Richard Dawkins is a tool. There, I'm out of the closet as an agnostic who doesn't support the seminal figure in the secular world. I've said it before and I will continue to harp on this subject: If you replace evangelism with another kind of evangelism, you're a freaking evangelist! Now that I've made those two statements without context, let's back up a bit.
Have you heard about the lawsuit that seeks to prevent Barack Obama from uttering the words, "So help me God," in the oath of office? While I agree in principle that an official oath should not have those words in it, I have to take issue with this little gem from this article that reports on the lawsuit:
""Plaintiffs are placed in the untenable position of having to choose between not watching the presidential inauguration or being forced to countenance endorsements of purely religious notions that they expressly deny," according to the lawsuit."
I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where we don't have to countenance things we don't agree with on television, online, in our work environment. It would certainly be a world without Crocs for me. Here's my question, though: What is the difference between allowing someone to state their beliefs and coercing others to listen to them? Further: Where do our rights not to be offended end and another person's right to offend begin?
I used Crocs as an example above but it was not an apt example. Perhaps a better example is one I was reminded of recently by Orac: The Secret. I hate the "Secret" because it puts people in the position of being responsible for the bad things that happen to them, to the point of lunacy. The founder of this marketing scheme has stated that the victims of the genocide in Rwanda, the child victims, were thinking negatively and brought their own victimization, their own hackings to death by machetes, on themselves. Can you see why I hate that ridiculous piece of damage? I will always speak out against it, in all its forms, whenever I hear it spoken as a valid piece of wisdom. If I see that one of the practitioners of the scheme is going to be on a show I want to watch (can't imagine what that would be), I would not watch it. If Barack Obama suddenly decided this theory was THE theory, I would speak out loudly, prolifically and unendingly. Does any of that mean, though, that I get to decide that others should be allowed to espouse these views? Not just no, HELL NO. Let me break the reason I believe this down very simply:
1. Here is a world where Liesl McQuillan, constant ponderer and educator of the best students on the planet, has never heard of the concept of the Will having its own particular animation that can change reality.
2. I this world, Liesl McQuillan, constant ponderer and educator of the best students on the planet, will perhaps never think of this issue and evaluate its merits or flaws, thus losing the opportunity to.... wait for it.... LEARN something.
That's the thing about living in a country where we are allowed to pursue our own happiness in our own way: We are allowed to be different and to challenge others in their thinking without forcing them to think as we do. So, while I despise the idea of "the secret" and I think it is quite harmful, I could not ever hope for a world in which it was outlawed because it is, in my view, wrong. If it leads to death and destruction on a larger scale than that of an odd person here or there misplacing their brain, then it deserves another look. However, that is something that is quite difficult to trace to harm in this instance.*
Getting back to the dull tool, Richard Dawkins: There is a new bus ad campaign in the U.K. that states: "There's probably no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life." Aside from the obvious flaw of reasoning in the ad (just because you believe in God does not mean you do not enjoy your life), I want to point out the fact that Dawkins was unhappy with the word "probably" being included in the phrase. To Dawkins' mind, it is a statement of fact. To the credit of the people who organized this campaign, they recognized that omitting the word would make them as dogmatic as the religious leaders they were attempting to contradict. So, why is Dawkins a tool for all of this? He's a tool because he refuses to admit that faith is not the same thing as fact. Just for giggles, let's look at his central argument against faith in God:
1. One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.
2. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artefact, such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person.
3. The temptation is a false one because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a "crane", not a "skyhook", for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.
4. The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that - an illusion.
5. We don't yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying than the biological version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate far more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.
6. We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I'll be brief, I swear:
1. Yes, it is a challenge to explain how life began. Actually, we don't know how life began so asserting anything as factual at this point is nothing more than a matter of faith.
2. It may be so that we look to ourselves and see obvious mechanization and so assume a prime mover; however, the fact that we make that leap of faith does not mean we are wrong, it just means we’ve decided to see it that way and not another.
3. Aside from Dawkins’ clear dismissal of Thomas in an earlier chapter without actually logically dismissing the 5 proofs, this argument does not improve his stance that God does not exist, only that the prime mover theory is not sufficient motivation for the proof of existence. He doesn’t tell us why it is not a good idea to go toward something more improbable if we are talking about an unknown. You see, that’s the thing, isn’t it? this all deals with something unknowable and therefore not amenable to proof. If we are trying to decide probability we might as well decide that it is as probable to find the devil in the details as it is to find God in the baby maker. It does not finally matter! Probability, with all of its fun (but educated) guessing does not seek to prove or disprove God because it is only a process by which we decide whether or not to leap. In the end, of course, it doesn’t matter if it is probable or improbable when dealing with something we can.not.know.
4. We can say that? Really? I didn’t think Darwinism addresses the existence or nonexistence of a creator or prime mover. Actually, I really thought that Darwinism addressed the process by which our biological selves have come to be in the form we now inhabit and in the way we continue to evolve. I don’t recall it ever addressing how it a priori came to be. You’d think a biologist would know this. Am I wrong about that?
5. Really? How? How does the assumption that all theories of physics take into account intelligent life and its existence in this type of universe allow us more luck than we can conceive? Wait, he wrote postulate, didn’t he. So, he is assuming something is true due to necessity, which really does force us to ask: If you make an assumption about something that is beyond our, how did he write it? “limited human intuition is comfortable with”, then aren’t you, um, taking a leap of faith about something we cannot conceive? Oh my my, Dawkins has been drinking the ontological water he so vociferously despises.
6. OK, we shouldn’t give up hope for an explanation as wonderful as evolution; I agree. How, though, does that mean that our decision to, in the meantime or even as a statement of our own necessity, believe in God is more illusive than the hope that someday, some way we’ll know more? Our current knowledge doesn’t come close to approaching this idea of Thing Itself in explanation as evolution does for biology, so… how are they the same?
I realize I claimed I would be brief, but this is just silly. As I was perusing his book tonight I was struck by the fact that he makes many, many categorical statements in derision of different philosophical theories about the existence of God but he never argues for their lack of merit. That’s a tactic that would earn him a C or a D on a paper in my class. If you want to make a claim of fact that is based on an idea, tell me why. Beyond that, you’re just evangelizing your idea without any logical reason to do so.
This is getting way too long and I have a lot more to write. I think I will do this in parts. Tomorrow (or someday thereafter): A really, really, really silly piece about a billboard campaign in Colorado. I mean, well, just plain astonishingly dumb.
*The same cannot be said for the antivaccine lunacy.
Picture credit
The next time you hear one of those "entitled" whiners who expect something for nothing from their government, remind them of what will happen to their ass if they ever become a non-productive member of society; remind them of Marvin Schur. That freeloader clearly expected society to take up his slack and pay his outstanding $1,100 electric bill. How dare he! NO ONE is entitled to help unless they can help themselves! You have to pay to play in this society and unless you can demonstrate through hard earned cash value that you have paid for the privilege of living, then you get what you deserve. Right?
