Some brief thoughts on Richard Dawkins

It is odd what one can find in one's 'mail boxes' (electronic or real) on any one day when one maintains an Internet site. Within today's batch were an announcement of a presentation on Thomas Aquinas with the excellent and apt title of "How to Be Happy," which made me glad that people attending will (possibly for the first time in their lives) be exposed to the extensive emphasis Thomas actually placed on this. I also received an email from an irate evangelical, who was scolding me for including an essay on Chaucer's "Miller's Tale," which he saw as an endorsement of adultery and sorcery (astrology... I had not noticed that Chaucer exactly recommended listening to astrologers in his text, and the adulterer hardly fares well), because I find it to be an hilarious story. My mail also included a few with obscene subject lines - I did not open them, because they clearly were advertisements for pornography sites, but I dare say that whatever search mechanisms the originators use do not have the sophistication to distinguish between 'bestiary,' the mediaeval home of the unicorn, gryphon, and ant-lion, and a vaguely similar word which... has no connection with any practises I would be likely to embrace. I then received a highly unwelcome package from someone who clearly has not read my site (mediaeval spirituality) or most of this blog (which I'd hardly find a depressing spot), and who saw my infrequent, brief illustrations of points which referred to my convent life as imprisoning me in some form of bitterness and inaction.

Will someone please get me another gin? I'd best make this one a double... (Oh, heavens... now I'll be getting email about 'substance abuse' from those who have no understanding of irony...)

As my faithful readers know, I've been studying the philosophy of religion in great detail this past year. Never one to scimp on the scope of an area, I 'spent' this afternoon with Richard Dawkins (in the sense of reading his works, not having a gin - for all of our ideological differences, the man indeed has wit and intelligence, and I'm not sure a pub visit with him would be entirely unpleasant.) Now, I suppose that, in Dawkins' view, I am rather hopeless, if not stupid or lacking in intellectual integrity, considering his assertion that "dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument." But we faith heads can take heart - his views of Yahweh are so hateful that, by contrast, we get off easily.

I am neither scientist nor philosopher, nor (with the study and writing schedule I have now) do I have the spare energy to refute Dawkins in the first place. Yet certain thoughts came to me when I was exploring his work. I know, from other (sincere and honourable) email in my inbox that a few of my readers think I am wasting time (which could be better spent with, let us say, scriptures or classic theologians... though it may be no surprise that I hang out with them quite a bit as well) by reading the works of atheists or 'Christians' of odd bent. My own source of strength (beyond divine grace - and I'm not about to try to explain just what that is) is very intellectual. There are current philosophers, historians, and even theologians, with whose conclusions I would disagree drastically, yet whose work is of value for other reasons than fostering faith, or who (as in Dawkins case) raise questions which theists are overdue in addressing, and which require further scholarly treatment. (This is not to say that no one is taking care of the latter - but the matters under consideration should have been reviewed in more depth centuries ago.)

"The God Delusion" is a rant, and frankly a poor illustration for one of Dawkins' clear intelligence and learning. (By contrast, I found his Blind Watchmaker to be an excellent and worthwhile refutation of the 'design arguments' along the lines of Paley's, which I have long found to be more problematic than inspiring.) One could receive the impression that all Christians are miserable souls who are haunted by guilt, longing for the liberating truths which Dawkins shall impart. (I know there are those who were exposed to miserable religious ideas and threats of hell - but the extreme examples Dawkins gives somehow remind me more of pathology than faith. I cannot recall any element of my own life, for example - whether presentation of catechesis, my essays, any part of my prayer, or any element of metanoia and conversion, which has the slightest connection with avoiding a fiery destiny. I never think of hell at all.) It is more irksome that Dawkins assumes that his own colleagues (scientists) who are theists are basically liars - pretending to a Christian faith to win acceptance, or that those who, for example, still espouse a form of teleological argument are in an "epistemological safe zone" where rational argument could not reach them.

Yet Dawkins work, as I see it, falls into two categories for a faith head like myself. Such scholarly works as "The Blind Watchmaker" have enormous value - just as, for example, for all my disagreement with John Dominic Crossan, I think his work on first century Palestine is ground breaking and valuable to any theologian. Books such as the "God Delusion" seem far more aimed at a popular market of those ill informed, or 'burnt' by past religious experience, or who smugly assume that no one with any intelligence (...I suppose that John Hick, Josef Ratzinger, John Polkinghorne, and countless other geniuses are in that category) could believe in theism.

Even books in the latter category can be valuable. Philosophical arguments for the existence of God, as even the most avid Thomistic philosopher today would concede, in many cases indeed are self contradictory. Others are obsolete in expression. Still others seem distressingly naif, today, because they are based on long outdated scientific or historical premises. There need to be fresh presentations, even when some are of ancient ideas (...Plato and Thomas Aquinas, or Augustine and Aquinas, or Augustine and Aristotle, were hardly contemporaries...). The mockery of one such as Dawkins, narrow though it is, can inspire exceptional Christian writings.

I must add that I agreed with a large amount of what Dawkins did say in refutation of certain ideas. (I'll not devote much space to that, considering hate mail and assertions of certain varieties of 'Christian' whom Dawkins mentioned, if I believed in capital punishment, which of course I do not, I'd string them up at dawn. But, in half a century of being a Christian, I must admit that, happily, I've rarely, if ever, met the likes of those who write such letters or have such limited perspectives.) Pascal's Wager (which I'd always assumed to be rather ironic, but who knows?) indeed does seem an inspiration merely to feign belief in God. Richard Swinburne, whose work I respect in various ways, irritates me with his harping on courage and suffering being fostered by evil - and anyone who can state that the Holocaust gave Jews a chance to show courage and the like, as if this were part of a divine plan, ought to spend his Purgatory shining Eichmann's shoes.

Dawkins also is woefully correct about how certain presentations of Christian doctrines can lead to images of a masochistic, punishing, thought-reading (and more... I'm too weary to quote it all) God. Of course, I always have an allowance for that inspired scriptures still were written with human pens, and basically strong images of a faithful Yahweh, for example, can drown in justification for human violence. I also know that Anselm, Augustine, et al - whose writings on atonement and original sin can make my skin crawl - presented ideas which, while essentially expressing images of divine salvation, revelation, and fidelity, need serious, contemporary treatment which preserves the essential while tossing a good deal of the wrappings.

The bitter Christians whom Dawkins mentions, and whose pain I would never minimise, are hardly representative of the species. For Dawkins, religious ritual is a ‘charade.’ He also focuses on extremes – and on those whom religion has made miserable, where many Christians (and believers of all faiths) have found their faith to be highly enriching. One could come away thinking that religious practise means inevitable misery and pain. My own experience has been based on a model a far cry from neurotic guilt! Even when one considers conversion (to which we all have a constant calling) when it actually means (running for cover at introducing a forbidden word...) repentance, it more often is a peaceful, warm, lovely experience of being aware of the embrace of divine love. For many of us, it stems from no fear of hell, but from awareness of an invitation to greater intimacy.

I've rambled quite enough for today, but I'll add one last thought which may surprise those of you who know that my own reflections are often intended either to inspire prayer or virtue (even if in unconventional fashion), or to clarify misunderstood doctrines (argue to doomsday, but at least base it on the actual point you wish to smash.) Long live controversy! The disillusioned readers to whom Dawkins is appealing are nothing new - they were common during the Enlightenment, and haunted every pub in Oxford (where Dawkins is) during the "Crisis of Faith" in the 1800s (even if the other students were crowding in to see Newman.) I'll take an honest atheist over a sycophant or a supposed Christian who has only his own motives in mind. But many of those in the Victorian crisis of faith mode, for example, probably never had any faith to lose! Their 'faith' was based on a glorified image of family, or on fear, or on duty.

One cannot come to a mature faith (in many cases - I've heard not everyone is interested, and that a few here and there never give philosophical arguments a thought...) unless one thinks, and challenges, and forms one's own viewpoints. One cannot build intimacy with God on 'obedience' and 'duty' - that is formation for a child (or perhaps a soldier), but not for the Christian calling - which is love. If one actually is not a believer (though many an atheist, some quite prominent Christians later, is not an unbeliever for life), I'd prefer being true to what one really believes - one cannot develop one's true self by its denial.