The God Delusion and disproving God's existence: Dawkins' bias

Some time ago, I posted on a book by Alister McGrath, who criticized Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I received some comments on that post. One of those comments said that I had mistakenly said that Dawkins claimed to have proved that God doesn't exist. The commenter was correct, and I was mistaken. I apologize.

I have since read The God Delusion, and wish to comment on what Dawkins actually said in the book.

First, as Dawkins admits, this is a book of advocacy. "If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down." (p. 5) There's nothing wrong with advocacy, but it should not be confused with unbiased scholarship (if there is any such thing).

Dawkins shows his bias occasionally. He claims that several prominent thinkers, including some of the founding fathers (38-9), were atheists, although they called themselves deists.

One of the most remarkable statements in The God Delusion is this: "I simply do not believe that Gould could have possibly meant much of what he wrote in Rocks of Ages." (57) See this Wikipedia article on Gould's book. What Stephen Jay Gould wrote was that religion and science each have a valid place, and are useful for different things. Dawkins doesn't bring any evidence to support his belief that Gould didn't mean what he said. Why should Gould have written a book with a central claim that he didn't believe? Gould was a scientist with impeccable credentials, and also perhaps the most important communicator of science to the public in the US at that time. His stature, and experience, were surely such that he had no need to write something he didn't want to. That would almost be the equivalent of someone saying that Dawkins really is, say, a closet Buddhist. It's hard to imagine anyone saying that Gould wrote a book that he didn't believe in, and, I'm afraid, claiming that he did shows Dawkins' strong bias. Here is a short excerpt from Gould's book:
I do not see how science and religion could be unified, or even synthesized, under any common scheme of explanation or analysis; but I also do not understand why the two enterprises should experience any conflict. Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values-subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve. Similarly, while scientists must operate with ethical principles, some specific to their practice, the validity of these principles can never be inferred from the factual discoveries of science.* Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballentine, 1999, pp. 4-5.

And here is a quotation from an essay by Gould, written earlier, that presents the same idea:
I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have enormous respect for religion…If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth from any superior knowledge of the world's empirical constitution. Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria" Natural History 106:16-22; 60-62, March, 1997. Quote is from pages 61 and 62.

I can't believe (because of my own bias, perhaps) that a tenured scientist who had the ear of the public, had written several well-received books, and had written that he is not a religious man, should have been so afraid of stating atheistic beliefs, that he wrote positively about the validity of religious thought.

Why would Dawkins say that people who claimed not to be atheists were, in fact, atheists? Well, one reason, of course, is that, just as some conservative Christians claim that all the Founding Fathers had beliefs compatible with theirs, either in spite of the evidence, or without examining it, Dawkins wants to show that the beliefs of prominent people were compatible with his. He wants this to be true so badly that he makes unsubstantiated claims. In fairness, there is another reason that has some validity, namely that atheists may be afraid to be labeled as such, especially in the US. Dawkins mentions that. But I don't accept that as an explanation for Gould's book, nor do I accept that all Founding Fathers who said that they were deists were actually atheists, but were afraid to say so.

As this Wikipedia article on Deism puts it (accessed February 2, 2010): Currently there is an ongoing controversy in the United States over whether or not the country was founded as a "Christian nation" based on Judeo-Christian ideals. This has spawned a subsidiary controversy over whether the Founding Fathers were Christians, deists, or something in between.

Note that the article does not even mention that they might have been atheists.

So Dawkins is biased. That's common, in books of advocacy, and forgivable, but it means that Dawkins' claims in this book should be treated with considerable skepticism.

I close this post (I expect there will be a few more on this subject) with a confession, or retraction. In an earlier post, I said that Dawkins claimed that he had proved that God does not exist. For the few who read this blog, including the previous post, I'm sorry. I was carried away by my own bias, and shouldn't have been. Dawkins did not really say that. He does say that he has good evidence that God does not exist, but does not make the stronger claim.

Thanks for reading.

*Lest there be any doubt, I disagree with Gould. I believe that, if we could interpret scientific and Biblical evidence correctly (and we have problems with both) they would agree. I can't prove that, but I believe it.

Science versus Christianity? I don't think so.

A commenter on a previous post said, in part:

The scientist Stephen J. Gould said the world can be divided into two "majesteria." One is the physical world of evidence and experimentation. This is where science goes. The other is the world of thoughts and conjecture and belief. This is the world of religion. . . .

The creationism/evolution debate is caused by people leaving their magesteria. Creationism and Intelligent design are unscientific, just as denial of a soul is atheistic. Thus, unless people want Darwinism to be taught in Church, they must stop trying to insert Creationism and ID into science class. One is supported by fact, one by millenia of scripture. They cannot and should not be mixed.

The reference is to Stephen Jay Gould, one of the great popularizers of biological science of the late twentieth century. In Rocks of Ages, one of his many books, Gould proposed that science and religion are Non-Overlapping Magisteria -- each is legitimate, but they don't have anything important to say to each other. On the face of it, that's an attractive view. Science can't answer a lot of "why?" questions, and religion doesn't produce valid equations for gravitational attraction. However, there are some problems with such a view.

This scheme results in the trivialization of religion. Science, after all, is based on facts, and religion is only a matter of opinion, it is often said. In a way, that's true, but there are opinions in "science" that masquerade as facts. For religious persons, the things that are believed are also facts, although they can't be demonstrated experimentally.

For the Christian, there is another problem. That problem is that God has revealed Himself to us in multiple ways, and it is shortsighted and dangerous to ignore any of these ways. (I am not attempting to cover the subject of all the ways God is revealed to us in this post.) Why do I say this? Because of the Biblical evidence. Psalm 19 and Romans 1 tell us, respectively, that
1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

and that "20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. . . ."

Not only that, but, as I was forcefully reminded in yesterday's sermon at the church I am presently attending:
Colossians 2:1 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
(All quotes from the ESV)

If all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ, surely that includes knowledge about quarks and ecosystems, quartz and energy. How, then, can Christianity be isolated completely from science, or how can science be completely isolated from religion? I am not arguing that only Christians can do effective science, or that the New Testament is a primary text for courses in astrophysics or microbiology, but that Christ, the Bible, and scientific findings are all ways of knowing about God. Nor am I arguing that we correctly understand all scripture, or all scientific findings.

Ian Barbour has been a leader in what he calls integration of science and religion. I think that, rather than what Barbour calls "conflict" or "independence," is the proper relationship between these two important areas of human thought.

Thanks for reading.

Origins, defined, more or less.

A reader kindly commented on one of what I consider to be my most significant posts, even though the post is about two and a half years old. I am grateful.

Here's my response, changed slightly from my answering comment:
I agree with much of what you say, including the fact that I didn't define "origins." I steered away from using "evolution," because I know that that word has many meanings, and which one is being used needs to be specified, but often isn't. Using origins without definition is just as bad, except that it may avoid some preconceived notions in readers.

I guess that by "origins," I mean how something came about, but the things included are so diverse as to include the universe, the chemical elements, life, large groups of living things (say, Arthropods), species, and humans. It is possible that the mechanisms that produced all of these may have been different from each other. (By the way, I also prefer that "evolution" be restricted to phenomena that might have come about by natural selection, which means that the first two of the phenomena listed in the first sentence of this paragraph, and probably the third, should not be described as having come about by evolution, even by a materialist or atheist. Origins is a more general term.)

You said that "scientists know how the universe came to be." I have to disagree. They think they know, but they can't prove, or disprove, that God acted to bring it about. Most scientists agree that there was a Big Bang, but, even if there was, there is little understanding of what came before it, or, if nothing did, why not.

As to Gould's Non-Overlapping Magisteria, as a Christian, I have trouble with a firm separation between scientific findings and religious belief, because I believe that both are revelations of God to us, and that, therefore, properly understood, they should be complementary and compatible. (See point 12 of this post, and point 4 of this one.)

Thanks again.