Dean's World

Well, to no one's surprise, Richard Dawkins loved Christopher Hitchens' anti-religion book.

I've always been curious if folks like Dawkins have ever considered the possibility that religion is, in fact, an evolutionarily inborn trait and, if so, how futile it would be to try to browbeat people out of it--or why the trait would have developed in the first place. The notion that it's just rumors and myths strikes me as severely lacking (and is probably why I gave up on atheism myself).

I haven't read The God Delusion; I find its premise offensive. So I cannot comment on its arguments. But here is From Alvin Plantinga of the University of Notre Dame, who gets paid, I suppose, to read things like this, and he seems afterward to come to a similar conclusion:

The God Delusion, however, contains little science; it is mainly philosophy and theology (perhaps "atheology" would be a better term) and evolutionary psychology, along with a substantial dash of social commentary decrying religion and its allegedly baneful effects. . . . [O]ne shouldn't look to this book for evenhanded and thoughtful commentary. In fact the proportion of insult, ridicule, mockery, spleen, and vitriol is astounding. (Could it be that his mother, while carrying him, was frightened by an Anglican clergyman on the rampage?) If Dawkins ever gets tired of his day job, a promising future awaits him as a writer of political attack ads. . . .

The real problem here, obviously, is Dawkins' naturalism, his belief that there is no such person as God or anyone like God. That is because naturalism implies that evolution is unguided. So a broader conclusion is that one can't rationally accept both naturalism and evolution; naturalism, therefore, is in conflict with a premier doctrine of contemporary science. People like Dawkins hold that there is a conflict between science and religion because they think there is a conflict between evolution and theism; the truth of the matter, however, is that the conflict is between science and naturalism, not between science and belief in God.

The God Delusion is full of bluster and bombast, but it really doesn't give even the slightest reason for thinking belief in God mistaken, let alone a "delusion."

The naturalism that Dawkins embraces, furthermore, in addition to its intrinsic unloveliness and its dispiriting conclusions about human beings and their place in the universe, is in deep self-referential trouble. There is no reason to believe it; and there is excellent reason to reject it.

I found this via the Tradition online journal, which is affiliated with the "centrist" orthodox Rabbinical Council of America.