The Atheist Delusion Part 1
Posted by Shannon Love on December 6th, 2006 (All posts by Shannon Love)
I keep losing my personal heroes.
Richard Dawkins is one of the century’s great evolutionary theorists and someone whose work I really admire. His work revolutionized the way scientists thought about evolutionary theory. I think I can safely say that I have read everything that the man has written in every major forum. So, as an atheist myself, I looked forward to Dawkins weighing in on the subject of religion, from the perspective of an evolutionary theorist, in his new book, “The God Delusion”.
This weekend I made it to my local bookstore, grabbed a copy of the “The God Delusion” and sat down with a cup of coffee to read it immediately — even before buying it. Imagine my shock and even horror to discover that Dawkins’ book is trite, facile and just plain, well, dumb.
I read about half of the book, skipping to the parts I thought would hold the most interest and pursuing the index (something I always do with new books). In the end I put it back on the shelf. I couldn’t bring myself to plunk down $30 for such low-quality work. It has the distinction of being the first Dawkins book I will probably never own. Granted, I had heard podcasts about the book and seen some supposed excerpts that raised my eyebrows, but I assumed that, in the manner of such things, those snippets represented the “village atheist” view that did not capture the nuance and sophistication of Dawkins’ work. Unfortunately, those previews did capture the essence of the work. If anything it’s even worse than they suggest.
The entire scope of the facileness of the book will take several posts to address, but the most immediate flaw in the book is Dawkins’ uncritical acceptance of the idea that religion causes people to systematically make worse, i.e., less-humane or -accurate, decisions than does an atheistic worldview. I’ll tackle this argument first because it has long annoyed me, because empirically it isn’t true, and anyone with even a passing knowledge of history can discern the real pattern.
Atheists reflexively repeat the mantra that religion causes oppression, war and general cruelty of all kinds, while asserting or implying that atheism does not. Dawkins falls right into this mindless argument in the opening paragraphs of the book and never lets up. (Reading someone like Dawkins making such a pompous, counterfactual argument is like chewing glass.)
This particular fallacy arises from three sources: (1) attributing every bad decision in the distant past to religion, (2) ignoring all of the bad decisions made by atheists in the recent past and (3) ignoring all of the good decisions that religious people made in the recent past.
Laying all bad decisions of the distant past at the feet of religion comes from projecting a wholly modern western cosmology onto pre-modern cultures everywhere. Until the Elizabethan Sir Roger Bacon (not the monk, the other one), nobody, anywhere, divided the cosmos into our contemporary conception of natural and supernatural. Up until that point, everyone, everywhere, thought the cosmos was governed by supernatural personalities or forces whose actions depended in whole or in part on the moral choices of human beings. Bacon’s key insight, (itself based in theology) that the material world functioned automatically, without continuous supernatural intervention, made a scientific study of the cosmos conceptually possible. Even so, it would be nearly 200 years later, during the time of the American and French revolutions, before such a world view developed real political import.
Until that time, everyone thought about all decisions in what we would today call supernatural terms. In truth, it is better to say that people then lacked our modern conception of the natural. They saw a chaotic and random world that appeared to follow no rules or inherent order. In one of his books, Carl Sagan (another fallen idol of mine) showed how an East Indian oral poem, that told how to create a poultice for an infected tooth, began and ended with a description of the poultice recipe’s relationship to the Hindu gods and the cosmos in general. In such a cultural milieu, everybody, everywhere, justified their actions, good or bad, in terms we would call religious.
This leads to a form of confirmation bias on the part of atheists. They look into the distant past, see some actions we disapprove of in the modern world, notice that the people who chose the actions had a religious world view, and conclude that the religious world view caused the problem. However, since everybody in the distant past had a religious world view, and no significant decision makers until the very recent past had an atheistic world view, the fact that decision makers in the past were religious tells us about as much about them as the fact that they all breathed oxygen.
Atheists like to single out both the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition as examples of inhumanity that occurred because of religion. (The very fact that we atheists feel compelled to reach back 400-800 years for our kneejerk examples of bad religious behavior should set off warning bells.) Yet both events had significant materialistic or practical drivers that would have created much the same events without any religion being involved. The Crusades arose as a counterattack against the Muslim military expansion that had consumed half of the Christian world. Had the United Atheist League conquered half the lands of the League of United Atheists the same dynamic would have applied. Contrary to many people’s view, no atrocities occurred during the Crusades that hadn’t occurred when Christians fought Christians or Muslims fought Muslims. The massacres of the inhabitants of cities that so occupy the modern mind did not arise out of religious bigotry but from the established rules of medieval siege warfare. Cities taken by storm were put to the sack. The Crusaders established Christian kingdoms in the Middle East that lasted nearly two centuries. Those kingdoms were 98% Muslim with a Christian nobility. The Christians didn’t try to exterminate those populations based on religion.
Likewise, the Spanish Inquisition sprang from the very secular needs for political control and money. The purpose of the Inquisition was to create legal and cultural justifications for the seizures of vast amounts of wealth from those accused. The religious aspects of the persecution were just a gloss, as in every other action taken during that time. In modern times, atheistic communists carried out nearly identical actions for nearly identical reasons. (The most strange thing about our view of the Spanish Inquisition is that we regard it with special horror even though the use of torture for both investigation and punishment was a universal standard at the time. What so shocked the contemporaries of the Inquisition was not the fact that it tortured people. Every police power of the time tortured people. What shocked the contemporaries was the class of people who got tortured. Mutilating peasants didn’t raise anyone’s eyebrows, mutilating the rich and noble did.)
Dawkins simply repeats the shallow and ahistorical version of history that any hip 19-year-old college freshman can regurgitate on cue. If Dawkins had approached the question from an empirical point of view, he would have readily determined that evidence for the degree to which religion does or does not promote inhumane decisions can only be found in the history of the last 300 years or so. Only during that time frame have atheistic ideologies gained any significant power to actually make good or bad decisions. Unfortunately for atheists, recent history shows that the more atheistic a political ideology, the more destruction it wreaks when it acquires power. The first true atheistic regime in history arose during the 1792 French revolution, which promptly consumed itself in the Great Terror. Atheistic communism next assumed power, and it killed 120 million people over 80 years, and brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation more than once. Mussolini was an atheist and the Nazis, who held a diverse mixture of atheistic, deistic and pagan beliefs, were united only by their antipathy towards traditional religion. National Socialism as an ideology was rigorously secular and justified its killings with appeals to a materialistic pseudo-science. Dawkins spends about 4 pages (what about Hitler and Stalin? weren’t they atheists? — p. 291) before concluding that atheism played no part in their crimes. (He comes so close to understanding why atheists go so wrong by observing that atheism didn’t cause them to commit their crimes. More on that later.)
Dawkins tries to lay claim to the American Constitution as an example of a successful atheistic experiment but again he falls into ahistorical stereotypes. The cosmology behind the American Constitution is quite definitely a theistic cosmology in the Baconian model. The founders believed that men could govern themselves because God had created an orderly and lawful natural world. Their government of the people logically precluded divinely-selected political leaders. If political power alone arose from the bottom up, by the conscious selection of men by other men, how could politicians claim to act from divine authority? The extensive writings of the founders show that they envisioned a society of theistic individuals cooperating to create a secular government. The idea that the founders were all a bunch of closet atheists is just silly, and they would have been horrified at the idea. More important, the Founders did not deliver the Constitution complete from on high. It was widely and publicly debated in all of the states and amended before adoption. Even if many of the founders had themselves been covert atheists, the people who actually voted for the Constitution, and turned it from a collection of suggestions into functioning law, certainly were not.
Moreover, Dawkins doesn’t appear to spend any time considering the positive role that religion has played in the last two-hundred years. I checked the index under “slavery” and found only three references, all of them complaining that religious people had not, throughout the history of mankind, always opposed slavery. Well, duh! Strangely, missing from Dawkins’ analysis is any mention of the role that Christian fervor played in virtually wiping out slavery worldwide. Indeed, slavery went from being a human universal to virtual extinction due to the efforts of individuals whom many people today regard as the trifecta of evil: Christian, capitalistic, white males.
Dawkins spends a great deal of time damning religion, but spends very little time highlighting the real-world positive effects of an atheistic world view. That is because, beyond the sciences, atheists really don’t have anything to crow about. The modern welfare-states that many atheistic democratic socialists are so proud of were actually voted into place by people who we can safely group under the description, Christian socialist. Appeals to the ideals of Christian charity, not secular socialism, sold those programs. How about the sexual revolution? The social and political debates over the sexual revolution pitted secular and often atheistic ideas against traditional religiously based morality. Yet only a historical fluke — the HIV virus attaches to T-cells using the same protein hook as the Black Death bacillus — prevented AIDS from killing not “just” hundreds of thousands in the developed world but millions. If so many in the developed world did not descend from survivors of the Black Death, the sexual revolution would have been the greatest cultural disaster of all times. We still don’t know whether the long term effects on family structure and child rearing will be a net positive or negative. The early indications do not look good.
Like Dawkins, I am troubled by the resurgence of the supernatural in the modern world. I worry not only about the resurgence of traditional religions but also the rapid spread of creepy new supernatural fads, like various “new age” practices, psychic powers, Feng Shui, Wicca, Kabbalah and Gaia worship. I am terrified that people who believe in magic water of various kinds have as much say on matters such as nuclear weapons as I do. After nearly three centuries of nearly unbroken progress towards a secular world mediated by reason and experimentation, we seem to have slowed or even reversed the progression.
Unlike Dawkins, however, I don’t shrug my shoulders in bewilderment and conclude that the reason for the decline of the atheistic world view lies in the inherent stupidity of non-atheists. I understand bitterly that atheist over promised, under delivered and spawned horrific monsters that nearly destroyed humanity. I know that the history of the Twentieth Century is dominated by smug atheists causing trainwreck after trainwreck without ever accepting any responsibility.
“The God Delusion” is a trite, shallow unimaginative book. It is not intended to evangelize to non-atheists, but instead preaches to the choir by vomiting out all of the conceits and prejudices that atheists hold in common. As a defense of the atheistic world view it is a pathetic failure. Coming from one of the century’s great scientific minds, it’s just sad.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:30 am
For those of us who saw the face of the Soviet system, it was nothing but a replacement of an older order based on “king as shadow of God.” It was like an old thief sactioned by God left and another came to rob people all over again. The “atheistic” Soviet system came with its own god(s), prophets, clergy, and terror. Its failure in delivering the material kingdom of god on earth, at least in Islamic 3rd world, has opened the door not to an agnostic capitalistic system that only allows you to pursue material wealth through sweat but to the old time religious ignorance (i.e. the earth is 6000 years old and a bunch of other fairy tales) which touched the U.S. on 9/11.
Calling Nazi Germany atheistic is just simply wrong. Anti-semitism was (still is) deeply rooted in Christian belief and many churches gave their full support to Hitler. And the Catholic church uttered not a single word when Nazis were killing Jews and other undesirables who did not subscribe to the Western Christian dogma.
As for American Founding Fathers, most would classify them as Deists who were not too fond of old time religion but do not deny the existence of God.
In terms of cost-benefit analysis, the horrors of monotheistic institutionalized religions far outweigh its good deeds, if any. Religion continues to be the opium of masses through which a bunch of political opportunists wearing funny hats manipulate uneducated minds.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:23 am
I think the non-monk Sir Bacon you’re thinking of might be Francis, not Roger.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:06 am
It’s untrue that anti-semitism was “deeply rooted in Christian belief and many churches gave their full support to Hitler. And the Catholic church uttered not a single word when Nazis were killing Jews and other undesirables who did not subscribe to the Western Christian dogma.” Hitler knew how to use the power of Christianity’s namesake to bring Germany in unison with his ideas, but it stopped there. He was born a Catholic, yes, but he became vehemently anti-Catholic and anti-Christian, as is obvious in his perseuction and murder of them during the Holocaust. Many Catholic priests were executed during his reign. He loathed Christianity just as much as Judaism. In 1941, he said that “Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless… When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let’s be the only people who are immunised against the disease.”
Pope Pius sheltered and protected thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. I do not believe that the Catholic Church did all it was capable of doing, no. But it did not do “nothing”. It did something, just not enough. And this we must live with now.
Hitler was as atheist as they come, which is not to say that all atheists are evil people, nor that it was his atheism that made him commit the evils he did.
If you’re interested in reading what Hitler had to say about Christianity, a good book is “Hitler’s Secret Conversations” by H.R. Trevor Roper
January 4th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Does it matter whether theists, or atheists have committed crimes in the past? Rationality should be respected, and appreciated by all. Because a theist commits a crime, does it automatically mean the cause of that crime was theism? No. The same goes for an atheist and atheism.
January 17th, 2007 at 10:58 am
You mentioned that the “entire scope of the facileness of the book will take several posts to address”. When will we get to read Part 2, and whatever you have next? I greatly appreciated this post and have been anticipating more.
January 24th, 2007 at 11:49 am
I haven’t read all of your post. Instead I skipped to the parts that I thought would be interesting and perused the index (something I always do with long posts). Imagine my shock and even horror on discovering that you’d missed out most of the parts of your source which would answer your accusations.
In the end, I couldn’t be bothered to read the whole post and decided instead to rip it apart with poorly-thought-out rhetoric. Because, as a rationalist/atheist/intellectual, I feel qualified to hold forth on whatever subject I like, having only “read about half of the book”.
I would reference the specific chapters, sections and pages which contradict your points, but in the end, I feel it would be a much more beneficial experience for you to do your own research - which should be a basic requirement before you start typing.
Dawkins’ work has its faults - mostly stemming from his stance as an atheist apologist and polemicist where a work like The God Delusion would be most valid from a third viewpoint which sides with neither party - but you manage to put your finger on none of them…
January 24th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
The God Delusion actually does not fall under your criticism because your criticism is based on not reading the book itself. You read parts of it, you didn’t read the whole things, therefore you can’t grasp the whole idea.
Nowhere does Dawkins state that all atheists are good and Theists are bad. You are simply assuming that he says this, when he doesn’t. No reasonable person would make that claim. The only delusion we are talking about here is the delusion that you can criticize something that you have not read.
January 28th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Wow was Auraeus really there with you while you read it? Sounds to me like he is proving the ALL knowing and ALL powerful qualities of a god. Not sure which one. So now then, because one does not believe or seethe same point of view (truth) are we Atheist going to start creating a Baptist Atheist group who see things (believe) in a certain way that just because others do not see it our way?
February 12th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Although I agree with many of the writers points, I fail to take it seriously purely because she/he didn’t read the full book. Sure the points are valid but thats not the point.
I’m sure if I went through the Bible only reading bits here are there I may actually find it a respectable way to live your life.
I’m not saying reading the whole book will change the writers views, (It won’t)it’s just the principle.
February 18th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
On this whole debate I feel extreme sympathy for people who have decided to take their atheism without critically engaging with this belief system - yes it is as much a belief system as any religion is. This book has been on the bestseller list for months now, Mr Dawkins must be a happy man. But who is he making money off .. people who are disturbed by their non-belief, and clutch desperately to the new edition of their “holy book”, constantly in search of reaffirmation, which Mr Dawkins tries to give them - it is OK we have come a long way .. we are good .. I am OK you are OK!! let’s just build this discource around assumptions which are as open to question as the belief in God, and follow them blindly, with superficial attempts at questioning them.All the people who have read this book, I urge you to reflect on the ‘purpose’ behind the consumption of this book. Are they ready to face the incongruities in their belief system? or are they committing the same mistake they indict theists for.
February 18th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Abdullah: Do you have another system you recommend ?
February 18th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Some humility on the part of the atheists, I suppose. You may point out that theists dont seem to show such humility - but that is besides the point. We inhabit this world together and engaging in a civil manner is the only option - with tolerance for differences in world views, and a genuine respect for the alternate view - an honest attempt at understanding the others view point as opposed to demonsing it and bashing it down creating barriers that hamper possible benefits from open dialogue and discussion.
February 18th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I’m a Christian. So your preconception is wrong.
February 21st, 2007 at 6:55 pm
In response to…
Tim Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 11:49 am
“In the end, I couldn’t be bothered to read the whole post and decided instead to rip it apart with poorly-thought-out rhetoric. Because, as a rationalist/atheist/intellectual, I feel qualified to hold forth on whatever subject I like, having only “read about half of the book”.”
If you looked at other reviews of the same book, you’d find that they all basically contain the same criticisms as this one. I couldn’t be bothered to read The God Delusion, despite several occasions of browsing it in the shop, for essentially the same reasons. Now doesn’t that indicate *something*, or is everybody just unqualified?
March 30th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
to Tim:
since you read the book why don’t you offer us a rebuttal? that’s the scientific way isn’t it?! show us how wrong this post is, debate it. I personally agree with the post, even though i haven’t read the book. ops!
Prefer other pastures like: “A history of God” or “Guns Germs and Steel…” i’m interested in the cultural and antropological aspects of god and faith, i debate religion with believers because it’s entertaining, but still respect them, because most of them are net contributors to society.
May 18th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
What Hitler believed is largely irrelevant, as he lied often. However, PRIOR to seizing power, he NEVER spoke against Christians, but VERY OFTEN against Jews. He always covered his own beliefs which were, in fact, occultism. He was successful because he claimed to protect people from Jews and communists. That he hated Christians was covered until too late to change a thing.
Also note that non-religious ideologies fall easier. USSR fell, but Iran remains.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Tim,
Ah yes, the old Dawkins answered all in the parts that you didn’t read and I’m not even going to bother pointing them out to you.
But let’s put it this way, if he wasn’t impressed with what he did read, was he supposed to hold out, absent empiric evidence that it was worth his time, in faith that Dawkins would explain all?
You “skeptics” are remarkably curt where you want to be and generous with other people’s time.
November 10th, 2007 at 4:35 am
@Tim: I’ve read the God Delusion twice, and I would say this was pretty on the ball. Only thing I would query is the point on the Crusades being motivated by profit etc: I don’t think we can fully explain them without the religious motivation.
@Ss13: I would very much disagree. The USSR stood for maybe 70 years. Iran has managed like that: it’s a new state.
I think the point about people disagreeing with the past, and the past being religious, is vital. It’s very common to come across people who seem admirable in Classical or Mediaeval times, and discovering they supported torture or brutal capital punishment. The anecdotal arguments against religion seem to me to be as effective as the claims that Germanic blood is superior because Germans and Germanic Brits and Americans win so many Nobel prizes, or claims that black people are inferior as the great artists and so on we recognise are mostly white.
December 28th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
CAN ATHEIST DEAL WITH THEIR MENTAL DISORDER
http://scientistcanotcalculateearth.blogspot.com/
We will look at the theories of evolution in their two main foundations: the expansion of the universe, and the quantum or microorganism. To understand it with reason, thee first subject we are confronted with is God. Let us read a few verses from the Bible. Psalm 14:1 of the Old Testament says, “The fool has said in his heart, /there is no God.” This sentence may also be translated as “The fool does not want God in his heart.” The result of saying this can be found in the second sentence of the same verse: “They are corrupt; they do abominable deeds.”Let us also take a passage from the New Testament.
[. . .]
[Long manifesto deleted by Jonathan.]
December 29th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
THE ATHEIST MENTAL DISORDER
[Long article deleted by Jonathan. Please do not spam us with your manifestos. You have already left a link to your blog. Anyone who is interested in your thoughts can read them there.]
December 31st, 2007 at 7:06 pm
I do really feel sorry to have bother and upset you for the long post, it was never my intention to offend you , not you guys. A small explanation , thanks. My intention was that in some maner it will reach to the author of the God of Delusion. I know my apology to you maybe late becouse i took your space already nevertheless I do feel I offended you, maybe beside saying that Im sorry I can give a donation. You can email me.
I will never do a long post again anywhere. It was hard for me to realize that I have hurt you whom I consider my neighbor and may have hurt other as well. I learn a lesson.
I hope you forgive me.
rafael
December 31st, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Rafael, please do not take my deletion of your comments personally. I did not mean it that way. If you leave very long comments they tend to disrupt the discussion, and it looked like you were ignoring my hints that your comments were too long. Please note also that I left intact the link to your blog, because that is really the place where you should post your long essays. Don’t stop writing them because I deleted a couple of them — instead, post them on your own blog and everything will be fine. You are welcome to leave links here to your writings. All I ask is that you don’t post extremely long comments here.
April 13th, 2008 at 4:45 pm