Roundup: Some Final Thoughts on Dawkins

This has been a provocative book and it's been an interesting exercise to think about it and write on it during the reading. Surprisingly, there is much that I agree with in The God Delusion.

For starters, I think there is a lot of truth in such statements as "one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding." As a former student of theology (a discipline much-maligned by Dawkins) at a college whose motto is "faith seeking undrstanding," I've been exploring, reading, studying, thinking about, and yes, even questioning my beliefs for many years.

Another area where I think Dawkins makes some good points is on the religious indocrination of children. It's certainly true that many lives have been ruined because of childhood threats and descriptions of a literal "hell" and that people have lived their lives in fear of what might happen if they didn't follow this or that religious rule or practice. And yet, I have no problem with parents bringing their children up in a particular faith provided it is introduced and presented in a loving manner. As at least one religious educator has said, unless you have been taught some basics as a child what can you later re-evaluate, possibly reject, or perhaps embrace with an adult understanding?

I agree with Dawkins on most of what he says about fundamentalist religion - whether Islamic, Catholic, Southern Baptist or whatever. However, I don't agree with him that all religion needs to be jettisoned. I don't think Dawkins gives enough weight to mystical experiences (it's not enough to just say such experience is hallucinatory!), nor do I think he properly looks at the importance of myth and symbol to what it is that religion is all about. Neither does he look at the Eastern religions at all.

Dawkins says "feelings and truth" are not the same thing. But, I might add, "facts and truth" are not the same thing either! In his final chapter, he almost "undoes" his whole book when he talks about the queerness of quantum physics with it's speculation about parallel universes and so on and about how little we as humans actually know for sure. Why embrace atheism when you just could turn out to be wrong?

Who Designed the Designer?

Dawkins' chapter "Why there almost certainly is no God" is an interesting one, especially from a scientific perspective for it deals with the exciting and awe-inspiring story of the improbability of our being here at all. Dawkins comes alive in this chapter and shows us that he not only knows his science from a Darwinian biologist's point of view, but he is clearly in love with his subject and communicates not only his expertise, but his fascination and excitement.

Darwin's theory of natural selection is the elegant and plausible answer to explain how we evolved very, very gradually from the simplest life forms to the myriad plants and animals now on earth. It is such an amazing "happening" that life ocurred at all: conditions had to be absolutely right, we had to be on a "friendly" planet out of billions, and however improbable it may seem - something happened once to "start" life: pure luck, chance, "something" got us started. Dawkins avers that at this point we can't explain that, but there is no reason to think it was God, in the sense of a supernatural being who "designed" and "created" everything.

We are constantly in awe at the beauty and perfection in living things, let's say a butterfly's wing or a human eye, or some other incredible adaptation. It is easy to see that many religious people and theologians of an earlier age posited the belief that such perfection could only have come from "the great Designer," God. But, according to Dawkins, it's not probable that this was so for two main reasons: one, we are still left with the question "who designed the designer?" and two, the "person" or "being" who could do all that designing must have been extremenly complex and thus statistically improbable. I would have to agree that thinking there is a being who is "out there" somewhere, "capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe," cannot be simple, and is highly unlikely.

So, I guess I would have to agree with Dawkins that this conception of God does not make sense. (Of course, many would say, "why does it have to make sense?"). My only questions at this point are but what if God is not in any way a being? not a "he, she or it"? What if God is more of a quality? What if God is that elegant law of physics yet to be discovered? What if God is not "out there" at all but in everything that is? What if God is not a being, but being, or the ground of all being? What if God is that which calls us on to possibility, to change, to growth? What if God is a concept, a metaphor for our deepest spiritual longings?

In any case, even if the concept of God as "designer of the universe" is improbable, I'm not about to give up my love of such poems as "God's Grandeur"!

"The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out like shining from shook foil"
- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Believer or Atheist:: A Range of Possibility

Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion places human judgement about the existence of God on a 7-point scale ranging from #1 - strong theist (100% sure of God's existence) to #7 - strong atheist (100% sure that God does not exist), with #4 - impartial agnostic (exactly 50%). For the "strong theist he posits the words of C.G. Jung: "I don't believe, I know."

Where do I place myself? Oh, I'm happy to place myself in the strong theist category along with C.G. Jung (or, if not quite as strong, close to it!). I've read that line of Jung's before and it resonated with me. Jung also had an inscription placed over his doorway in Latin that translated to "Bidden or unbidden, God is present." But, and I think it's a very important "but," Jung had a very broad understanding of God and religious belief, and his work on dreams, on myth and symbol (which I think is the only way of getting at religious truth) is tremendously important. Jung believed in the "collective unconscious" as the source of archetypal symbolic figures such as the anima, the shadow and the hero and so on that are found in the psyche. He was curious and very much interested in scientific exploration.

Dawkins dismisses Jung as a crackpot I imagine! (If I remember correctly he says Jung had books on his shelf that exploded with a loud bang.) But what of Joseph Campbell? I looked in vain in Dawkins' book for mention of Joseph Campbell, whose work is synonymous with the study of myth in religion. Dawkins is quick to ridicule such Christian "beliefs" as the virgin birth, but Campbell explains that "the mythic image of the virgin birth refers to the birth of the spiritual life in the human animal" (An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms).

I don't think it's enough to just say the core beliefs of Christians are mad, ridiculous, insane and so on! That the New Testament is factually dubious, that the virgin birth is a legend, that the Old Testament is definitely not history, that there was no literal creation 'in seven days' and so on: there are many religious Christians who would agree on these points. But on many points of belief or doctrine one has to look at the historical development and the meaning behind the statements.

I cannot think of the author's name right now, but in The Gifts of the Jews we are led to appreciate the evolution of belief in one God from the gods who dwelt in rocks and in specific places to God who walks with mankind (Abraham). You would think that Dawkins, being such a firm Darwinian scientist could see some of the evolution of ideas without being so one-sided! Oh, sure, the Old Testament God is sometimes a petty, unjust, racist, bloodthirsty tyrant, but he is also the One who leads the Israelites out of bondage, who never gives up on them, who is healer and consoler and shepherd. Actually, now that I think of it, one could probably say that the whole history of religion is a great evolutionary epic!

Just as I Suspected

Continuing on with Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion I took a little look at some book reviews, interviews and other commentary. Apparently, not only Dawkins, but also Sam Harris and E.O.Wilson have recently published works that some consider 'the new atheism,' a more argumentative, no-holds-barred stance that seeks actively to discredit or hold up to ridicule religion in general, not only belief in a particular concept of God. Some call this group 'evangelizing non-believers' - how is that for irony? Just as I suspected, there would be book reviews as in this one by Robert Lee Holtz of the LA Times and interesting interviews as this one by Gary Wolf
that I have printed out to read.

Dawkins Limits His Arguments

Getting into the first couple of chapters of The God Delusion the first thing we find out is that Dawkins does not like to see the word "God" used too broadly. He limits "God" to "supernatural creator." One of my favourite books God in All Worlds, Lucinda Vardy, ed., contains passages from many culturally diverse thinkers and, in these passages, God is understood in countless different ways, "supernatural creator," being one of many.

Secondly, he limits his definition of a religious person by excluding those like Einstein and other scientists who espouse a kind of pantheistic reverence towards the complexity of the universe and awe at the mystery. Dawkins calls these people religious non-believers, but did they call themselves atheists? Rudolph Otto in The Idea of the Holy explains that the religious impulse begins with the sense of wonder, the mysterium tremendum, and myth and ritual begin as responses to the experience in all cultures. Dawkins says the main reason people belong to any religion is simply because their parents did and they were taught to believe as children. I daresay that is so for most believers today, but that doesn't address "why religion?" in the first place. Someone remarked that if there is no God we would have had to invent one. I suppose Dawkins doesn't count as "religion" the spiritual beliefs of aboriginal peoples? How does Gitchi Manitou arise in one culture and Yahweh in another and so on? Karen Armstrong in A History of God begins in a different way: she says human beings have always looked for a system that gives meaning and value to life and most cultures have sensed something beyond ourselves, commonly known as the divine or the sacred. Thus, the idea of God is what exists, a word that attempts to describe what is beyond words, beyond thought, not definable. Armstrong notes "people dubbed atheists deny a particular conception fo the divine." The particular conception, the "delusion" according to Dawkins is that "there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us."

Dawkins tells us that he is attacking everything supernatural, from fairies at the bottom of the garden to God. There is nothing that is not purely physical in the universe, and that cannot be explained naturally (given, of course, that there is much that hasn't been explained yet). I am looking forward to reading this book from a science perspective but I also recognize myth, symbol, metaphor, creative imagination, the non-rational (not irrational), art, aesthetics and so on as other ways of knowing.

Am I Deluded?

OK, I'm going to read Richard Dawkins The God Delusion, currently the number one selling book in Canada. Richard Dawkins is an atheist and he expressly states "if this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down." Well. That sounds like a challenge. As I read the book I will be posting comments: on what points will I agree with Dawkins? on what points will I disagree? can he convince me to be an atheist?

Let's start with the introduction. He begins with the line, "I didn't know I could," meaning many people think they have no choice in the matter. They simply have never realized that they do not have to go on believing what their parents did or what they were taught. Well, I have long ago given up that sophomoric idea: I know I could give up on religion tomorrow, I could choose to be an atheist. But the question is do I want to?

Dawkins mentions the John Lennon song Imagine. That's a song I love and yes, Lennon does sing "imagine a world without religion too" - and of course, we all agree that we could do without the crusades, the wars, the hatred, the witchhunts and all the various atrocities committed in the name of religion. But I think Dawkins misses the irony here for we can find as many true and good and beautiful things done in the name of religion, and dichotomy is everywhere. I'm not sure we can see everything in an either/or way.

Next Dawkins points out that "the magnificence of the real world ... can fill the real role that religion ... has usurped." I sort of see his point here, but again I don't think it must be either/or. Why not "both/and"? I love the real world. I am as much in awe over Carl Sagan's "pale blue dot" as the next person! It gives me goosebumps to think that on this little speck of the universe everything that's ever happened and everything that's ever going to happen to us takes place - all of what makes us human, all of what makes us, "us." And since energy is never lost, only changed or transformed, even the physical matter of of our being is here somewhere. I love Annie Dillard's comment that the dead are here on planet earth and there are more of them than us living ones. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh understands this and tells us constantly to be mindful - we are the clouds and the ocean and the minerals and the forest. It's all connected and all one. Oh dear, I fear these are just very spiritual (religious) thoughts: surely Dawkins can not be against this kind of religious thinking?

The Windigo Spirit

The strange native spirit windigo figures prominently in Three Day Road. What is it? An excellent site The Windigo tells us that it can be many things and take many forms from being a supernatural demon to the spirit of cannabalism to a personality disorder. Seeing the windigo or being overtaken by the windigo is often associated with loneliness, with winter, with hunger. In the book the windigo spirit is certainly associated with evil, with human beings overtaken with madness. Applying this to the broader context of humanity we can see that the windigo spirit is present in the world in countless ways: serial murders; power and domination over others; mindless killing; savage acts. Someone once remarked "man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

And yet, just as native lore talks of the windigo, the savage beastly presence, it speaks of its antedote - the circle of life. It's interesting and very, very sad that Xavier and Elijah travel a road that leads from innocence, goodness, and life to a world of brokeness, the killing fields of France. It is truly "no-man's land" and it's made more poignant by the native boys having little understanding of why they are there fighting this white man's war. Young and spirited, good hunters and trappers in their forest home, they are eager to use those skills. and use them they do, becoming snipers of the highest calibre. There is heroism here, to be sure, but also craziness. Xavier retains a lot of himself in the process, but the windigo spirit overtakes Elijah as he disintegrates more and more into a killing machine, glorifying in his exploits and taking pleasure in the carnage.

In the end, only Xavier returns, a mere shell of a man. We are left wondering whether Niska the medicine woman's power will be enough to overcome the evil that has been done to him and through him, or whether this is his "three day road." Being an optimist, I opt for the healer, and the author suggests that ending with images of two young boys playing by the great bay, perhaps Xavier's sons.

A Tale of "Hell and Healing"

The book I'm now reading for my next book club meeting is Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road. A comment on the cover by Louise Erdich calls it "a masterful account of hell and healing." It is indeed that. Against the backdrop of the First World War (the hell), the gradually unfolding story of two young Cree boys and Niska (the healer) evolves.

The story opens after the war with Niska meeting one of the boys, her nephew Xavier Bird, at a railway station somewhere in Northern Ontario and heading with him by canoe into the bush. Xavier is largely incoherent and on morphine and has returned with only one leg. We don't know what has happened to his friend Elijah Whiskeyjack. But gradually the two, Niska and Xavier, tell the story, alternating voices as if in oral storytelling, although perhaps the voices are simply the voices of memory speaking to us. Xavier and Niska, back and forth, telling episodes of the war, episodes from childhood, stories of hunting and trapping in the bush, stories of the residential school at Moose Factory, and very gradually, the story of what happened to Elijah. There is a measured cadence to the story which takes place over a three day canoe trip - a trip that may well be Xavier's "three day road, " in native spirituality, a metaphor for that final journey, death.

The book was nominated and shortlisted for a number of awards, both Canadian and International, but it is not an easy book to read as the author holds nothing back in his descriptions of the war. There is page after page of brutal, horrifying and graphic detail. But like no other book on the First World War that I have read has the reality of the experience affected me so strongly. It is stunningly, yet bluntly told, as are the scenes of what it was like for aboriginal people to live through a winter of near starvation, when the windigo was known to come and when another kind of killing had to take place. "Sometimes one must be sacrificed if all are to survive," Niska tells Xavier.

I find "the three day road" to be a haunting spiritual image for the final journey. There is much about the number "three" that is connected with myth and magic, spirituality and religion in all cultures, so we can make connections between what the story reveals of native lore and the Judeo-Christian tradition. I kind of wonder if the nuns and priests who went to bring Christianity to the Indians even tried to see those connections. I am sure the good ones did, but it depresses me to think of the repression and downright cruelty that was done to native people by some sadistic individuals in the name of religion.