Deluding Who About What?
Dan J. Bye
In 2006, Richard Dawkins published
his first book on the subject of atheism (The God Delusion.
London: Bantam Press). In early
2007, Alister McGrath’s
response (co-written with his wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath) appeared (The Dawkins Delusion? London:
SPCK).
The Dawkins Delusion? Is the latest of several McGrath books to bear the
Archbishop of Canterbury’s all-purpose imprimatur-esque claim that,
“Alister McGrath invariably combines enormous scholarship with an
accessible and engaging style.” I
have been following McGrath’s career closely since The Twilight of Atheism,
and there and elsewhere I have found his scholarship to be flawed and his style
uneven.
I am not particularly interested in fighting Richard Dawkins’
corner. Firstly, he can look after himself. Secondly, atheism does not stand or
fall by Dawkins’ presentation of the issues. Thirdly, I don’t
always agree with Dawkins. The God
Delusion is not the book I hoped he would write. This is not, then,
primarily a defence of Dawkins. My
purpose here is simple: to document the scholarly failings of Alister
McGrath. It comes as no surprise to me
to discover how many faults can be found in the 78 pages of The Dawkins
Delusion? (only 65 pages of text, the rest being notes and bibliography),
but it might come as a shock to those who believe what they read on the back of
the book, where the publisher's blurb presents The Dawkins Delusion?
(hereafter abbreviated to DD) as “a reliable assessment of The God
Delusion” (hereafter abbreviated to GD).
In DD, McGrath comments: “One obvious response [to GD] would be to
write an equally aggressive, inaccurate book…” But to do so would be “pointless and
counterproductive, not to mention intellectually dishonest”. (DD, p.xi).
Unfortunately, DD is aggressive, inaccurate, and arguably intellectually
dishonest. McGrath also notes that to
publish a “litany of corrections” to Dawkins would be
“catatonically boring” (DD, p.xii).
I, however, unapologetically adopt the “litany of
corrections” approach, simply because it is good to set McGrath’s
scholarly pretensions against the reality, making the contrast as stark as
possible. Early versions of this
document were criticised for failing to distinguish between different kinds of
faults: I had started at the beginning of the book and worked through to the
end, noting the problems as I went, and some readers disliked that
approach. I have now classified
McGrath’s solecisms, giving this review something approaching a helpful
structure.
Finally, I welcome feedback. I may have made mistakes myself, or I may
have missed more of McGrath’s mistakes. Either way, you can tell me at:
delusion @ sheffieldhumanists.org.uk
MISQUOTATIONS,
MISREPRESENTATIONS OR MISINTERPRETATIONS
In this section I discuss occasions where McGrath misquotes, misrepresents
or misinterprets The God Delusion, or
fails to deal adequately with the arguments.
“God is a delusion – a
‘psychotic delinquent’ invented by mad, deluded people.
That’s the take-home message of The God Delusion.”
(DD, p.1.)
Firstly, Dawkins does not use the words “mad, deluded
people.” Secondly, Dawkins does
not simply say that God is a “psychotic delinquent”: McGrath takes
the phrase out of context. On the page
cited by McGrath, Dawkins compares two different concepts of God:
“Compared
with the Old Testament’s psychotic delinquent, the deist God of the
eighteenth-century enlightenment is an altogether grander being.” (GD,
p.38)
“Although Dawkins does not offer
a rigorous definition of a ‘delusion’, he clearly means a belief
that is not grounded in evidence – or, worse, that flies in the face of
the evidence.”
(DD, p.1)
Dawkins does define what he means by “delusion”:
“The
word ‘delusion’ in my title has disquieted some psychiatrists who
regard it as a technical term, not to be bandied about… I need to justify
my use of it.” (GD, p.5)
Dawkins quotes the definition from the Penguin English Dictionary
(“false belief or impression”), and notes that
“Microsoft
Word defines a delusion as a ‘persistent false belief held in the face of
strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric
disorder.’ The first part captures religious faith perfectly.” (GD, p.5)
So Dawkins is not using the word in a technical sense – hence the
lack of “rigor” in his definition. But why doesn’t McGrath
cite the definition that Dawkins does provide?
“Dawkins insists that Christian
belief is a ‘persistently false belief held in the face of strong
contradictory evidence.’”
(DD, p.5)
McGrath cites GD, p.5, where we find that far from being something that
Dawkins “insists” upon, the quoted line is a definition of
‘delusion’ from Microsoft Word. McGrath slightly misquotes it. It
should read, ‘persistent false belief’, not ‘persistently false
belief’.
“In earlier writings, he asserted
that the third-century Christian writer Tertullian said some particularly
stupid things, including, ‘It is by all means to be believed because it
is absurd.’ This is dismissed as typical religious nonsense. ‘That
way madness lies’. He’s stopped quoting this now, I am pleased to
say, after I pointed out that Tertullian actually said no such thing. Dawkins
had fallen into the trap of not checking his sources, and merely repeating what
older atheist writers had said.”
(DD, p.5-6)
McGrath here cites Dawkins’ essay Viruses of the Mind. This
was first written in 1991, and has been reprinted in Dahlbom, Bo (ed.) (1993). Dennett
and his critics : demystifying mind. Oxford: Blackwell, and Dawkins, Richard and Menon,
Latha (ed.) (2004). A Devil’s Chaplain: selected essays. London:
Phoenix. Viruses of the Mind is, so far as I have been able to discover,
the only time Dawkins has mentioned Tertullian in print. McGrath first pointed out the mistake in Dawkins’ God
(2004, pp.99-101). McGrath claims the
credit for preventing Dawkins from constantly misquoting Tertullian, as though
it were something Dawkins did all the time. Apart from Viruses of the Mind,
however, Dawkins seldom refers to Tertullian. I did find one other reference,
in a
lecture he gave in 2005, so he may have repeated it in speeches based on Viruses
of the Mind, but it doesn’t appear in any of his other books. Since
the one time Dawkins did misquote Tertullian in one of his books was some 13
years before McGrath’s comments were published, it looks to me like
McGrath is overdramatising his role.
In Dawkins’ God, McGrath summarises Dawkins’ view:
“In
his view, Tertullian’s approach – as evidenced by these two
isolated citations – is just like that of the White Queen in Lewis
Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, who insisted on believing six
impossible things before breakfast.” (Dawkins’ God, p.100)
Hilariously, however, and had McGrath paid rather more attention to the
source material he would have avoided this careless mistake, the White Queen
merely claims that she “sometimes” believed “as many as six
impossible things before breakfast” (Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain,
p.164).
The final element of McGrath’s accusation against Dawkins is that
Dawkins was “merely repeating what older atheist writers had
said”. McGrath doesn’t cite
these “atheist writers”, which isn’t very helpful: I’ve
tried to find other references to the Tertullian quote in my own collection of
atheist books, but the only one I have found is Bernard Williams’ essay Tertullian’s
Paradox, in New Essays
in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre
and first published as long ago as 1955. However, Williams is clear that he is
not trying to explain what Tertullian really meant. Dawkins does cite Sir Thomas Browne’s
Religio Medici
(1643) as the source of one of his Tertullian quotes, and Browne was not an
atheist. The article cited by McGrath in
Dawkins’ God in support of his contention that the
misunderstanding of Tertullian has been exposed for some time, is available
online: Sider,
R.D. (1980). ‘Credo quia absurdum?’ Classical World, vol.
73, (7), pp.417-419. (McGrath wrongly gives the date of this article as
1978 in Dawkins’ God.). Sider observes that “the largest
portion of modern scholarship” has understood Tertullian in an
anti-rationalist way. Hardly just an
atheist mistake, then. See also Boyle on Atheism.
“Dawkins takes issue with the
approaches developed by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, traditionally
known as the ‘
(DD, p.7-8)
It’s difficult to see Dawkins “mistake” as a
“serious error”, since the philosophy of religion has for
generations taken Aquinas’ “five ways” as archetypal
categories of arguments purporting to demonstrate the existence of a God. That this turns out not to have been
Aquinas’ intention is interesting, on one level, but not important to the
issues Dawkins is discussing. Had
Dawkins written a book without mentioning the classical “arguments for
the existence of God”, that would have been seen as a serious
omission. As Fergus Kerr noted in 2001
(Kerr, Fergus (2001). ‘Theology in Philosophy: revisiting the five
ways.’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 50
(1-3), pp.115-130)):
“changing
approaches to the study of Aquinas have not yet much affected standard expositions of his arguments for the
existence of God.” (p.115).
It’s surprising to find McGrath accusing Dawkins of confusing a
posteriori with a priori arguments, since Dawkins clearly states:
“Arguments
for God’s existence fall into two main categories, the a priori
and the a posteriori. Thomas Aquinas’ five are a posteriori
arguments…” (GD, p.80).
“
(DD, p.12).
McGrath creates the impression that Dawkins ignores Swinburne. But Dawkins addresses Swinburne’s
argument (citing the same book as McGrath does) on pp.147-150 of GD. For
Swinburne's response, see here.
“Dawkins dismisses Gould’s
thoughts without giving them serious consideration. ‘I simply do not
believe that Gould could possibly have meant much of what he wrote in Rocks of
Ages.’”
(DD, p.13)
The way McGrath tells it, it looks like Dawkins was responding to the
view that “there are limits to science” (DD, p.13). But he wasn’t. He was responding to the idea that scientists
can’t (or shouldn’t) comment on the question of the existence of
God (see GD, p. 55; the quote cited by Dawkins appears on GD, p.57). In which case, asks Dawkins, on what basis
did Gould make his judgements on the question?
McGrath claims (DD, p.13) that Gould had “simply articulated the
widely held view that there are limits to science.” Dawkins sees it
differently: “It is conceivable that he really did intend his
unequivocally strong statement that science has nothing whatever to say about
the question of God’s existence…” (GD, p.57). You have to see this in the context of Gould’s
notion of Non-overlapping Magisteria,
with which McGrath himself disagrees (DD, p.18). It’s not about
“the limits of science” but the subject matter of science. Could
someone like Swinburne legitimately say that science has nothing to say on the
existence of God? Hardly. And surely
McGrath, with his “scientific theology”, must argue for some
overlap too. Dawkins considers the
existence of God to be a scientific hypothesis, and McGrath offers no
counter-argument.
“The same view, much to
Dawkins’ irritation, is found in Sir Martin Rees admirable Cosmic
Habitat, which (entirely reasonably) points out that some ultimate questions
‘lie beyond science’. As Rees is the President of the Royal
Society, which brings together
(DD, p.13-14)
Dawkins’ response, which
doesn’t seem particularly irritable to me, is: “I would prefer to
say that if indeed they lie beyond science, they most certainly lie beyond the
province of theologians as well.” (GD, p.56).
Rees’ book is actually entitled Our Cosmic Habitat. He is also now Lord Rees (he was knighted in
1992, but given a life peerage in 2005).
It would be interesting to see what would happen were “careful and
critical attention” given to his comments on his own religious position. He has
described himself as a “practising, but non-believing Christian”,
and goes to church because it “was a custom of my tribe and I stick with
it.” (See also a similar quote apparently given to Dawkins in personal
communication, GD, p.14).
“…those who want to talk
simplistically about scientific ‘proof’ or ‘disproof’
of such things as the meaning of life, or the existence of God.”
(DD, p.14)
A waste of ink, since Dawkins doesn’t talk like that. Dawkins says:
“That
you cannot prove God’s non-existence is accepted and trivial, if only in
the sense that we can never absolutely prove the non-existence of anything.
What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn’t) but whether his
existence is probable.” (GD, p.54).
“Science is the only reliable tool
that we possess to understand the world. It has no limits. We may not know
something now – but we will in the future. It is just a matter of time.
This view, found throughout Dawkins’ body of writings, is given added
emphasis in The God Delusion, which offers a vigorous defence of the universal
scope and conceptual elegance of the natural sciences... Dawkins does, I have
to say with regret, tend to portray anyone raising questions about the scope of
the sciences as a science-hating idiot.”
(DD, p.15).
It is regrettable that McGrath chooses to caricature Dawkins on this
issue, instead of engaging with his arguments.
This is what Dawkins says about limits (in a non-NOMA sense):
“Perhaps
there are some genuinely profound and meaningful questions that are forever
beyond the reach of science. Maybe quantum theory is already knocking on the
door of the unfathomable. But if science cannot answer some ultimate question,
what makes anybody think that religion can?” (GD, p.56)
Dawkins’ position is therefore not that science has no limits, but
that the limits of science are the limits of any kind of inquiry. Or, to put it
another way, if you can’t find out by using the tools of science (which
are many and varied), there is no other way to find out (which isn’t to
say that no answers could be given at all).
McGrath has nothing to say on this.
“[Sir Peter] Medawar suggests
that scientists need to be cautious about their pronouncements on these
matters, lest they lose the trust of the public by confident and dogmatic
overstatements.”
(DD, p.17)
This is a pragmatic or tactical point. It’s not about the
epistemological limits of science, or the extent of scientific explanation, but
about ‘what people might think’.
It might be good advice, but it’s not exactly a rigorous argument.
McGrath’s distinctly dodgy deployment of Medawar is worth
exploring in more detail. McGrath says
that Medawar “distinguishes between what he calls
‘transcendent’ questions, which are better left to religion and
metaphysics, and questions about the organization and structure of the material
universe.” (DD, p.17). Noting that
Dawkins and Medawar agree on the possibilities of scientific progress, McGrath
continues: “So what of other questions? What about the question of God?
Or of whether there is purpose within the universe?” And then he quotes Medawar:
“That
there is indeed a limit upon science is made very likely by the existence of
questions that science cannot answer, and that no conceivable advance of
science would empower it to answer… I have in mind such questions as:
How did everything begin?
What are we all here for?
What is the point of living?
Doctrinaire
positivism – now something of a period piece – dismissed all such
questions as nonquestions or pseudoquestions such as only simpletons ask and
only charlatans profess to be able to answer.”
(The Limits of Science,
p.66),
McGrath continues, “Perhaps The
God Delusion might have taken Sir Peter by surprise, on account of its late
flowering of precisely that ‘doctrinaire positivism’ which he had,
happily yet apparently prematurely, believed to be dead.” (DD, p.18).
The first thing we should notice is that Medawar doesn’t dump his
“transcendent questions” into just two laps – those of
religion and metaphysics. In fact, he
offers four alternatives: “myth, metaphysics, imaginative literature or
religion.” (The Limits of Science,
p.88).
Secondly, note the ellipsis in the passage quoted from Medawar.
It’s quite obvious why McGrath has omitted that particular bit of
text. Medawar says: “These are the
questions that children ask – the ‘ultimate questions’ of
Karl Popper.” (The Limits of
Science, p.66). Later in the book, Medawar expands the analogy with
children’s “Why?” questions: “a mother’s answers
are palliative rather than explanatory. It is not necessary that they be right
or even comprehensible – and often they are not. But they give
satisfaction enough to bring the exploratory ritual temporarily to a
standstill.” (The Limits of
Science, p.92). This is not a flattering picture of religion’s
role in ‘answering’ the ultimate questions! No wonder McGrath brushes it under the
carpet.
Thirdly, note that Medawar does not in fact include “the question
of God” in his list of questions science cannot answer. McGrath gives the impression that Medawar
does think of the existence of God as an
issue beyond the limits of science, but it is not clear that this is the
case. Chapter 7 of The Limits of Science is entitled “The Question of the
Existence of God” (p. 94-99).
Nowhere in that chapter does Medawar explicitly say that the existence
of God is a “transcendental question”, to be left to myth,
metaphysics, imaginative literature and religion. Says Medawar:
“I
believe that a reasonable case can be made for saying, not that we believe in
God because He exists but rather that He exists because we believe in
Him.” (The Limits of Science, p.94)
“I
regret my disbelief in God and religious answers generally, for I believe it
would give satisfaction and comfort to many in need of it if it were possible
to discover and propound good scientific and philosophic reasons to believe in
God.” (p.96).
“To
abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of
belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be
perilous and destructive.” (p.97)
So Medawar, despite his expression of regret at being an unbeliever, is
thus clearly not willing to look outside of reason
to decide what to believe (“I suppose that’s just my trouble:
always wanting reasons”, he says (p.97)), and, crucially, does not say
that “good scientific and philosophic reasons to believe in God”
are in principle unobtainable. He thinks
religion is untrue, whereas “it is not useful or even meaningful”
to ask whether “questions having to do with first and last
things” are true or false (The Limits of Science, p.92) – what matters is whether the answers
“bring peace of mind” (in other words, whatever answers myth,
metaphysics, imaginative literature or religion might come up with, they can never
claim to be right –
that’s the price of being unscientific).
Here another quotation from The
Limits of Science:
“The
failure of science to answer questions about first and last things does not in
any way entail the acceptability of answers of other kinds; nor can it be taken
for granted that because these questions can be put they can be answered. So
far as our understanding goes, they can not.” (p.60)
This is a remarkably similar sentiment to that expressed by Dawkins in
GD, in relation to questions that supposedly lie beyond science:
“I
would prefer to say that if indeed they lie beyond science, they most certainly
lie beyond the province of theologians as well… The fact that a question
can be phrased in a grammatically correct English sentence doesn’t make
it meaningful, or entitle it to our serious attention. Nor, even if the
question is a real one, does the fact that science cannot answer it imply that
religion can.” (GD, p.56).
McGrath accuses Dawkins of “doctrinaire positivism”, of
holding that questions such as “does god exist?” are
pseudoquestions. But Dawkins
doesn’t think that “does god exist?” is a pseudoquestion,
unlike the logical positivists, who held that it was meaningless. Dawkins thinks that the existence of God is a
scientific question, capable of a
scientific answer. Not, to emphasise the point, that science can disprove God, but that science can
certainly shed light on the probability of God.
To return to Medawar, what does he think of religion’s capacity to
answer questions about “first and last things” in the right kind of
way (i.e. being neither true nor false, the issue is whether religious answers
bring peace of mind)?
“Whatever
else we may expect of transcendent answers, we also expect that they should not
be outrageously incongruent with the world of experience and common sense
– for if the incongruence is flagrant and blatant, we shall lose peace of
mind. Nowhere is this incongruence more apparent than in the problem of evil
and of reconciling the idea of a benevolent God with the natural dispositions
and events that are so difficult to reconcile with it.” (The Limits of Science, p.93)
Having reviewed what The Limits of
Science actually says, I submit that McGrath’s use of out-of-context
quotes in support of a dubious line of attack on Dawkins is a mischievous abuse of Medawar’s intentions.
“… those natural scientists
– such as Dawkins – who refuse to concede any limits to the
sciences.”
(DD, p.18)
As I have shown, it is not true that Dawkins refuses to
“concede” limits to the sciences.
“…Dawkins’ rigid
insistence that real scientists are atheists.”
(DD, p.20).
McGrath cites Owen
Gingerich, Francis
Collins, and Paul Davies
as counter-examples. But Dawkins
doesn’t insist on anything of the kind, rigidly or otherwise. In the
section of his book addressing “the argument from admired religious
scientists” (GD, pp.97-103), Dawkins (explicitly countering those who
cite religious scientists as some kind of pro-religious argument) himself names
Newton, Michael Faraday (says Dawkins, “We have no reason to doubt Michael
Faraday’s sincerity as a Christian…”,GD, p.98), James Clerk
Maxwell (“an equally devout Christian”, GD, p.98), Lord Kelvin,
Arthur Peacocke, Russell Stannard, John Polkinghorne, and Francis Collins. So Dawkins is unlikely to be surprised by
McGrath’s revelations. Indeed,
Dawkins says he has had “amicable discussions” with Peacocke,
Stannard and Polkinghorne, and - far from insisting that real scientists are
atheists – confesses merely to being “baffled, not so much by their
belief in a cosmic lawgiver of some kind, as by their belief in the details of
the Christian religion: resurrection, forgiveness of sins and all.” (GD,
p.99)
“but the fine details of such
surveys are actually beside the point. Dawkins is forced to contend with the
highly awkward fact that his view that the natural sciences are an intellectual
superhighway to atheism is rejected by most scientists…”
(DD, p.21)
McGrath piles abuse on his caricature:
Dawkins’ “insistence that all ‘real’ scientists
ought to be atheists” is “petulant” and
“dogmatic” (DD, p.21). But
where does Dawkins say anything of the kind?
Instead, in arguing against the view that the existence of religious
scientists demonstrates the value of religion, he identifies a number of
religious scientists himself (see above). He also says:
“Great
scientists who profess religion become harder to find through the twentieth
century, but they are not particularly rare. I suspect that most of the more
recent ones are religious only in the Einsteinian sense which… is a
misuse of the word. Nevertheless, there are some genuine specimens of good
scientists who are sincerely religious in the full, traditional sense.”
(GD, p.99)
It’s fair to say that Dawkins isn’t much impressed by
religious scientists, but it’s also perfectly clear that he doesn’t
think that “real” scientists must be atheists.
“…consider his censorious
remarks about Freeman Dyson, a physicist widely tipped to win a Nobel Prize for
his groundbreaking work in quantum electrodynamics. On being awarded the
Templeton Prize in Religion in 2000, Dyson gave an acceptance speech
celebrating the achievements of religion, while noting (and criticizing) its
downside. He was also clear about the downside of atheism, noting that
‘the two individuals who epitomized the evils of our century, Adolf
Hitler and Joseph Stalin, were both avowed atheists.’ Dawkins regarded
this as a craven act of apostasy and betrayal…”
(DD, p.22)
First of all, let it be made crystal clear: Adolf Hitler, at least, was
not an avowed atheist. Therefore Freeman
Dyson, for all his eminence, was merely peddling a particularly grubby
anti-atheist lie. Secondly, it must be
acknowledged that the ability of the Templeton Foundation to lavish huge wads
of cash on individuals raises serious questions about its influence on
scientists. For some discussion, see this article and this article. Dyson’s Templeton speech can be found here,
and the original exchange of words involving Dawkins and Dyson among others can
be found here. Dawkins’ sharp response to Dyson
(reproduced in part in GD) is merely a sarcastic attack on what Dawkins sees as
nonsense – he also identifies a gap between Dyson’s claim to be a
Christian, and his actual beliefs, which appear much more unorthodox than is
usual. McGrath had the opportunity to
discuss the theology behind this polemical dispute, but instead concentrates on
misrepresenting Dawkins’ stance.
“Dawkins is so unswervingly
committed to this obsolete ‘warfare’ model that he is led to make
some very unwise and indefensible judgements. The most ridiculous of these is
that scientists who believe in, or contribute to, a positive working
relationship between science and religion, represent the ‘Neville
Chamberlain’ school. This comparison is intellectual nonsense, not to
mention personally offensive.”
(DD, p.24)
McGrath notes that Dawkins singles out some comments by Michael Ruse as
a particular target. What he
doesn’t do is notice what it was about Michael Ruse’s article that
might have inspired Dawkins’ “Neville Chamberlain”
analogy. McGrath is self-confessedly
bewildered as to what point Dawkins is trying to make, and he wonders if
To return to Michael Ruse, Dawkins cites an article
“Winston
Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt did not like Stalin and communism. But in fighting
Hitler they realized that they had to work with the
Dawkins says he can see some tactical value here, and indeed he has
worked with religious figures himself in the past against creationism (See Guardian,
7 April 2002). But notice
Finally, how are we to interpret
“I have already criticized the
Intelligent Design movement, a conservative Christian anti-evolutionary
movement whose ideas are also lambasted in The God Delusion. Yet ironically,
this movement now regards Dawkins as one of its greatest assets.”
(DD, p.25).
McGrath’s discussion of the infamous Ruse-Dennett email case, and Madeleine
Bunting’s Guardian article criticizing Dawkins’ approach, omits
a rather important point. Which is that Dawkins himself discusses both in GD
(p.68-69). Why doesn’t McGrath
deal with Dawkins’ response to
“…in the TV series The Root
of All Evil?... Dawkins sought out religious extremists who advocated violence
in the name of religion, or who were aggressively anti-scientific in their
outlook. No representative figures were included or considered. Dawkins’ conclusion? Religion leads to violence,
and is anti-science.”
(DD, p.27)
It is not true that no moderate religious figures appeared in the
documentary. An uncut version of
Dawkins’ interview with the Bishop of Oxford can be viewed here.
“…that’s what Dawkins
wants his readers to think – that believing in God is on the same level
as cosmic teapots.”
(DD, p.28).
This is a singularly careless way of explaining Dawkins’
point. The parable of the celestial
teapot is used to illustrate the mistake of jumping “from the premise
that the question of God’s existence is in principle unanswerable to the
conclusion that his existence and his non-existence are equiprobable.”
(GD, p.51)
“How can Dawkins speak of
religion as something ‘accidental’, when his understanding of the
evolutionary process precludes any theoretical framework that allows him to
suggest that some outcomes are ‘intentional’ and others ‘accidental’?”
(DD, p.30)
Dawkins explains what he means in GD, p.172-173. He draws an analogy
with the self-immolating behaviour of moths round candle flames. Why would
natural selection favour such apparently ‘suicidal’ flights? The lesson, for Dawkins is that you have to
ask the right question:
“Instead,
we should ask why they have nervous systems that steer by maintaining a fixed
angle to light rays, a tactic that we notice only when it goes wrong.”
(GD, p.173)
By analogy, the suggestion is that supernaturalist propensities arise
because of the way our minds have evolved.
Supernaturalism itself may not be a useful adaptation, but useful
adaptations may cause supernaturalism in other circumstances.
“Dawkins theories of the
biological origins of religion, though interesting, must be considered to be
highly speculative.”
(DD, p.30)
Well, yes. As Dawkins himself says: “I am much more wedded to the
general principle that the question should be properly put, and if necessary
rewritten, than I am to any particular answer.” (GD, p.174). Perhaps the important thing is that the
theories are interesting, as McGrath says. McGrath complains that
Dawkins’ discussion contains lots of “maybes” and
“mights”. But if Dawkins is
discussing admittedly speculative material, is such language not entirely
appropriate?
“At an early stage in The God
Delusion, Dawkins represents atheism as the last outcome of a final process of
whittling down irrational beliefs about the supernatural. You begin with
polytheism… Then as time progresses, and your thinking becomes more
sophisticated, you move on to monotheism… Atheism just takes this one
step further… Yet the history of religion obliges us to speak about the ‘diversification’,
not the ‘progression’ of religion. The evidence simply isn’t
there to allow us to speak about any kind of ‘natural progression’
from polytheism to monotheism – and thence to atheism.”
(DD, p.31)
McGrath has simply not understood the cited section of GD (p.31-32), and
consequently misrepresents a humorous aside as a serious expectation. Dawkins does say,
“Historians
of religion recognize a progression from primitive tribal animisms, through
polytheisms such as those of the Greeks, Romans, and Norsemen, to monotheisms
such as Judaism and its derivatives, Christianity and Islam.” (GD, p.32).
But he goes on to observe that,
It is
not clear why the change from polytheism to monotheism should be assumed to be
a self-evidently progressive improvement. But it widely is – an
assumption that provoked Ibn Warraq (author of Why I Am Not a Muslim)
wittily to conjecture that monotheism is in its turn doomed to subtract one
more god and become atheism. (GD, p.32).
It’s a joke, you see.
Perhaps someone could explain this to McGrath, slowly, so that he
understands.
“[Dawkins’] analysis rests
on the ‘general principles’ of religion he finds in Sir James
Frazer’s Golden Bough – a highly impressionistic early work of
anthropology, first published in 1890… Why on earth should Dawkins’
theory of the roots of religion depend so heavily on the core assumptions of a
work which is well over a century old, and now largely discredited?”
(DD, p.33)
We can agree that Frazer’s work has been discredited by subsequent
scholarship, but the answer to McGrath’s rhetorical question is that
Dawkins’ speculations don’t actually depend heavily on The
Golden Bough at all. GD, p. 188,
which McGrath cites at this point, merely mentions the book as a survey which
“impresses us with the diversity of irrational human beliefs”.
There’s no indication that Dawkins takes more from it than that.
“More seriously, he draws
attention to the hypothesis of Michael Persinger that religious experience is associated
with pathological brain activity, subtly implying that religion is itself
therefore pathological. Readers ought to be aware (for Dawkins does not mention
it) that Persinger’s experiments have been severely criticized for their
conceptual and design limitations, and that his theory is no longer regarded as
plausible.” (DD, p.38).
Here is Dawkins, “drawing attention” to Michael Persinger:
“I shall not pursue
the neurological idea of a ‘god centre’ in the brain because I am
not concerned here with proximate questions. That is not to belittle them. I
recommend Michael Shermer’s How We Believe: The Search for God in an
Age of Science for a succinct discussion, which includes the suggestion by
Michael Persinger and others that visionary religious experiences are related
to temporal lobe epilepsy.” (GD, p.168)
As McGrath observes in an endnote, it’s not clear how familiar
Dawkins is with Persinger’s work beyond Shermer’s discussion, but
notice he doesn’t go further than calling it a “suggestion”. It’s merely mentioned in passing, which
is no great crime.
“During the 1990s, Dawkins
introduced the idea of God as some kind of mental virus…”
(DD, p.40)
“I was severely and quite
properly critical of this pseudoscientific idea in Dawkins’ God, noting
that it lacked any basis in evidence, and seemed to depend on Dawkins’
highly subjective personal judgement as to what was ‘rational’ or
not. This discredited idea now seems to have a purely walk-on part in the
narrative of The God Delusion, which alludes to a 1993 article in which Dawkins
wrote about God as a ‘virus of the mind’. It’s clearly about
to be written out of the plot altogether, and not before time. Its passing will
not be mourned.”
(DD, p.41)
I’ll leave gently on one side the atrocious mixed metaphor of the
last two sentences of the second of those quotes from DD.
One wonders why McGrath makes such heavy weather of what was quite
obviously a piece of rhetoric from Dawkins, not a serious scientific proposal.
How many words will McGrath waste on disproving the existence of Gerin Oil? (See also this article
from The Independent, and this Wikipedia entry). You can imagine McGrath working himself up
into an indignant frenzy: “There is no scientific evidence that the 9/11
hijackers were ‘high’ on any such substance…”
“But why should
biology be able to explain culture?”
(DD, p.43)
I’m no expert, but the answer ought to be obvious. If human culture is the product of human
brains (and I take it that McGrath agrees that it is), and human brains are the
product of the interaction of genes and environment (again, this seems
unassailable), then in principle it ought to be possible to investigate the
contribution of biology to culture. So
McGrath’s question just looks silly, even given the evident fact that the
relationship between biology and culture is not going to be a trivial one to
unravel. I don’t count myself
among those who find “memes” a particularly convincing model for
cultural evolution, but that’s another issue.
“has anyone actually seen these
things, whether leaping from brain to brain, or just hanging out?”
(DD, p.43)
I am sympathetic towards those who find “memes” an unhelpful
model for cultural development. But
McGrath’s objection here is infantile.
A “meme” is merely an idea, a concept, an opinion, a
“way things should be done”.
In which case, yes, we see memes all over the place: written down or
acted out.
“In The God Delusion, Dawkins
sets out the idea of memes as if it were established scientific orthodoxy.”
(DD, p.43)
Not really. He takes memes
seriously, but observes that “the main purpose of meme theory, at this
early stage of its development, is not
to supply a comprehensive theory of culture, on a par with Watson-Crick
genetics.” (GD, p.196, my emphasis).
“The God that Dawkins does not
believe in is ‘a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive,
bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal,
genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic,
capriciously malevolent bully’. Come to think of it, I don’t
believe in a God like that either.”
(DD, p.46)
The quotation McGrath is using here is from p.31 of GD. And McGrath is completely misrepresenting
Dawkins’ intentions. Here is the
context:
“The
God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all
fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control
freak… It is unfair to attack such an easy target. The God Hypothesis
should not stand or fall with its most unlovely instantiation, Yahweh… I
am not attacking the particular qualities of Yahweh, or Jesus, or Allah, or any
other specific god such as Baal, Zeus or Wotan. Instead I shall define the God
Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a superhuman, supernatural
intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything
in it, including us.” (GD, p.31)
“The God whom I know and love is
described by Dawkins as ‘insipid’, summed up in the
‘mawkishly nauseating’ idea of ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.’”
(DD, p.46)
Once again, McGrath is misrepresenting Dawkins. Dawkins explicitly contrasts the Old
Testament God with “his insipidly opposite Christian face” (GD,
p.31). There doesn’t appear to be any implication that this is supposed
to be anything more than a polar opposite.
Indeed, Dawkins goes on to observe that, “To be fair, this milksop
persona owes more to his Victorian followers than to Jesus
himself.” (GD, p.31)
“Jesus of
This is a curious thing to say, since there is no evidence anywhere that
could help settle the question. It is merely dogma, therefore. The New
Testament, even if taken as an entirely accurate portrait of the historical
figure of Jesus, covers only a few years of his life.
Does the story of Jesus and the Gadarene Swine fit into an entirely
non-violent model? Jesus’ actions in this case led to the drowning of a
herd of pigs (see Mark,
5:1-20; Matthew,
8:28-34; Luke,
8:26-39).
“Dawkins is nauseatingly
condescending about the Amish. Yet I cannot help but feel that he misses
something rather important in his blanket dismissal of their significance. If
the world were more like Jesus of
(DD, p.47)
Of course, it’s not an answer that most followers of Jesus have
been comfortable with, either, otherwise pacifism would be more popular than it
actually is. The Amish forgave the
gunman who killed five schoolgirls (see the Wikipedia entry on
the shootings), but actually it is not obvious that such a reaction is more
moral than any other human reaction. One
might regret the inability to bring the killer to justice, since he shot
himself. Is that a less worthy response than forgiveness? Dawkins’ discussion of the Amish
concentrates, in fact, on a Supreme Court decision supporting the withdrawal of
children from High School by Amish parents in Wisconsin (GD, p.329-331). McGrath doesn’t bother to engage with
the real point at all.
“Dawkins insists that there is
‘not the smallest evidence’ that atheism systematically influences people
to do bad things. It’s an astonishing, naïve and somewhat sad statement.”
(DD, p.48)
Dawkins’ discussion of atheism and totalitarianism and violence is
in fact quite weak, but McGrath’s attack on it fails miserably. Atheists have committed atrocities,
including atrocities in pursuit of anti-religious policies. Dawkins must know this, because he devotes
some space to a discussion of Stalin (GD, pp.272-273, 278). McGrath does not engage with what Dawkins has
to say about Stalin, conveying the impression that Dawkins doesn’t
mention the
Dawkins accepts that Stalin was an atheist, and that he did bad things.
What he says is that, “there is no evidence that his atheism motivated
his brutality” (GD, p.273).
Dawkins comments that “individual atheists may do evil things but
they don’t do evil things in the name of atheism”. Stalin, says
Dawkins, did evil things in the name of “dogmatic and doctrinaire
Marxism” (GD, p.278).
McGrath’s strongest point is that the
Finally, what arguments does McGrath offer against Dawkins’
contention that what matters is “whether atheism systematically influences
people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it
does.” (GD, p.273)? In fact,
McGrath doesn’t supply any relevant arguments at all, concentrating as he
does on the anti-religious history of the
Even when faced with some of Dawkins’ weakest writing,
McGrath’s failure to address himself to what Dawkins actually says leaves
Dawkins unchallenged.
“For Dawkins, it is obvious that
it is religious belief that leads to suicide bombings.”
(DD, p.50)
The motives for and justifications of suicide bombings are many and
various. It is obvious that some
of those motives and justifications are religious. Dawkins recognises that it’s not all
down to religion:
“It
might be said that there is nothing special about religious faith here.
Patriotic love of country or ethnic group can also make the world safe for its
own version of extremism, can’t it? Yes it can, as with the kamikazes in
So Dawkins is not saying that all suicide bombings are down to religion.
What he is saying is that religious faith is a potent element of some such
attacks. To that extent, then, religious faith is dangerous. Again, McGrath fails to address
Dawkins’ point.
“Suppose Dawkins’ dream
were to come true, and religion were to disappear: would that end the divisions
within humanity? Certainly not."
(DD, p.51)
Dawkins would agree. Indeed, McGrath quotes Dawkins agreeing with such a
point (DD, p.52, quoting GD, p.259). But
McGrath’s reply again fails to address what Dawkins’ point
actually is. I find McGrath’s
inability to deal with the real arguments disturbing. Here is what Dawkins says:
“I
do not deny that humanity’s powerful tendencies towards in-group
loyalties and out-group hostilities would exist even in the absence of
religion… But religion amplifies and exacerbates the damage in at least
three ways… ” (GD, p.260).
Dawkins then lists three things which tend to make religious conflict
particularly damaging. First, children
are labelled by religion, before they can make an informed choice of their own.
Second, schooling is often segregated on a religious basis. Third, religions
often ban intermarriage. When Dawkins
talks about religion’s capacity for creating in-groups and out-groups,
what he often has in mind is the perpetuation of sectarianism through segregated
schooling. Note that McGrath nowhere deals with these points or their public
policy implications (especially point two).
FAULTY SCHOLARSHIP
In this section, I document what I think are serious
scholarly failings.
“Lenin regarded the elimination
of religion as central to the socialist revolution, and put in place measures
designed to eradicate religious beliefs through the ‘protracted use of
violence’.”
(DD, p.48)
I hope I will not be misunderstood.
I am an advocate of secularism,
However, in the passage quoted above McGrath is badly wrong, however you
look at it.
McGrath doesn’t provide any citations to Lenin at this point. Luckily for us, it’s not the first time
he’s made this mistake. In Twilight
of Atheism, McGrath writes:
Lenin,
frustrated by the Russian people’s obstinate refusal to espouse atheism
voluntarily and naturally after the Russian Revolution, enforced it, arguing
– in a letter of March 1922 – that the “protracted use of
brutality” was the necessary means of achieving this goal. (Twilight,
p.166)
The letter in question does not concern the imposition of atheism (which
isn’t even mentioned), as such, and it does not advocate the
“protracted use of brutality”, as we shall see.
A translation of Lenin’s “Letter to Molotov for Politburo
members”, 19 March 1922, is available in Pipes’ The Unknown Lenin (1996, p.150-155). Slightly different
translations can be found on the Internet, for example at: http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918p/lenimolo.html.
The context to Lenin’s letter is a programme of confiscation of valuables
and other assets from Orthodox institutions (in order to prop up the economy),
which was resisted. At Shuia, troops
fired on protesters and the Politburo ordered a halt to the programme.
Lenin’s letter overruled that decision, urging that an attempt to carry
out the confiscation of Church property at any later juncture risked failure
and loss of peasant sympathy:
“I
think that here our enemy is committing an enormous strategic mistake in trying
to drag us into a decisive battle at a time when it is particularly hopeless
and particularly disadvantageous for him… It is precisely now and only
now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds
if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore
must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most savage and
merciless energy…It is precisely now and only now that the enormous
majority of the peasant mass will be for us or at any rate will not be in a
condition to support in any decisive way that handful of Black Hundred clergy
and reactionary urban petty bourgeoisie who can and want to attempt a policy of
violent resistance to the Soviet decree.” (Pipes 1996, pp.152-153).
So this is not an explicit policy on the eradication of belief, but
about an alleged threat to the
One wise
writer on matters of statecraft rightly said that if it is necessary to resort
to certain brutalities for the sake of realizing a certain political goal, they
must be carried out in the most energetic fashion and in the briefest possible
time because the masses will not tolerate prolonged application of brutality.
(Pipes 1996, p.153).
Lenin is therefore not advocating the “protracted use of
violence” at all, but in fact warning against it!
McGrath would be quick to jump on the cavalier use of uncited sources by
other writers. I see no reason to be
more indulgent of his scholarly errors, and this is a serious one.
OMISSIONS
In this section I draw attention to important things that McGrath fails
to mention.
“A good recent example is
provided by Anthony [sic] Flew (born
1923), the noted atheist philosopher who started to believe in God in his
eighties.”
(DD, p.3.)
The God that Flew now believes in is an Aristotelian ‘First
Cause’. This is still some
distance from the Christian concept of deity. See this BBC
interview, and the original interview with Gary Habermas.
“In the God Delusion, Dawkins
criticizes ‘the worship of gaps’. This is a reference to an
approach to Christian apologetics that came to prominence during the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries… In its simplest form, it asserted that there
were necessarily ‘gaps’ in a naturalist or scientific understanding
of reality… It was argued that God requires to be proposed in order to
deal with these gaps in scientific understanding. It was a foolish move, and
was increasingly abandoned in the twentieth century. Oxford’s first
professor of theoretical chemistry, the noted Methodist lay preacher Charles A.
Coulson, damned it with the telling phrase ‘ the God of the gaps.’ (DD, p.10-11)
McGrath creates the impression that Coulson invented the phrase
“God of the gaps”. The idea
actually goes back to the Scottish theologian Henry Drummond (1851-1897):
“There
are reverent minds who ceaselessly scan the fields of Nature and the books of
Science in search of gaps – gaps which they will fill up with God. As if
God lived in gaps?” (from The Ascent of Man,
1894, chapter 10)
FACTUAL
ERRORS
In this section I list minor mistakes. A “minor” mistake is one that could be corrected without changing the thrust of the book’s argument.
“Though an atheist, Gould was
absolutely clear…”
(DD, p. ix)
In fact, Gould referred
to himself as an agnostic (Rocks of Ages, 1999, p.8). He might qualify as atheist under some
definitions of the term, but it is not clear how McGrath defines it.
“I am not alone in
feeling disappointed here. The God Delusion trumpets the fact that its author
was recently voted one of the world’s three leading intellectuals. This
survey took place among the readers of Prospect magazine in November 2005. So
what did this same Prospect magazine make of the book? Its reviewer was shocked
at this ‘incurious, dogmatic, rambling, and self-contradictory’
book.”
(DD, p. xi)
Prospect’s survey cannot have been conducted in November 2005, because the
results were published in October (see for example: ‘Chomsky
is voted world’s top public intellectual’, Guardian, 18
October 2005). True, the official list did appear in Prospect’s
November edition, but that edition actually appeared in late October (not
uncommon in publishing). Nor was the survey only among readers of Prospect.
It was also promoted jointly with Foreign
Policy. According to the shortlist
posted on Foreign Policy’s website (registration may be
required to view the article) in September 2005, voting closed on 10 October
2005. Furthermore, the opinion of a reviewer can hardly be taken as a sign of
“disappointment” on behalf of the entire readership of a magazine.
The reviewer, by the way, was Andrew
Brown, and Brown had previously reviewed Dawkins unfavourably – also
in Prospect, which tells us what? (see ‘Beautiful
metaphors, bad science’, Prospect, June 1996).
“As Dawkins pointed out in his
Thought for the Day on BBC Radio in 2003...”
(DD, p.3)
Dawkins didn’t take part in Thought for the Day.
He participated in a discussion on the Today programme by providing an
example of atheist opinion, but it fell outside Thought for the Day
itself, because Thought for the Day excludes non-religious views (this
was the whole point of the discussion).
And it happened in 2002, not 2003.
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2193321.stm,
dated 14 August 2002, where it is explained that,
“Prof
Dawkins's broadcast did not replace the regular daily slot but ran an hour
afterwards as an unofficial "Thought". Christine Morgan, who produces
the series, said the official "Thought" would remain closed to
non-religious voices.”
For Dawkins’ “Alternative Thought for the Day”, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/archive/features/thought_for_day_dawkins.shtml
“…Anthony
Flew…”
(DD, p.3)
Flew’s first name is spelled “
“Back in 1916, active scientists
were asked whether they believed in God…”
(DD, p.20)
Actually, James Leuba’s survey was in 1914, though his book was
published in 1916. See Larson,
Edward J. and Witham, Larry. (1998). ‘Leading scientists still reject
God.’ Nature, vol. 394 (6691), p.313. Unmentioned by McGrath, Dawkins also
comments on the Larson/Witham research (p. 100-101), as well as on other
surveys. Odd that McGrath ignores this.
“Madame Rolande was brought to
the guillotine to face execution on trumped-up charges in 1792.”
(DD, p.51)
Careless. Madame Roland was
executed on 8 November 1793, not in 1792 (see wikipedia; Encyclopedia
Britannica).
First written: 7 May 2007
Latest update: 25 June 2007
Swinburne's response to Dawkins added: 16 May 07
Text reorganised: 19 May 07.
Typos corrected. Section on Medawar expanded: 1 June
07
More on Medawar: 2 June 07.
.
Contact: delusion @ sheffieldhumanists.org.uk