cause. That's right. Because he discounts supernatural explanations in his premise, he concludes that there are no supernatural causes. But you can't use your conclusion as your premise. There's a fancy Latin term for that, and it's this:
petitio principii
Let's get a COED definition in there!
petitio principii: a logical fallacy in which a conclusion is taken for granted in the premises
What Dawkins claims he's trying to prove is that there is no such thing as supernatural. (A major problem with that is his definition of supernatural, which relegates supernatural phenomena to those which we cannot observe. If we observe it, it becomes natural, and therefore not supernatural. The proof he says he requires to believe in the supernatural is impossible, because the very fact that it's observable proof renders it non-supernatural.) That's the conclusion he wants. If that's the conclusion you want, you can't use it as your beginning assumption, as one of your axioms. You can't assume something is true from the beginning if you're trying to prove that it's true. BEEP! Logical fallacy, captain.
Is that proof that God doesn't exist? (That he's highly unlikely, technically, since Dawkins never proposes that he can prove God doesn't exist, anymore that we can categorically prove unicorns don't exist or the celestial teapot doesn't exist.) Of course not. Is it proof that God does exist? Of course not. It's, to quote Dawkins's quotation of Jefferson, to "talk of nothings" (42). It's irrelevant, both to science and religion. All you're saying is that the rules of your discipline deny the existence of what you're denying the existence of. Right...
Ballet is another discipline with a set of precise and formalized steps and procedures, but if I then say clog dance moves (or some other equivalent non-ballet step) are highly improbable to be found in a ballet because, one: clog dances have never been witnessed in a ballet, and two: clog dance steps are not allowed in ballet anyway, then everyone would just sort of look at me funny. Yeah, they would say. So?
They might say, as Dawkins did of theologians at a Cambridge conference, that I had defined myself "into an epistemological Safe Zone where rational argument could not reach [me] because [I] had declared by fiat that it could not" (154).
Can't he see he's done the same thing?!
(To be fair, on page 155, Dawkins states specifically that he is "not advocating some sort of narrowly scientistic way of thinking." To which I say, actions speak louder than words, sir.)
Yes, yes, in that example the clog dance is not creating the ballet, but remember Dawkins's purpose: to prove that all supernatural things, "wherever and whenever" are not real (36).
Are you starting to see why I got so frustrated? Here I was promised a logical presentation of evidence to prove a hypothesis, and I'm getting paralogisms and a petitio prinicipii.
Basically, you can stop reading the book right here, if you so choose. There's no need to follow his argument unless you choose to.
I choose to.
Hold up! Don't put words in my mouth! I make no comments on whether or not his hypothesis is true. Just because the logic is bad (or un-testable) doesn't mean that the hypothesis is false. You can most certainly get the right answer in the wrong way, and you can also have a true hypothesis for which you have to wait for the corroborating evidence (just look at Einstein and black holes). I'm just saying that, at the starting gate, his argument seems to be a purely philosophical one in that you either agree with his premises (even agreeing to a certain degree) or you don't. You can't prove his premises are true or false. Nothing wrong with a book about a certain philosophy, but you should realize that's what you're getting.
Feel free to skip down to the bottom, if you're as frustrated as me, or learn about the Mushroom of the Month. If you're still feeling doughty, read on, dear reader, read on.
Let's review a little: Dawkins is "attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented" (36).
That's not saying he's waging some sort of atheist war. Don't get angry quite yet. What he means by "attacking" is that his hypothesis is that nothing supernatural exists.
Further review!
The definition (from the Concise Oxford's English Dictionary) of supernatural is: "(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature."
So, if we observe ghosts and subsequently have a Law of Ghostly Manifestations, which has true predictive and explanatory power, that doesn't count as supernatural. That's important to remember, and it's an important distinction. He's saying that no gap in our knowledge will be filled with the explanation "Supernatural Being X takes care of that." Why do apples fall? Not because angels pull them down. Because of the law of gravity, which says that all objects with mass have an attractive force, that force we call gravity. The bigger the mass and the closer the mass, the stronger the attractive force.
But, as we learned, that's not saying anything. That doesn't prove God doesn't exist, or even that he's very highly improbable, which is actually what Dawkins is after. All it proves is that all observable phenomena are caused by the laws of nature.
Also important, and to be fair to Dawkins: he freely admits, as we all must, that we can't prove God doesn't exist, anymore than that celestial teapot Bertrand Russell talked about. That's not a basis for proving that something does exist, just because we can't prove it doesn't. What he's after is proving that it's so statistically improbable that it would be foolish to believe in the supernatural in the same way that, it is so statistically improbable that an apple released from my hand (while I was standing on Earth, of course) would float away rather than fall that it would be foolish to believe the apple will float away.
He's saying that simple causes can lead to improbably complex effects. He asserts that the reverse is not true. Improbably complex causes cannot lead to simple effects. A complex cause is at least, if not moreso, as complex as its complex effect. Evolution is the solution to the complex creatures we see around us. Evolution says that a simple cause can slowly, gradually, lead to a complex effect.
(The evolution of the human eye is an oft-cited example. It became more and more complex over millions of years by natural selection, since seeing more clearly and in color gave us the advantage we needed to survive long enough to reproduce. This is true in reverse, where you find cave-dwelling animals with no eyes, because eyes give no survival advantage when you live without light. Interestingly about eyes, many prey animals have great peripheral vision, and their eyes are on the sides of their heads, so that they can better see predators sneaking up on them. Many predator animals have great binocular vision, where the two eyes' fields of vision overlap because the eyes are on the front of the head, which gives great depth perception. Just what you need to land that caribou. Also, since our eyes are on the front, that puts humans in the hunter category. Go us!)
This makes sense to most people, when properly explained. There are more examples than just in natural history. Children develop slowly and become more complex adults. Tadpoles become frogs. Ocean ripples in the wind become huge breakers. This theory, that drops in the bucket eventually fill the Pacific Ocean, isn't so offensive. It seems to be that many things work in this way. In fact, spiritual growth is seen in this same way. No one, upon converting to a particular faith is instantly the group genius. It takes time to grow in understanding, to grow slowly in faith until enough time has passed and everyone around gazes in awe at the person standing on the mountain of knowledge.
In fact, I would go so far as to propose that the God described in the Old and New Testaments fits this profile--working over billions of years in a region so vast we can't comprehend its vastness and yet working with simple, comprehensible laws--than some tiny God who can only work with 3,000 years and only on Earth. If I may be so arrogant as to quote the Bible:
Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (Psalm 90:2)
Our current cosmological knowledge throws around distances and timescales so far beyond our own comprehension that a good popular science writer has to make analogies of pennies going to the moon and back and other such pictures in order for us to understand. If the Abrahamic God were described as limited, believers in the One God would be in a whole lot more trouble.
Fortunately for these believers, the universe we live in is millions of times more vast and old than we thought. You'd think there would be rejoicing. Rather than having dominion over something unpredictable, capricious, and incomprehensible, we are able to understand more and more about the way the world and the universe around our tiny planet works, to the effect that we can predict the trajectories of our rockets to the moon (if not the weather for two weeks from next Tuesday). The first books of the Old Testament were written down 5,000 years ago, and the New Testament 2,000 years ago, and so it is fortunately silent about the specifics of life today. If the Bible promised us we'd have flying cars in 1999, and we didn't, we'd be in trouble. Fortunately for Christians, the Old Testament only predicts the arrival of Jesus. Prophecy already fulfilled! (You're understandably less satisfied if you're a believer in Judaism. Your Messiah is still on the way.)
What I'm trying to say to biblical literalists is: Nuts! Why you tryin' to drag God down? First of all, the Bible doesn't say Earth is 3,000 years old, Ussher did, and I hardly trust him nearly so well as I trust the Word of God. Second of all, the Bible's filled with metaphors and parables, so why are you reading something literally that was never meant to be read literally? Third of all, science is telling us that the universe is simultaneously simple and complex, that existence itself is governed by simple laws that interact in infinitely complex and improbable ways, and that randomness and unpredictability and irrationality is an inherent component of the universe and still exists side-by-side with predictability and rationality without the whole dang thing imploding on itself. That sounds a heck of a lot more like the God of the Realm than some dinky little Earth-god who's only been presiding over a tiny little rock in the boonies of the Milky Way Galaxy for three grand and change.
Sorry, anti-creationist rant over, and we're back to Dawkins and his assertion that God is the most complex being possible, and therefore he can't be at the beginning of the universe, since the history of the universe works from simplicity to complexity.
Assuming you agree with his axiom that God is complex (as opposed to being simultaneously complex and simple or just flat-out simple), you then have to agree with his assumption that complex causes are always at least as improbable as their effect, which is to say that an effect can't be more probable than its cause. Is that true? You have to decide whether or not you think it is.
Can you think of a complex cause that produces a simple effect? Of something complex causing something highly probable?
If you think awhile I bet you can. I thought awhile, and I decided that I could.
When you touch a hot stove, a series of complex chemical reactions occurs, resulting in the simple effect that you remove your hand from the stove. Complex things can cause simple things. The whole can be simple, and more than the sum of all its discrete parts. And that complex set of reactions in my nerves to my spinal chord when I touch the hot stove will always result in me pulling my hand away. Highly probable outcome, I daresay.
But, you can argue, the human body's nervous system is the result of evolution, which is what Dawkins is arguing, that all complex things are the result of earlier, simpler forms. You're right. Cause to prior cause all the way back to the first cause (unless you don't believe in a linear worldview) at the beginning of the universe, and we're at the same problem. Part of the problem, as we said, is your definition of "complex" and "simple". Which is more complex, an orangutan or a symphony? Which is simpler, the point of singularity inside a black hole or the color yellow?
If you follow that logic, that the current, complex outcome is more improbable than its cause, which is more improbable than its cause, then you increase and increase in probability (or decrease in improbability, same thing) all the way back to the beginning of the universe, which approaches the limit of having a probability of 1, meaning that it always happens, meaning that it must, of necessity, be more probable than all the events that occur after, and therefore it happened because it always happens.
Ok... But is that science? Is that a "crane," as Dawkins calls it, that lifts us up out of our ignorance onto a new platform of greater understanding? No. It has absolutely zero explanatory power. It's the same as saying the universe began because God planned it that way, so it had to happen.
Gopnik, Alison. "How Babies Think," Scientific American, Vol. 303, 1. July 2010, 56-61.
We're programmed to latch onto statistically unlikely things from childhood. Gopnik, in a 2010 article in Scientific American, references a 2008 study out of the University of California, Berkeley, saying that eight-month-old babies were shown a box of Ping-Pong balls, some red, some white, in a certain proportion (58). Gopnik gives the example of 80% white and 20% red. Gopnik explains that
the babies were more surprised (that is, they looked longer and more intently at the scene) when the experimenter pulled four red balls and one white one out of the box--an improbable outcome--than when she pulled out four white balls and one red one. (58)
Gopnik goes on to explain how this is a very scientific approach to the world, examining evidence and paying more attention to those things that don't match our expectations and to use the statistics of everyday events to draw conclusions about cause and effect in the world around them.
So, our brain tends to ignore expected and predictable things (things it already comprehends) and pay more attention to (and thus be more likely to remember) things that are improbable. It's a form of the confirmation bias. You don't remember all the times you thought of a friend and she didn't call you right at that moment, but you do remember the time you thought of your friend and she did call you that moment.
Jumping from science to philosophy, you can hypothesize that this propensity to focus on the improbable; to remember the reasons we believe something and forget the reasons why we shouldn't; to anthropomorphize inanimate objects; and to hold out hope for an improbable event are all reasons different religions take the forms they do. If your philosophical view is that all observable phenomena have natural causes, then it follows you might attribute this wholly to psychology (or to psychology and sociology both, perhaps). If your philosophical view allows supernatural explanations, then you might attribute this to a mark of the design or plan by a divine creator to make us more likely to believe in him (or her or it).
Does that mean we should stop investigating psychology because we believe it was allowed to develop the design it did to better prepare us to believe in the supernatural? No. Most faiths incorporate the tenet that greater understanding leads to greater appreciation, which leads to greater faith. But does the fact that humans mistake curtain cords for cobras because of the way our brains evolved mean supernatural things never happen? No. It means we should take any eyewitness testimonials (both here and in a court of law) with heavy grains of salt and search for other, more solid evidence in the meantime, but it still comes down to your interpretation of the evidence. Either you think all the laws that have functioned elegantly and intricately for billions of years to create such beautifully complex simplicity were created by an intelligent designer, or you don't. Either they are the way they are because they are, or they are the way they are because someone made them. Scientifically, we can't say anything more than that. (Yet.)
Let's do some thought experiments.
First one: let's say that non-biased chemists discover in an accurate experiment that is successfully replicated by other experts in the field of chemistry that the probability of the origin of life is one in one trillion billion(1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or a 1 followed by 21 zeroes), rather than only one in a one billion billion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000, or a 1 followed by 18 zeroes). That is, it is even more improbable (1,000 times more improbable) than we thought taking account of any and all natural causes, and therefore had to have been the subject of divine influence. Would Dawkins concede that the origin of life is too improbable to account for purely natural causes? My guess is not. My guess is that he would argue that the numbers for the probability are subjective and therefore inaccurate (a good objection in the real world, but this is a thought experiment where the experiment's conclusion is accurate) or that, because of his application of the anthropic principle, it is self-evident, by our existence, that life can be no more improbable than one in a one billion billion, because only natural causes could have been involved. Do you see the fallacy?
It is obvious that no cosmic theory, philosophical or scientific, can be true if it proposes something that means we can't exist. Because we do exist, and so we have to be included in any theory. Theism includes us, and so does atheism. That's as far as the anthropic principle goes. It can only be used to declare invalid theories that don't allow us to exist. Because we do exist, existential crises aside. It is a petitio principii again to use our existence without the aid of an intelligent designer as a beginning premise to later prove that we don't exist because of the aid of an intelligent designer.
Back to the thought experiment above. After testing and testing, all and sundry are only able to conclude that the origin of life is a one in a trillion billion event. Will died-in-the-wool atheists concede the point that an event occurred on Earth that, even accounting for the vastness of the universe and the number of available planets for different outcomes, cannot be accounted for with either statistics or the gradual development of complex results from simple causes? Perhaps. Sophisticated, reasonable ones would. Who would then concede that, because the science proved our existence to be outside the probability of natural causes, life on Earth must have been from a supernatural cause?
BUZZ! That's right. No one. Zip. Nada. (That's my guess. People are always more thoughtful than I assume.)
To a person, the objection would come: it must be the result of a natural law we don't understand. Or perhaps they would just deny the truth of the scientific experiment's conclusion because they would say it can't be true, since it doesn't match the observable universe, where life is a one in a billion billion occurrence. Perhaps they would argue that the scientists were biased or falsifying data or had a secret Christian agenda.
(There's nothing wrong with that reaction, and I think it's just good critical thinking not to believe everything the latest pop science studies conclude.)
You know who that sounds like, a group of people who have defined themselves into a box and refuse to let any evidence contradict their foregone conclusion about the origin of humanity and the universe? That's right: biblical literalists.
Fortunately for us, chemists haven't discovered that the origin of life is too improbable to be caused naturally, because we'd all kill each other fighting over it.
(Incidentally, I don't think the thought experiment above would conclude what I said they would, simply because I think life--not intelligent life, just life--is more prevalent in the universe than just little ole us. Perhaps even intelligent life.)
Many of the other points of the book consist of: If God is perfectly good, why would he do this? If I were God, I wouldn't sit back and let natural laws do my work.
First off, don't you think theologians haven't already seen this seeming contradiction (along with the other points in the Bible that are vague or contradictory) and discussed for as long as people have sat around talking about religion?
Second off, the character of a highly improbable being has no bearing on your argument, since you're arguing against all gods, not just the perfectly good Christian one. (It could be that the God chilling up on his sky-cloud is sadistic.)
And third off, you're not God! What you would or would not do if you were an omniscient being has no bearing on that being's probability of existence. If I were God, I would put a surplus of pink unicorns in Minnesota, but the fact that there are no unicorns in Minnesota doesn't prove whether supernatural events exist or not. Mostly, Dawkins sounds angry that God doesn't do exactly what Dawkins wants him to. But that's no basis for a scientific experiment. Charm quarks don't do what I want them to do, but that has no bearing on their existence. (If charm quarks did what I wanted them to, they would create a surplus of pink unicorns in Minnesota. Absolutely charming.) Absolutely charming.
Which is to say that science has proved that God did not set down all the people and animals on the Earth, fully-formed and functioning, like so many pieces on a chessboard. Ok, great. Yes. But that's not your stated purpose! Your stated purpose is to prove that supernatural causes are so statistically improbable as to be non-existent. All you've proved is that it's laughably unlikely that God set down all the people and animals on Earth, fully-formed and functioning, like so many pieces on a chessboard, because evolution through the process of natural selection gets us to the same complexity.
I'm sorry, but that's not proving God doesn't exist. You still have to deal with your own version of the infinite regress: where did the laws come from?
Dawkins says of the infinite regress in regards to God breaking it:
these arguments rely upon the idea of a regress and invoke God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress. Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God. (77)
"Dubious luxury" Dawkins calls naming an endpoint of an infinite regress, because we can easily ask, "Er...but what made the egg the chicken came out of?"
In that sense, he's right: a circle has no endpoint, and so you have to "break in" at some point and start going around. Where you start is arbitrary. Hindus and Buddhists have a circular cosmological view. Jews, Christians, and Muslims don't. They have a linear worldview. History proceeds in a line from a definite beginning to a definite end (the end being different depending on what book you're reading). Some things truly are infinite, like numbers (in both directions on the number line). Some things are linear if you take one time perspective (rain falls out of the clouds) but cyclical if you take another (rain falls, runs in rivers to the ocean, and gets evaporated into clouds).
But you can't have it both ways. Either both atheists and theists have to answer their respective infinite regresses, or neither do. If Jews have to answer for who produced Yahweh, then Dawkins has to answer for what produced the laws of nature. That Dawkins tries to wave his hand over the issue and say they are because they are is the same as a Christian saying God exists because he does.
Oh, but it gets better.
Remember his purpose! Hindus and Buddhists don't believe in a linear universe, so this whole "infinite regress" thing doesn't work as an argument against the existence of the supernatural anyway. It gives Muslims something to think about, but a Hindu would just shake her head at your misunderstanding. So how does Dawkins's argument that Yahweh has to answer for who created him pertain to the probability of all things supernatural? It doesn't. That's my point. It's nothing. It doesn't get us anywhere we weren't already.
Guess what? There's a fancy Latin term for this, too.
ignoratio elenchi
Roll out that definition, O Beloved COED!
"a logical fallacy which consists in apparently refuting an opponent while actually disproving something not asserted"
Dawkins asserts that no supernatural things exist and then proves that God didn't create any of the diverse creatures on the face of our planet fully-formed out of the void. Er...great job?
I can assert that pink unicorns exist in Minnesota and then prove that Minnesotan winter is too cold for coconut palms, but you don't see me trying to publish a book about it.
Right. So remember that series I promised? Negative. Why waste time with logical fallacies?
~~~Tyt~~~
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