Richard Dawkins (again) and folk religion
Tony B and Martin have been raising good points in the comments on this post. One of the things they have said is an idea I've heard in various other places. The idea goes something like this: it isn't valid to dismiss Dawkin's critique of Christianity as a "straw man", because lots of people do believe in the kind of God Dawkins describes. The idea runs that it's no good Terry Eageleton or Steve Tomkins or anyone else saying "but that's not real Christianity" because some people do believe in the straw man. The conclusion that some people draw is that the straw man Dawkins describes must actually be "real" christianity, and the over-intellectual, philosophical approach that some of us adopt doesn't count because it's not the most widespread view of Christianity. If we are in a minority, we are not talking about "real" Christianity.
I have two reasons for not agreeing with that point of view. One is that I don't actually think that a carefuly thought out faith is quite as minority a position as many would like to suggest. Even in the small segment of the world I inhabit I have met hundreds and hundreds of people who process their faith at a very thoughtful level - I'm not talking about professional theologians or priests or anyone else who has done theology at college level, but ordinary Christians who have jobs and expertise in other fields. They read, they think, and they live thoughtfully with their doubts and their faith.
My other reason is that you can apply the same criticism to science, or any other field of knowledge. Large numbers of the population see the white, billowing "smokey stuff" that sits in the air when you boil a kettle, and they call it "steam". Actually, it isn't steam at all. But that doesn't stop thousands of people believing that it's steam and continuing to call it steam. Is the fact that most of the population has a very inaccurate grasp of science a good reason for suggesting that carefully thought out science is not "real" science? Should we say that "real" science is actually what the majority think, and not what experts tell us? Should we stop believing in the credibility of science because lots of people have an inaccurate view of science? Should we insist that no-one should pursues science at all, because lots of people believe things that aren't true? I don't think so. I think we should go right on doing science.
Theology, like science, is sometimes obscured by layers of folk ideas. That doesn't mean there isn't anything worth knowing, and it certainly shouldn't stop anyone pursuing it at a more rigorous level if they want to.
Gaahhh!! Nooo!!! I can see why you thought I meant that, having re-read my comment, but I didn't actually mean that! (your analysis is of course absolutely correct, but, dare I say it, you are attacking a straw man!).
What I was trying to say was, not that the folk religion was the 'real' Christianity, but that it's almost impossible for the outsider to judge what the 'real' Christianity is. I grew up, as a Roman Catholic, with a certain understanding of Christianity that bore a great resemblance to the version described by Prof. Dawkins. (Now maybe I was just a kid, maybe I misunderstood, whatever). The point is that until recently I thought 'that was it'. (and in the intervening 25 years I had been an atheist on the strength of my understanding of Christianity). So now I've learned that it's not the end of the story and there's something else. Thanks in no small way to my chance encounter with your blog, Maggi.
But I'm sure there are plenty of Christians who would say that your "over-intellectual, philosophical approach" wasn't really Christianity; and who am I to judge? At the end of the day I'd take your version. But why? Because the other stuff is "just dumb". So does that mean there is no 'Christianity', but many 'Christianities', to pick and choose from according to personal taste? Or is 'real' Christianity to be found on the cutting edge of modern theology? I don't know the answer to that.
Posted by: Tony B | 18/12/2006 at 11:16
..and as a postscript to that last..yes I have known for some time that there is something worth knowing. But work, four children, and other passions tend to get in the way of my knowing it. Not to mention a staunchly atheist wife. So my appetite has been whetted, and my spiritual side has been awakened, not that it was ever asleep, it was just pursuing various other ideas. So how do I 'pursue it at a more rigorous level'?
Posted by: Tony B | 18/12/2006 at 11:32
Thanks for that, Maggi.
pax et bonum
Posted by: John | 18/12/2006 at 14:37
hi back, tony. OK, that makes more sense, then. I sympathise totally with the too-busy to think about it thing. One son and a full-time job leaves me pretty flattened most of the time, But you can still find 15 minutes a day to read, can't you? You don't have to do a degree in this, just read a bit. And make sure you include in your conversation partners some people who take a sympathetic view as well as some who don't agree.
Posted by: maggi | 18/12/2006 at 14:44
As I see it, it is completely fair to judge Dawkins negatively over his straw men, because Dawkins is making sweeping, universal claims about religion, and then drawing conclusions based on those claims. If he is going to make generalizations about faith, then it is completely fair to point out that his claims ignore segments of religion that don't conform to his stereotype. It is irrelevant whether or not the beliefs he ignores are in a minority or not; what matters is that his universal claims about religion are repudiated by the existence of forms of belief that he patently ignores.
Posted by: Mystical Seeker | 18/12/2006 at 17:38
...if it isn't steam, what is it then, or have I been labouring under a heresy all this time?
Posted by: Fr. S | 18/12/2006 at 19:07
steam is vapourised water and it is a gas and is invisible to the naked eye. The white misty stuff is the steam condensing back into tiny droplets of water, hence not gas and therefore technically not steam any more. If you watch carefully when your kettle boils, there is an inch or so of steam (invisible) above which you see the white mist (_=condensing back into water).
That's this theologian's description - any scientists out there want to improve on that?
Posted by: maggi | 18/12/2006 at 19:50
Ok, don't have a go at me :-)
Read what, that is the question..
Posted by: Tony B | 18/12/2006 at 22:34
Ok, I had to go look up "steam" in wikipedia to get the full explanation. That raises an interesting point in itself--even well-educated scientists don't keep track of all of the details most of the time, we only maintain a curiosity for things we don't know and, in the best cases, some humility with which to approach them. But like anything else, it takes some discernment to figure out what you ought to spend your time trying to learn, whether the subject is theology, web technology, or thermodynamics.
Posted by: Peter Schweitzer | 19/12/2006 at 04:11
Fr.S steam is clear so you can't see it but as soon as it hits colder air it condenses and what you see is water vapour - basically a small hot cloud over your kettle.
Personally I don't believe in the existence of Richard Dawkins; the idea of an Oxford Fellow who writes books without studying the subject doesn't fit reality as I know it.
Posted by: Hugh A | 19/12/2006 at 14:51
Serious question - what punishment does the Anglican Church think Jesus has in store for those who reject him?
Posted by: Tony B | 20/12/2006 at 10:32
The real danger is making total claims which then effectively deny the validity or worth of other claims to truth. Christianity based on a reasonable reading of the N.T. writings allows for plurality of opinion, if only because the writers are so certain they are speaking that which is true.
Dawkins merely substitutes is own belief that Science is the real benfactor of Mankind for the Christian view that humble submission to God's commandment that 'we love one another or die' (to borrow of Auden) is. That he does so suggests that he's entirely comfortable in his Oxford enclave and rejects the evil which Science has brought, let's ignore the Nukes for a minute and just consider Edison's bloody light bulb, to some a blessing but to those who labour throughout the night on sewing machines,. power presses etc, etc, nothing but a curse and so is all techology whatever blessings it brings the tail has the curse, the refinement of control, the burden then of increasing living costs, the reality of an entire people slaving for nothing, not for family it can't survive the expediencies of labour demands, not for love it can't compete with the gnawing need for instant gratification sustained daily through that delight called television. No what Dawkins offers is a hell all to similar to that which Catholicism once brought a population doomed to toil and despair why the high Priests enjoyed all the fruits of their pimpery.
Posted by: phillip | 24/12/2006 at 11:50
again, the question is not if science or its application are moral (science is value-neutral, its application is as good or bad as its applicator) - it's if rational enquiry is a more sensible way to establishing truth than faith. Two very different questions but two that theists for some reason often struggle to differentiate.
(But in passing, I can't resist repeating a favourite observation: without religion, good people would do good things and bad people would do bad things. But to get good people to do bad things- you need religion)
And just in case someone comes back with "non-overlapping magisteria" or similar then plse don't also try to claim any effect of or on god with anything in the rest of the universe (including your mind).
Posted by: Martin | 25/12/2006 at 18:16
I've discovered this thread by accident but it has struck a nerve after a Christmas arguing with my (atheist) family about why I don't go along with Dawkins' The God Delusion... (my uncle bought it for my parents as a present)
From my point of view it is quite clear that there are different aspects of reality we know differently... I know that if I turn a lock in a key or boil a kettle (!) the door opens or I get some hot water for my cup of tea... but when it comes to aspects of reality that are unseen - the love I feel for (some!) people in my life, the way I really like some of the songs by Outkast, then there is no scientific explanation or even observable phenomena... well ok, you could scan my brain or monitor my behaviour - but the point is that all of the scientific info would be somehow incomplete descriptions of what is really happening. this is reality as i know it from the inside. and we all know this reality exists, if only from our own inside. Of course you don't need God to understand/ think about/ explain this aspect of our reality (I should know - I'm a psychologist it would seem) but it is this aspect of reality that is, for me, the most important part of my faith (and at some level the most real and important part of my experience)
My second point about Dawkins is a noticing of the very position that he takes up when engaging in debate. From his scientific world view he seems to take the position that it is possible to know who is right - and then he tells us that it's him. From a (ok - my) world view that has space for the "unscientific" or "the realities we cannot see" to use a term from the Taize community (examples: love, music preferences, the taste of a really good meal, an attitude of pacificism or of homophobia) the important question is not "who is right?" but "how do we live with our differences?"
It seems that people from all different world views (religious or atheist) position themselves in the "there is truth and I'll tell you what it is" category... and of course I am concerned with truth and with truth about God, but for me there is a danger in missing the importance of the question "how do we live with our differences?" and this is a question I think Christian faith says a lot about... which can be paraphrased as love your neighbour - yes - even when it's really difficult and you disagree... and yes - even when you disagree about really important stuff like truth.
Of course there are humanists, muslims, buddhists and people of all different beliefs or perspectives who would share and have wisdom to offer on how we live together with our differences, but Dawkins does not seem concerned with this and I think it's this that I find most difficult.
Posted by: Robyn Vesey | 02/01/2007 at 22:25
to quote the song: what's love got to do with it? yes it is very possible to explain love through evolution and brain science. It still feels wonderful!
The fundemental question is do we need to posit anything supernatural(including god)to explain the world including feelings of love. Rationality doesnt do away with love or wonder or fear or .... For me (& I claim to speak for no other) the assumption (in the absence of other evidence) there isnt a god enhances the sense of being alive and all - good & bad - that entails.
Posted by: martin | 02/01/2007 at 23:13
martin, from where I'm looking, it seems like this discussion quickly goes along the lines of what is sometimes called a "god-of-the-gaps" theology - that is to say, you only need God to explain things that you can't explain any other way. ONce how have enough science, enough technology, enough psychollogy etc., to explain everything another way, you don't "need" GOd \any monre and can dispense with al that superstition. THomas Aquinas argued against this, and plenty of others have since, pointing out that the purpose of studying "God" is not to cover the bits we don't yet know about, but to study everything that there is through another set of lenses. Theology is the study of everything, in the light of GOd. If you earnestly believe that GOd is not there and you like it that way, I can see that theology wouldn't interest you. But scientific discovery, for a Christian theologian, is never going to be threatening, only exciting, because it enhances our understanding of the world, and of the GOd we worship. And I, at least, dont worship God because I "need" him. I could do fine without religion, earn a living, enjoy life, love my son, do my thing. It's just that I do actually believe in God. Not the life-limiting, mind-numbing GOd that Dawkins doesn't believe in, mind you - I agree with Dawkins that that version of God is long since redundant. But a life-stretching, love-affirming, world expanding GOd? YEs, please.
Posted by: maggi | 03/01/2007 at 08:53
Hi Maggi,
Yes, ok, Dawkins is both right and wrong. Also, he is boring. So that's got that out of the way. But what he says is relevant to an awful lot of what passes for Christian belief and action. Let's agree that that's just the bad stuff, and that there is good stuff that's worth engaging with. But I have to say that the good stuff is hard to find. For every blog like yours or Simon Barrows, it's possible to find sites like "Answers In Genesis" and many others, telling us about a Christianity that is fundamentally(!) different from yours. Or a church like the (Anglican) one I considered attending at Christmas, until I read its statement of beliefs, which told me and anyone else who wanted to read it that Jesus would come again 'to punish those who have rejected him'. Such stuff makes me want to run a mile.
So is it up to the individual to work out what works for him or herself, and ignore the rest? To what extent can you ignore what you don't like? It's baffling.
But anyway, I have begun a dialog with the local vicar who has told me helpfully that since C of E services are public acts of worship, anyone can join in, whether believer or not. And he and his curate are running sessions for the curious outsider in the village pub. So hopefully he can clarify some of my approximately 8 zillion questions.
Posted by: Tony B | 03/01/2007 at 11:41
Hey, I’m really liking this conversation
I just about manage to call myself Christian… (although things like “Jesus will punish those who reject him” make ME want to run a mile – not least because it includes nearly everyone close to me – and most probably also me as well!) …I very much identify with those asking questions of faith and doubting a lot of what is said and I find it really helpful to hear from people with an atheist position. Where I first went to church the vicar said (from the pulpit) “I feel I have more in common than non-Christians than Christians” – needless to say I thought this was quite a cool place being atheist at the time – and then I found out about all those really quite odd beliefs that Christians are thought to/supposed to hold…
For what it’s worth I would really recommend the Taize website (www.taize.fr) – they have an authority to their theology which they live out and if you ever get to go to the community (the brothers live in Burgandy, France, and welcome everyone and anyone – originally Br Roger originally offered hospitality to Jews fleeing Nazi occupied France) then you can’t help but feel something mysterious and beautiful about the free and fun conversations between young people from all over the world.
In a Margaret Atwood book a character says “we need God for heaven, hell we can make for ourselves” and for me my faith is, at one level about needing God… however much I HATE to admit that I need ANYBODY! I agree with Maggi – we don’t need God to explain things – but maybe I need God to live a good life. I liked the quote from Martin that you need religion for good people to do bad things (that is definitely me!) but then I’m not sure that there is anyone who doesn’t do at least a couple of slightly bad things… and for me there is something (weirdly) helpful about having a place I can go where I can be wrong, I can be messed up, I can say – I’m actually kinda sorry about doing or saying that – helpful because it keeps me humble and means I can keep trying to be good. And I can be assured that God never wants anything bad for me, only to encourage me, in spite of what I get wrong.
You must have heard that quote from Douglas Coupland in Life After God: “my secret is that I need God – that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love”… (by the way the other characters aren’t so keen on God)… now if I know my Tina Turner “what’s love got to do with it” includes the line “who needs a heart when a heart can be broken” and I have a real experience of faith helping me to take the risks of loving and trusting others when all I want to do is feel safe and sterile – but that’s not living! It says somewhere in the Bible that Jesus said “I came that they might have life, and life in all it’s fullness” and that is about risking everything to be in good relationship with others – not a life in which we fear punishment or retribution and just do “good” to somehow keep ourselves safe (...out of hell??!). In Taize they say “God never wants us to suffer”…
I think I must be one of those “minority” Christians… but who’s counting…
(PS sorry it's so long - stick with me!)
Posted by: Robyn Vesey | 04/01/2007 at 20:03
Robyn, the long posts are usually the ones worth reading :-)
Actually as far as atheism goes it seems that there are some Christians who aren't that far from me, in terms of thought and belief. Whether there is some line of demarcation between us I don't know. It's hard to spot where it might be. I guess I am now "open" to God and to Christianity and find it helpful. But still doubting.
Posted by: Tony B | 04/01/2007 at 20:59
How great - to be "open" to God - as well as having all those doubts - I think this is as far as any of us gets ...and "ignoring what you don't like" works for me ;-) uh, I mean being challenged and discerning what it is that makes some kind of sense to me and my experience works for me...
Posted by: Robyn Vesey | 05/01/2007 at 19:11
Hi Maggi. Ok, so neither of us go for a god of the gaps (although many others I think come close : if not now through asking what created the world, then why do we have morals or why does the universe have the properties in which life could evolve or how to explain love or even how to explain a belief in god and so on. ) I actually tried to discover on another thread what we disagree about!
You suggested that "Theology is the study of everything, in the light of God". Fair enough but this presupposes a god doesnt it?
The bottom-line is surely the truth or not of the existence of god and a god beyond what dawkins describes as the 'einsteinian sense of god' but rather god as understood by christianity
Is it possible to get beyond me saying "I dont think there is a god" and you stating that you believe there is? [Acknowledging that you like most christians are open about doubts and I basing my self description as an atheist not on an absolute certainty that there is no god but rather on an absence of reasons to believe in one and applying occam's razor]
Lurking in the background is what we mean by "existence" of course... Would you even accept "does god exist?" as a valid question or does this betray my misunderstanding of what you mean by 'god'?
If we got beyond that we could then discuss how a universe (including our minds) with a god would be different (would it be? in what way?) from one without and how we might then (hypothetically at least) test for the differences.
We could also avoid any correspondence-type truth theory. Do you think atheistic models are not coherent? In what way? If not (& for the time being I'm happy to assume models including god dont lead to contradictions although that's another line of argument...). I assume we'd then move on to apply principles like occam's razor (would this be acceptable even if we disagreed with the result?) Could we also agree on tests of something like 'explanatory power'?
The lines of debate I wouldnt accept here are those about if a belief in god makes the world a better place or helps us as individuals to be happy and fulfilled or to do good. Interesting debates but tangential to what I'm trying to get at.
This is a process question about how theoretically we could move the conversation further. I'm not asking that we go through all the steps (although it might be fun I'm not sure either of us has the time!)
Of course, none of this might be suitable to your epistemology so how would you go about bringing lost souls like me to god ;-)
Posted by: Martin | 08/01/2007 at 22:29