Andrew Marr’s Start the Week programme on BBC radio had four scientists as guests, including Richard Dawkins, that missionary for his indivisible cause, “evolution and atheism”. Perhaps he is the progenitor of that hybrid, for I don’t recall Darwin himself being an atheist. I understand Dawkins’ line of reasoning well enough. But where we differ is in our respect for reason. He puts it as the highest of human achievements. I don’t. He thinks it is perfectly all right to attack anyone for their beliefs— and claims that it’s respect for his fellows that inspires him to try and separate them from their crazy attachment to any idea not evidence-based. Which reminds me of a Spanish Inquisitor loving his fellow-men so much that he goes to extreme lengths to separate them from their heresies.
He likes to irritate half of humanity, but I won’t let him irritate me. Like Benjamin Brandreth in the nineteenth century, he purveys a powerful cathartic, purging the impurities of religious belief with his magical pills. Sitting on the sidelines I see that both Dawkins and his adversaries are products of the same evolution. They are different mutations of the same species. Which is fittest to survive, I wonder: the armies of reason or the armies of God?
Listening to Dawkins, I try to decide whether he’s a nuisance or a boon. By attacking, he forces his enemies to defend. He doesn’t attack everything in religion, because he doesn’t see everything. He sees the outward show of beliefs but not the inchoate mass of experience. Attacks are designed to kill or at least deter your quarry from growing stronger. But sometimes they kill the more sensitive and leave the field clear for the more ruthless. This is why deadly infections lurk in hospitals, after profligate use of antibiotics for generations.
Ever the optimist, I hope that Dawkins will prove a boon, sharpening the brains of his opponents to understand the difference between form and substance. The form of religious belief is irrational, cannot be otherwise. Its substance is metaphor, to express what otherwise can’t be expressed in words. Foolishness only arises when congregations lay claim to reason as well as faith; for example firing provocative salvoes, creationism v. evolutionary theory.
My own experience isn’t esoteric and doesn’t ask to be clothed in magnificent imagery, or dramas of God’s overarching supremacy. I express it simply enough as the feeling that nothing happens unless it is meant to happen. Because it’s only a feeling, not a universal theory, I don’t try and apply this to everything I hear on the news. With nothing to defend, I have no axe to grind. When I’m in need, I release a simple prayer for protection, like a child losing hold of a gas-filled balloon bought at the fair. It goes up I know not where. When not in need, I give thanks for myriad blessings received. Such experiences don’t depend on belief in God. They do however cause me to sit in the same pews (metaphorically) as the believers. I accept that God is an excellent way to explain my experience. I also accept that atheism would be satisfyingly rational—if only reason could satisfy.
The greatest of my experiences is to feel a joy. I feel it whenever I’m not caught up in life’s struggles. You might say it is the ground of being, the solid earth beneath my bare feet, when flights of anxious fancy don’t waft me up into the ethers. When I don’t feel it directly, I still know it, remember it, love it, give thanks to it. You may say it sounds like God. But when others speak of God, I sometimes feel they are not talking about the same thing. A pity, because I’d like to return to the churches of my childhood and worship there, without being browbeaten by dogma.
Andrew Marr asked Dawkins how he feels about popular distortions of evolutionary theory. Dawkins sighed. If only the ordinary people would understand the purity of science: its slow but steady advance, based on nothing but solid evidence; this and the happy democracy of scientists trying to expose their more deviant peers as frauds and incompetents.
It’s plain that some scientists, not just Dawkins, want us to revere them as prophets to lead us out of the desert, into the promised land. I see it a little differently. If advanced technology is their child, yes, they have a parental responsibility, now that their child has reached its teenage delinquent stage, to pay for the damage it causes and rein in their wayward offspring, if it is not already too late.
I think of evolution constantly, but not in any way that Dawkins would approve. Last night there was a slug in the bathroom again. Once more I felt awed by its visit, with a superstitious reverence—its vulnerability, its indifference to its image in human eyes, its extreme slowness, its survival against the odds, (my human idea of the odds, not a scientific one). Others may talk unscientifically about evolution, “gay genes” perhaps. I pervert evolutionary theory even further, imagining the slug as my living ancestor, to be revered along with the rest of creation.
To ask if we need religion is no different from asking if we need intellect. We come with both, built-in. If the house be divided against itself, then what?
a wayfarer’s notes 
Beautiful essay Vincent, great for this New Year's eve.
You write: “My own experience isn’t esoteric and doesn’t ask to be clothed in magnificent imagery, or dramas of God’s overarching supremacy.”
There is a wonderful word that might catch both the attitude of Dawkins and some religious fundamentalists: “Triumphalism”
Wiki: “Triumphalism is the attitude or belief that a particular doctrine, religion, culture, or social system is superior to and should triumph over all others. Triumphalism is not an articulated doctrine but rather a term that is used to characterize certain attitudes or belief systems by parties such as political commentators and historians.”
Just the opposite attitude can be seen in the following:
舉梁武帝問達摩大師：「如何是聖諦第一義？」摩云：「廓然無聖！
When Bodhidharma saw the Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty, the Emperor asked, “What is the Holy ultimate truth?”
The Bodhidharma answered. “Openness. Hold nothing Holy!”
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Reason can be very satisfying to the intellect (there is great beauty in mathematics, for example), but we are more than intellect. Dawkins and others like him have a superstitious horror of religion. They should realize that science, a process by which a certain kind of objective truth is uncovered (and which contributes enormously to our comfort and well-being), is only one activity that the human mind is capable of.
I love knowledge and the intellectual tools by which it is acquired, and I rant about it's misuse, especially in intellectual contexts, but I also need humour, the appreciation of beauty, and certain unproven or unprovable beliefs, in order to feel that I am truly human
I saw a conversation recently between Dawkins, the Bishop of (I think)York, and Jeremy Paxman. (I don't have a link but it's on itunes). At one point when Dawkins was getting worked up about the fact that not everyone understands evolution, Paxman interrupted him with 'but what does it matter?' Dawkins was increduous, 'Because it's true,' he screamed.
Also, reason is a very slow, ponderous process. It can only take one halting step at a time, and must then pause again to
peer at the tiny patch of path that we have brought into our sight. Yes, it works, but human reason is nothing to get excited about. If there is a Platonic form of reason, it will be to our one-dimensional monochrome plodding what a jungle canopy heaving with birds of paradise is to a dead sparrow by the roadside.
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Yes Cingram, it is true that reason is satisfying to the intellect. I should have clarified that reason, and indeed the intellect, ought to be servant not master.
I've just been listening to the debate. It was Richard Harries the Bishop of Oxford. Dawkins is clearly uncomfortable, perhaps throughout, but I have only reached halfway.
One of my arguments against reason and the supremacy of science is the implicit elitism. The man in the street – and each of us is one of those most of the time (I cannot be bothered with tedious gender politics here, I use man in its old-fashioned non-gendered sense) – responds by feeling and subjectivity, or ought to. And then we have to check ourselves and ask if we are being fair, and here reason comes in. So I ask “am I wrong to speak of the man in the street? Will a woman feel excluded by my utterance?” That is a rational question, and my rational answer depends on my education, experience and judgement.
Dawkins in the debate acknowledges his own sense of awe at the universe and also his negative response to scripture. He doesn't think the book of Genesis is up to expressing in allegory his feeling about the beauty of it all. Which is subjective; for others (not me!) find extraordinary solace in the words of the Bible.
So I share with him the negative feelings about the details of Christian (or Muslim, etc) belief. But I feel generous about the feelings of others. It is an historic fact that others have worshipped within the various dogmas and still do. I cannot deny them their experience and the structures of belief with which they associate that experience.
So Dawkins appears like a nineteen-year-old archetypal student who wants to argue the whole night long out of the sheer joy of smiting his foes with the power of logic.
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Which brings me, Raymond, to your point about triumphalism. I know from my own experience that when you are not feeling it (the benefit of your belief) you can get a kick from preaching it to others, feeling superior to them.
There seems to be a whole class of “second-best” satisfactions in love, power and religion. For example if I don't really enjoy my wealth, I can enjoy the belief that I am happier than others (even though I cannot know if it is true).
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Vincent,
Happy New Year!
I have to read up your post a few more times and research all the names and words mentioned here. But triumphalism is the point of great discussions. We probably can fill with this throughout the year.
Also about second-best satisfaction, it is so true. I hope I would be less guilty of it in 2010.
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Raymond,
I love the quote. It makes me think in many angles. First, I wondered if Dharma shouted or not. I also thought about the usage of each word and its location in the sentence. Then I came up with my personal interpretation:
Emperor Wu asked Bodhidarma, “What should be the primary consideration for saint emperors?” Dharma said, “Our world contains no saints.”
I imagined the ancient usages of 聖,諦, 第一義, and廓然. I think they had more flexibility in usage then.
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Love this, Vincent! I think what irritates me most about religious AND scientific fundamentalists, is that they assume they have the full story. This is particularly offensive in scientists, since science pretends to maintain an open mind on things not yet proved or disproved. History makes fools of scientists ever generation or so, and still they do not follow their own precepts.
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I have had a slug in my lounge a couple of times.
It left a silvery trail across the carpet….I could just make out the words it had traced, “lettuce pray”.
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Are you mocking my ancestor, Robert?
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Right, Hayden. the scientists, scenting what they see as the death of god, make their bid for high-priest status. But they have undergone no spiritual training; only the in-crowd out-crowd bullying of the peer review process.
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Raymond & Keiko: I'm intrigued by the disparity of your translations of the same passage of old Chinese.
Keiko's translation gives Bodhidharma a wonderful put-down response to the emperor. Raymond's, as Keiko suggests, seems to need the addition of a tone of voice, or perhaps the goggle-eyed glare that we see in some of the old brush-sketches of Bodhidharma (e.g. by Sengai).
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Vincent and Raymond,
In Japanese culture, Dharma is known to be a friendly high priest. So his image to me is being calm at all time.
Also聖means holly. 諦 means “make it clear,” and its left side of the character, 言 is “to say” and its right side, 帝 means emperor. So I guess諦means that when an emperor speaks, he speaks to make it clear. That makes sense. And 聖帝means holly emperors. 聖諦and 聖帝are almost the same, so I think it’s reasonable to translate it as saint emperor. But Wu Liang called himself saint emperor, so I can imagine that it motivated Dharma to scold him without scolding. Also 第一義 means “ultimate truth” in Buddhism, but Buddhism came from India, so originally第一義 meant primary concern which is a neutral word.
In addition, since廓means walled, so I translated it as “world” to show big openness. But I looked at my Japanese dictionary again. It said 廓然means “big mind.” So for the second thought, I’ll take my translation of “Our world contains no saint” back and replace it to “Big-minded, no saint.”
What do you think?
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I don’t recall Darwin himself being an atheist.
Now that you mention it, I don't either. But the point is, what would he be saying if he was here today? I'm pretty sure he would be saying that we don't have a buddy out there that loves us.
Creation simply doesn't need an omnipotent god to make it happen.
“Openness. Hold nothing Holy!”
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
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Wikipedia has a section on Charles Darwin's religious views, from which I extract the following:
He considered it “absurd to doubt that a man might be an ardent theist and an evolutionist” and, though reticent about his religious views, in 1879 he wrote that “I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. – I think that generally … an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.”
The question as to what Darwin would be saying if he were here today is far too hypothetical for my taste, Billy. In any case I would not value his opinion on religious matters above anyone else's!
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Catching up between evolutionary coughings and splutterings.
Dawkins rehearses his challenges and arguments with certain chosen protagonists, a kind of showmanship of opposing sides. That tells you much about his own 'selections' and scientific proofs. Whatever my beliefs, I have yet to find a gold standard scientific evidence base for “The God Delusion” by Dawkins.
Yet I hear that Dawkins' earlier written works – maybe I should read one or two – were intelligent thought provoking works. It is unfortunate, I feel, that my first foray into Dawkins' writings was, for me, less than exciting, it was quite frustrating and the reading of the book remains unfinished.
I don't see Dawkins as a religious 'anything', I am not even clear if he is an atheist. That remains a matter for conjecture, even after that book.
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Sheesh … all a bit negative. Dunno about anything – or anyone – else (and yep, have been accused of being ‘selfish’) – but OY; what else can one do – looking forward (and hope for a compatible companion) to do the things one remains hopeful to achieve ???
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It’s not too late, Davoh . . .
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