Cataclysmic Events

Living in upstate New York, I rarely think about the slow-paced glacial retreat that influenced the landscape surrounding me.  However, every time I visit the Rocky Mountains, I am overwhelmed by the cataclysm that must have occurred in order for them to exist.  I wonder if people living here ever mentally strip away the snow and evergreens and look at the outline of the peaks with the obvious fingers of once flowing lava that brought about these massive shapes.

I picture what it would have been like to watch….from a safe distance in space, of course…as the earth spewed out its molten interior by either projectile vomiting or gradual oozing.  What awesome power was required to force the mountains to such amazing heights?

I imagine a divine conductor waving his baton and thunderous orchestration accompanying the fireworks….sort of like cannon accompaniment in the 1812 Overture, only infinitely louder and grander.  A sweep of the baton producing a gigantic plume of yellow and orange with a rumble followed by an eardrum shattering BOOM!

But today, out the window I can see white ribbons of sunlit snow wandering through the dark evergreens.  Skiers and snowboarders gracefully fly down the solidified once molten fingers with no thought to the unimaginable power contained by the fragile crust on which we dwell.

In the Terminal

I suppose that talking on a cell phone in an airport departure lounge surrounded by strangers seems like a “safe” thing to do.  No one there actually knows you, so knowing your business probably seems like no biggie.  But, do you really want to entertain those of us listening?  At one point, the cellphone talker walked out into the corridor and my eyes met with those of two other individuals in the vicinity.  I said nothing, but the other two made comments to each other about having to listen to this woman’s business. So, even though the lady repeatedly walked out into the corridor, thinking she had greater privacy there, I learned the following:

She is a single mother whose daughter lives with her parents.  They aren’t happy that she keeps taking off to follow her dreams leaving the child with them.

She works in the film industry and is currently working on a fairly low budget project.

Someone is very unhappy with her.  I am not sure if this is someone working on editing a script or someone waiting for the completed script, but no amount of begging “please, trust me” was cutting it with S……. (I’m not going to use her real name).

After a long and distressing phone call with the upset S……, she talked with a confidant, sharing that at the age of 40, she was questioning everything about herself and her career.  Should she back off or jump in with both feet.

She is in a relationship, and I am unsure how secure it is. 

She works on projects with her brother.

I don’t know if she was talking to her brother or her special friend when she encouraged him to remember that:  “The universe is working toward a higher order at all times.”

I was trying very hard NOT to listen to her and to read my Time magazine, but the printed page is no match for live drama unfolding.  There was a large white space on the page I was reading when she came out with this tidbit about the universe, and I wrote it down in the space, so I wouldn’t forget it.  I guess this is New Age thought.  It certainly doesn’t sync with what I learned about thermodynamics in physics class.

The flight was delayed, but the time passed rapidly between my magazine and the drama of the the cell phone calls.  I found myself wishing I could talk with this woman, but at the same time thinking, what would I even use as a point in common from which I could develop a meaningful conversation?  So I prayed for her then, and I have several times since.

Iphigenia at Aulis

This story should be before “Iphigenia among the Tauri” if the stories in the Great Book series were chronological.  It occurs when her father Agamemnon is at Aulis, apparently becalmed and unable to continue sailing towards Troy.  He and Menelaus and their army are on the way to attack Troy and attempt to retrieve Helen.  A seer has told Agamemnon that in order to continue to Troy and have success, he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis.

Agamemnon is horrified by this and doesn’t want to do it, but is afraid of what others will think if he doesn’t show that kind of commitment to the cause.  He knows his wife Clytemnestra will never agree to this so he sends a message that he has arranged a marriage between Achilles and Iphigenia.  He later sends his servant off with a message to ignore his prior message, but the servant is stopped by Menelaus who then confronts Agamemnon.

Not having received the second message, Clytemnestra and Iphigenia and their entourage arrive expecting a wedding celebration.  Agamemnon is hoping to carry out the sacrifice without Clytemnestra catching on, but she meets Achilles and tries to talk with him about his impending marriage to her daughter.  When he indicates he has no idea what she is talking about, they are both embarrassed.

 Once the truth is known, Achilles swears he will protect Iphigenia.  He is distressed that his name has been used in this deception.  Clytemnestra and Iphigenia both plead with Agamemnon, but there doesn’t seem to be any way out.  Iphigenia decides that if it means success for the army of her father, she is willing to sacrifice herself.  Although the retrieval of Helen doesn’t seem worth her sacrifice, the protection of the army and her homeland is worth it.

At the moment when the knife is put to Iphigenia’s throat, she disappears and a hind appears in her place to be sacrificed.  Iphigenia has been saved by and spirited away by the gods.

Interesting quotes:

Agamemnon:  I envy…every man who leads a life secure, unknown and unrenowned; but little I envy those in office.

None of mortals is prosperous or happy to the last, for none was ever born to a painless life.

A hateful thing the tongue of cleverness.

Thine is the madness rather in wishing to recover a wicked wife, once thou hadst lost her—a stroke of Heaven-sent luck.  (In other words, Agamemnon wishes Menelaus would just say ‘good riddance’ to Helen.)

He who is wise should keep in his house a good and useful wife or none at all.

Menelaus:  …he is enslaved by the love of popularity, a fearful evil.

Clytemnestra:  An honourable exchange, indeed, to pay a wicked woman’s price in children’s lives!  ‘Tis buying what we most detest with what we hold most dear.

Iphigenia among the Tauri by Euripides

One of several things that caused Clytemnestra to be so angry with her husband Agamemnon that she killed him was that he had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the gods in order to attempt to win their favor in the war against Troy.  Orestes later killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father resulting in his exile.  We now learn that Iphigenia was not actually killed.  Just as Agamemnon was going to slay her with a knife, she was spirited away by the goddess Artemis, and a hind was left in her place.  Iphigenia was taken to the land of the Tauri and became a priestess in the temple of Artemis.  She is charged with making a sacrifice of any person who arrives on their shores from Hellas.

In his exile wanderings Orestes (her brother) and his friend Pylades stumble on these shores and are captured by the locals.  They are brought to Iphigenia who intends to sacrifice them according to the accepted protocol.  However, when she learns they are from the country of her birth, she begins to question them.  Pylades has given her his name, but Orestes has withheld his, so she doesn’t know initially that she is questioning and preparing to kill her own brother.  Eventually it is decided that Orestes will stay and die, but that Pylades will escape death by promising to carry a message back to Ilium for Iphigenia.  When Iphigenia gives him the written message and says it is for Orestes, Pylades hands it to him immediately, and so Iphigenia learns that her captive is her brother.

The three begin to plot how Iphigenia can get out of her required duty of killing them and escape with them back to Ilium.  She says that she will convince Thoas, king of the Tauri, that they are not a proper sacrifice because they have been guilty of matricide.  They must be purified before they are sacrificed, and since they have touched the statue of the goddess, it must be purified also.  This needs to be done in seawater, and she alone may preside over these rites.  King Thoas should stay behind and see to the cleansing of the temple itself.

Of course, Orestes and Pylades have a ship waiting for them.  

The three, with Iphigenia carrying the statue, escape to their ship.  The Tauri attempt to stop them, but are unsuccessful.  They hurry back to get soldiers to assist.  King Thoas is about to give chase, when the goddess Athena appears and tells him that it is the will of the gods for them to escape.  Also, although their ship is about to be dashed on the rocks, Poseidon intervenes and calms the sea for their sake.  Orestes and Pylades are to return to Ilium.  Iphigenia is going to end up at the temple of Artemis in Brauron.

Interesting quotes:

Iphigenia:  The unfortunate, having once known prosperity themselves, bear no kind feelings towards their luckier neighbours.

                Who knows on whom such strokes of fate will fall?  For all that Heaven decrees proceeds unseen, and no man knoweth of the ills in store; for Fate misleads us into doubtful paths.

                A man’s loss from his family is felt, while a woman’s is of little moment.  (That would be Euripides’ opinion!)

Orestes:  No wise man I count him, who, when death looms near, attempts to quell its terrors by piteous laments, nor yet the man who bewails the Death-god’s arrival, when he has no hope of rescue; for he makes two evils out of one; he lets himself be called a fool and all the same he dies; he should let his fortune be.

Chorus:    This that I have seen with mine eyes, not merely heard men tell may rank with miracles; ‘tis stranger than fiction.  (Truth is stranger than fiction.)

Response to The God Delusion-chapter 10

The God Delusion concludes with a discussion of whether we “need” God for anything.  “Does religion fill a much needed gap?  It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled…”

 If Dawkins is trying to quote Blaise Pascal, he hasn’t quite got it right.  “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”  Vacuum…not gap, heart…not mind, and not just any God.

Dawkins does allow for four possible roles for religion:  explanation, exhortation, consolation and inspiration.  He believes he has already eliminated looking to religion for any explanation….that is the purpose of science.  Exhortation is out, because he doesn’t see religion as a proper source of morality.  That leaves consolation and inspiration to be explained away in this final chapter

So, God may be comforting, but he isn’t really anything more than an imaginary friend.  Two of my children had vivid imaginations and well-developed imaginary friends.  Neither of them seemed to use these friends as a form of comfort.  My daughter had one friend on whom she projected all of the naughty things she might have liked to do herself, but refrained from as her “Jinny Johnny Monee” did these for her.  Her second friend “Jennifer-in-the Mirror” was more a rival.  Looking in the mirror on the car visor, she was disgusted that Jennifer had a knit hat exactly like the one her aunt had knit for her.  Neither of these friends would qualify as “a good model for understanding theistic belief in adults,” which is Dawkins claim regarding imaginary friends.  My son had several friends who were off having adventures in a strange land he made up.  He also talked to his stuffed animals, but they were not for comfort to him.  He referred to them as his “sons” and took care to read to them, and try to protect them from such things as airport security machines.  Again, this did not parallel a relationship with a deity.

Dawkins doesn’t think that those who say they believe in the after-life really do.  He quotes a nurse as saying that, having seen many deaths,”the individuals who are most afraid of death are the religious ones.”  It is convenient for his argument that he can quote this particular nurse, but I am also a nurse, and I do not agree with that statement.  He asks why believers don’t look forward to death.  The answer is that some do.  Many people are not in a state in which they are able to talk about their impending death.  People of faith, who I have known and who have been coherent and verbal prior to death, have talked about it. 

A few days before her death, my mother-in-law cried out asking for me to help her.  I asked her if she was in pain, and she answered, “I don’t know.”  I asked what I could do for her, and she responded, “I don’t know.”  I then said, “Mom, do you just want to go see Jesus.”  She cried and said, “Yes, oh yes.”  A bit later, while my husband and I sat holding her hands, she said, “This is a sad time for everyone.”  I said, “I hope it isn’t too sad for you, Mom.”  She laughed out loud, “Oh, No!  I’m going to be better off than the rest of you!”  She also told my father-in-law very firmly that she was leaving “to go be with the Lord.”  She exhibited no fear and no difficulty in talking about her impending death.

Dawkins lastly turns to inspiration and whether God is needed for it.  He, of course, doesn’t believe so.  He talks about all the trillions of people who could have existed, but don’t, so we are “staggeringly lucky to find ourselves in the spotlight.  However, brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull…couldn’t this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never be offered life in the first place?”  

Now wait just a minute here, a few pages back he is talking about life pretty cheaply.  It is perfectly alright to abort a fetus, who will never know the difference.  Death is no problem because we weren’t conscious before birth, so why should that be a problem after death. I’m sorry, but I don’t see the logic in now talking with grandiose sentimentality about callously insulting unborn trillions…who, of course, never existed, aren’t conscious, can’t feel pain, and don’t know they are being insulted.  It is apparently okay to get all sentimental about the “unborn” when it is convenient to the point he wants to make.

He likens man’s ability to understand what is around him to looking through the small slit of a burka.  We can only “see” a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with our eyes.  We are aware of additional portions of it by using instruments.  “Our imaginations are not yet tooled-up to penetrate the neighbourhood of the quantum.  Nothing at that scale behaves in the way matter—as we are evolved to think—ought to behave…..Common sense lets us down, because common sense evolved in a world where nothing moves very fast, and nothing is very small or very large.”  And later, “the assumptions that quantum theory needs to make…are so mysterious that even the great Feynman himself was moved to remark…’If you think you understand quantum theory…you don’t understand quantum theory.”

So…we are supposed to accept science, which defies common sense and can’t be understood because our range of sight as humans is limited, but we can also be certain (as he has declared in chapter 4) that there is NO GOD?????

In a world where nothing moves, very fast, and nothing is very small or very large, there is a God who encompasses all of it.  He does not need to be fast, because he is omnipresent.  He permeates the very small and even the very large moves within Him.  Does it defy common sense….maybe.  Is it explainable through science….probably not, but then currently neither is quantum theory.

Dawkins ends with “….we may eventually discover that there are no limits.”  I wish he would discover the One who has no limits.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm.  He said, “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?  Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer me.  Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.  Who marked off its dimensions?  Surely you know!  Who stretched a measuring line across it?  On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone, while the morning stars sang together and the angels shouted for joy!”

After four chapters (Job 38-41) of such questions, Job wisely responds, “Surely, I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. I repent in dust and ashes.”

I am not opposed to science and looking for answers. (I actually have an undergraduate degree in chemistry.)  But, there are limits to the human mind….Dawkins himself has admitted that. 

I would hope that no one would lose his/her faith or wallow in despair after reading this book.  It contains way too much misinformation and faulty reasoning to be taken seriously.

Response to The God Delusion-chapter 9

Are there seriously people out there, besides, Dawkins, who believe that indoctrinating a child in a religion is worse than sexual abuse?  We are not talking about radical Islam here.  “….horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.”  I am forcing myself to read the rest of this book.  I am not Catholic, but I find this statement by Dawkins so offensive that I would put The God Delusion in the trash….but for the fact that the copy I’m reading was borrowed from the library, and that I set my mind to reading the entire book as an exercise in intellectual honesty.

Dawkins suggests “…that the extreme horribleness of hell, as portrayed by priests and nuns, is inflated to compensate for its implausibility.  If hell were plausible, it would only have to be moderately unpleasant in order to deter.  Given that it is so unlikely to be true, it has to be advertised as very very scary indeed, to balance its implausibility and retain some deterrence value.”  I’m not sure I follow the logic here.  Deterrence has a great deal more to do with likelihood of something happening than how horrible it is.  It would be horrible to be in a fiery plane or car crash, but most of us still chose to travel, because we don’t think the odds of the disaster are all that good.  The horribleness of the event, if it were to happen, is not sufficient deterrent.

Dawkins tells stories of a number of “conversions” from Christianity to atheism.  There are many examples of conversion from varieties of unbelief to Christianity.  His stories don’t prove anything.

Nicholas Humphrey is approvingly quoted as saying, “…children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society have a duty to protect them from it.  So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.”  He is essentially wiping out the whole concept of parental rights!  Dawkins acknowledges that what constitutes “nonsense” may be open to debate, but extols the glories of science and teaching a child how to think, rather than what to think.  He passes over the fact that “how to think” can also be a matter of opinion.  He also doesn’t take into account that scientific knowledge changes over time.  What was taught as truth 50 years ago, may not be truth now.

Is he seriously suggesting that society should step in and stop parents from teaching children their beliefs?  This sounds like a repressive totalitarian state!  And it’s off the North Korea we go! 

One of the groups that comes under Dawkins’ criticism is the Amish.  “Even if the children had been asked and had expressed a preference for the Amish religion, can we suppose that they would have done so if they had been educated and informed about the available alternatives?”  I guess Dawkins is not familiar with the fact that in their late teen years, Amish young people are allowed a time of “wilding,” during which they can try out alternatives before making a conscious decision to be baptized and stick with the Amish faith.

After all of his ranting, he abruptly switches tones and tacks on a section on the value of the Bible as literature.  He acknowledges its influence on conversational language and on other great literary works.   He believes “We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.”  He is right about that, but it does reduce what might have been belief to sentimentality.

Of course, if he agrees with introducing children to the Bible as literature, he does run the risk of thoughtful children asking questions such as:  Is this true?  Is there a God?  Is this supposed to impact the way I think?  And, some of them may come up with answers Dawkins won’t like.

Response to The God Delusion-chapter 8

Evidently, many of Dawkins fellow atheists are of the live-and-let-live persuasion and don’t understand Dawkins’ hostility toward religion.  He claims he is motivated by concern for us poor uninformed folks who are missing so much. “My passion is increased when I think about how much the poor fundamentalists, and those whom they influence, are missing.”  I suspect there is something more behind his apparent rage than altruistic care for others.

He takes on what he sees as the “dark side” of absolutism.  I certainly agree that it has a dark side.  When the beliefs of any one religious group are forcefully imposed on others, things can get nasty.  He particularly cites blasphemy, homosexuality and abortion as areas where religious fundamentalists go to extremes trying to impose their perspective.  Personally, blasphemy makes me cringe. (I've done a lot of cringing while reading this book.)  Homosexuality causes me conflicted feelings as I believe it is a “sin” to practice it, but I have sympathy for those whose inclinations are in that direction.  Abortion breaks my heart.  It is a horrific means of birth control and shows a disrespect for life, but I stop short of calling it murder.

As members of a society, we have an obligation to move things in the direction of what we believe is “right” and in the best interests of society as a whole.  Those of us who believe in the God of the Bible are obviously going to disagree with those who don’t on those issues.  That is why we have discussions and get to vote on issues.  I certainly do not support the idea of killing abortion doctors and bombing abortion clinics.  

In his discussion on abortion, Dawkins does give some misinformation.  He states, “I wonder what these people would say if they knew that the majority of conceived embryos spontaneously abort anyway.  It is probably best seen as a kind of natural ‘quality control.’”  I have searched and cannot find any reliable source that says the “majority” abort spontaneously.  Sources often say between 10 and 30 percent.  Last I knew, a majority meant over 50 percent.

Dawkins discusses the idea of “slippery slopes.”  I think he is on a “slippery slope” himself in his belief that all life is a continuity.  Because he is a naturalist and an evolutionist, man is a more highly developed animal whose life has no greater intrinsic worth than that of any other animal.  This has some scary implications.  Those of us who believe that man was specifically made in the image of God attach greater value to human life.  “The evolutionary point is very simple.  The humanness of an embryo’s cells cannot confer upon it any absolutely discontinuous moral status.  It cannot, because of our evolutionary continuity with chimpanzees and, more distantly, with every species on the planet.”  Interesting.  Carried to what I see as a ridiculous, but not totally illogical extension, I wonder if we should stop taking antibiotics, because bacteria have as much right to live as humans do.

Dawkins believes that “the take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism…”  I suppose this is true of some religions…the Kool-Aid drinking cult of Jim Jones comes to mind.  But, Dawkins is making a sweeping generalization regarding all religions, and I cannot accept that.  He has gone back and forth between Christianity (of all varieties) and Islam throughout this book, making them all equal.  If he really wanted to deal with “the God delusion” appropriately and fairly, he would not lump all religions together. Not all religions have the same concept of God and therefore, do not manifest themselves in the same way.

Dawkins has created a horrible, sticky, tangled mass of vitriol, rather than a clear-headed argument.

Response to The God Delusion-chapter 7

“Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it…”

I am not the only person who scores very high on reading comprehension tests, has read the Bible multiple times, and thinks quite differently about it than Richard Dawkins. 

To illustrate his above statement, Dawkins has chosen some of the most difficult to understand Old Testament stories and retold them dripping with sarcasm and worded in the most inflammatory way possible, attempting to show that the God of the Old Testament was a horrible ethnic cleansing tyrant, who hated everyone except Jewish men.  He has passed over any of the stories that illustrate God’s compassion on anyone who comes to Him recognizing Him as the one true God.  There are many examples of this, and I have already cited the city of Nineveh in the story of Jonah.  Additional examples of this would be Rahab, a prostitute in the city of Jericho, and Ruth, a Moabite woman.  They were women, making them, according to Dawkins, loathed second class citizens.  They were foreigners, making them, according to Dawkins, hated by the Jews and by God Himself.  However, because they accepted Him and exhibited faith, they were accepted by God and even appear in the genealogy of Christ (a bit of inexplicable inclusion if Dawson’s viewpoint is believed).

Taking the Old Testament as a whole, rather than focusing on a handful of difficult stories, demonstrates an extraordinarily patient God who is giving man a chance to find Him by obedience to a specific code of rules and regulations.  Man is not successful in keeping these rules.  In the end, all they accomplish is to show man his need. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. Romans 3:20 Still, those who are found with faith, are recognized as children of God, in spite of their inability to keep the law.  Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.  Genesis 15:6

In the New Testament, which Dawkins claims is no better, we have a new approach.  Instead of keeping rigid rules, man is now given an ideal to follow through both Christ’s example and Christ’s directives.  An expert in the law, tested him with this question:  Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?  Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…the second is like it. “Love your neighbor as yourself.  Matthew 22:35-38 So now, we have the opportunity to know God through principles rather than procedures.

It is my contention that at the end of human history, we will have to accept that God has been totally fair with mankind.  He tried giving us a means of finding Him through rigid laws to be followed, and He gave us the opportunity to come to Him through a couple of basic ideals.  We haven’t managed it either way.  The only thing that bridges the gap between us and God is faith in the atonement of Christ.

Atonement is an impossible concept for Dawkins.  Not only does he not accept the existence of God, but he doesn’t accept the notion of sin and that it separates us from God.  He sees the sacrificial death of Christ as an exercise in sadomasochism. To Dawkins it is “vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent…barking mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has dulled our objectivity.”  Of course, as Paul put it, …the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…I Corinthians 1:18

Dawkins attempts to prove that even the New Testament intended salvation only for the Jews, and that “Jesus limited his in-group of the saved strictly to Jews.”  Ah…not so.

Matthew 8:5-13 tells the story of a Roman centurion who seeks Christ’s help to heal one of his servants.  Their conversation results in Christ saying, …I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.  I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.  But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness….”  This sounds suspiciously like being a Jew isn’t adequate, and that those of faith from around the world will displace some who are Jews by birth who are without faith. 

Another story in the New Testament which makes it clear that Christ’s message of salvation is not for the Jews only is found in Acts 10.  Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Regiment who is described as devout and God-fearing, sent for Peter.  Before the servants of Cornelius arrive at Peter’s home, Peter has a vision in which he is told not to call anything unclean which God has made clean. (v. 15) He is told not to hesitate to go with the men who will come to him with a message.  He goes to the home of Cornelius and finds a large gathering of Gentiles wanting to hear the message of salvation through Christ.  He says to them, You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him.  But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.  I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.  Acts 10: 28 and 34

This stands in direct contradiction to this quote from Dawkins, “It was Paul who invented the idea of taking the Jewish God to the Gentiles. Hartung puts it more bluntly than I dare: ‘Jesus would have turned over in his grave if he had known that Paul would be taking his plan to the pigs.’”

So…

1.        Christ Himself took his message to Gentiles

2.       It was Peter, not Paul, who first had the insight that the gospel was for the Gentiles also.

3.       Jesus isn’t in His grave to turn over.  (My opinion vs Dawkins and Hartung, of course)

Apparently it is frequently pointed out to Dawkins that Hitler and Stalin were atheists and committed terrible atrocities.  He acknowledges that Stalin was an atheist, but says there is no evidence that it was the cause of his brutality.  He notes there is some question in Hitler’s case.  Hitler claimed to be Catholic, although no one is sure whether this was just a matter of convenience for him.  So…let’s grant him that Stalin’s and Hitler’s behaviors may not have been related to atheism.  Let’s talk instead about regimes that are openly atheistic and oppressive of religion.  It is characteristic of these regimes to be brutal and to impoverish large percentages of their populations. E.g. a number of countries during the era of the Soviet Union, China and North Korea.  Perhaps, he would argue that in these countries atheism amounts to a religion and that any nation which doesn’t allow freedom of religion (i.e. imposes a state religion) has an excellent change of being oppressive.  This may well be true.  But, I certainly have no desire to live in North Korea in particular, and I bet he doesn’t either.

His concluding comment in this chapter is “why would anyone go to war for the sake of an absence of belief?”  There is a sense in which he himself has figuratively “gone to war” by writing this book.  As to actual war, I hope we never have to take on China or North Korea or a resurrection of one of the Soviet states.  They would not be going to war strictly for an absence of belief, but their atheism would certainly be a contributing factor to the underlying philosophy that caused aggression.

Response to The God Delusion-chapter 6

In discussing the roots or morality and how goodness can come about without religion, Dawkins begins by pointing out how awful religious people can be.  He quotes letters sent by supposed Christians to atheists.  As a Christian, I apologize to Dawkins and his allies for this nastiness.  Now mind you, Dawkins has said some plenty nasty things himself….even in this book, he has referred to God as a “psychotic delinquent,”   That does not, however, excuse foul and abusive language coming from those opposing his atheistic view.

Dawkins argues that religion is not necessary for humans to have a sense of morality.  I actually don’t disagree with this.  However, I believe that our moral sense comes from God, the Creator, whether or not we are particularly religious.  When the Bible says we are created in the image of God, I believe it means that we have a number of things that make us different from the rest of God’s created beings.  We have free will, we have creativity, and we have a conscience which give us moral insights.

Dawkins says that moral behavior can come about without God through the Darwinian pillars of care for kin and reciprocal altruism, with secondary factors such as reputation and the advantages gained by conspicuous generosity also playing a role.  He suggests that the kindness of one person to another is a sort of “mis-firing” or “mistake.”  In ancestral times, when men lived in “small and stable bands,” looking out for those around them would have been advantageous, because these individuals were genetically related.  Our urge to kindness/altruism now is a left over remnant from that time.  Hence, we are kind to those around us even though their survival doesn’t promote the survival of our own genes.

The results of a number of studies seem to point to the notion that atheists are just as moral as are the religious.  I suspect this is entirely possible.  “The main conclusion of Hauser and Singer’s study was that there is no statistically significant difference between atheists and religious believers in making these judgements. (sic)  This seems compatible with the view…that we do not need God in order to be good …or evil.”  The problem with reaching this conclusion is that I expect they have not accounted for the general influence of Christian values present in society or the possibility of at least some of these atheists having had their values influenced by Christian parents.

One of my main problems with this chapter is that Dawkins seems to believe that the way in which Christians are influenced to be good by religion is through fear. (i.e. The notion that God is watching and He is going to punish us for bad deeds.)  I guess that idea is prevalent in some religious sects.  However, my personal belief is that most of us cannot achieve our own standard of goodness…to say nothing about God’s standard.  I reached that conclusion even as a child.  I knew that I didn’t obey my mother, that I told lies, and that I was not always kind to my little brother.  I disliked these thing about myself.  I never thought about God raining down punishment on me.  I wanted His help to be “good.”  I tried to do it on my own, and I just couldn’t manage it.  Maybe I was innately a worse person than most, although I seriously doubt that. (I actually had a grandmother who thought I was perfect.  Ha!)  When I in absolutely childish faith asked Jesus to “come into my heart,” I was looking for help in living, not an escape from hell after death.

Dawkins does in the conclusion of this chapter comment, “…it is pretty hard to defend absolutist morals on grounds other than religious ones.”  He, of course, doesn’t believe morals have to be absolute.  I believe there are moral absolutes…however, let’s be clear that not every rule thought up by a religious group rises to the standard of being a moral absolute!