Delusions of Deicide

Earlier this week, I finally got through Richard Dawkins' popular handbook on anti-religion, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). In our time, when Christian leaders of every stripe need to pay more attention to apologetic, not least for the benefit of those in our own pews who have often been catechetically shortchanged, this book is a virtual must-read. Authored by a man who has done much to popularize science (indeed, his chair at Oxford is in the "public understanding of science), The God Delusion has made a bit of a splash. For me, reading it has been part of the preparation for a coming teaching series on the core creedal statements of the Church.



Sadly, what one comes away with is less a sense of reasoned critique of theism (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any other), but a heavily biased rant, one wants to say the marketing of a highly personal agenda under the banner of "science". A faux-playfully snide and supercilious tone pervades the work, and it is plagued by internal incoherence. (To cite one minor example: on p. 335, he refers to what he considers "reputable" theologians, only later to dismiss all theological reasoning as irrational on p. 360. Dawkins gives, Dawkins takes away ....) Basic categorial and history-of-ideas errors pervade Delusion, as his univocal use of the term "reason" across time and without definition (even though it is a cornerstone concept), and his conflation of "religious faith" and "religion", oblivious to the elementary distinction between fides quae creditur and fides qua creditur. In other words, he doesn't know what constitutes what he doesn't know. Dawkins claims to want to free the world from the chains of religious mis-thinking, especially where it touches the young; but put into action, his recommendations would take us to the secular police-state, where under the banner of "freedom from religion" an atheistic orthodoxy would trample on expressions of faith. (A chilling example of this nascent cognitive imperialism can be found on p.57, where he confidently maintains that fellow scientist -- and atheist -- Stephen Jay Gould "could [not] possibly have meant much of what he wrote ...." Why? Gould wisely concedes that there are philosophical questions which are beyond the competence of the discipline of science to pronounce upon.) My response to Dawkins' invitation to such a future? No thanks.



Two aspects of Dawkins' writing are especially revealing to me. One: his lack of use for the category of "humanity". This is striking, but hardly more so than on p. 297f., when tackling the question of abortion: "Religious moralists can be heard debating questions like, 'When does the developing embryo become a person -- a human being?' Secular humanists are more likely to ask, 'Never mind whether it is human (what does that even mean for a little cluster of cells?); at what age does ... [it] become capable of suffering?" This is hugely revealing; and throughout, humanity is disprivileged as a category.



Two: Delusion is, as much as anything, a statement of faith. Not religious faith, of course: faith in Darwinism and a Darwin-based atheism. Dawkins wrongly maintains throughout his tome that religious faith is all about not asking questions, not using the faculties of logic or curiosity -- indeed, a deliberate turning away from anything which truly expands the understanding or horizons. (This shortsightedness, one must point out, would make it impossible for him to explain any number of religious movements in history.) On the last pages of the book, then, he indulges in what can only be described as great leaps of faith and paeans of praise to the (undemonstrated, undocumented -- by him) possibilities of the unchained (understand: un-, non-, or antireligious) human reason. Indeed, his closing statement I took as a negation of the central thesis of the book, which seeks to put sharp limits and brackets around disciplined thought, along Dawkins' lines, of course.



Throughout, I was wondering about Dawkins' audience. My conclusion was that it was written to sway the doubters in religious communities, the "dechurched", the disillusioned, those who through pain or despair or disappointment (or laziness) are looking for a reason to abandon the quest -- as Anselm put it -- of "faith seeking understanding" (another construct which would appear to be a mere word salad to Dawkins). In their nice, compact critique of Dawkins' work by Alister and Joanna McGrath (The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine; InterVarsity, 2007), the authors -- who masterfully blend biting criticism of Dawkins' limits of competency and his method with polite respect overall and quite a dose of graciousness -- make the case that he is preaching to a nonreligious choir which is increasingly alarmed by the irritating persistence of religious faith in the world, belief in God that is annoyingly overdue in fulfilling the confident predictions of the past 200+ years of its imminent decline, demise, and disappearance from the scene.



Dawkins clearly seems to think that he has presented an airtight, popularly accessible case for why God is not only dead, but mouldered beyond identification. His confidence is misplaced. It's his belief that he's made a credible and informed case that is the flight from reason, and his alleged deicide that is the real delusion.