Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Dawkins on Militant Atheism: The Response of a Worried Worker for Peace


I think I can honestly say that I think Richard Dawkins is one of my least favorite scholars of all time. Last year, Dawkins stood up at TED and made some rather less than exemplary (and I believe less than academically honest) remarks in regards to the war between atheists and religious folk (you can find the link to right here, by the way). For those of you who don’t know Dawkins, he is an evolutionary scientist-turned-author who has taken to writing books on the subject of the silliness of a belief in God. His books like “The Blind Watchmaker,” “The God Delusion,” and “The Selfish Gene” stand as testaments to his fundamentalist Positivist attitude towards the universe. He’s in close cohorts with Sam Harris, another fundamentalist atheist whom I wrote about some time ago. Without much further ado, let’s get dirty.

Dr. Panza, I suppose this is what I fear when I think of Positivism in academia. It isn’t that asking for evidence is wrong in any way (I’d take it over blind faith in something any day of the week), but Positivists get stuck in this idea that only physical evidence and explanations will suffice. It’s not fair, really, to say that. It’s also not fair to say that in order for something to be considered “knowledge” it has to have empirical evidence. Nor is it fair to say that science is ca-ca because the Bible says so. Both sides are problematic, and both sides only serve to stoke the fire of their opposition. By continually antagonizing each other, they only serve to further polarize their opponent.

Dawkins, in his speech, most certainly polarizes, marginalizes, and invectively attacks people of religious belief. His admitted agenda for his TED talk is to push “militant atheism” because “religion is corrosive to science. It teaches people to be satisfied with trivial supernatural non-explanations and blinds them to the wonderful real explanations that we have within our grasp. It teaches [people] to obey authority, revelation, and faith instead of always insisting on evidence.” To me, this point exposes Dawkins as attacking a religious straw-man. I know many, many intelligent religious people who are not blind and ignorant to the world around them, they are not hurtful to the scientific process or atheists, and they are not fundamentalist in their beliefs.

I suppose one of the problems I have, and have always had, with Dawkins is that he makes this move all too often. Dawkins has the choice to try and be productive in his assessment of religion and attack some poor religious policy, or attack fundamentalism in particular, or go after the politics of religion. He does not. Instead he chooses to throw the baby out with the bathwater, negating all positive aspects of religion and its ability to turn people into substantive, moral agents. Rather, he attacks religion in general assuming that all of its followers are stupid and thoughtless. Several times throughout his talk he makes reference to the fact that intelligent, thoughtful, honest people don’t believe in God. It is like believing in the tooth fairy or tea pots that orbit Saturn. Simply silly.

Here’s the bottom line for me: Dawkins makes some very good points in regards to religion. Many religious people are closed minded, hurtful, politically divisive, and uneducated. They hijack religion for their own agenda and personal gain, bashing people over the head with beliefs. One might even venture to say that these people are the majority (especially here in the Midwest). That does not, however, give one grounds to dismiss all people who believe in God or are religious. Dawkins line of attack is just as hurtful as those of Fred Phelps.

What’s more is that I don’t think Dawkins is honestly engaged in the arguments, which is probably why it’s so easy for him to dismiss religious people as idiots. For example, he addresses the problem of infinite complexity that is really the front line of the ID vs. Darwinism debate, but his answer isn’t really thought provoking or satisfactory in my opinion. Besides that, he tags on a little ad hominem attack, which doesn’t actually weaken his argument, but it certainly exposes the fact that he seems to be less than willing to engage in actual debate and will settle for mud-slinging instead.

He states that:
“The standard creationist argument…takes off from statistical improbability. Living creatures are too complex to have come about by chance. They must have had a designer. This argument, of course, shoots itself in the foot. Any designer capable of creating something really complex has to be more complex himself, and that’s before we even start on the other things he’s supposed to do like forgive sins, bless marriages, listen to prayers, favor our side in a war, disapprove of our sex lives, and so on.”

Okay, so Darwinism can’t always explain the problem of infinite complexity, and religion seems to have an answer by postulating the existence of an infinitely complex, intelligent creator. Dawkins comes back by saying that you can’t solve the problem of complexity by postulating a more complex creator. Not only does Dawkins’s rebuttal fail to actually solve the problem for Darwinism (it only exposes the weakness of theism’s solution), but his attack doesn’t fly because the fact that God exists outside of time and without a cause is built into God’s set of necessary conditions. Granted, many people will not accept these premises, but what it exposes is that these sides eventually reach a point of faith. Both sides aren’t willing to listen to each other any longer (if they ever were in the first place) and they simply withdraw deeper into their beliefs. Atheists like Dawkins will resort to attacking some of the more absurd propositions about an anthropomorphic God, and religious fanatics like George Bush Sr. will resort to saying that atheists shouldn’t be citizens of the United States and cannot be considered patriots.

What the hell is going on here? How are we supposed to resolve this argument? Do we just sit both sides in the corner for some time out until they can play nicely with each other again? I’d say that we should simply learn move past it, but both sides keep trying to delve into the sphere of public influence and thus affect the daily lives of the other. I tend to think that going back to Karen Armstrong’s talk, for both sides, is the way to go, but we need to act fast. I always worry that we’re on the border of some all-out battle between these two positions. I imagine it playing out like the Palestinians and Israelis in the Gaza Strip. Both sides aren’t fighting for the betterment of the world, for some greater cause, but for their right to say “I’m right and you’re wrong.” I’m doing my part by writing about it and trying to live in a way that accords with my blog posts. Tolerance, patience, forgiveness, and compassion. What do you think?

5 comments:

Chris Panza said...

For the record, I'm no fan of Dawkins at all. I think he is open to all the criticisms you highlight.

If "positivist" means "accepts only empirically based reasons" (or something like that) for *any* type of explanation, then I'd agree with you that positivism is a bad thing and that Dawkins likely fits that mold.

I want to distinguish people like Dawkins from someone who says this: "science gives _better_ answers or explanations than religion when it comes to understanding why man has the genetic makeup he/she does." So, I think we need to resist saying that evolution and intelligent design are equal in some way because religious and scientific explanations are all the same on "some general level" (requiring faith, or something like that).

Explanatory relativism seems like as bad a route to take as your positivism, maybe even a worse route.

For me, it's a question of what game is being played. If I want to understand genetic makeup, I'm playing a causal/predictive game. I want the explanation to give me a causal explanation, and I want the explanation to do some predictive work. If it can't, it's a bad explanation. On that level, religious explanations _are_ "ca ca" and legitimately so.

However, if I want to give an explanation that gives a sense of _significance_ to events, then religious explanations are not "ca ca". Rather, scientific ones are. Two different games, and it seems to me that when people like Dawkins say "belief in religion is stupid" (or something like that), he is confusing the two games.

Similarly, if a religious person says that evolution fails to deliver a sense of "significance" to events for them, that's understandable and not ca ca. But if they want to confuse the two games and suggest that evolution can't be the right causal explanation, but rather ID, then that _is_ "ca ca".

All this typing of "ca ca" is making me laugh, by the way. In any case, hopefully that makes some sense of where I'm coming from. In sum, although I am sensitive to criticisms about "positivism" I think we need to be _very_ careful not to shift too far to the other extreme -- explanatory relativism. One way to do that, I think, is to be clear about the games we are playing and keep them separate from one another to some degree.

Chris Panza said...

By the way, a good series of posts recently on the TED series!

Mark said...

Thanks for the compliment, Panza. It's nice to have some direction on the blog these days. I read your blog, but I'm afraid I'm not anywhere near educated enough to put forth a comment worth anything.

I completely agree with your perspective on this matter of faith vs. evidence. If I want to know about the natural world, I'll appeal to science and look for data. If I'm going to look for meaning in life, I'll probably appeal to a religious tradition. I just don't like it when a person from one sphere of influence tries to speak authoritatively about the validity of the other.

Chris Panza said...

Mark,

I'm in agreement with your last comment. For me, however, that *might* mean that at the bottom of it all there's actually a tension or fundamental inconsistency between faith and reason. Given that our departmental motto is that such a thing doesn't exist, we'll keep that on the dl! :)

My own blog posts have "kicked it up" a notch due to the seminar I'm in here in CT -- usually I make my posts more accessible to a general reader, but given the nature of the seminar, I've been trying to work out some specific research issues. But please feel free to comment -- if something isn't clear, I'd be glad to explain it. Most of the time that helps me to understand it myself!

Anonymous said...

Hi, I was just googling to see whether some people disagreed with me on the account that Dawkins is a positivist (and quite outdated in that respect). Doing so I stumbled upon your nice blog and couldn't help responding. What I'll try to say here is kind of in addition to Chris Panza, to give it a name: constructivism.

I feel that to many people 'science' equals positivism. And though positivism gets you a long way scientifically, it is exactly Dawkins kind of reasoning that gets you nowhere. The problem with positivism is the idea that you can step outside reality and look back at it. This is simply not possible. We are part of reality. This is the same for someone who is religious, religion is part of such a persons reality. It gives meaning to such a persons life. To me constructivism has better value than positivism to move beyond claiming truth. Constructivism states that _we_ construct _our_ reality. By typing this message I am in a sense constructing your reality. Constructivism does not claim that we can change what is real. For example a tree is a tree. Still the word tree has a meaning on its own. To me a tree means a resource to make a bonfire or just nature. Someone else may see a tree as something to sit against.

So what does this mean for evolution? for that I'll just link you to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology read the part about darwinian theory in the 'concepts and idea's' section. I could've explained it here but it would take to much space.