A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

[Guest guest]

The Sunday Times December 24, 2006

 

A Christmas thunderbolt for the arch-enemy of religion

 

Professor Richard Dawkins has caused a sensation this year with the

runaway success of his anti-religious book The God Delusion. Here,

through the pen of John Cornwell, the Almighty delivers a

counterblast

 

 

Naturally I can appear to my creatures in any form I choose —

burning bushes, pillars of fire, bearded Jewish patriarchs, even

bread and wine. So imagine Me, if you will, in the guise of a simple

monk. Does that surprise you? I have chosen to pen this letter in

the cloister where a century and more ago the Austrian priest-

scientist Father Gregor Mendel discovered the genetic laws of

heredity. Cross-breeding different coloured peas, he performed a

series of remarkable experiments that became the basis of the modern

age in biology.

 

Richard, you know better than anybody that Father Mendel was both a

scientific genius (to whom you are immensely indebted as a

scientist) and a deeply religious man. Mendel was living proof that

faith in Me and knowledge of science are not in competition. I hope

to persuade you that while science and religion are two very

different discourses, they can coexist in harmony.

 

I've read your book, The God Delusion, which calls for the

elimination of religion and belief in Me. I do not wish to berate

you; after all, as a poet once wrote, " hatred of God may bring the

soul to God " . For what many atheists loathe is not God at all but

the false representations of Me.

 

But consider the wise warning of GK Chesterton. When people cease to

believe in God, they come to believe not in nothing, but in

anything. It's that anything that concerns Me. You recommend in

almost every line of the book that your readers should replace Me in

their hearts and minds with you.

 

LET ME begin with your overall thesis. You insist that all claims

for My existence are " hypotheses about the universe " , and hence the

exclusive province of science. What of those traditional

rational " proofs " for My existence? Popular to this day is the

argument for a Grand Designer God to solve the riddle of nature's

exquisite complexities. Could the parts of a watch, or a Boeing 747,

fall into place by pure chance? How much less likely the human

brain, or a water beetle! Following Charles Darwin's Origin of

Species, however, you explain, eloquently and persuasively, how the

mystery of design is sufficiently settled by the bottom-up blind

laws of evolution.

 

You then allow that anthropologists are competent to describe what

religion is and what religionists do. But only Darwin's theory of

evolution, you insist, can offer an ultimate explanation for the

true origins of religion.

 

So you relate what you believe to be a parallel in natural history.

A moth navigates by the light of the moon or the stars, but is

sometimes attracted by the same conditioned reflexes into a candle-

flame. These accidents of self-incineration, you tell your readers,

are a " by-product " of a programmed behaviour that is normally

advantageous. Religion, you speculate, is also a harmful by-product

of an infant's disposition to believe fairy tales that are

beneficial. Believing in a big bad wolf may prevent a child straying

into the woods. But stories of the hell fires that await naughty

children are received with the same credulity in inevitable

consequences. Thus religious fictions, with a propensity for fear,

bigotry, hatred and violence, take hold of a child's psyche and are

passed from generation to generation.

 

The tragedy for most believers, you argue, is their failure to

understand that all are free to reject the religion taught by their

parents. You end with the heartening news that once God has been

abandoned, " a proper understanding of the magnificence of the real

world can fill the inspirational role that religion has

historically — and inadequately — usurped " .

 

Without commenting in depth on these arguments, it must be said at

once, Richard, that most sensible theologians have no problem with

Darwin's theory of evolution, nor with much of what you yourself

have written on the wonders of the natural world. You are pushing

against an open door. Nor are most children so credulous as to

actually believe that they will be eaten by bears if they tread on

the pavement cracks. They can, and do, distinguish between the real

and the imaginary at a very early age. Most human beings, moreover,

are capable of being moved both by nature and the inward stirrings

of the spirit without a sense of mutual exclusion.

 

Let Me start, though, by commenting on the sources you have

marshalled for a work that attempts to embrace a vast scope of

philosophy, religion, anthropology, and theology.

 

You have relied far too much on the nice but facile philosopher,

Richard Swinburne of Oxford, for Christian theology. On Islam you

cite one book, Ibn Warraq's caustic Why I am not a Muslim. Nothing

on Judaism, Confucius, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Sufism. Little or

nothing, moreover, on your philosophical atheist antecedents since

the 18th century. And in support of many amateurish generalisations

on anthropology you have mainly resorted to that decaying old

monument, Frazer's Golden Bough.

 

It was no surprise to read Professor Terry Eagleton's acidulous

observation: " Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only

knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have

a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on

theology. "

 

But then, what need of scholarship when in possession of a superior

intellect like yours! You are described on the book's dustjacket

as " one of the world's top three intellectuals " . Not a peer-group

verdict, but the opinion poll of a small-circulation, avowedly

atheistic, British monthly.

 

There was a time when Oxford dons prided themselves on modesty — the

more learned, the more unassuming. But your self regard, Richard,

has assumed bizarre proportions, privately and publicly. Witness the

admission that you allowed Mrs Dawkins, the former Lalla Ward of

Doctor Who fame, to declaim out loud The God Delusion in its 400-

page entirety; not once but twice. As you usefully inform your

readers, such a service is best performed by a partner with

appropriate speech and drama training.

 

YOU write that you don't regard religion to be a " proper field in

which one might claim expertise " . Which is presumably why you saw no

reason to acquire any knowledge relating to the topic. Yet you

concede that there are eminent scientists who disagree with you, and

you cite the eminent cosmologist Professor Sir Martin Rees.

 

" The pre-eminent mystery, " Rees has stated, " is why anything exists

at all. What breathes life into the equations, and actualised them

in a real cosmos. Such questions lie beyond science, however; they

are the province of philosophers and theologians. "

 

Yet you dismiss this gracious acknowledgment as folly. What fuels

your contempt of theology, moreover, is the profound prejudice you

once articulated in an earlier work, Climbing Mount Improbable.

Let's take a look.

 

You describe how you attended a lecture about figs in poetry,

religion, anthropology. " This kind of thing, " you write, " is the

stock-in-trade of a certain kind of literary mind, but it provokes

me to literal mindedness. " The " real poetry " , the " real metaphor "

lurking in the fig, you argue, is its " Darwinian grammar and logic " ,

Botanical facts are true, whereas the other stuff is made up and

hence untrue.

 

So why not propose, Richard, that King Lear by William Shakespeare

(the Bard being of that " certain kind of literary mind " you so much

depore) be substituted with psychiatric case notes on senile

dementia? Or that Wordsworth's Daffodils be swapped for a

horticultural fact sheet? You condescend elsewhere to permit a role

for literature in your science-dominated utopia, provided that it is

confined to anodyne tropes about " ineffable " sunsets and " sublime "

landscapes. But your dogmatic separation of true and false in

literature could not be more plain. " The only difference between The

Da Vinci Code and the gospels, " you pronounce in your new book, " is

that the gospels are ancient fiction while The Da Vinci Code is

modern fiction. "

 

Logicians characterise the inherent fallacy of such statements as

the " undistributed middle " . The Da Vinci Code, which is not factual,

is pulp fiction; the gospels are not strictly speaking factual,

therefore the gospels are pulp fiction. This freshman howler masks

an even deeper, and more pernicious, error. You are thereby

declaring that there is no sense in which storytellers, poets,

dramatists, evangelists can utter truth. Never mind the profound

verities of My Son's Sermon on the Mount, what about Chaucer,

Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky . . . the entire canon of world

literature. I smell bonfires! On the matter of truth and bonfires,

you are right to indict religious believers who have perpetrated

persecution and cruelty in my name, both past and present! But would

you deny the good performed down the ages by religious believers of

every kind? And would you deny the evil done in the name of science

and atheism in recent history? How do you see a world without

religion? " If the demise of God will leave a gap, " you

proclaim, " . . . My way includes a good dose of science, the honest

and systematic endeavour to find out the truth about the real

world. "

 

And you invoke John Lennon's famous song Imagine to conjure up the

paradise on earth that will ensue. " Imagine a world with no

religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades,

no witch-hunts . . . no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no

Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as `Christ-

killers', no Northern Ireland Troubles . . . No Taliban to blow up

ancient statues. "

 

Oh please, Richard! Your list, which includes conflicts that are

blatantly secular, omits two catastrophic eras in recent history:

Stalin's Soviet Union, and Hitler's Germany. So how do you attain a

world without them? Are you not aware, Richard, that Stalin's brand

of communism found its origin in an idea called dialectical

materialism — a self-proclaimed " scientific " and atheistic ideology?

Did you never learn that Marx, who characterised religion as

the " opium of the people " , conjured up a dream of the perfectibility

of humankind according to mechanical laws that operate like those of

the natural sciences.

 

Marxist-Leninism, it is well known, provided a powerful impetus for

murderous purges of political dissidents and religious believers

alike. Under Stalin, Russia saw the devastating implementation of

sociobiological principles based on Lamarck — the inheritance of

acquired characteristics — legitimising strategies of enforced

collectivisation and ruinous systems of agricultural production.

 

Meanwhile Hitler's appeal to bio-politics evoked images of Jews as

parasitical invasions of the host body of Germanhood. Jews were

responsible, Nazi propaganda claimed, for actual epidemics in the

east requiring immediate quarantine — early euphemisms for the

ghettos and the camps.

 

In the pathological paradox that attends science as salvation, the

purveyors of death paraded their cynical pretensions to preserve

human life. Which is why I disapprove of your characterisation of

religion as a kind of cultural virus, which you call a " meme " . In

the gleeful claptrap generated around this unproven article of

pseudo-scientific faith, religious belief has already been

characterised as a viral infection requiring drastic solutions.

 

Are you not aware that Hitler yearned for religion's capitulation to

science? In his rambling table talk he declared that " the dogma of

Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion

will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths

crumble. When understanding of the universe has become

widespread . . . then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of

absurdity " . Familiar, Richard? Hitler and Stalin are a crucial test.

In your opinion they were merely unfortunate by-products, the

necessary " saw-tooth " of history, you call it, as science and

encroaching atheism escort the human race ever onwards and upwards.

But you are evidently irritated by suggestions that Hitler is a

monstrous exception. Is it because the phenomenon of Hitler

threatens your facile optimism? " Hitler's ideas and intentions were

not self-evidently more evil that those of Caligula — or some of the

Ottoman sultans, " you pronounce in an attempt at moral equivalence

that wobbles on the brink of mitigation.

 

Ponder too, Richard, the strange logic of the claim that militant

atheism is by definition innocuous. " Hitler and Stalin shared

atheism in common, " you write. " They both also had moustaches, as

does Saddam Hussein. So what? " All three wore socks and underpants,

but such banalities betray once again your pitiful lack of

background reading.

 

Hitler cynically played fast and loose with religion, to manipulate

the German people. Whenever and wherever he deemed religionists a

threat to his own self-idolatry he persecuted them and purged them.

Apart from the Jewish genocide, he persecuted and imprisoned

hundreds of thousands of Christians, Protestant and Catholic, for

their faith.

 

Stalin's atheism, moreover, was no mere private foible, either. It

was a violent feature of his ideology. He oppressed, imprisoned,

tortured and murdered the Orthodox faithful, destroying their icons

and their churches, throughout the length and breadth of Russia. Mao

Tse-tung, another enthusiastic atheist, followed suit, and his anti-

religious policies continue to this day in China.

 

Your failure to acknowledge, still less explore, the consequences of

triumphalist atheistic science as ideology undermines your claim to

seriousness, Richard. But then, you seem to have a poor grasp of

totalitarianism and religious fundamentalism alike, and how they

relate to an absence of respect and freedom. Notably missing from

your reading is the late John Rawls's study of political science, A

Theory of Justice. It might have compensated for the evident absence

in your book of studies in political philosophy from Ancient Greece

to the present day.

 

Rawls made a telling distinction between two paths to the " good

society " . One allows for individuals and groups to choose their own

beliefs and values (obviously within the law); the other insists

that beliefs and values should be enforced top-down. The former,

Rawls defines in the political sphere as a pluralist society; the

latter as a totalitarian. There is a corresponding divergence within

religions: tolerant faiths that respect difference, and

fundamentalist faiths that do not.

 

IT IS in the context of these two paths, Richard, that you betray

both political and historical naivety. You argue, for example, that

the " secularism " of the founding fathers of America was a bid to

weaken the hold of religious belief on society. Hardly. The genius

of the American proposal was its insistence on a state (in other

words governmental) secularism that guarantees religious freedoms,

including atheism, in a pluralist society.

 

The importance of understanding, and conserving, that historic

experiment could not be more urgent today as President George W Bush

attempts to hijack the protective neutrality of America's state

secularism with evangelical convictions. Which brings Me to the

issue of respect, which, you say, religion does not deserve.

 

The question is not whether you respect the content of people's

faith, Richard, it is whether you respect their right to adopt

freely chosen beliefs, within the law, without insult and

persecution. There is no more powerful incentive for universal

respect than the proposition that all without exception are children

of God and find their ultimate destiny in Me.

 

There are times when a fine line exists between persecution and

satire, especially when a powerful majority makes mockery of all

that is held sacred by an insecure, hard-pressed minority. But never

let it be said that I am unable to enjoy a joke at My own expense!

Which brings Me to the debate over creationism, on which you wax

heatedly. To adopt such beliefs into the science curriculums of

schools would of course be a gross category error. Theology is

theology, and science is science, as Father Mendel would have

agreed. But you yourself consistently make a striking category error

by confusing creationism and the doctrine of creation held by many

faiths.

 

The matter is straightforward: Biblical creationists believe that

the Book of Genesis is a source of factual information about the

origins of the world. They teach that I literally created all things

in a series of instantaneous acts over six days some 5,000 years

ago. Most sensible believers in the book without demur to

Darwin's theory of evolution while reading Genesis in the light of

the mystery so well articulated by Martin Rees — " Why is there

something rather than nothing? " And now, I am bound before I finish

to comment on what you call the God Hypothesis. You define God as " a

superhuman, supernatural intelligence which deliberately designed

and created the universe and everything in it, including us " . This

is typical of militant atheists who constantly define me purely in

terms of the criteria of science alone, rather than in terms of a

quest for spiritual contact that becomes a reciprocal loving

relationship between creature and creator.

 

Hence you reduce Me by declaring that " any creative intelligence, of

sufficient complexity to design anything (for that is what you think

I do all day!) comes into existence only as the end product of an

extended process of gradual evolution. "

 

Richard, when theologians attempt to describe My reality (My Mind,

say) they are all too well aware of the trap known as

anthropomorphism: of treating Me as a human creature. Yet it seems

pointless to remind you that thousands of studies have been

published on this theme down the centuries. So your consistent image

of Me resembles nothing so much as a megalomaniac designer-

scientist. Should I say it? Your God resembles a Great Big Professor

Dawkins in the sky!

 

THE sun has gone down and the monks are chanting vespers. I'm

reminded, Richard, that you were once a choirboy. Fancy.

 

The tradition of choral evensong, preserved in the churches and

cathedrals of your islands, points back to the rhythm of the

monasteries founded by St Benedict in the 6th century. While

considering all the hateful things that believers have done down the

ages supposedly in My name, you might spare a thought for the monks

who lived, and still live, by Benedict's rule.

 

During the troubled period in Europe known as the Dark Ages, which

resemble in many ways the barbarism and fragmentations of the world

today, it was the monasteries that preserved civility, education,

scholarship, moral intellectual life, care of the poor and the sick,

the arts of husbandry, and community building. So. Why don't you

occasionally slip into your college chapel for evensong to ponder

that thought. It might make you less antagonistic towards religion.

And it might help to relax you a little.

 

For now I bid you farewell. But be assured: you have not heard the

last of Me.

 

Till then I remain yours affectionately, and faithfully

 

God

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2517335,00.html