A Review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion Part V
Sept 7, 2007, Wausau, Wi — So far, in my review of Richard Dawkins’, “The God Delusion” I have showed how Dawkins’ arguments in the first chapter of his book concerning religion in general and Christianity in particular are seriously flawed. In chapter two Dawkins turns to the more specific question of God.
He starts the chapter with what can at best be characterized as a stereotypical rant, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all the fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, and unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniac, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
The main justification that Dawkins’ gives for this statement is that Winston Churchill’s son, Randolph, came to a similar conclusion when he read the Old Testament for the first time while in the army.
As a result, his views were not based on any serious in depth understanding of the text. No attempt was made to put any of the books into an historical context. No attempt was made to put the books into any cultural context. There was simply a superficial reading.
Dawkins goes on to write that, “It is unfair to attack such an easy target.” The reason it is so easy is that what Dawkins has done here is to create a strawman view of god that he can then easily knock down, not an accurate depiction of God based on any scholarly analysis of the text.
Dawkins goes on from this to state his alternative to god, “any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.” His alternative is a little confusing because it seems to be, not an alternative to god, but a reason why a god could not exist. But even as a reason why a god could not exist, it still does not make very much sense because it is based on the premise that a god would be a part of the universe and therefore that would need to evolve. But a god who created the universe could not be part of the created universe without falling into the absurdity of self creation.
From there Dawkins goes on to expand the view of religion that sees progress from “primitive tribal animisms, and, through Polytheisms such as those of the Greeks, Romans and Norsemen, to monotheisms such as Judaism and its derivatives, Christianity and Islam.” (pg 32) While this seems like a nice neat theory that fits Dawkins bias to see evolution everywhere, as I discuss in my book, Evidence for the Bible, if anything the opposite is true. Monotheism seems to devolve into polytheism, and the tendency would seem to be to create more gods, not fewer. Even in modern times, as Western civilization as moved away from Christianity, God has been replaced by many other things, wealth, fame, country, science, nature. Now even in science there are those pushing the concept of Gaia or mother earth.
While Dawkins purports to discuss polytheism at this point, instead, he quickly switches to ridiculing the Trinity. That his discussion of the Trinity occurs in the section on polytheism shows once again the superficiality with which Dawkins approach religion. After quoting a passage from St. Gregory, Dawkins takes one of his characteristic swipes at religion, saying “his words convey a characteristically obscurantist flavor of theology, which – unlike science or most other branches of human scholarship – has not moved on in 18 centuries.”
The first problem with this is that there was nothing particularly obscure in St. Gregory’s discussion of the Trinity. That Dawkins finds it obscured is simply more evidence of his superficiality. Anyone, reading a technical discussion in a field of study where they are not familiar with the key issues, problems, or terminology, is likely to find that discussion obscure.
Dawkins’ claim that theology has not “moved on in 18 centuries” is equally as false. Sure the basic doctrines such as God, Jesus Christ, and salvation, have not changed. But why should they? If scientists 18 centuries from now still believe in gravity will that be a reason to reject science because it is not moved on? On the other hand, to say there has been no development in theology in the last 18 centuries is simply false.
In fact, just in the last hundred years there’s been tremendous development in our understanding of the Bible, as our understanding of Biblical languages, archaeology, and history have improved. Granted, these have not challenged the foundations of our faith, and in fact if anything, have strengthened them, has they have demonstrated the reliability of the Bible, and have refuted most of the arguments put forth by critics such as Dawkins, which is perhaps why Dawkins ignores these developments.
Dawkins’ closes the section on polytheism by attempting to forestall the criticism that the god Dawkins is attacking is not the God that Christians believe in. His response is that all notions of god are silly and that he is “attacking god, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented.”
While this is a bold and sweeping claim, it does not match the actual arguments in the book. It would be like claiming you are refuting all of science, when all of your argument relate to alchemy. Likewise Dawkins’ arguments fall short.
Part I Part II Part III Part IV
Stages of a Political Movement Part II
In Part 1 I looked at the five stages that movements in general and political movements in particular go through : Origin, Development, Struggle, Dominance, and Decline. Currently, the conservative movement is in stage 3 struggle, hoping to move to stage 4, Dominance. The political dominance of Liberalism was weakened by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and broken in 1994 when the Republicans won control of Congress. Currently neither side has dominance. Conservatives are trying to gain it, while the Liberals are trying to reverse their decline and regain it.
While this goes a long way towards explaining the current climate of partisanship, there are two additional factors that can further explain the current battles. The first is openness to new ideas. In stages 1, 2, there has to be a great openness to new ideals and new ways of thinking about things if a movement is to progress. This is facilitated by the lack of any power, so there is nothing to lose. However somewhere in stage 3, as the base of support grows, the openness to new ideas begins to decline. If, and when, a group gains dominance, the openness to new ideas greatly decreases. Part of this is because everything begins to be cast in terms of the great leaders who brought the group to power. New ideas are often cast as “destroying the legacy.” As a group moves into decline, these old ways are often defend even more tediously with calls to “return to our roots.”
Thus, for example, Liberals are normally portrayed as the ones with the new Ideas and conservatives as defending the status quo. Yet when it comes to issues like social security, it is the Democrat, the group who until recently was dominate, who defends the status quo, frequently by pointing to the legacy of FDR. On the other hand, it is conservatives, who are in stage three hoping to gain dominance, who are the ones proposing the new ideas.
The second major factor is willingness to hear differing opinions and to debate issues. Groups in the early stages have to be open to differing opinions. Since they have no power, the only way to get their position accepted is by debate. However once in a position of dominance, stagnation sets in. Since they are in power, differing opinions do not need to be engaged, they can simply be voted down. If the period of dominance last long enough, the current leaders may even have lost (or never developed) the ability to defend their position against serious intellectual challenges. Thus when serious intellectual challenges do arise, there will be a strong inclination to use their dominate power to suppress opposing views, rather than to defeat them intellectually.
Both of these factors can be seen in the current political debate. The dominance of liberalism began in the early 1930s. While there were Republican presidents, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford were not conservatives; nor was the first President Bush. In addition, liberalism dominated not only political power, but the news and entertainment media, and universities. Liberalism was simply the norm, while conservatism was rare. Conservatives, if they remained conservative, were challenged on a daily basis, and thereby had to learn to defend their beliefs, if only to themselves. As the dominate power this was not the case with liberalism. Liberals could pretty much live their entire lives without ever being seriously challenged in their beliefs. Any differing view they did encounter could be written off as a minority views that did not need to be taken seriously.
When Reagan broke the dominance of Liberalism, many liberal simply could not believe it, and they did not know how to respond. In the absence of rational arguments, irrational arguments take over, and the easiest (and thus most popular)of the irrational arguments is the ad hominem attack. Be it Regain, Bush 41, Dan Quayle, Newt Gingrich, Bush 43, Dick Cheney, or any other Republican leader, they are portrayed as dumb, a puppet, out of touch, insensitive, uncaring, evil, or some combination of the above.
This also explains the great disparity in talk radio, a medium based on the discussion of ideas. While there are some “shock jock” the vast majority of conservative talk radio consists of taking apart liberal views. While they are often criticized for not allowing differing points of view, most spend a great deal of time debating liberal guest, playing clips of what liberals say, and love to take liberal callers, because they know, based on experience, that liberals for the most part are not very good at defending themselves intellectually and thus normally it is not very long before they resort to ad hominem attacks or other types of fallacious reasoning.
This also explains why liberals employ a number of techniques aimed at suppressing differing points of view. If you hold a view that the fetus is a person with right to life, and you are labeled religious and your view must be excluded from political debate because of separation of church and state. The belief that marriage as an institution should be between a man and a woman is homophobic and to be excluded from political debate. The claim that affirmative action does more harm than good is racist speech and to be excluded from political debate. And with the failure of Air America, talk radio needs to be regulated by the “Fairness Doctrine” which would effectively silence it. Groups in the Decline stage normally seek to suppress opposition, rather than debate and defeat it.
As these tactics fail, the normal response is to simply ratchet up the attacks, however irrational. Thus the increasing hatred on the left with attacks such as Bush lied, War for oil, and even that Bush knew about or in some cases even planned 9/11, all the while accusing him of causing the division. In short when understood against the background of the stages of a political movement, much of the current political debate become understandable.
A Review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion Part IV
August 31, 2007, Wausau, Wi — I ended part III of my review of Richard Dawkins’, “The God Delusion” by pointing out that atheism, like all world views, involves a component of faith. It is not the completely reason and evidence based system that it claims to be. This time I want to look at what is at best a strange line of argument made by Dawkins, but it is an argument which is increasingly common among atheists.
On page 20, Dawkins writes, “A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our society accepts – non-religious included – is that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect that any human being should pay to another.”
To anyone even remotely familiar with the assaults to which Christians and Christianity are routinely subjected, Dawkins statement will come as somewhat of a surprise. To justify this strange claim, Dawkins points that “In Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants are euphemized to ‘Nationalists’ and ‘Loyalists’ respectively.” Yet this hardly is showing any deference to religion. What Dawkins’ neglects is the historical fact that the conflict in Ireland existed long before there was any difference in religion. In fact it is more likely that the difference in religion was caused by the conflict rather than the conflict caused by the difference in religion.
Another way Dawkins’ attempts to show that religion has some sort of preference is that religious leaders are sought out for their opinions on moral issues. While he says he does not want them excluded from such discussions as he puts it “why does our society beat a path to their door, as though they had some expertise compare to that of, say, the moral philosopher, a family lawyer or a doctor?”
One reason perhaps is that, while Dawkins may not like it, religion is a source of moral teachings. So why wouldn’t we seek the opinions of those trained in a moral teaching for their advice on morality? A lawyer is trained in the law, so that might make a lawyer a good source of legal advice, but what is legal and what is moral are two different things. There are many things that are legal and yet immoral. For example, most everyone, including atheists, would agree that adultery is immoral. Yet it is legal. In fact one of the big problems I see is that we, as a society are thinking more in legal terms and less in moral terms. In fact one of the universities I was associated with, required its instructors of ethics to be lawyers. Thus a common defense we frequently hear for questionable actions is, “but there was nothing illegal” as if that makes everything ok. Much the same can be said about doctors. They are trained to give medical treatment, not moral advice. ‘Practices safe sex, and everything is ok.’
While the moral philosopher has at least studied morality, one could just as easily ask, what makes them automatically more qualified than a theologian? Moral philosophers may be trained to think about moral issues, but what are they using as a basis for their moral view? At least for a theologian, the basis for their moral beliefs is pretty clear. With many moral philosophers, it is not clear at all. The situation is sort of like having two doctors, one who was trained at a school you know well, and another whom you have no idea where or how they were trained. Which would you trust with your life?
Several of the other examples of the supposed “unparalleled presumption of respect for religion”, involve Islam, and actually argue more for a special status for Islam than for religion. For example, Dawkins points to the recent incidence of the Danish cartoons that caused riots in the Muslim world, and how newspapers “expressed ‘respect’ and ‘sympathy’ for the deep ‘offence’ and ‘hurt’ that Muslims had ‘suffered.’” (pg 27) I know that here in the United States, many news organization refused to even show the cartoons.
The main problem with Dawkins’ argument is that his examples are not representative of religion in general. For example, with the Danish cartoons, while deference and respect was clearly paid to Islam, there is no such similar deference paid to Christianity. When Andre Seranno received a grant from the government to place a crucifix in a jar of his own urine in the name of art, most of the complaints were that it was government funded. More importantly the newspapers were not sympathizing with the hurt felt by Christians, but instead attacking them for being intolerant and trying to stifle artistic freedom. There was much the same reaction when, again in the name of art, a picture of the Virgin Mary was smeared in Elephant dung. Then there was the play that depicted Jesus has a homosexual. When Christians complained, and justifiably so, about these and many other affronts, there were no calls to understand there hurt, but rather they were label intolerant and were accused of censorship.
In fact, the affronts against Christianity and Christians are now so common, that even many Christians accept them as a normal part of life in 21st century America. Thus like so many of Dawkins’ claims, the claim that there is some sort of deference paid to Christianity, is simply false, and shows a massive misunderstanding of the actual situation.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact
Part I Part II Part III Part V
Stages of a Political Movement Part I
It is common to hear complaints about how partisan politics have become and question what has happened to the political system. One problem with understanding current events is the differing time spans over which events occur. Events that have short time spans can normally be analyzed and understood, particularly if they occur frequently, so that patterns can be determined and then future reoccurrences understood in light of these pattern. Often times, these patterns are so predicable that these are just taken for granted. For example, because of the pattern of education we are all familiar with in the United States, we expect more from those graduating from High School, than those in 1st grade. The shorter the time span and the more frequently the type of event repeats, the easier it is to see any patterns. When time spans gets longer, particularly when they start involving more than one generation, the patterns gets harder to see. One such pattern involves most human movements that are in competition with each other. These movements go through 5 main stages: Origin, Development, Struggle, Dominance, Decline. While many human institutions can be understood using these stages, here the focus will be on political institutions.
The first stage is Origin, or in some cases rebirth. At this point, the political movement is unfocused and undirected consisting of a grab bag of ideals, principles and beliefs. Most political movements never really get beyond this stage, and even those that do can still be in this stage for many years or even decades. Movements begin to transitions to the next phase when intellectual leaders begin to appear. These intellectual leaders take the mass of ideals, principles and beliefs that are floating around and begin to tie them together into a coherent system. They also use this newly developed coherent system to lay the ground work for a criticism of competing system.
At some point the emerging system will, if it is successful, begin to attract the attention of political leaders. This is the beginning of stage three, as the intellectual movement, which to that point has been relatively free to develop ideals, begins to transition into a political movement that struggles for power. This is an extremely important stage for the more the new movement gains political strength, the more it comes in conflict with the existing powers. If the new political leaders, drawing on the intellectual framework developed in stage two, are persuasive enough, the movement will grow to be a significant power and if successful, the movement will become the dominate position (stage 4). While competition never goes completely away, in this stage the movement has enough power that it can enact most of its programs.
The world is not static and just as the movement challenged and eventually overthrew the old status quo, there will arise new challengers to the movement. Should these succeed, and so far history has show that eventually one will, the movement enters into the last stage, that of decline. If the decline is great enough, the movement dissolves back into the general ocean of ideals that composes stage one to await a rebirth.
Thus one way to look at the current political conflict is not just as a struggle between two political parties (Republican and Democrat) but also a struggle between two (or more) political movements which are at different stages of development and whose time span covers decades. The liberal movement (using the current understanding of the term) was in struggle phase (phase 3) prior to coming to dominance with FDR in the 1930s. With the corresponding decline of the Republican party at that time, some began to seek new direction. The 1940s and 1950 saw the development of a new intellectual movement of conservatism, which then began to attract political leaders. 1964 was a hallmark year for the new political movement which saw the nomination of a conservative (Goldwater) for president, and the emergence of another conservative political leader on the national stage, Ronald Regan. Still the dominance of the liberalism continued. More importantly the dominance was pervasive. Not only did liberalism dominate politics, but also the media, both entertainment and news, and universities. Even when Republicans won the Presidency, they often enacted liberal policies and thus partisanship was minimized.
The first major victory for the fledgling conservative movement came with the presidency of Ronald Reagan in 1980s. Regan broke the political dominance that liberalism had enjoyed since the 1930s. Still the Democrats still had a lock on the House and at times control of the Senate. And while conservatism came to dominate the Republican party, there were still many detractors within the party, particularly among elected officials, given the difficulty in removing incumbents. So Reagan did not bring conservatism to dominance, and the struggle continued. The second major victory came in 1994 when the Republicans led by conservatives, gained control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the early 1950s. Even when the Republicans had control of both houses of the congress and the presidency in 2002, conservatives could not be said to have a dominance given the slim margin in the Senate and its 60 vote requirement to move legislation.
Thus the increased partisanship at the moment which some label ‘the worst they have seen’ can simply be understood as the natural result of the dominance of the liberals being broken and the subsequent struggle for power between Liberals and conservatives. But there is an addition factor resulting from these five stages the greatly contributes to the current partisanship which I will look at next time.
Zeitgeist – The Response
August 24, 2007, Wausau, Wi — This week I thought I would address some of the responses to Zeitgeist, The Movie and my review. Perhaps the one of the most absurd attempts to defend the movie was the claim that you cannot invalidate the claims in Zeitgeist, without first validating the claims made in the New Testament.
The irrationally of this statement is easily seen by simply turning it around. One could just as easily, and in fact given the actual evidence, more easily, claim that one could not invalidate of the historical claims made in the NT without first validating the claims in Zeitgeist, which given the errors shown in my review of the movie, would be impossible. While I believe the claims in the NT are historically accurate, I would never make such an argument, because is it irrational on its face.Some messages took objection to my claim that the December 25th date was not biblical but a later tradition and therefore those parts of the movie based on this date were invalid. These objections took two main forms. One was to claim that there is no proof December 25th was a later tradition. This of course ignores the statements in Luke that points to the spring as the time for Jesus birth. But it also reveals a common line of argument with such claims which is to point to anything that can be seen as supporting them as valid evidence, while everything that conflicts is simply ignored.
The other approach was to claim that the Church did set the December 25th date, even if it was later, and that this shows the claims in the movie are correct. There are two problems with this argument either one of which would be fatal. The first is that the movie claims that the beliefs of Christianity derived from date. But how could this be true if the connection was only made hundreds of years later? The other problem is that when the connection was made, it was not to commemorate the date, but to use the celebration of Christmas, to replace the pagan celebrations that occurred on this date. So no matter how you look at it the movie’s claim that Christian belief derived from the winter solstice simply wrong.
A more general defense was found in a number of messages, which was even if some of the details of the movie were incorrect, the main message of the movie that religion basically is just a means of control, was correct. In fact it was commonly called the most powerful form of control that exists.
Such arguments have a number of problems. If the purpose of religion is to control, then how, by whom and for what purpose? This might make sense when dealing with a religion that has a clear hierarchical power structure, but not all religions have such a structure. In fact, one of the problems with Islam is that it lacks any formal power structure that could control its radical extremes.Many Protestants churches have a very democratic power structure (which was historically an important factor in the emergence of democracy in Europe and the US.) How does “control” fit as a purpose for these groups? Applied to specific groups and individuals, “control” might be an explanation, but as a blanket explanation, it fails miserably.But even if true, religion is hardly the main means of control. Government is far more powerful and invasive. More importantly, while religion is often, and should always be, voluntary, government, by its nature is not. Just look at the massive amount of control Government has over our lives in the US, and we are classified as a “free” society. Consider the amounts of control totalitarian governments have over the day to day lives of their citizens. So government is much more a source of control.In fact one of the benefits of religion is that it can provide a check and balance on government, sort of like the separation of powers set up in the Constitution. In fact this was why the founding fathers viewed religion as so important, yet independent of government, for it could provide a check on government.The real danger occurs when government becomes completely dominated by any single group so as to use it power to suppress and restrict competing groups for then the ability for checks and balances disappears. In European history, Christianity was at times too closely allied with, and in some cases was, the government. That was a problem. Today the danger lies with secularism, which has come to dominate government, and is using its power to restricting the influence of religion. Completely remove the influence of religion and you remove any ability it has to check the control of government.
To see this just look at the last century where you had a declining influence of religion in America you had a corresponding increase in the growth of government, and a corresponding decrease in freedom. Sure we now have much more freedom to use certain words formally considered vulgar, but in exchange we now have speech codes on what opinions and thoughts are acceptable. Express a politically incorrect opinion, however true it may be, and you can be sent to sensitive training, or even lose your job. (In Europe, which even more secular, you can go to jail). So in 21st century America, I fear Big Government much more than Big Religion. And it is not coincidence that those who seek to limit religion the most, also seek to expand government the most.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
Review: Part I Part II Part III Responses II
