What’s Wrong With Dawkins’ Argument…

Posted on January 10, 2006
Filed Under Deep Thought, religion |

This post was one of those lost in the transition from Nucleus to WordPress and was ressurrected (funnily enough) in response to this post on Uncommon Sense. I could only reinstate the post and not the comments unfortunately, some of which were enlightening, others as full of vitriol and bile as anything a right-wing christian fundamentalist could produce but issuing from the keyboard of a supposed rationalist. The link for Richard’s site below is out of date, his P.R. department can now be found here.

I watched “The Root of All Evil.” this evening. In it Prof. Richard Dawkins purports to argue for the abandonment of faith, for the good of humanity. I admire his motives and his courage for wearing his heart on his sleeve in an ever more religious world, but…

First and foremost he fails to recognise the difference between faith and religion. Religion is the institution which is built upon faith and humanity’s need to believe. Faith is simply belief. Not in any particular deity, it is the pure act of belief without the need for evidence. To use the same “Celestial Teapot” analogy which Prof. Dawkins borrows from Bertrand Russell; if I want to believe that there is a teapot in orbit around the sun of my own volition, then thats alright. A little eccentric, admittedly, but at the heart of it, its alright. If, however, I only believe that there is a teapot because I have been brought up in an institution which indoctrinates that belief in me, that is not alright. My own belief in the teapot is faith, The institution which indoctrinates this belief in me to further its own ends and influence in the world is religion.
Religion is Prof. Dawkins’ target. Not faith. I am a man of faith, see here, all that matters to me is that I have my faith. It is mine alone, it was not handed down to me by any authority, it was not indoctrinated in me by an institution, it has none of the trappings of ritual and ceremony which signify religion. Faith should be tested and questioned at every opportunity. It should be flexible, mutable and open to change. What I believe changes in a small way every day. Religion is dogmatic, authoritarian and divisive. It does not serve the faith of those who follow it it merely serves its own selfish and often malign ends. Religion is monolithic in its resistance to change. Faith is a necessary part of being human, religion is not. By confusing faith and religion Prof. Dawkins is attacking something which is deeply ingrained into humanity. He is attacking one of the most important parts of what it means to be human.
Faith and religion are like a snail and its shell. The snail builds its shell to protect itself from predators and enemies. Faith used to need religion so that it could gather like-minded people together and protect itself from attack. A snail retreats into its shell when it percieves a threat. People of faith, when attacked will flock to the churches to gain the protection provided by numbers. People in large groups don’t feel half as threatened and afraid as individuals. A child seeing a snail for the first time only sees the shell and unless it investigates further will think that the shell is all there is. When brought up in a religious environment children are taught that the beliefs of that religion are fact, and any further investigation is discouraged. What you end up with in that case is people who go through the motions and follow the dogma but have no real faith.
Secondly he either ignores, or doesn’t realise, the fact that he is arguing from a position of faith, possibly even a religious position. His scientific method is his dogma, experiments are his rituals, and his “mountains of evidence” his holy books. His faith is not in the results of the application of the scientific method, but in the method itself. How does he know that his way of looking at the universe is the right one, or even the only one? He doesn’t. The evidence he cites only proves the theories not the validity of the method itself. Not that I’m saying that his belief isn’t justified, just that he fails to accept the fact that it is a belief at all.

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Comments

2 Responses to “What’s Wrong With Dawkins’ Argument…”

  1. Graham on November 18th, 2006 12:48 am

    Interesting distinction and you are right that Dawkins targets religion rather than faith by your definitions. However a lot of us do not have faith in any kind of higher power / supernatural force which is the kind of faith Dawkins refers to. He is not, therefore, really confused. He would not, I’m sure, deny that other kinds of common sense faith are necessary to live life but thats not what he’s talking about.

  2. mandrill on November 18th, 2006 9:15 am

    It doesn’t matter whether faith is based around a’higher power’ or supernatural entity, or the laws of physics. There is no such thing as ‘common sense faith’ as by its very nature faith requires the suspension of any kind of common sense.
    Belief in something beyond what there is evidence for is a part of human nature and is present even in the highly rational world view of Prof. Dawkins.
    If Prof. Dawkins wants to target religion then he should do so, If he wants to target faith then he needs to start with himself.

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