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Monthly Musings

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November 2006

Richard Dawkins is in the news again. His recent book The God Delusion is a forthright exposition of his atheism. For him, religion is the root of all evil. It is, as the title of one of his articles expresses, snake oil.

It seems odd, given that he holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, that he feels compelled to link a public understanding of science, upon which he has much knowledge, to a public denigration of religion, about which he knows nothing of importance. I like to think we do things differently at Cambridge, where once I was a student and teacher. We certainly do things differently at Aurora University, where recently, in taking a new religion major through the validating processes, I have had a number of helpful conversations with my colleagues in the sciences.

Indeed, it is rather easy to question Dawkins’ credentials. He knows nothing of the complexities of religion. He creates a straw man that is easy to set afire. His views upon religion deserve the sort of respect you would accord a tone-deaf person who chooses to launch a diatribe against the beauty, importance and compelling power of music.

Religion is, of course, a mixed phenomenon that produces saints and sinners, wise and foolish. It is not an end in itself but rather the means to the end that humans can achieve all their potential, much of which remains hidden to all except the most adventurous and discerning. Perhaps it has more in common with science, when viewed from this perspective, than is dreamed of in the philosophy of polemicists like Dawkins.

The major problem with Dawkins is that his brand of black and white partisanship is a form of secular fundamentalism, where there is no opportunity for rational discourse that can illuminate and learn from others. May Heaven or Science (or both) protect us all from the terrifying and trivial certainties of secular and religious fundamentalists.

— Martin Forward