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?
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?
posted by mamie @ 2:44 PM
4 Comments:
At 9:44 PM,
canary said…
" ...it teaches us that is is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding." This seems to be a common "memory" or "belief" people have of the religion of their past (or their present) but this characterization has always puzzled me as it was not at all my experience. I recognise perhaps that I was very fortunate to have a father -also a minister- who was constantly challenging, asking questions and searching himself and who expected the same of us. And I guess also I was fortunate to be under the religious tutelage of Anglican nuns who never intimated that God's word was to be literally understood or that hell was anything but of our own making, a distancing from God.
Yes, we can never fully understand, just as we can never fully understand the cosmos. Who would think that this means one should not try and should not search for more understanding than one has now? I never understood this attitude and so I would have trouble with the statement quoted.
Science and the search for truth are friends of true religion (but not necessarily the church). Those who avoid seeking truth are in the thrall of Screwtape. As he advised Wormwood:
"Above all do not attempt to use science (I mean the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science,Keep him on economics and sociology; don't let him get away from that "real life"..."
At 11:37 AM,
mamie said…
Canary,
Thank you for your most thoughtful comment. Perhaps I am remiss in stating that I agree with Dawkins' rather broad generalization. He, and I, should qualify the statement by noting that there are individual exceptions, and that not every person 's religious upbringing, even in the past, would have been of the unquestioning sort. You were lucky! I just got "it's a mystery" and "we just have to have faith" - that sort of thing. In my adult understanding, I've come to the conclusion that that is indeed the case, of course, and I quite agree with you that there is much we will never understand ("now we see through a glass darkly" and all that).
At 11:37 AM,
mamie said…
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At 11:38 AM,
mamie said…
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