Arguing about God on Internet forums is a largely pointless
activity, guaranteed to lead to annoyance and frustration, and one I don’t
usually dabble in. But the other day I got caught up in such a discussion over
at Longrider’s blog. I made the mistake of trying to make two points at once,
or rather, one observation which I didn’t expect to be contentious as the
lead-in to another which was no more than a question, though a difficult one to
express, and to understand.
There were two commenters who attempted to engage. The first
did so intelligently, but he didn’t quite seem to grasp the point of what I was
asking, and in any case he retired early on the not unreasonable grounds that
he’d had this sort of argument before and they never got anywhere. I intend to
follow his example after this post. The second was a weird creature who
interlaced references to irrelevant people and concepts with random abuse in
block capitals. Both signs of a less than towering intellect, so that wasn’t
going very far either. Then our host on the blog stepped in and asked us
politely to return to the topic, from which we had strayed to some extent.
Politely, we obliged.
The observation I made, which I thought uncontentious, was
that Richard Dawkins is a militant atheist. He is frequently bombastic,
importunate and rude, dragging the stupidity of believers into places it wasn’t
invited. Although he has a sharp intellect and an extensive knowledge of his
field, which is itself broad, not everything he says in defence of his beliefs
is filtered through that intellect. Some of it much more primal. It seems to me
a perfectly reasonable use of the word militant. Not only that, but a criticism
of his dialectic style was given in the original post, albeit tangentially, and
I originally commented to defend him from a misconception that had arisen.
The question I asked was, in essence, the following:
The idea that there exists, or should exist, some power,
creative, guiding, saving, explaining, is present in the human mind. This idea
usually conceives, implicitly or explicitly, that this power is outside the
mind itself. At the very least, almost everyone seeks some kind of moral order,
both personal and social, and recognises that it is good that there should be
such a thing. Most people seek, or imagine, something more than that, that
there life has meaning, and not uncommonly, that that meaning, that purpose,
that moral order, is created, or actively imposed, from outside man.
This is not an invention of ‘organised religion’; the fact
that large and powerful organizations can exist which take advantage of it merely
proves how important that perception is to us.
This is why it is important to explore the question, because
‘god’ undoubtedly exists in the human mind, and is an important part of what we
are. Where, then, does it come from? Is it a product of the way the human mind
is constructed, does it arise within the mind, as a result, perhaps, of our
ability to recognise and reflect on our mortality, but not to understand it or
to change it? Is it just a by-product of what we are?
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There is another possibility, that it actually does reflect
something outside ourselves, that thing we sometimes call god.
The question I asked was, has Richard Dawkins given a
convincing explanation of why this last hypothesis is the least parsimonious?
I could have put it in other ways. Has he proved to his own
intellectual satisfaction that this last possibility is not true? It isn’t
quite the same question, though it’s close enough, and I wish I had asked it
that way, because although the question is difficult to frame, there is in fact
a simple answer: no, he hasn’t.
His book, The God Delusion, is an attempt to address
precisely the question I asked, as I originally asked it. He sets out to
consider what causes the sense of a greater, guiding power to arise within
mankind, and to take such an important personal and social role, and he
considers the possibility, naturally enough, that it could be because there is
something outside us which has placed knowledge of itself within us, or that we
are capable of identifying. Does he show, at least to his own satisfaction,
that it can’t be true? In fact he doesn’t, not completely, and he recognises
this fact, although he does conclude that it is very unlikely indeed.
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He rejects any attempt to consider god as an old boy on a
cloud with a beard and a set of scales, or any variation thereof, because once
you posit an omnipotent being that can arbitrarily change reality or our
perception of it, it all comes down to how much that being wants to be noticed.
Human reason cannot detect such a being. It isn’t the only concept that can be,
or has been, posited, that is more or less defined to in such a way as to lie
outside the scope of our reason, but it is probably the only one that actually
matters. Some people find the idea obviously preposterous, others feel they
have actually experienced him. But there’s no point arguing about it
intellectually.
He doesn’t consider the god of the creationists either
because it isn’t worth arguing about. Creationism is not an intellectual
position, it’s just a belief, and one which, unlike the old man on the cloud,
is now easily refutable by observation, at least to the extent that it attempts
to justify itself by reason.
The god of most believers is not accessible to scientific
enquiry and genuinely curious atheists/agnostics know this. The moral systems derived
from those beliefs are a matter of debate, ultimately inconclusive and often
circular, but productive nonetheless, and necessary. The concepts and limits of
right and wrong are defined and redefined constantly by a continuous social
negotiation, and if you don’t contribute others will decide what you should and
shouldn’t do (even more than they do now). Insofar as the actions of believers
have consequences for other people they will be judged in the same way as
actions derived from any other source of will or motivation.
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The purpose of this post was to explain the question I’m
trying to ask. Inevitably (because I’m me) I have ended up rambling about other
things which seemed relevant or appeared to shed some light, but the post is
intended as an intellectual enquiry, not a defence of any theological position.
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