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A Review of
Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion Part II
June 29, 2007, Wausau, Wi — In part I of
my review of Richard Dawkins’, “The God Delusion” I looked at three errors in
Dawkins view of religion. Somewhat more
surprising, however, is Dawkins view of atheism in America. He claims that “The
status of atheists in America today is on a par with that of homosexuals fifty
years ago. ” He goes on to claim that
atheist are so under siege that they “are reluctant to ‘come out.’” (p 4) Does Dawkins really believe this? In the 1970s
when I was an atheist, it never even crossed my mind that I was some sort of
persecuted minority, or that I needed to hide my rejection of a belief in God.
Since then, if anything atheist has only become more accepted.
Dawkins goes
on to say that “atheists are a lot more numerous, especially among the educated
elite, than many realize.” (p. 4) While I have no doubt Dawkins is correct that
many of the “educated elite” are atheist [and most of rest are either agnostics
or simply support secularism], I don’t
think that this would come as much of a
surprise to many, but rather is pretty common knowledge. In fact this is one of the reason his
previous claim that atheists are a persecuted minority is so silly, for these
elites not only dominate
Universities, but also the news and
entertainment media, and much of government, and they use their power and position
to spread secular views, and attack and restrict religious views wherever they
can, and they have been quite successful.
More importantly,
Dawkins clearly sees the fact that so many of these educated elites are atheist
as strong evidence that he is correct. After all if these smart people believe
it, it must be true. However for those
like myself, “educated elite” is not a positive term, but a negative one that
refers to those who are so caught up in theory and academia that they long ago
cut themselves off from reality.
One of the hard
lessons that those in the physical sciences like physics and chemistry have
historically struggled with is that nature often acts in ways that one would
not expect. The history of science is
full of scientists who had really nice theories of how nature should work, only
to have them dashed to pieces when they were tested. This is a good thing as it move our knowledge
forward. However as one moves out of
the physical sciences and into the social sciences the ability to actually test
one’s theories becomes increasingly difficult. More over the ability of the
researcher influence the results increases.
Yet this difficulty has not tempered the “educated elite” creation of
new and novel theories.
For
example, until recently it was the norm for the “educated elite” to claim that
men and woman are basically the same. Any behavior differences we observer were
simply the result of how they are raised.
Now for those who were not fortunate enough afford such an education the
ideal the men and women are the same was always pretty silly. But then the educated elite are not the elite
for nothing.
Even though
recent medical research, particularly on the brain, has thoroughly debunked this claim and has
clearly show that, to the great astonishment of many of the elite, that men and
women are different, this falsehood that they are the same continues to shaped much of the social debate in this
country. After the differences were
demonstrated, many of the elites simply moved from the view that the
differences don’t exist, to the view that they are not that important.
For
example, the idea that because of these differences, a father and a mother play
different roles in the raising of a child is still questioned by many of
“educated elite” who continue to maintain that these roles are completely
interchangeable. It really does not matter
if you have a mother and father, a mother
and mother, father and father, or whatever combination you desire, the
only thing that is important is that the child is loved. I have often hear the “educated elite”
characterize the claim that the best way to raise a child is with loving mother
and a loving father in a stable committed relationship as a
bigoted and narrow minded religious view, and I should not seek to impose my
religious views on society because of the separation of church and state.
In short, what defines so much of the
“educated elite” at least beyond the physical sciences, is they have constructed
a world view that is largely immune to actually testing and even when parts are
disproven, this is not allowed to have much impact on the worldview
itself. Yet because it is labeled
“science” this world view is somehow seen as automatically true, differing
views are then rejected as religious and therefore false.
Where this
comes into play for atheism is that this is pretty much what atheist like
Dawkins have done. They construct a world view based on assumptions that cannot
be tested or proven, but must just be accepted, and then when God does not fit
into the world view they have constructed, they conclude He does not exist.
Could it be that the vast majority believe in God for the same reason that the vast majority believe that men and women are different, and that the educated elite reject God for pretty much the same reason they once rejected the idea that men and women are different?
See www.consider.org for additional information.
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