The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. Black Swan, 2007.

Like Clive Bradley in his review on the Workers’ Liberty website, I’m very glad that a book as combatively atheist as this has become a best-seller.

And it’s not a bad book. But I regret that the “opening” for a best-seller advocating atheism was not taken by a better book, and I think Dawkins himself could have done better.

The way it compares with Dawkins’ earlier books reminds me of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s comment on the contrast between Bertrand Russell’s later, more popular, writings (many of them, as Ray Monk’s biography of Russell shows, churned out to raise money, and with little regard for consistency and coherence) and his earlier work. “Russell isn’t going to kill himself doing philosophy now”, said Wittgenstein, with a sad smile.

Dawkins’ earlier books, like The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, are taut, closely-argued, conscious attempts to subvert common sense. You feel that the author stretched and challenged (if not quite killed) himself in order to construct the argument. That The Selfish Gene brought great hostility on Dawkins from many left-wingers (wrongly, I think) is in itself testimony to its ability to champion assumptions.

The God Delusion is much more knockabout, much more slackly written.

I do not at all object to the vehemence of the style. But it is not like the vigour you get, for example, in 19th century writers taking on a Church which smothered much of social life. Take Charles Bradlaugh for example, or Samuel Butler’s splendid, sharp though quiet, debunking of the New Testament in chapters 59 and following of The Way Of All Flesh.

Dawkins’ manner is more that of the knowing wink to his co-thinkers: “Well, as intelligent people, you and I can see that all this is rubbish, can’t we?”

He is good on the argument that God must exist because there must be some prior cause, something “before” the material world. He points out that if you accept this argument, then you must equally be driven to the conclusion that there was something or someone “before” God, a “cause” for God.

He comments that it is no reason beyond convention to find the idea of one God somehow less irrational than that of the sky, the sun, rocks, trees, etc. all containing their own diverse indwelling spirits or Gods. In fact, if you think about it, supposedly “primitive” many-spirits religion is far more reasonable than the ludicrous farrago believed by many people under the name Christianity.

However, he is wrong, I think, to equate the idea of religion too tightly with the idea of God. Doing so, he comments somewhere that he does not really consider Buddhism (in which there is no God, as such) to be a religion. But why let the Buddhists off the hook?

Logically, there is not much connection between religion and the idea of God. You can believe, if you like, that there was some being (“God”) which existed before the Big Bang and was in some way responsible for the creation and design of the universe.

Nothing “religious” – no idea that this “God” is concerned about your sex life, your diet, your haircut, your clothes, your attendance and behaviour at temples of one sort or another, and will punish you for faults in those respects – logically follows. On the face of it, it is no more likely this creator-“God” will take any interest in those things than that the sky, or the force of gravity, or electrons, will take such an interest.

Equally, if you say that you feel “God” inside you, giving you instructions about your sex life, diet, and so on, that amounts to no more than plain ordinary “hearing voices”, unless you can claim that these “instructions” are more than your individual hallucination.

What is religion? It is the belief that a defined book (Bible, Koran, etc.) and/or a defined hierarchy of officials (popes, dalai lamas, ayatollahs) have authority above and beyond any capacity of human reason or logic to instruct you about your sex life, your diet, your haircut, your clothes, your attendance and behaviour at temples of one sort or another; and to warn you credibly that, either in life or in some hypothetical existence beyond death, you will be punished terribly for getting those things wrong (eternal damnation, unfavourable reincarnation, etc.)

“God” is simply the prop that the officials may or may not use to bolster their claims. Emotionally, it is easy to see why it is tied with religion. Logically, the link is very loose.

Time for a book on “the religion delusion”.