Have you ever turned the page of a book borrowed from the library and encountered someone else’s scribbled notes in the margin? Irritating, isn’t it? I really objected to being (sub)liminally told what to think in all those books I had to study last year. So it was a foolish choice to buy Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion. Although its author is a Fellow at my undergraduate college who used to write quite engagingly, and it seemed to be a relief not to have to wade through acres of marginal notes to distract me, I soon realised my mistake.
The relentless tone of tub-thumping fundamentalism infesting this book really set the bee buzzing. I found myself scribbling my reactions to Dawkins in the margins! He is often wrong in his claims, but since others more qualified than I have already answered many of them, here I will share only some of my reactions.
“Do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand”
Dawkins is a scientist. In Latin “scientia” means knowledge, and an honest scientist or academic researcher tries to acquire knowledge by analysing something observable, and drawing conclusions. But this is only one way to achieving knowledge, as Saint Augustine tells us above. Dawkins dismisses as irrelevant any routes to wisdom other than his own, confusing faith in a personal God with faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster for example, because such beings cannot be observed. He arrogantly discounts miracles for the same reason:
“… miracles, by definition, violate the principles of science.”
Not by my definition! Every miracle was observed by someone. But perhaps Dawkins doesn’t consider these observers good enough scientists? Or more probably their evidence does not fit his hectoring thesis, so he conveniently ignores them and arrogantly hijacks miracles to deny faith.
Similarly he tries to deny the Gospels’ evidence:
“… the gospels are ancient fiction while the Da Vinci Code is modern fiction.”
Again, I beg to differ. Fiction consists of a plotline and characters designed to entertain the reader. The Gospels are eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ time on earth, albeit muddled in their plotlines. Clearly their muddle demonstrates that they were not written as entertainment but to reveal the word of the Creator.
The major omission Dawkins consistently makes is any reference to the divine Jesus whose actions are motivated by love for mankind. The examples of religious violence and hatred he adduces in his first chapter to belittle religion are all drawn from fundamentalist groups which do not admit of Jesus’ historical command to “Love one another”. On the contrary, by constantly haranguing the reader to consider the vapid blandishments of atheism, Dawkins conveniently avoids mentioning all the good Jesus and his followers have done over the centuries.
But there is some light relief. Dawkins sends himself up in the shrill rhetoric with which he defines the God of the Old Testament, at the start of Chapter 2:
“In public readings of The God Delusion this is the one passage that is guaranteed to get a good-natured laugh”
I found the passage offensive actually. Dawkins is deluded to expect a good-natured reaction. This ineffective attempt at humour just isn’t funny and destroys any hope of an intellectually honest discussion.
It certainly isn’t a book I would recommend for anybody honestly curious about God, be they a trained scientist or not. One wonders, with McGrath, whether the real reason Dawkins is so insistent on pushing atheism in this book is because atheism itself is undergoing a crisis of belief. He would be more convincing if he admitted that the only thing atheism is any good for is predicting the weather.
And now that my copy has all these irritating notes in the margins, I would rather burn it than give it away or sell it. Thank God I only wasted my money on the cheap and nasty paperback edition!
