Dawkins, McGrath and the Daily Mail

I don’t read the Daily Mail — in fact I actually detest it. I have read it, on occasion, in the past, which is why I can discard it as the poor excuse for a newspaper that it is supposed to be. This is also why I’m not completely surprised to see an article (again attacking Dawkins) written by the erudite yet impolitic Alister McGrath.

You see, the readership of the Daily Mail is traditionally what has become known as ‘Middle Englanders‘: populist, low-brow and generally intolerant of anybody unlike themselves. On further consideration, I realised that I’m not surprised that McGrath wrote this piece, the average Daily Mail reader is precisely the sort of person this article is to appeal to.

In this article, McGrath takes another flailing side-swipe at Dawkins, again he posits the now customary ad hominems and, as usual, he doesn’t present any actual arguments to support his position — it’s the same whining strains of “oh, poor persecuted christian, Dawkins is so mean!”.

Even the title, Do stop behaving as if you are God, Professor Dawkins is evidence that McGrath still completely misses the point of what Dawkins says he’s trying to achieve.

Dawkins, Oxford University’s Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, is on a crusade.

My emphasis. A common theme in McGrath’s writing is to make use of words with religious overtones, like “crusade” in the above example. My guess is that, to a less critical reader, it makes McGrath’s descriptions of Dawkins seem as if he is on some mission to destroy christianity, and replace it with the New Church of Atheism. This, of course, is complete bollocks. Speaking of Dawkins’ The God Delusion, McGrath writes:

His salvo of outrage and ridicule is meant to rid the world of its greatest evil: religion. “If this book works as I intend,” he says, “religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.” But he admits such a result is unlikely. “Dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads” (that’s people who believe in God) are “immune to argument”, he says.

I have known Dawkins for more than 20 years; we are both Oxford professors. I believe if anyone is “immune to argument” it is him. He comes across as a dogmatic, aggressive propagandist.

Aside from the red herring, McGrath is misrepresenting Dawkins’ position. What Dawkins means by [d]yed-in-the-wool faith-heads is those who are too deeply ingrained into their religion won’t be swayed by any argument. no matter how reasonable or how much evidence supports it: i.e. the fundies, literalists and other people with their heads so far up their arses bibles that can’t see anything beyond Genesis. That’s hardly the same thing as, as McGrath says in his parentheses, the far simpler and melodramatically generic people who believe in God.

All of the evidence, from what I’ve read and heard from those ‘dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads’ (FSTDT or any of the creationist literature are prime examples) is that they are immune to argument, which supports Dawkins’ assertion. In fact, Dawkins says in The God Delusion [b]ut my belief in evolution is not fundamentalism, and it is not faith, because I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming. I’m sure McGrath’s alleged familiarity with Dawkins would enable him, if he felt so incredulous, to ask Dawkins himself what that evidence might be. I gather, though, from McGrath’s statement, that he’s not actually bothered to enquire.

Speaking of McGrath’s time in Oxford in the 1970s, he wrote about two life-changing things after discussions with articulate Christians who were able to challenge my atheism:

First, Christianity made a lot of sense. It gave me a new way of seeing and understanding the world, above all, the natural sciences. Second, I discovered Christianity actually worked: it brought purpose and dignity to life.

I would say, then, to McGrath that, if he couldn’t find a purpose in life without christianity, then it’s lucky for him that he did, and I wish him well with that.

However, providing “dignity” I’d have to disagree with. Where is there more dignity is being the whimsical creation of an omnipotent being than being the product of organisms surviving billions of years of biological evolution? Where is the dignity in being created from clay, to be damned in perpetuity for a single act of one’s ancestors, to have to endlessly supplicate oneself while suffering this simple biological existence for the promise, albeit conditional (where the conditions are unclear and ever disputed by those who claims to be experts) of an equally ill-defined everlasting life in an ill-defined place from an ill-defined being that there is no evidence of? All of this being, of course, based on a collection of contradictory and badly translated manuscripts written by bronze- and iron-age mystics?

This is ‘dignity’? I’d rather be the simple evolved animal that science explains that I am.

And I, for one, would be wonderfully intrigued as to how McGrath’s exposure to christianity provided insight into the natural sciences. I’ve read (and still occasionally do read) the bible, it didn’t seem to offer up much in the way of explanations of reality. If there was evidence for it, I’d absolutely love to see it.

Dawkins and I both love the sciences; we both believe in evidence-based reasoning. So how do we make sense of our different ways of looking at the world? … For instance, Dawkins often compares belief in God to an infantile belief in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, saying it is something we should all outgrow. But the analogy is flawed. How many people do you know who started to believe in Santa Claus in adulthood?

McGrath’s argument, too, is fatally flawed, and completely contradicts his earlier statement that he believes in evidence-based reasoning. Santa Claus is supposed to live at the North Pole, (or Lapland if you prefer). We have (as a species) been to both Lapland and the North Pole, and guess what? No Santa! Amazing! Now, if we could just have an exploration team go to heaven, and report back their findings, using their in evidence-based reasoning…

Many people discover God decades after they have ceased believing in the Tooth Fairy. Dawkins, of course, would just respond that people such as this are senile or mad, but that is not logical argument. Dawkins can no more ‘prove’ the non-existence of God than anyone else can prove He does exist.

Most of us are aware that we hold many beliefs we cannot prove to be true. It reminds us that we need to treat those who disagree with us with intellectual respect, rather than dismissing them – as Dawkins does – as liars, knaves and charlatans.

The difference is, though, when one has a belief that contradicts the evidence (or lack thereof), the person being lied to is very often oneself. Whether this lying is intentional or not is beside the point – faith is nothing more than ignoring the (lack of) evidence in front of one for something that one wants to be true.

Why should this be treated with intellectual respect? What possible reason could I have for respecting the ideas of somebody that, say, has lost a leg in an accident, yet firmly believes it is still there? I couldn’t respect that person’s ideas, and yet McGrath claims that I should. I can respect a person, without respecting their ideas. Of anything I would feel for their beliefs, it wouldn’t be respect.

McGrath also omits other possibilities: being mistaken, ignorant, deceived or just plain gullible. These may or may not deserve respect, depending on the circumstances, but they are by no means equivalently virtuous.

The dogmatism of the work has attracted wide criticism from the secularist community. Many who might be expected to support Dawkins are trying to distance themselves from what they see as an embarrassment.

Being vocal, assertive and (with good reason, considering the influence of religion on those of us who don’t believe) reactionary or even angry shouldn’t be confused with being dogmatic.

Aware of the moral obligation of a critic of religion to deal with this phenomenon at its best and most persuasive, many atheists have been disturbed by Dawkins’s crude stereotypes and seemingly pathological hostility towards religion. In fact, The God Delusion might turn out to be a monumental own goal – persuading people that atheism is just as intolerant as the worst that religion can offer.

What moral imperative is this, that we are supposed to deal only with the more cultered and sophisticated aspects of religion? Assuming that there was such a thing, I’m sure Dawkins et al would be wonderfully content to only have discourse regarding such a religion. However, the reality is that the uglier and tangibly destructive sides of religion are so painfully evident, and I submit that there is a greater “moral obligation” to deal with this aspect of it first.

As I mentioned in a previous post, McGrath just doesn’t get the point of The God Delusion. Unfortunately, for all of us, concrete examples of those crude stereotypes exist — they (Falwell, Robertson, etc.) exist — and they’re very vocal, much more so that Dawkins and, by a huge margin, more so than the friendlier and more conventional believers who keep themselves to themselves.

It also clearly shows that McGrath, while calling himself an ex-atheist, doesn’t actually understand what atheism is. Atheism isn’t intolerant, unlike, say catholicism is about gays, or islam about apostates. It’s just not part of it: individuals may be intolerant (for example, I won’t suffer being proselytised to) but that in no way reflects on anyone else that holds the same, single, position.

Atheism has no creeds, no codices, no rules, no dogma, no scripture, no promises, no threats, no gifts, no rituals, no insight, no explanations, no truths, no lies, no followers, no prophets — it’s just a simple statement: I do not believe in gods. Anything else is up for debate.

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2. The McGrath confusion ...
3. The Independent: Ask Dawkins ...
4. The Independent: Dawkins takes fight against religion into the classroom ...
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