friedrich braun
01-24-2007, 08:52 PM
Atheist Richard Dawkins on 'The God Delusion'
By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted January 18, 2007.
In the last few years, Americans have seen the harm that results when
political decisions are made in the name of religion. Now, the
non-believers are fighting back.
In the last few years, Americans have seen the dark side of religion. The
events of 9/11 brought home the extremes to which some radical Muslims
would go to defeat infidels and attain virgins. At home, we've seen
assaults on the separation of Church and State and attacks on the teaching
of evolution and the distribution of life-saving condoms. And now, it
appears the godless are fighting back.
During the recent holiday season, there were prominent articles about
atheism in The New York Times and the UK's Financial Times and Telegraph,
and a segment on NPR's All Things Considered. Richard Dawkins debated the
existence of God on the London chat show, The Sunday Edition. Dawkins'
book, The God Delusion was a top 10 bestseller on the lists of both the New
York Times and LA Times, number one at Amazon UK and Amazon Canada, and
number two at Amazon.com. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris was
recently an equally successful bestseller.
A group calling itself "The Rational Response Squad," has launched The
Blasphemy Challenge, a campaign to entice young people to publicly renounce
belief in the God of Christianity. Participants who videotape their
blasphemy and upload it to YouTube will receive a free DVD of The God Who
Wasn't There, a number one bestselling independent documentary at Amazon.com.
Richard Dawkins holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public
Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His 1976 book, The Selfish
Gene, popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the
term "meme." In January 2006, Dawkins hosted on the UK's Channel 4 a
two-part documentary on the dangers of religion, entitled (against his
wishes, I might add) The Root of All Evil. His newest book, The God
Delusion, is an international bestseller.
Below is a shortened version of Terrence McNally's recent interview with
Richard Dawkins. You can also listen to the audio of the full interview.
Terrence McNally: When and how did you become an atheist?
Richard Dawkins: I suppose it was discovering Darwinism. I was confirmed
into the Church of England at the age of thirteen. I then got pretty
skeptical about it, but retained some respect for the argument from Design
-- the argument that says living things look as though they've been
designed, so they probably have been. I then learned the real scientific
explanation for why they look as though they've been designed, and that was
enough for me. I lost my religious faith pretty much then.
TM: What do you think explains the current interest in atheism?
RD: I would love to think that there really is something moving -- a
shifting in the tectonic plates, and, at last, in America, atheism is
becoming respectable; that one can now come out of the closet and proclaim
one's self.
I got certain indications of that on my recent tour of the United States. I
got packed houses everywhere I went. Of course, I was preaching to the
choir, but I was impressed by how large the choir is and how enthusiastic.
Over and over again people came up to me afterwards and said how grateful
they were that I and Sam Harris and others were finally speaking out and
saying the things that they wanted to say, but perhaps didn't feel able to.
TM: You compare the experience of atheists to that of gays in the fairly
recent past. Do you think that's an apt comparison?
RD: I think the parallel is a valid one. Until recently nobody dared admit
that they were gay. Now, they're rather proud to do so. Nowadays it's
impossible to get elected to public office if you're an atheist, and I
think that's got to change. The Gay Rights Movement raised consciousness.
It initiated the idea of Gay Pride. I think we've got to have Atheist
Pride, Atheist Consciousness. I think it's pretty clear that a fair number
of members of Congress must be lying because not a single one of them
admits to being an atheist. The probability that in a sample of over 500
well-educated members of American society, not a single one of them is an
atheist, statistically, that is highly unlikely. So, some of them, at
least, have got to be lying, and I think it's a tragedy that they have to.
TM: Could you address a couple of reactions that I see in the media, either
to atheism, in general, or to you and your book? One, people ask why are
atheists so angry?
RD: That's a very curious misperception. We get accused of being angry or
of being intolerant, but, if you were to look at critiques of one political
party by the other... when Democrats criticize Republicans, or Republicans
criticize Democrats, nobody ever says, "You're being intolerant of
Republicans, or angry." It's just normal, robust argument.
People have gotten so used to the idea that religion must be immune to
criticism that even a very mild and gentle criticism of religion comes
across as angry and intolerant. That's yet another piece of consciousness
raising that we've got to undertake.
TM: You and others are accused of being arrogant, condescending. What would
you say to that?
RD: Exactly the same thing. Nobody says that a Democrat who dismisses
Republican ideas is arrogant. They just assume that's what politicians do.
They attack each other's ideas with good, robust give and take. That's
exactly what people like me and Sam Harris are doing with respect to
religion. Once again, the accusation of arrogance comes about because
religion has acquired this weird protection that you're not allowed to
criticize.
TM: You give the Americans too much credit. In the last couple of years,
perhaps since 9/11, when people criticize the Bush Administration, they are
accused of Bush-hating. I think they're attempting to clothe this President
and this Administration in the same kind of protective halo that religion
has had.
RD: Now that you mention it, I have noticed that very thing. There has been
a tendency to say, if you criticize the President, Bush, you are
criticizing America, which is ludicrous because he was elected by a --
TM: --a minority.
RD: -- if indeed he was elected at all. I take your point completely. Thank
you.
TM: People finally say, "What's it to you? Why not be an atheist if that's
what works for you, and leave the rest of us to be as religious as we
wish?" This, I believe, is offered as a challenge to your open-mindedness
or your respect for others. You're being called "an atheist fundamentalist. "
RD: "Fundamentalist" usually means, "goes by the book." And so, a religious
fundamentalist goes back to the fundamentals of The Bible or The Koran and
says, "nothing can change." Of course, that's not the case with any
scientist, and certainly not with me. So, I'm not a fundamentalist in that
sense.
Why not live and let live? Why not just say, "Oh, well, if people want to
believe that, that's fine." Of course, nobody's stopping people believing
whatever they like. The problem is that there's not that much tolerance
coming the other way. Things like the opposition to stem-cell research, to
abortion, to contraception -- these are all religiously inspired
prohibitions on what would otherwise be freedom of action, whether of
scientists or individual human beings.
There are religious people who are not content to say, "Oh, well, my
religion doesn't allow me to use contraceptives, but I'm quite happy for
anybody else to." Instead, we have religiously- inspired prohibitions on aid
programs abroad, including in areas where HIV AIDS is rife, prohibiting aid
going in any form that might be used to help contraception. That is
religion over-stepping the bounds and interfering in other people's
freedom. So, religion does not observe this "live and let live" philosophy.
TM: In other words, if it were just a philosophical belief that had no
impact on the world, fine.
RD: Exactly. I don't think you'll find many people criticizing any gentle
religion, like Jainism.
The other thing is that, as a scientist and an educator, it is impossible
to overlook the fact that, especially in America, there is a vigorous and
virulent campaign to suppress the teaching of scientific biology. In state
after state, there are court battles being fought. Scientists have to go
out of the laboratory and waste their time responding to these
know-nothings who are trying to stop the teaching of evolution or give
equal time to creationism or intelligent design, or whatever they like to
call it. They actually are trying to interfere with the freedom of children
to learn science and the freedom of science teachers to teach their science
properly.
TM: Why did you write The God Delusion?
RD: I care passionately about the truth. I believe that the truth about
whether there is a God in the Universe is possibly the most important truth
there is. I happen to think it's false, but I think it's a really important
question.
Also, because I felt that the world actually is drifting, parts of it
anyway, towards theocracy in very dangerous ways. Education in my own field
of Evolutionary Biology was under threat. There are all sorts of reasons
why one might worry about the looming rise of religious influence,
especially in the United States of America and in the Islamic world.
TM: Can you explain the distinction you offer between Einstein's God, as
you put it, and Supernatural God? You clarify this at the top of the book
to make clear which definition of God you believe is a delusion.
RD: Sometimes when people hear that one is an atheist, they say something
like, "Oh, well, surely you believe in something." Or "You believe that the
Universe is a wonderful place." And I say, "Yes, of course, the Universe is
a wonderful place." And they say, "Oh, well, then you believe in God." And
they are using "God" in the Einsteinian sense of a kind of metaphor for
that which is mysterious and wonderful in the universe. And the more the
physicists look into the origins of the universe, the more wonderful it
does seem to become. Without a doubt there is cause for something
approaching worship or reverence that moves scientists such as Einstein,
and Carl Sagan, and, in my humble way, myself. Einstein was very fond of
using the word "God" to refer to that feeling of non-personal reverence.
TM: Beyond that feeling, didn't he also use it to refer to the awesome
existence that we confront?
RD: Yes, he did. When Einstein wanted to say something like, "Could the
universe have happened in any other way? Is there only one kind of
universe?" The way he expressed it was, "Did God have a choice in creating
the universe?" Now, to any ordinary churchgoer in the pew, that sounds as
though Einstein believed that a personal God designed the universe. In
fact, all Einstein was doing was wondering whether there could be more than
one kind of universe, which is a perfectly respectable scientific question.
I think it's extremely unfortunate that Einstein chose to use the word
"God" for that. Einstein himself was most indignant when he was taken
literally and people thought that he meant a personal God, such as the
Christian God or the Jewish God. But I think he was asking for trouble by
using the word "God." He did it again over Heisenberg's indeterminacy
principle, which he hated. He expressed his hatred for it by saying, "God
does not play dice."
TM: So you're making the distinction between that use of the word "God" and
the God that you believe is a delusion?
RD: A personal God. A God who is a deliberate, conscious intelligence, the
sort of God who listens to your prayers, forgives your sins. A God who sits
down like a master engineer or physicist and designs the Universe, works
out what ought to happen, worries about sins, all that kind of thing.
TM: Could you briefly respond, as you do in the book, to some of the
arguments for this supernatural, directive, personal God. The argument from
beauty...?
RD: People say things like, "If you don't believe in God, how do you
account for Beethoven? How do you account for a lovely sunset? How do you
account for Michelangelo? " It's such a dopey thing to say. Beethoven wrote
beautiful music. Michelangelo painted wonderful paintings and did wonderful
sculptures. Whether or not there is a God doesn't add to the argument one
bit. So that's not an argument, although an amazingly large number of
people seem to think it is.
TM: The argument from scripture... ?
RD: There are lots of scriptures all around the world and they contradict
each other. There's really no reason to suppose that just because
something's written down, it's true. You have to ask who wrote it and when
and why.
If you ask somebody, "Why do you believe that your Scripture is the Word of
God?" the answer that comes back is, "Oh, because it says so." And you say,
"Well, where does it say so?" And they say, "In my Scripture." So, the Holy
Scripture, whichever it is, The Koran, or The Bible, or The Book of Mormon,
says within itself that it is the Word of God. This is a circular argument
and not to be taken seriously.
TM: The argument from personal experience.. .? In late-night conversations
during my high school days, my questions regarding God's existence would be
answered by the challenge-defying, "You have to experience it."
RD: I think that is a difficult one, but, on the other hand, anybody who
knows anything about psychology, knows what an immensely powerful
simulation engine the brain is. I'm impressed by the fact that every single
night of my life, my brain conjures up images and sounds of things that
have never existed and never will exist. They are completely non-sensical.
It's as though I go temporarily insane every night of my life and you do,
too. Everybody does. We get a very life-like, full color simulation of a
fantasy world inside our heads. Now, when we get that in our sleep, we call
it a dream. When we get it in our waking lives -- in much less vivid form
-- we might call it a vision of God or a vision of an angel, or we might
say "God just talks to me."
Even when you actually see an angel or you actually hear a voice inside
your head, that is an easy feat of simulation for the brain to achieve.
When it's just a sort of vague feeling that God is whispering to you, it's
really rather pathetic to be fooled by that, I think.
TM: My president claims God talks to him.
RD: Yes. Your president is told by God to invade Iraq. It's a pity, by the
way, that God didn't tell him there were no weapons of mass destruction.
TM: I, too, wish God had been more specific. What do you make of the recent
scientific conversations about certain phenomena such as a "God nodule" in
the brain?
RD: There is a certain amount of evidence that specific parts of the brain
do have something to do with so-called religious experience. I've had
experience of the work of the Canadian neurophysiologist, Michael
Persinger. He tries to mimic the effects of temporal lobe epilepsy by
passing magnetic fields through the brain. In about eighty percent of
subjects, when he passes magnetic fields through certain parts of the
brain, he can induce religious or mystical experiences. The details of the
religious experience depend upon how the person was brought up. So, if the
person was Catholic, they tend to see Virgin Marys or whatever it might be.
I turned out to be one of the twenty percent for whom it didn't work. If it
had worked for me, I probably wouldn't have seen any gods, but I probably
would have experienced some sort of mystical experience of Oneness with the
Universe.
TM: How universal is the belief in a supernatural God?
RD: It's universal in the sense that all human cultures that
anthropologists have looked at seem to have something corresponding to a
belief in some sort of God.
Sometimes it's many gods. Sometimes it's one. Sometimes it's an animistic
set of gods -- the God of the Waterfall, the God of the River, the God of
the Mountain, the Sun God. The details vary, but it does seem to be a human
universal, in the same sort of way as heterosexual lust is a human
universal, even though not all individual humans have it. Like sexual lust,
I suspect there's a kind of lust for God.
TM: How do you explain its prevalence?
RD: When you ask a Darwinian like me, how we explain something, we usually
take that to mean, "What is the Darwinian survival value of it?"
Quite often, when you ask what is the survival value of "X", it turns out
that you shouldn't be asking the question about "X" at all, but that "X" is
a by-product of something else that does have survival value. In this case,
the suggestion I put forward as only one of many possible suggestions, is
that religious faith is a by-product of the childhood tendency to believe
what your parents tell you.
It's a very good idea for children to believe what parents tell them. A
child who dis-believes what his parents tell him would probably die, by not
heeding the parent's advice not to get into the fire, for example. So child
brains, on this theory, are born with a rule of thumb, "believe what your
parents tell you." Now, the problem with that -- where the by-product idea
comes in -- is that it's not possible to design a brain that believes what
its parents tell it, without believing bad things along with good things.
Ideally we might like the child brain to filter good advice like, "Don't
jump in the fire," from bad advice like, "Worship the tribal gods." But the
child-brain has no way of discriminating those two kinds of advice. So,
inevitably, a child-brain that is pre-programmed to believe and obey what
his parents tell it, is automatically vulnerable to bad advice like,
"Worship the tribal juju."
I think that's one part of the answer, but then, you need another part of
the answer: Why do some kinds of bad advice, like, "Worship the tribal
juju," survive and others not?
Beliefs like "life-after- death" spread because they are appealing. A lot of
people don't like the idea of dying and rather do like the idea that
they'll survive their own death. So the meme, if you like, spreads like a
virus because people want to believe it.
TM: Though children may tend to believe what their parents tell them, you
state strongly that a child should not be called a Catholic child, a Muslim
child, or a Jewish child.
RD: Yes. I'm very, very keen on the idea that children should be not
labeled like that. We're back to consciousness raising. The feminists
raised our consciousness about use of language in all sorts of ways --
things like saying, "his or hers," instead of just "his". In the same way,
I think we need to raise consciousness about such labeling of children.
I'm not saying that parents shouldn't influence their children. That would
be hopelessly unrealistic. Parents influence their children in all sorts of
ways, but I think religion is more or less unique in being licensed to
confer a label on a child. You never talk about a "Republican child" or a
"Democratic child." You never make the assumption that because a professor
of post-modernist literature has a child, that therefore it will be a
post-modernist child. It would be ridiculous to do that, and yet if a
Christian or a Jew or a Muslim has a child, then the whole of society goes
along with the idea that you can label this child "a Jewish child," "a
Christian child," "A Muslim child." I think that is a form of child abuse.
I think it's a civil rights issue.
TM: Many suggest that you and other atheists, perhaps especially scientists
who are atheists, neglect phenomena that you cannot explain. For example,
the subjective experience of meaning or comfort of inspiration many claim
to receive from their belief or their relationship with God... If millions
experience such things, is this not evidence for the source to which they
attribute them? If not, can you clarify why it isn't?
RD: There's no question that people do get comfort and consolation from
religion. If a loved one has died, of course, it's comforting to feel that
they're still somewhere out there caring for you, and you're going to see
them again one day. But, what is comforting isn't necessarily true, and it
is sort of intellectual cowardice to say, "We should let people wallow in
their illusions, because it comforts them." I think it's rather patronizing.
TM: Do you think this is similar to when families or even doctors debate
whether to tell someone their cancer is terminal? Because, after all, life
is terminal...
RD: That's a really good parallel. There are people who would rather not be
told the truth by a doctor and I respect that, but that doesn't make it
true. That you want your doctor to tell you that you haven't got terminal
cancer, and your doctor obliges by lying to you, that's fine; but the fact
is he has lied to you. Similarly, you may be comforted by the thought that
there's a God looking after you, but if there isn't a God looking after
you, then I'm afraid there isn't one, and that's all there is to it.
I don't want to impose my beliefs on anybody else, but I do care about
what's true. If you want to know what I think is true, read my book. If
you'd rather not know what I think is true, don't read my book.
TM: Many criticize you on the grounds that science can't answer some of the
biggest questions or that science is unwilling or unable to offer those
meaningful things that we just talked about. Is it fair to respond to your
book or your arguments by pointing out insufficiencies of science?
RD: There are some questions that science not only can't answer, but
doesn't want to answer, things like, "What is right? And What is wrong?" or
"How shall we be comforted?" Science has nothing to say about "right" or
"wrong." Moral philosophy does. There's another whole category of questions
that science may not be able to answer -- the really deep questions of
existence, like, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" or "Where
did the laws of physics come from in the first place?" It's an open
question at the moment whether science will ever be able to answer
questions like that.
Physicists, in particular, are working on questions like, "Where do the
laws of physics come from?" But it's a fallacy to say that because science
can't answer such a question, therefore religion can. Much more realistic
to say, "Well, if science can't answer that deep question, nothing can."
TM: In America, we hear that we're more provincial and religious than so
many other people; that much of Europe, even the Roman Catholic countries
of Spain and Italy, for instance, are far more secular...
RD: I suspect that the grip that religion is alleged to have over America
has been exaggerated. If people who are not religious would only recognize
that they're not a beleaguered minority, but actually are exceedingly
numerous and potentially very powerful... If they would stand up and
recognize each other and organize, I suspect that they would soon give the
lie to this idea that America is a supremely religious country.
I think there's been a kind of hijacking of American political life by
religious interests, and I think it's rather sad the way so many have gone
along with that. You'll see even intelligent Democrats desperately currying
favor with the religious vote because they think it's so powerful. No
member of Congress will admit to being an atheist, although obviously some
of them are.
TM: In polls, people are least likely to vote for an atheist for
significant political office. They claim to be much more willing to vote,
for instance, for a homosexual or a Muslim...
RD: It's no wonder that politicians are scared.
TM: I don't think we can expect too many politicians to move first.
RD: People have to come out of the closet and write to their Congressmen
and Congresswomen and say, "Look, stop sucking up to the religious vote.
Suck up to us, for a change. Better still, don't suck up to anybody, but
speak your own convictions. "
TM: I once asked a member of the Achuar -- an Amazon rainforest tribe who
had its first contact with the modern world in the 1970s -- "How do you
feel about the missionaries? " I assumed he would say, "Oh, bad folks," but
he said, "They were the ones who stopped us from killing each other all the
time."
Although several of our Founding Fathers were more likely Deists than
conventional Christians, they believed that once you took away the monarchy
or the Papacy, that the people did need religion in order to behave as a
moral society. Do you agree that religion is a civilizing or moralizing force?
RD: There's something awfully patronizing and condescending about saying,
"Well, of course, we don't need religion, but the common people do." I hope
it's not as bad as that.
With regard to the missionaries being a civilizing influence on tribes
whose habit was to kill each other -- presumably, if their first contact
with Westerners had been with policemen, they would have said, "Until the
policemen came, we killed each other."
Through centuries of change, we have now reduced our natural tendency to
kill each other, but there have long been tribes where killing is the norm
and the way to achieve worldly success. In our society we talk about making
a killing on Wall Street. The equivalent in some tribes in the Amazon
jungle might be to literally go and kill sexual rivals, for example.
That changes when such tribes are brought into contact with Western
civilization. The fact that the people who go out of their way to bring
Western civilization to such tribes usually are missionaries doesn't mean
that religion fosters the "Thou salt not kill," point of view. "Thou shalt
not kill" is a general moral principle, which we all have now, whether or
not we're religious.
TM: Some people will claim that without religion we would not act morally;
we would lack ethics...
RD: That's an appalling thing to say, isn't it? It suggests that the only
reason we have morality -- the only reason we don't kill and rape and steal
-- is that we're afraid of being found out by God. We're afraid that God is
watching us, afraid of the great surveillance camera in the sky. Now,
that's not a very noble reason for being good.
As a matter of fact, there's not the slightest evidence that religious
people in a given society are any more moral than non-religious people. We
are, all of us in the modern world, far more reluctant to kill, reluctant
to discriminate against other people on grounds of sex. We no longer regard
slavery as a good thing. All these things are universally approved of among
educated people of goodwill in modern society, whether or not they are
religious. You can point to abolitionists who happened to be religious, and
you can point to other religious individuals who were in favor of slavery.
Modern morality is very different from the truly horrifying version of
morality in the Old Testament. If we went by the Bible, we'd still be
taking slaves. If we went by the Bible, we'd still be stoning people to
death for the crime of picking up sticks on the Sabbath. There are all
sorts of ways in which we've moved on, and nobody who claims to get their
morality from religion, could seriously maintain that they get it from
Scripture.
TM: You have a problem with moderate Christians, Jews, and Muslims, don't you?
RD: I take this largely from Sam Harris. In his two excellent books, Letter
to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith, he points out -- and I agree
with him -- that the majority of religious people are perfectly nice people
who don't do horrible things. Yet moderate religion makes the world safe
for extremist religion by teaching that religious faith is a virtue, and by
the immunity to criticism that religion enjoys. That immunity extends to
extremists like Osama Bin Laden and that dreadful man who goes around
saying, "God hates fags." I've forgotten his name...
TM: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the list goes on.
RD: The world is made safe for people like them and Osama Bin Laden because
we've all been brainwashed to respect religious faith and not to criticize
it with the same vigor we criticize political and other sorts of opinions
that we disagree with.
If you can say, "such and such a view is part of my religion," everybody
tiptoes away with great respect. "Oh, it's part of your religion," then of
course, you must go ahead. In a way, we've been asking for trouble by
moderate people persuading us to give to all religion a respect, which it
has never done anything to deserve.
TM: You quote physicist Steven Weinberg: "Religion is an insult to human
dignity. Without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. For good people to do evil things, it takes
religion."
You open the book marveling at the wonders of existence. You end it writing
about your personal experience of awe and transcendence. You also write
eloquently about this in a previous book, Unweaving the Rainbow.
RD: Unweaving the Rainbow, which I wrote in the late '90s, was my answer to
those people who say that science and, in particular, my world view in The
Selfish Gene was cold and bleak and loveless. Maybe I could read a few
words from the opening of Unweaving the Rainbow, which I've set aside and
asked to be read at my funeral.
"We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are
never going to die because they're never going to be born. The potential
people who could have been here in my place, but who will, in fact, never
see the light of day, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. ...In the face
of these stupefying odds, it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are
here. Here's another respect in which we are lucky. The universe is older
than a hundred million centuries. Within a comparable time, the sun will
swell to a red giant and engulf the earth. Every century of hundreds of
millions has been in its time, or will be when its time comes, the present
century. The present moves from the past to the future like a tiny
spotlight inching its way along a gigantic ruler of time. Everything behind
the spotlight is in darkness, the darkness of the dead past. Everything
ahead of the spotlight is in the darkness of the unknown future. The odds
of your century being the one in the spotlight are the same as the odds
that a penny, tossed down at random, will land on a particular ant crawling
somewhere on the road from New York to San Francisco. You are lucky to be
alive and so am I."
We are lucky to be alive and therefore we should value life. Life is
precious. We're never going to get another one. This is it. Don't waste it.
Open your eyes. Open your ears. Treasure the experiences that you have and
don't waste your time fussing about a non-existent future life after you're
dead. Try to do as much good as you can now to others. Try to live life as
richly as possible during the time that you have left available to you.
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Tagged as: richard dawkins, god, atheism, religion, fundamentalism
Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles
(streaming at kpfk.org).
http://www.alternet .org/stories/ 46566/
By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted January 18, 2007.
In the last few years, Americans have seen the harm that results when
political decisions are made in the name of religion. Now, the
non-believers are fighting back.
In the last few years, Americans have seen the dark side of religion. The
events of 9/11 brought home the extremes to which some radical Muslims
would go to defeat infidels and attain virgins. At home, we've seen
assaults on the separation of Church and State and attacks on the teaching
of evolution and the distribution of life-saving condoms. And now, it
appears the godless are fighting back.
During the recent holiday season, there were prominent articles about
atheism in The New York Times and the UK's Financial Times and Telegraph,
and a segment on NPR's All Things Considered. Richard Dawkins debated the
existence of God on the London chat show, The Sunday Edition. Dawkins'
book, The God Delusion was a top 10 bestseller on the lists of both the New
York Times and LA Times, number one at Amazon UK and Amazon Canada, and
number two at Amazon.com. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris was
recently an equally successful bestseller.
A group calling itself "The Rational Response Squad," has launched The
Blasphemy Challenge, a campaign to entice young people to publicly renounce
belief in the God of Christianity. Participants who videotape their
blasphemy and upload it to YouTube will receive a free DVD of The God Who
Wasn't There, a number one bestselling independent documentary at Amazon.com.
Richard Dawkins holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public
Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His 1976 book, The Selfish
Gene, popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the
term "meme." In January 2006, Dawkins hosted on the UK's Channel 4 a
two-part documentary on the dangers of religion, entitled (against his
wishes, I might add) The Root of All Evil. His newest book, The God
Delusion, is an international bestseller.
Below is a shortened version of Terrence McNally's recent interview with
Richard Dawkins. You can also listen to the audio of the full interview.
Terrence McNally: When and how did you become an atheist?
Richard Dawkins: I suppose it was discovering Darwinism. I was confirmed
into the Church of England at the age of thirteen. I then got pretty
skeptical about it, but retained some respect for the argument from Design
-- the argument that says living things look as though they've been
designed, so they probably have been. I then learned the real scientific
explanation for why they look as though they've been designed, and that was
enough for me. I lost my religious faith pretty much then.
TM: What do you think explains the current interest in atheism?
RD: I would love to think that there really is something moving -- a
shifting in the tectonic plates, and, at last, in America, atheism is
becoming respectable; that one can now come out of the closet and proclaim
one's self.
I got certain indications of that on my recent tour of the United States. I
got packed houses everywhere I went. Of course, I was preaching to the
choir, but I was impressed by how large the choir is and how enthusiastic.
Over and over again people came up to me afterwards and said how grateful
they were that I and Sam Harris and others were finally speaking out and
saying the things that they wanted to say, but perhaps didn't feel able to.
TM: You compare the experience of atheists to that of gays in the fairly
recent past. Do you think that's an apt comparison?
RD: I think the parallel is a valid one. Until recently nobody dared admit
that they were gay. Now, they're rather proud to do so. Nowadays it's
impossible to get elected to public office if you're an atheist, and I
think that's got to change. The Gay Rights Movement raised consciousness.
It initiated the idea of Gay Pride. I think we've got to have Atheist
Pride, Atheist Consciousness. I think it's pretty clear that a fair number
of members of Congress must be lying because not a single one of them
admits to being an atheist. The probability that in a sample of over 500
well-educated members of American society, not a single one of them is an
atheist, statistically, that is highly unlikely. So, some of them, at
least, have got to be lying, and I think it's a tragedy that they have to.
TM: Could you address a couple of reactions that I see in the media, either
to atheism, in general, or to you and your book? One, people ask why are
atheists so angry?
RD: That's a very curious misperception. We get accused of being angry or
of being intolerant, but, if you were to look at critiques of one political
party by the other... when Democrats criticize Republicans, or Republicans
criticize Democrats, nobody ever says, "You're being intolerant of
Republicans, or angry." It's just normal, robust argument.
People have gotten so used to the idea that religion must be immune to
criticism that even a very mild and gentle criticism of religion comes
across as angry and intolerant. That's yet another piece of consciousness
raising that we've got to undertake.
TM: You and others are accused of being arrogant, condescending. What would
you say to that?
RD: Exactly the same thing. Nobody says that a Democrat who dismisses
Republican ideas is arrogant. They just assume that's what politicians do.
They attack each other's ideas with good, robust give and take. That's
exactly what people like me and Sam Harris are doing with respect to
religion. Once again, the accusation of arrogance comes about because
religion has acquired this weird protection that you're not allowed to
criticize.
TM: You give the Americans too much credit. In the last couple of years,
perhaps since 9/11, when people criticize the Bush Administration, they are
accused of Bush-hating. I think they're attempting to clothe this President
and this Administration in the same kind of protective halo that religion
has had.
RD: Now that you mention it, I have noticed that very thing. There has been
a tendency to say, if you criticize the President, Bush, you are
criticizing America, which is ludicrous because he was elected by a --
TM: --a minority.
RD: -- if indeed he was elected at all. I take your point completely. Thank
you.
TM: People finally say, "What's it to you? Why not be an atheist if that's
what works for you, and leave the rest of us to be as religious as we
wish?" This, I believe, is offered as a challenge to your open-mindedness
or your respect for others. You're being called "an atheist fundamentalist. "
RD: "Fundamentalist" usually means, "goes by the book." And so, a religious
fundamentalist goes back to the fundamentals of The Bible or The Koran and
says, "nothing can change." Of course, that's not the case with any
scientist, and certainly not with me. So, I'm not a fundamentalist in that
sense.
Why not live and let live? Why not just say, "Oh, well, if people want to
believe that, that's fine." Of course, nobody's stopping people believing
whatever they like. The problem is that there's not that much tolerance
coming the other way. Things like the opposition to stem-cell research, to
abortion, to contraception -- these are all religiously inspired
prohibitions on what would otherwise be freedom of action, whether of
scientists or individual human beings.
There are religious people who are not content to say, "Oh, well, my
religion doesn't allow me to use contraceptives, but I'm quite happy for
anybody else to." Instead, we have religiously- inspired prohibitions on aid
programs abroad, including in areas where HIV AIDS is rife, prohibiting aid
going in any form that might be used to help contraception. That is
religion over-stepping the bounds and interfering in other people's
freedom. So, religion does not observe this "live and let live" philosophy.
TM: In other words, if it were just a philosophical belief that had no
impact on the world, fine.
RD: Exactly. I don't think you'll find many people criticizing any gentle
religion, like Jainism.
The other thing is that, as a scientist and an educator, it is impossible
to overlook the fact that, especially in America, there is a vigorous and
virulent campaign to suppress the teaching of scientific biology. In state
after state, there are court battles being fought. Scientists have to go
out of the laboratory and waste their time responding to these
know-nothings who are trying to stop the teaching of evolution or give
equal time to creationism or intelligent design, or whatever they like to
call it. They actually are trying to interfere with the freedom of children
to learn science and the freedom of science teachers to teach their science
properly.
TM: Why did you write The God Delusion?
RD: I care passionately about the truth. I believe that the truth about
whether there is a God in the Universe is possibly the most important truth
there is. I happen to think it's false, but I think it's a really important
question.
Also, because I felt that the world actually is drifting, parts of it
anyway, towards theocracy in very dangerous ways. Education in my own field
of Evolutionary Biology was under threat. There are all sorts of reasons
why one might worry about the looming rise of religious influence,
especially in the United States of America and in the Islamic world.
TM: Can you explain the distinction you offer between Einstein's God, as
you put it, and Supernatural God? You clarify this at the top of the book
to make clear which definition of God you believe is a delusion.
RD: Sometimes when people hear that one is an atheist, they say something
like, "Oh, well, surely you believe in something." Or "You believe that the
Universe is a wonderful place." And I say, "Yes, of course, the Universe is
a wonderful place." And they say, "Oh, well, then you believe in God." And
they are using "God" in the Einsteinian sense of a kind of metaphor for
that which is mysterious and wonderful in the universe. And the more the
physicists look into the origins of the universe, the more wonderful it
does seem to become. Without a doubt there is cause for something
approaching worship or reverence that moves scientists such as Einstein,
and Carl Sagan, and, in my humble way, myself. Einstein was very fond of
using the word "God" to refer to that feeling of non-personal reverence.
TM: Beyond that feeling, didn't he also use it to refer to the awesome
existence that we confront?
RD: Yes, he did. When Einstein wanted to say something like, "Could the
universe have happened in any other way? Is there only one kind of
universe?" The way he expressed it was, "Did God have a choice in creating
the universe?" Now, to any ordinary churchgoer in the pew, that sounds as
though Einstein believed that a personal God designed the universe. In
fact, all Einstein was doing was wondering whether there could be more than
one kind of universe, which is a perfectly respectable scientific question.
I think it's extremely unfortunate that Einstein chose to use the word
"God" for that. Einstein himself was most indignant when he was taken
literally and people thought that he meant a personal God, such as the
Christian God or the Jewish God. But I think he was asking for trouble by
using the word "God." He did it again over Heisenberg's indeterminacy
principle, which he hated. He expressed his hatred for it by saying, "God
does not play dice."
TM: So you're making the distinction between that use of the word "God" and
the God that you believe is a delusion?
RD: A personal God. A God who is a deliberate, conscious intelligence, the
sort of God who listens to your prayers, forgives your sins. A God who sits
down like a master engineer or physicist and designs the Universe, works
out what ought to happen, worries about sins, all that kind of thing.
TM: Could you briefly respond, as you do in the book, to some of the
arguments for this supernatural, directive, personal God. The argument from
beauty...?
RD: People say things like, "If you don't believe in God, how do you
account for Beethoven? How do you account for a lovely sunset? How do you
account for Michelangelo? " It's such a dopey thing to say. Beethoven wrote
beautiful music. Michelangelo painted wonderful paintings and did wonderful
sculptures. Whether or not there is a God doesn't add to the argument one
bit. So that's not an argument, although an amazingly large number of
people seem to think it is.
TM: The argument from scripture... ?
RD: There are lots of scriptures all around the world and they contradict
each other. There's really no reason to suppose that just because
something's written down, it's true. You have to ask who wrote it and when
and why.
If you ask somebody, "Why do you believe that your Scripture is the Word of
God?" the answer that comes back is, "Oh, because it says so." And you say,
"Well, where does it say so?" And they say, "In my Scripture." So, the Holy
Scripture, whichever it is, The Koran, or The Bible, or The Book of Mormon,
says within itself that it is the Word of God. This is a circular argument
and not to be taken seriously.
TM: The argument from personal experience.. .? In late-night conversations
during my high school days, my questions regarding God's existence would be
answered by the challenge-defying, "You have to experience it."
RD: I think that is a difficult one, but, on the other hand, anybody who
knows anything about psychology, knows what an immensely powerful
simulation engine the brain is. I'm impressed by the fact that every single
night of my life, my brain conjures up images and sounds of things that
have never existed and never will exist. They are completely non-sensical.
It's as though I go temporarily insane every night of my life and you do,
too. Everybody does. We get a very life-like, full color simulation of a
fantasy world inside our heads. Now, when we get that in our sleep, we call
it a dream. When we get it in our waking lives -- in much less vivid form
-- we might call it a vision of God or a vision of an angel, or we might
say "God just talks to me."
Even when you actually see an angel or you actually hear a voice inside
your head, that is an easy feat of simulation for the brain to achieve.
When it's just a sort of vague feeling that God is whispering to you, it's
really rather pathetic to be fooled by that, I think.
TM: My president claims God talks to him.
RD: Yes. Your president is told by God to invade Iraq. It's a pity, by the
way, that God didn't tell him there were no weapons of mass destruction.
TM: I, too, wish God had been more specific. What do you make of the recent
scientific conversations about certain phenomena such as a "God nodule" in
the brain?
RD: There is a certain amount of evidence that specific parts of the brain
do have something to do with so-called religious experience. I've had
experience of the work of the Canadian neurophysiologist, Michael
Persinger. He tries to mimic the effects of temporal lobe epilepsy by
passing magnetic fields through the brain. In about eighty percent of
subjects, when he passes magnetic fields through certain parts of the
brain, he can induce religious or mystical experiences. The details of the
religious experience depend upon how the person was brought up. So, if the
person was Catholic, they tend to see Virgin Marys or whatever it might be.
I turned out to be one of the twenty percent for whom it didn't work. If it
had worked for me, I probably wouldn't have seen any gods, but I probably
would have experienced some sort of mystical experience of Oneness with the
Universe.
TM: How universal is the belief in a supernatural God?
RD: It's universal in the sense that all human cultures that
anthropologists have looked at seem to have something corresponding to a
belief in some sort of God.
Sometimes it's many gods. Sometimes it's one. Sometimes it's an animistic
set of gods -- the God of the Waterfall, the God of the River, the God of
the Mountain, the Sun God. The details vary, but it does seem to be a human
universal, in the same sort of way as heterosexual lust is a human
universal, even though not all individual humans have it. Like sexual lust,
I suspect there's a kind of lust for God.
TM: How do you explain its prevalence?
RD: When you ask a Darwinian like me, how we explain something, we usually
take that to mean, "What is the Darwinian survival value of it?"
Quite often, when you ask what is the survival value of "X", it turns out
that you shouldn't be asking the question about "X" at all, but that "X" is
a by-product of something else that does have survival value. In this case,
the suggestion I put forward as only one of many possible suggestions, is
that religious faith is a by-product of the childhood tendency to believe
what your parents tell you.
It's a very good idea for children to believe what parents tell them. A
child who dis-believes what his parents tell him would probably die, by not
heeding the parent's advice not to get into the fire, for example. So child
brains, on this theory, are born with a rule of thumb, "believe what your
parents tell you." Now, the problem with that -- where the by-product idea
comes in -- is that it's not possible to design a brain that believes what
its parents tell it, without believing bad things along with good things.
Ideally we might like the child brain to filter good advice like, "Don't
jump in the fire," from bad advice like, "Worship the tribal gods." But the
child-brain has no way of discriminating those two kinds of advice. So,
inevitably, a child-brain that is pre-programmed to believe and obey what
his parents tell it, is automatically vulnerable to bad advice like,
"Worship the tribal juju."
I think that's one part of the answer, but then, you need another part of
the answer: Why do some kinds of bad advice, like, "Worship the tribal
juju," survive and others not?
Beliefs like "life-after- death" spread because they are appealing. A lot of
people don't like the idea of dying and rather do like the idea that
they'll survive their own death. So the meme, if you like, spreads like a
virus because people want to believe it.
TM: Though children may tend to believe what their parents tell them, you
state strongly that a child should not be called a Catholic child, a Muslim
child, or a Jewish child.
RD: Yes. I'm very, very keen on the idea that children should be not
labeled like that. We're back to consciousness raising. The feminists
raised our consciousness about use of language in all sorts of ways --
things like saying, "his or hers," instead of just "his". In the same way,
I think we need to raise consciousness about such labeling of children.
I'm not saying that parents shouldn't influence their children. That would
be hopelessly unrealistic. Parents influence their children in all sorts of
ways, but I think religion is more or less unique in being licensed to
confer a label on a child. You never talk about a "Republican child" or a
"Democratic child." You never make the assumption that because a professor
of post-modernist literature has a child, that therefore it will be a
post-modernist child. It would be ridiculous to do that, and yet if a
Christian or a Jew or a Muslim has a child, then the whole of society goes
along with the idea that you can label this child "a Jewish child," "a
Christian child," "A Muslim child." I think that is a form of child abuse.
I think it's a civil rights issue.
TM: Many suggest that you and other atheists, perhaps especially scientists
who are atheists, neglect phenomena that you cannot explain. For example,
the subjective experience of meaning or comfort of inspiration many claim
to receive from their belief or their relationship with God... If millions
experience such things, is this not evidence for the source to which they
attribute them? If not, can you clarify why it isn't?
RD: There's no question that people do get comfort and consolation from
religion. If a loved one has died, of course, it's comforting to feel that
they're still somewhere out there caring for you, and you're going to see
them again one day. But, what is comforting isn't necessarily true, and it
is sort of intellectual cowardice to say, "We should let people wallow in
their illusions, because it comforts them." I think it's rather patronizing.
TM: Do you think this is similar to when families or even doctors debate
whether to tell someone their cancer is terminal? Because, after all, life
is terminal...
RD: That's a really good parallel. There are people who would rather not be
told the truth by a doctor and I respect that, but that doesn't make it
true. That you want your doctor to tell you that you haven't got terminal
cancer, and your doctor obliges by lying to you, that's fine; but the fact
is he has lied to you. Similarly, you may be comforted by the thought that
there's a God looking after you, but if there isn't a God looking after
you, then I'm afraid there isn't one, and that's all there is to it.
I don't want to impose my beliefs on anybody else, but I do care about
what's true. If you want to know what I think is true, read my book. If
you'd rather not know what I think is true, don't read my book.
TM: Many criticize you on the grounds that science can't answer some of the
biggest questions or that science is unwilling or unable to offer those
meaningful things that we just talked about. Is it fair to respond to your
book or your arguments by pointing out insufficiencies of science?
RD: There are some questions that science not only can't answer, but
doesn't want to answer, things like, "What is right? And What is wrong?" or
"How shall we be comforted?" Science has nothing to say about "right" or
"wrong." Moral philosophy does. There's another whole category of questions
that science may not be able to answer -- the really deep questions of
existence, like, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" or "Where
did the laws of physics come from in the first place?" It's an open
question at the moment whether science will ever be able to answer
questions like that.
Physicists, in particular, are working on questions like, "Where do the
laws of physics come from?" But it's a fallacy to say that because science
can't answer such a question, therefore religion can. Much more realistic
to say, "Well, if science can't answer that deep question, nothing can."
TM: In America, we hear that we're more provincial and religious than so
many other people; that much of Europe, even the Roman Catholic countries
of Spain and Italy, for instance, are far more secular...
RD: I suspect that the grip that religion is alleged to have over America
has been exaggerated. If people who are not religious would only recognize
that they're not a beleaguered minority, but actually are exceedingly
numerous and potentially very powerful... If they would stand up and
recognize each other and organize, I suspect that they would soon give the
lie to this idea that America is a supremely religious country.
I think there's been a kind of hijacking of American political life by
religious interests, and I think it's rather sad the way so many have gone
along with that. You'll see even intelligent Democrats desperately currying
favor with the religious vote because they think it's so powerful. No
member of Congress will admit to being an atheist, although obviously some
of them are.
TM: In polls, people are least likely to vote for an atheist for
significant political office. They claim to be much more willing to vote,
for instance, for a homosexual or a Muslim...
RD: It's no wonder that politicians are scared.
TM: I don't think we can expect too many politicians to move first.
RD: People have to come out of the closet and write to their Congressmen
and Congresswomen and say, "Look, stop sucking up to the religious vote.
Suck up to us, for a change. Better still, don't suck up to anybody, but
speak your own convictions. "
TM: I once asked a member of the Achuar -- an Amazon rainforest tribe who
had its first contact with the modern world in the 1970s -- "How do you
feel about the missionaries? " I assumed he would say, "Oh, bad folks," but
he said, "They were the ones who stopped us from killing each other all the
time."
Although several of our Founding Fathers were more likely Deists than
conventional Christians, they believed that once you took away the monarchy
or the Papacy, that the people did need religion in order to behave as a
moral society. Do you agree that religion is a civilizing or moralizing force?
RD: There's something awfully patronizing and condescending about saying,
"Well, of course, we don't need religion, but the common people do." I hope
it's not as bad as that.
With regard to the missionaries being a civilizing influence on tribes
whose habit was to kill each other -- presumably, if their first contact
with Westerners had been with policemen, they would have said, "Until the
policemen came, we killed each other."
Through centuries of change, we have now reduced our natural tendency to
kill each other, but there have long been tribes where killing is the norm
and the way to achieve worldly success. In our society we talk about making
a killing on Wall Street. The equivalent in some tribes in the Amazon
jungle might be to literally go and kill sexual rivals, for example.
That changes when such tribes are brought into contact with Western
civilization. The fact that the people who go out of their way to bring
Western civilization to such tribes usually are missionaries doesn't mean
that religion fosters the "Thou salt not kill," point of view. "Thou shalt
not kill" is a general moral principle, which we all have now, whether or
not we're religious.
TM: Some people will claim that without religion we would not act morally;
we would lack ethics...
RD: That's an appalling thing to say, isn't it? It suggests that the only
reason we have morality -- the only reason we don't kill and rape and steal
-- is that we're afraid of being found out by God. We're afraid that God is
watching us, afraid of the great surveillance camera in the sky. Now,
that's not a very noble reason for being good.
As a matter of fact, there's not the slightest evidence that religious
people in a given society are any more moral than non-religious people. We
are, all of us in the modern world, far more reluctant to kill, reluctant
to discriminate against other people on grounds of sex. We no longer regard
slavery as a good thing. All these things are universally approved of among
educated people of goodwill in modern society, whether or not they are
religious. You can point to abolitionists who happened to be religious, and
you can point to other religious individuals who were in favor of slavery.
Modern morality is very different from the truly horrifying version of
morality in the Old Testament. If we went by the Bible, we'd still be
taking slaves. If we went by the Bible, we'd still be stoning people to
death for the crime of picking up sticks on the Sabbath. There are all
sorts of ways in which we've moved on, and nobody who claims to get their
morality from religion, could seriously maintain that they get it from
Scripture.
TM: You have a problem with moderate Christians, Jews, and Muslims, don't you?
RD: I take this largely from Sam Harris. In his two excellent books, Letter
to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith, he points out -- and I agree
with him -- that the majority of religious people are perfectly nice people
who don't do horrible things. Yet moderate religion makes the world safe
for extremist religion by teaching that religious faith is a virtue, and by
the immunity to criticism that religion enjoys. That immunity extends to
extremists like Osama Bin Laden and that dreadful man who goes around
saying, "God hates fags." I've forgotten his name...
TM: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the list goes on.
RD: The world is made safe for people like them and Osama Bin Laden because
we've all been brainwashed to respect religious faith and not to criticize
it with the same vigor we criticize political and other sorts of opinions
that we disagree with.
If you can say, "such and such a view is part of my religion," everybody
tiptoes away with great respect. "Oh, it's part of your religion," then of
course, you must go ahead. In a way, we've been asking for trouble by
moderate people persuading us to give to all religion a respect, which it
has never done anything to deserve.
TM: You quote physicist Steven Weinberg: "Religion is an insult to human
dignity. Without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. For good people to do evil things, it takes
religion."
You open the book marveling at the wonders of existence. You end it writing
about your personal experience of awe and transcendence. You also write
eloquently about this in a previous book, Unweaving the Rainbow.
RD: Unweaving the Rainbow, which I wrote in the late '90s, was my answer to
those people who say that science and, in particular, my world view in The
Selfish Gene was cold and bleak and loveless. Maybe I could read a few
words from the opening of Unweaving the Rainbow, which I've set aside and
asked to be read at my funeral.
"We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are
never going to die because they're never going to be born. The potential
people who could have been here in my place, but who will, in fact, never
see the light of day, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. ...In the face
of these stupefying odds, it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are
here. Here's another respect in which we are lucky. The universe is older
than a hundred million centuries. Within a comparable time, the sun will
swell to a red giant and engulf the earth. Every century of hundreds of
millions has been in its time, or will be when its time comes, the present
century. The present moves from the past to the future like a tiny
spotlight inching its way along a gigantic ruler of time. Everything behind
the spotlight is in darkness, the darkness of the dead past. Everything
ahead of the spotlight is in the darkness of the unknown future. The odds
of your century being the one in the spotlight are the same as the odds
that a penny, tossed down at random, will land on a particular ant crawling
somewhere on the road from New York to San Francisco. You are lucky to be
alive and so am I."
We are lucky to be alive and therefore we should value life. Life is
precious. We're never going to get another one. This is it. Don't waste it.
Open your eyes. Open your ears. Treasure the experiences that you have and
don't waste your time fussing about a non-existent future life after you're
dead. Try to do as much good as you can now to others. Try to live life as
richly as possible during the time that you have left available to you.
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Tagged as: richard dawkins, god, atheism, religion, fundamentalism
Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles
(streaming at kpfk.org).
http://www.alternet .org/stories/ 46566/