Book Review: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins sets out in this book to prove that there is no God. In his initial chapters he goes over the "proofs" of the existence of God, as well as other reasons for believing in God such as Pascal's wager. Pascal said that one is better off to believe in God for the following reasons. Suppose there is a God and you believe in him. Then surely you will go to heaven. If there really isn't a God and you believe in him, you've lost nothing. But, if there is a God and you don't believe in him, you'll surely go to hell, whereas, if there really isn't a God and you don't believe in him, you've gained nothing so you're better off to believe in God. But hold on for a second. This is assuming that all God cares about is whether you believe in him or not. What if God doesn't really care whether or not you believe in Him but cares about how you've lived your life? Then all bets are off. And what if your believing in God causes you to carry an unnecessary and inhibiting baggage of false beliefs around your whole life, causes you to live in a mental straitjacket? Then surely, you've lost something by believing in God!

Dawkins separates the human race into a number of religious classifications from Theists (true believers) to Deists such as Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein, who believe God created the universe but doesn't micro-manage it by listening to and responding or not responding to prayers and supplications to agnostics who are unsure whether there is or isn't a God to atheists, like Dawkins, who believe there almost certainly is no God. We have to wait till the 4th chapter for Dawkins' proof that there almost certainly is no God and it is a big disappointment or maybe it's a huge relief depending on your point of view. His proof is essentially that, if there were a God, then who created Him and so on in an infinite regression? Well, it doesn't take too much imagination to imagine a God who is timeless, who exists outside of time and, therefore, always existed. Time is a function of the physical universe as Einstein demonstrated. Time started with the Big Bang and will end if the universe ends in a Big Crunch. If the universe continues to expand it may never end, but, at any rate, it is a function of our physical universe and doesn't apply to any entity that transcends our universe. Well, God, if He exists, and is the Creator of our universe would "almost certainly" transcend the time constraints of the universe He created. Timelessness is not hard to imagine, and I'm surprised that Dawkins, who prides himself on being able to imagine things beyond our normal 3 (or 4) dimensional world, doesn't seem capable of imagining it.

I agree with Dawkins that the great preponderance of war in human history has been justified by religion or has had religious overtones. Many ancient warlords and conquistadors were only interested in religion to the extent that any particular religion's God would help them to vanquish their enemies and win wars. The Roman emperor, Constantine, made Christianity the state religion of Rome only because he thought the Christian God would help him win battles. Otherwise, Christians would have probably continued being persecuted and tortured and thrown to the lions in the Roman Colosseum. But the existence or non-existence of God really has nothing to do with religion as it has played out in human history. I agree with Dawkins that religion really isn't about whether or not God exists so much as it is about filling a psychological void in the human experience. We probably need God more than God needs us.

If one is not a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a member of any other religion, one can still believe in the existence of God. Anyone can completely reject organizational religion and can still have a personal one. The fact that religion has been used to justify war does not mean that there is no God or that there is one. One of the positive things Dawkins is for is to conduct objective experiments which can reflect on certain religious beliefs. He discusses an experiment in which a group of cancer patients was prayed for by another group of people while a control group of cancer patients was not prayed for. It was double blind in the sense that no one knew which group was being prayed for or by whom. Then the two groups were statistically evaluated to see if one group had less deaths than the other. In this particular experiment, prayer was not found to have a benefical effect. There are other experiments that could be conducted. One I dreamt up is to have a carefully monitored light bulb hooked up to a switch that was switched off, but very easy to turn on. Then the object would be to have a group of people who would be willing to try to turn on the light after they had died. This experiment could be conducted over a long time span - many, many years. It would be hoped that a large group of people would agree to be participants. This would tend to prove or disprove that there are ghosts or that people who have recently died could affect reality among the living by interacting with them as ghosts and, at least, some of the dearly departed are reported to do. It is claimed that ghosts can open and close doors. Then they should be able to turn a light off and on. This would be a controlled experiment as opposed to the anecdotal stories that are heard which could be entirely apocryphal. The number of times the light turned on spontaneously could be compared to the number of people in the control group who had died.The only problem with experiments such as these is that true believers are not interested in conducting them, and scientists are for the most part not interested either.

Dawkins explores to a great extent the dichotomy between Darwin's theory of evolution and the religious fundamentalist theory of Creationism. Of course, he comes down on the side of Darwin and his arguments are most convincing. This is really child's play for an intellect like Dawkins. It's a no-brainer that the theory of evolution is viable. The only question is do we know all that there is to know about how evolution works? I don't think so. I think there is more to be discovered. It would be arrogant to assume that the last word has been written about any scientific theory. Will Darwin's theory ever be invalidated? I don't think so. Will it ever be added to or subsumed? Undoubtedly. While random genetic changes over a long period of time and natural selection can account for the evolution of complex species from simple ones, is randomness the only mechanism that's involved? I don't think science can maintain that with 100% certainty. I think there may be other mechanisms like even maybe the subconscious mind that might affect mutations thus making them somewhat less than totally random. I also happen to think that Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) is a reality. There was a book "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain" that reported scientific experiments on ESP and, to my mind at least, strongly suggests the reality of such phenomena. J.B. Rhine founded a Department of Parapsychology at Duke University and conducted statistical experiments in card guessing and dice tossing. I think this is a fruitful area of research although there doesn't seem to be any money to fund it in a theocratic, militaristic culture such as the US.

Dawkins pays tribute to the psychological roots of religion. As human beings, we are all in need of solace, peace of mind, consolation and love. When I was a boy, my parents led me to believe in Santa Clause. Now there was somebody who loved me and rewarded me every Christmas by delivering a great assortment of presents. It was my favorite time of year, and Santa Claus was my best (imaginary) friend. Of course, it was my parents who loved me and delivered the presents. My Mom taught me that, although she didn't put it in exactly these terms, God was essentially Santa Claus writ large. God was all loving. God loved me unconditionally. That was the God they taught me to believe in. This was very comforting. Although I'm ambivalent about a personal God at this point, it is still comforting to believe that the universe has a purpose and God, while I don't believe He micro-manages life on earth, ultimately wants good to win out over evil. The purpose of the universe may be nothing more than the unfolding drama, the spectacle of it all, from beautiful sunsets to the ecstasy of sex. I tend to think prayer may have some validity, even though God doen't necessarily hear and answer prayers, in terms of sending out good thoughts and wishes via ESP to other human beings. So prayer may have validity even though the mechanism by which it works may not be the same mechanism that most people who pray believe in. In fact God may have set up the universe to work perfectly and automatically (including evolution), physically and spiritually, without his having to do anything.

This gets to the heart of the problem. Suppose that all religion is subjective and has nothing to do with objective reality. Dawkins decries wishful thinking, self-delusion and anthropomorphism where anthropomorphism is defined as ascribing human attributes to inanimate objects, natural phenomena or in this case God. As Dawkins points out, human beings' minds can play tricks on them when dealing with objective reality and most humans don't have the aptitude, inclination or robust intellect to be absolutely objective. It is too cold and forbidding. So we need things like God if only in the mythological sense. Dawkins and other scientists, and, in particular, atheists tend to take things absolutely literally. They are literalists for whom something is either true or false. What does it hurt to believe in a God of our own devising if we can believe in art, history, mythology, even Santa Claus, for Christ's sake, even though we know he doesn't really exist, and find some consolation there. Dawkins rightfully points out the importance of the Bible as part of our literary, cultural and historical heritage. Maybe we should consider God a part of our mythological heritage too and yet still draw comfort from Him as we would from art, music or literature - in other words not take God too literally or too objectively. How could you tell a child who has lost her mother anything other than "Mommy is in heaven with God"? Dawkins mentions religion as consolation and this is probably the bottom line of why religion is necessary even if you don't believe in it with your rational mind. You couldn't tell a child that her mother's death was just a random perturbation of atoms and molecules that came together in an unfortunate circumstance.

The trouble with atheists, especially atheist scientists, is that they don't even believe they they themselves exist as anything other than a machine, let alone whether God exists. Turing invented the Turing machine and the Turing Test. He said imagine that you ask questions through a slot in the wall. On the other side of the wall is either a computer or a human who supplies the answers through the same slot. If the computer is sufficiently complex, you could not tell the difference between a human and a computer based on the answers you get. Some scientists even believe that advanced computers or robots even have conscious feelings. So in a spiritual sense, some scientists, at least, believe that machines are "alive" and that they themselves are nothing more than "dead" machines. If you can't believe in yourself as a spiritual being, a self who is real to you anyway, how could you ever believe in the existence of something beyond yourself whom you've never seen or experienced in any direct way?

So let's postulate for a minute that God exists. Then the real question is: "What is the nature of God?" Is he all powerful and all loving? No, he can't be both because, if he was, he would step in and prevent the slaughter of innocents. He could have prevented 9/11 just by having better communications between the FBI and the CIA, not to mention having the President willing to read the PDB which was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack within the US.". He could have prevented the Nazi genocide of the Jews. He could have prevented genocide in Darfur. So it's obvious to me that God is not micromanaging affairs on earth. I think of myself as a Deist plus. I think God could have set up the universe just by defining six numbers, and set it up so that God is involved on an ongoing basis in terms of psychic and spiritual phenomena. In fact God, instead of being a well-defined entity outside the universe, could have immersed himself and dispersed himself within the universe and life itself could be God manifested in multitudinous forms combining both spiritual and physical attributes.

So the atheist position that there is no God is sort of a conversation ender. It's much more interesting to wonder, if there is a God, what is his nature, and what am I doing here and how does that all relate to the purpose, if there is one, of the universe?

Comments

[Kaitlyn]

Well, just because one is an atheist doesn't mean they couldn't ponder on the nature of a theoretical God. Everybody has the ability to wonder, to be curious, to explore (even if it leads them nowhere.) I admit there are still many phenomena that I don't fully understand (such as ESP, which I experimented with as a child, pulling a card out of a deck and guessing if it was a face rather than a number.. I remember I got them all right.) But in the end, we atheists explore other possibilites just as much as everyone else. The only difference is that we've settled on the decision that there is no God. There are still atheists that believe in ESP, astrology, predicting the future, souls, etc. They simply don't speak up much because they can't explain those phenomena very easily. It would also seem that both sides (the believers and the full-out atheists) might treat them differently, since they don't fit perfectly with either group. Therefore, they prefer to keep quiet.

Also, as to life being like a machine, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. People seem to hate the idea that they are natural beings, a product of this earth and universe. I, however, think that's a beautiful thing, and it makes me feel closer to nature, the stars, and even other people by just imagining it. We are all made from the same material, which cycles through us all the time. The molecules in my body right now will have completely changed in a couple years. Meanwhile, other molecules are changing every second. It's like giving inanimate material a chance to experience life, even if for a brief time, before returning to be the elements of Earth once again. For me, that alone gives life enough wonder and beauty. There's no need to add questions of Gods or angels or magic to it.