I have reposted my essay on Michel Foucault and authorship as well as this polemical piece contra Richard Dawkins' atheism.
This essay has been defaced and attacked on several occasions, probably because people who disagree with me are unable to respond to my substantive criticisms of Mr. Dawkins' arguments.
I suggest that you read both Dawkins and his critics -- especially Oxford scientist, Alister McGrath (whose book is cited below) -- then come to your own conclusions concerning the rationality of religious belief. For my views, see "Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Is this atheism's moment?"
The image accompanying this essay has been blocked many times and other attacks on this work are always expected by those claiming to argue "for" diversity and scientific open-mindedness.
I highly recommend Professor Dawkins' books, also anything by Christopher Hitchens is worthy of your attention.
Jim Holt, "Beyond Belief," The New York Times, Book Review, October 22, 2006, at p. 1.
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), $27.00.
The following works are just as highly recommended as anything by Dawkins or Hitchens:
Alister McGrath, Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life (London: Blackwell, 2005), $18.95.
Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999), $7.50.
"Jim Holt" ("Manhola Dargis"?) reviews the latest opus by Richard Dawkins in a recent issue of the New York Times.
Mr. Holt is a well-informed, diligent, not highly imaginative journalist with a clear bias for what he takes to be the "scientific perspective" on things -- kind of like Kurt Andersen, except that Andersen also writes good novels.
Most contemporary graduates of "elite" schools in America will adopt a secularist, antireligious attitude, along with a polite and mild condescension towards all members of the lower orders, clinging to so-called "archaic" religious beliefs.
This deprecating view of religion is not required by their educations, it is merely a cultural fashion.
A hundred years ago, religious belief was expected of the bright young person entering journalism, today disdain for religion is preferred.
Today's bien pensant "opinion-makers" are undisturbed by the fact that most people in the nation -- and in the world, for that matter -- disagree about this hostility to religion. This secularist, atheist, mildly liberal worldview is officially sanctioned in academia and in trendy corners of Manhattan where media people and advertising executives congregate to schedule sessions of fornication and aroma therapy.
Any political candidate too closely associated with such people will not do well with the vast majority of the population. This is fortunate. The subtext these days is: "... people like us think this way, so don't you dare to disagree."
If you do disagree or point out that the "emperor has no clothes' you may find it difficult to publish your books or you may well find your work ignored.
Kiwi anyone? How about a little mineral water?
Let us hope that Hillary Clinton keeps some distance from the "skinny people dressed in black" (Ms. Maddow?) until she is elected to the presidency. ("'This is totally amazing!' -- Donald J. Trump.")
I say speak truth to power. And yes, there is such a thing as cultural power. My unwillingness to be impressed by intellectual "fashionistas" (of all genders) is my true offense, not to mention having read more books than most of them and being at least as smart as they are. I will say nothing about my shapely legs. These are grave faults. ("David Stove and the Intellectual Capacity of Women.")
Why are people so disturbed to realize that I am a tiny bit smart and well read? How does it offend YOU to think that I may be a wee bit clever? Why insert "errors" in my writings? Money? Envy? Both?
My theory on this issue is that the existence of someone like me is doubly offensive and unbearable to lower-upper-middle-class-suburbanites of all genders, races, and sexual orientations because: 1) I upset a view of the universe in which persons (like me) are in need of instruction from so-called "social superiors"; and 2) I am an unbearable revelation of the inadequacies in the worldviews -- or even in the thinking -- of trendy "others" who have taken the time to learn about life from the t.v. show "The View."
I am merely "unbearable" you say? Fine. Make your judgments if you must.
Mr. Holt makes some serious mistakes in this review. Dawkins makes even more philosophical blunders. Although I admire Mr. Dawkins, as a scientist, he is just not a very good philosopher. ("Stephen Hawking's Free Will is Determined.")
For those who are in a hurry, here's the "bottom line." Neither Dawkins, Holt, Dennett, nor anybody else has provided (or will provide) a demonstration that it is "irrational" to believe in God. Contemporary science is neutral on this issue and always will be, partly for reasons that these men (Dennett is an exception) find difficult to grasp. Furthermore, creative interpretations of current scientific findings, arguably, lend support to many forms of religious belief. ("John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness.")
Belief is a choice which is exactly as rational as non-belief. You must choose on this issue. I suspect that this is how it should be if human beings are (as I believe them to be) free subjects and not just material objects, beings endowed with spirituality and not exclusively animals concerned to eat and excrete. (You definitely want to do both of those things.)
Religion is about meaning. It is not a factual description of empirical reality derived from a laboratory. I am not alone in this view that belief in God is as rational as the opposite belief. My view is shared by many of the most distinguished scientists, philosophers, artists, police officers, mail carriers, nurses, and other people in the U.S. and throughout the world.
True, many of these people do not attend fashionable parties in Park Avenue apartments. This is to their credit.
Now let us turn to Holt's review. My method will be to read the review pausing to identify what are called "difficulties" along the way. I will conclude with what I think belief in God is about even as I invite the reader to decide this issue for him- or herself.
Holt begins by recognizing that Dawkins is not writing a book of scientific explanation, but an attempt at "consciousness raising." Thus, Mr. Dawkins has no greater claim to your attention on this matter than anyone else. Dawkins is offering his opinions. Feel free to give him yours. I do. And I will. Just watch me. According to Holt:
"The nub of Dawkins's consciousness-raising message is that to be an atheist is a 'brave and splendid' aspiration. Belief in God is not only a delusion, he argues, but a 'pernicious' one."
Dawkins says:
"I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."
No one knows for certain, Richard. Some scientists believe that God is highly probable. For example, theoretical physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne writes:
"In my friendly arguments with my unbelieving friends I am always encouraging them to lift their eyes beyond the limited horizons of the scientific view. I believe that beauty is not mere emotion, and that it provides an important window into the nature of reality. I think that I know, as certainly as I know anything, that torturing children is wrong and that love is better than hate. I cannot for a moment suppose that these ethical insights are merely cultural choices of the particular society in which I happen to live, or some curious strategy to propagate my genes more effectively. One of the attractions of belief in God is that it ties together these very different aspects of the one world of our human experience." ("Hermano: An Evening With Christopher Hitchens.")
Keep in mind this idea of the unifying power of God, as a principle, since it has been found useful by scientists and mathematicians, philosophers and theologians, in many parts of the world today. This idea is also found in world mythology from the very beginnings of recorded human history, probably earlier. A recent article in Scientific American suggests religious worship may have been part of human groups 70 thousand years ago, long before the development of civilization.
Persons have been groping in the dark for a clearer sense of what is revealed by the, I believe, innate human intuition of divinity or the numinous. It may well be that 70 thousand years ago a representation of a powerful animal would serve human symbolic needs adequately. Today more sophisticated symbols will be needed for what will always escape literal definition but which is felt, as a REALITY, in human lives.
The unifying power of the religious impulse in humanity is crystalized in monotheism leading to the world's great religions and (for me), supremely, in the symbol of the cross.
Catholic priest and scientist, Lorenzo Albacete, comments:
"All our views related to meaning and purpose are born out of experience the same way that a scientific insight emerges. These experiences give rise to religion. Therefore, according to Pollack, only a 'semantic difference' exists between scientific thought and what religion calls 'revelation.' ..."
Dawkins is engaged in a work of "exhortation," a religious effort, which -- he believes -- is supported by argument. We readers will decide on the plausibility of this claim since we are no longer intimidated by Dawkins' scientific credentials. Dawkins is "preaching" as it were. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
If Dawkins were to decide to become a boxer his scientific learning would be pretty irrelevant; by the same token, his scientific learning is not all that helpful when it comes to his theological or metaphysical speculations as we will see.
Mr Holt summarizes Dawkins' argument, but Jim Holt first offers this definition of God:
" ... 'God' is here taken to denote the Judeo-Christian deity, presumed to be eternal, all-powerful, all-good and the creator of the world ..."
Holt's "Judeo-Christian" God is a construct. There is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian text containing this definition. For one thing, "omniscience" is not mentioned by Holt; also, Islam is excluded, for some reason, though God in Islam is pretty much identical to the so-called Judeo-Christian version of God, as an idea and in terms of His attributes. ("Ought Implies Can.")
Mr. Holt fails to tell us whether this definition is found in Dawkins' text; and if it is, where it is to be found; Holt does not make clear whether this is Dawkins' conception of God or his own; Holt does not indicate where he finds Biblical support for this definition that, he says, is used "here."
As my cab driver friend likes to say: "Where's here?" Footnote please, Mr. Holt.
A reference is made to "three great arguments" for the existence of God. In fact, Thomas Aquinas provides five in the Summa Theologica. If we add Maimonedes and Averroes, we can formulate at least seven such arguments, which have survived for centuries (suggesting that they're pretty good arguments).
Some pro-God arguments are derived from pure reason (a priori), others from observation and experience (a posteriori).
Mr. Holt concentrates on the "ontological argument," some forms of which are untouched by anything said "here." See Richard Swinburne's The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) and my essays on R.G. Collingwood's historicism and on the rationality of belief in God. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")
Holt and Dawkins seem unaware of the formal argument from "contingency to complexity" -- i.e., entropy theory and chaos -- which has now put on a different name and costume to resurface in theoretical physics so that it is often (unknowingly) used by scientists as a "working hypothesis":
"If the unpicturable world of electrons gives us some surprises, we shouldn't be too amazed if the unpicturable God has some surprises in store for us also." ("'Interstellar': A Movie Review.")
John Polkinghorne uses this idea of God's unifying power knowingly. Among scientifically-informed writers echoing these sentiments, the reader will find Alister McGrath, Steven Jay Gould (who advocates separating religious from scientific discourse as non-competitive inquiries), psychologist Diarmuid O'Murchu agrees. Biologists have also defended religious belief, see Arthur Peacocke's Paths From Science Towards God (2001) and Robert Pollack's The Faith of Biology and the Biology of Faith (2000). Mr Holt makes his bias clear when he writes:
"It is doubtful that many people come to believe in God because of logical arguments, as opposed to their upbringing or 'having heard a call.' But such arguments, even when they fail to be conclusive, can at least give religious belief an aura of reasonableness, especially when combined with certain scientific findings."
Why is it doubtful that many people come to believe in God because of "logical arguments"? Some of the most important such arguments are not recognized by Holt or Dawkins, so why are they rejected? Are distinguished scientists and philosophers who believe in God "irrational" only because they disagree with Dawkins and Holt? Are there ways of understanding, through experience, the existence of God that have nothing to do with rationality -- as narrowly understood by Dawkins and Holt -- ways that are as intelligent (or more so) than the opposite belief? Exactly how is "rationality" understood by Dawkins or Holt? If "there is no atheist in a foxhole," then ask yourself why that is so? Comfort or hope, you say? Is it more likely that something false or true will provide comfort and hope to people?
When all rhetoric is stripped away and life gets as real as cancer God seems to surface at the center of consciousness. Why is that? Is it rational? Do you believe that something "irrational" and "stupid" would have been (and still is) central to the lives of billions of people all over the world because Richard Dawkins did not write a book before this year? I don't. (Compare Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" with his recent film "Cassandra's Dream.")
Nothing that I say "here" should take away from the clarity and informative value of Dawkins, as a scientist and writer on scientific subjects. I will read and review in this group The Selfish Gene. I have read Dawkins' essays on a regular basis in Free Inquiry.
Since atheism is not a matter that can be established by arguments may we not conclude that Dawkins and Holt only give an "aura of reasonableness" to atheism which remains a minority view among both the world's intellectuals and ordinary people?
I say this as someone who is usually classified as an atheist, who regards himself as an agnostic, at best, on the question of whether God, as traditionally conceived, exists.
The answer to the God question does not require a Ph.D., but maybe only a capacity to feel, especially to love and be willing to suffer for it. Take a look at my essays examining the metaphysics of F.H. Bradley or at the metaphysics of C.S. Peirce. ("The Return of Metaphysics.")
I have no doubt about the ethical truth and wisdom at the center of the great religions -- a truth which (I think) is about the meaning and importance of love.
The crux of the issue on the God question is: "What do you mean by God?" If by God is meant the power of love in human life then I am a believer.
"Where is God?" The skeptic asks with a smile.
The believer responds: "Why are you asking? Are you missing something or someone?"
Beyond establishing the open-ended nature of the question, philosophy and science leave us with the awesome responsibility to decide for ourselves: "Is there a God?"
It must be significant to this inquiry that the need to ask this question does not go away. It is often answered in a very unsatisfactory manner by persons who have decided to call something else -- like science or money -- "God." Such substitutes will not be satisfactory in the long run. (See the movie "In America.")
I don't claim to know "objectively" what is the answer to this question of whether God "exists." I have read and studied much more intensely than I did for the bar examination, over a period of many years, and what I have learned and know is only so much straw. In the end, the decision must come from a more central place in the self than the part of us that "knows" facts and information. It is in one's center that one must know. It is in that place where one loves another person, where proof or argument seem irrelevant, as they do when you love someone no matter what and contra mundus.
Philosophy can take you to the door of faith; it is up to you to step through it -- or not.
As paradoxical as it may seem, if there is nothing and no one that you love enough to die for that person or faith (if it comes to that), then you are not truly alive. ("Law and Literature.")
I think I know the direction in which I am moving on the issue of faith. When I decide, you'll be the first to know. I have a "feeling" that decision has already been made, I just haven't understood it yet. "Here" is a better theologian -- who is probably smarter -- than either Dawkins or Holt (or me), Thomas Merton, who notes that the God of the philosophers or scientists is fine, if you're into philosophy or science. Just as good or better is the path of love and intuition. All of these paths lead to the same place anyway. And yes, you can be both a socialist and Christian. You can also be a scientist and religious:
"[God] ... is a matter of freedom and self-determination -- the free receiving of a freely given gift of grace -- man cannot assent to a spiritual message as long as his mind and heart are enslaved by automatism. He will always remain so enslaved as long as he is submerged in a mass of other automatons, without individuality and without their rightful integrity as persons." ("'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")
See my short story "A Doll's Aria," then ask yourself which character is more of a person in that story. I can find similar statements in Buber, also in Islamic Sufists, whose poetry and depth of feeling is stunning. ("Westworld: A Review of the T.V. Series.")
Belief in God is "improbable," Holt and Dawkins insist. The emergence of life in the universe is even more "improbable." Guess what, we're "here."
What if God says the same to Dawkins upon his arrival at that great academic establishment in the sky. Think of God as a mildly amused Oxford don: "Ah, yes ... Dawkins. I've been waiting for you." ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")
It is improbable that I will meet Melanie Griffith. I am not willing to say that it's impossible. I've got my "Antonio" cologne and everything. I'm all set. ("The Art of Melanie Griffith.")
Holt dismisses the claim by theologians that God is the essence of simplicity as "woolly." I find Holt's dismissal "woolly." We are faced with the mystery of subjectivity and agency resulting from the experience of freedom. Hence, we also experience metaphysical yearning for other free entities. We are equipped to experience and to satisfy this yearning as "mirror neurons" and language-capacity enable us to socialize -- so as to become fully human -- by uniting with other freedoms-in-the-world. The ultimate destination and drive in us, scientists suggest, is towards an always larger unity with that which equips us with this "mirroring" capacity even as it seems to share in that capacity. (Again: "Steven Hawking's Free Will is Determined" and "John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness.")
We find ourselves in a universe amazingly fine-tuned for life and intelligence. Consciousness is shaped by intentionality and mirror neurons drive us to reflect inside ourselves an external "Other" that reaches out to us from beyond ourselves. We discover, according to believers, under our microscopes and at the end of our telescopes what Michelangelo depicted -- a God reaching out to us with (or as) all of His/Her love. Giacomo Rizzolatti, Leonardo Fogassi and Victorio Galessi, "Mirrors in the Mind," Scientific American, November 2006, at p. 54. (Yes, these are metaphors.)
Mr. Holt exclaims in frustration:
"Perhaps, as Russell thought, 'the universe is just there, and that's all.' ..."
I'll tell you, Jim, I doubt that anything important is just "there."
At this point, metaphors get out of control for Dawkins. "Memes" are not only selfish, but "religious beliefs," on his view, "benefit neither us nor our genes; they benefit themselves."
Memes are not persons and cannot be "selfish." Religious beliefs cannot benefit "themselves," since they do not have and are not "selves," nor can they exist apart from the persons who accept them. Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry (New York & London: Routledge, 2001). (Professor Midgley prevailed in her debate against Dawkins and she would certainly prevail in debate against me.)
I alluded to defenses of belief in God based on complexity theory, quantum physics as well as chaos, much of this new science raises serious problems for Mr. Dawkins and other critics of the "concept" of God:
"Despite the power of molecular genetics to reveal the hereditary essences of organisms, the large-scale aspects of evolution remain unexplained, including the origin of species. ... It is here that new theories, themselves recently emerged within mathematics and physics, offer significant insights into the origins of biological order and form. Whereas physicists have traditionally dealt with 'simple' systems in the sense that they are made of few types of component, and observed macroscopic or large-scale order is then explained in terms of uniform interactions between these components, biologists deal with systems (cells, organisms) that are hideously complex. ... However, what is being recognized within these 'sciences of complexity,' as studies of these highly diverse systems are called, is that there are characteristic types of order that emerge from the interactions of many different components. ... Order emerges out of chaos."
Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), pp. x-xi and discussion with analysis by Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 1-17.
What happened to entropy?
Beliefs have no "interests" to be benefited, since they are abstractions. The persons to whom religious beliefs belong have interests. What allows beliefs (religious or otherwise) to survive is plausibility and usefulness. These qualities have a little something to do with truth. My belief that the bathroom at the big Barnes & Noble store near Lincoln Center is on the second floor will survive when I discover that, in fact, the bathroom is on the second floor. My belief that religion has something to do with human goodness and meaning in life will survive if I discover that this belief is shared by many others and borne out in human experience. ("Richard Rorty's Ethical Skepticism" and "The Wanderer and His Shadow.")
The same logic undermines the claim quoted by Jim Holt and attributed to E.O. Wilson and Michael Ruse: "ethics is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate."
Now it seems that genes are not only capable of motives, but that they're tiny "con men," looking to "deceive" and manipulate us. This is literature masquerading as science. Why not speak of little devils or angels? Gremlins? The effect is the same -- to escape our freedom and responsibility for choosing between good and evil -- qualities that we recognize as existing in our lives as human beings. Mr. Holt objects:
"Hitler never formally renounced his Catholism. [sic.]" ("Catholicism"?)
Is "Jim Holt," or one author of this review, a Cuban-American? Senator Bob? ("Is the universe only a numbers game?")
True, Jimmy Boy, but then Hitler also never admitted there was a policy to exterminate the Jews. "What Holocaust?" Jews were merely being "repopulated."
Why expect candor and honesty from Hitler? Whatever Hitler called himself, he was no Catholic. W.H. Auden referred to Hitler as a "lapsed Catholic." I think of Hitler as a lapsed human. Mengele was a scientist. Are all scientists equally evil? Other than "C.I.A. Psychiatrist" Terry Tuchin a.k.a. "David" I mean. Holt says:
" ... believers will never discover that they are wrong, whereas Dawkins and fellow atheists will never discover that they are right."
It may be more accurate to shift the burden of persuasion on this issue: Dawkins and fellow atheists may never discover that they are wrong whereas religious believers (in this world) may never be able to know or prove that they are right. Pascal wagers on God based on similar considerations.
Perhaps this uncertainty and mystery is indicative of a divine gift of grace and freedom requiring persons to decide this matter for them- or ourselves, since the problem is -- and has always been -- "choice." ("'The Matrix': A Movie Review.")
