Celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins has been in Wellington.
Ian Harris went to hear him speak.
Richard Dawkins. Supplied photo.
One of the most promising events proposed for
Wellington's International Festival of the Arts this week
didn't happen.
This would have been a dialogue between the champion of
science and atheism, former Oxford professor Richard Dawkins,
and leading New Zealand theologian Sir Lloyd Geering, but Dr
Dawkins refused to take part.
That is a pity. These are highly intelligent men.
They would have found much common ground, for example on
evolution, the contribution of science to the modern world,
and some shameful excesses, even evils, perpetrated in the
name of religion over the centuries.
Sir Lloyd knows rather more about the world's religions than
Dr Dawkins, however, and he would not have come across as the
atheistic stereotype of religious folk as superstitious,
naive, credulous, and block-headed deniers of scientific
truth.
A quality dialogue might have revealed the roots of Dr
Dawkins' fervid scientism - the belief that the methods and
assumptions of science are applicable to all fields of study
- that makes him want to wipe religion off the face of the
planet.
And why he refuses to show the slightest interest in any
broader understanding of the positive role of God and
religion in the world's cultures.
Among his supporters, this ignorance is upheld as a badge of
honour.
Leading English philosopher A.C. Grayling parried a scathing
review of Dr Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, by
saying, in effect: why should he waste his time informing
himself about "the pre-scientific, rudimentary metaphysics of
our forefathers" when he knows it's all rubbish?
To which another academic retorted: "It is a great shame that
the most public defenders of secular thinking show all the
dogmatic arrogance and evidence of closed minds that they
associate with religious thinking."
But perhaps that helps explain why, as prominent English
religious scholar Karen Armstrong notes in her latest book,
Dr Dawkins and other atheist crusaders "refuse, on principle,
to dialogue with theologians who are more representative
[than fundamentalists and extremists] of mainstream
religion".
She finds their analysis shallow, prejudiced, intemperate,
theologically illiterate, and all but silent on the great
moral questions of justice, compassion, poverty, and
political oppression.
Their hardline scientific naturalism turns out to be the
mirror image of the religious fundamentalism to which it is
reacting.
Even more trenchant is English and cultural history professor
Terry Eagleton.
He lumps Dr Dawkins in with Christopher Hitchens, another
fulminator against religion and author of God is Not
Great, as "Ditchkins" and says: "When it comes to God,
liberal rationalists who are otherwise accustomed to
enforcing fine discriminations are permitted to be as sloppy
and raucous as they please."
Sadly, however, "this straw-targeting of Christianity is now
drearily commonplace among academics and intellectuals - that
is to say, among those who would not allow a first-year
student to get away with the vulgar caricatures in which they
indulge themselves with such insouciance".
Prof Eagleton charges Ditchkins with a Pollyanna-ish view of
human progress, of failing to appreciate the role of the
creative imagination in both science and religion, and of
regarding religion as "a botched attempt to explain the
world, which is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to
run for a bus".
Could Dr Dawkins be that bad? I wondered. So I joined the
throng who flocked to hear him during Writers and Readers
Week* in Wellington on Wednesday this week.
On this occasion, Dr Dawkins chose to soft-pedal his
anti-religious rhetoric and focus on science.
He was masterly in explaining the improbability of our own
existence, the even greater improbability that life came into
being at all, and, when it did, the predictability of
evolution through natural selection over hundreds of millions
of years.
But he could not resist the odd sideswipe.
The origin of the cosmos required no creator, except for "a
certain kind of naive mind". Anyone who could not accept the
massive evidence for evolution was "plain thick".
Religion was no guarantor of morality: "Criminals are nearly
all religious - look at the mafia, look at the Roman Catholic
Church."
Prof Grayling describes the ethical stance of atheism as one
based on respect, concern, trust, fairness and honesty.
Dr Dawkins' wild generalisations managed, quite gratuitously,
to showcase the opposite.
Countering such distortions, Prof Eagleton can have the last
word: "Christian faith, as I understand it, is not primarily
a matter of signing on for the proposition that there exists
a Supreme Being, but the kind of commitment made manifest by
a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in
darkness, pain and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains
faithful to the promise of a transformative love."
*The Writers and Readers Week is part of the New Zealand
International Arts Festival in Wellington which runs until
March 21.
- Ian Harris is a journalist and commentator
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