Dawkin's God Book

Note: This review was written a long time ago which was when I read the book. It may not totally reflect my modern opinions, which have changed drastically since 2007 (in the realm of politics at least).

Dawkins' God: A Critical Look

This essay is a critical look at the ideas of Alister McGrath, who argues against some of Richard Dawkins' ideas. I will deal with the arguments that he uses against Dawkins.

Chapter Two: The Blind Watchmaker

McGrath portrays Dawkins' ideas as being:

--Darwinism is necarssarily atheistic

--Darwinism is the only way to explain the world because as God and other expalantions(like Lamarckism) fail as explanatory principles. [Dawkins' reasoning goes along these lines: It either came about by "creation" or it came about by some form of "evolution". The mind first view(the creator) explains nothing, because it leaves us with the bigger problem of who created the creator. Thus, we end up in an infinite regress of gods if we do not postulate some way of getting complexity from non-complexity, hence evolution.(see Dennett 1995; Dawkins 2006)]

McGrath has three objections to Dawkins' positions:

1. The Scientific method is incapable of proving or disproving God's existence. Science only deals with naturalistic explanations. If we are to answer the question of whether God exists, we cannot decide by science.

2. Just because God need not be invoked in the explanatory process of evolution doesn't mean he doesn't exist.

3. The "God as watchmaker" idea is an outdated view of God's creation and not typical of the Christian tradition.

Objection One

Dawkins would agree that one cannot prove/disprove the existence of God. But that does not mean that we cannot say anything about God by using science. If one wanted to be philosophical, one could argue that "we can't prove anything", we haven't proved any of our scientific theories correct, only that they are not false based on the evidence (Popperian falsificationism). As I argued in my article "Meaningless Propositions and God" the God Hypothesis makes predictions about reality, and thus can be tested using science. Withdrawing it form rational enquiry effectively makes God a meaningless idea. Thus, science can comment on the supernatural.

McGrath cites an example where 2 theories in science are equal, and we don't know which one is correct, but people decide which one is right. Firstly, they don't dogmatically assert which one is right, and the evidence will eventually be king when it comes in. Secondly, scientifically, theism and athiesm are not on the same footing; atheism is more parsimonious. It fits with more facts (eg. problem of evil, callousness of the universe, etc) and is less ad hoc than theism. If one is an atheist, a lot of facts are already explained (problem of evil etc).

Also, what other grounds are there to decide other than science? Personal experience? But we know people's personal experiences can contradict science. People can appear to percieve ESP or spirits even though there's no evidence those things are real. Of course, people from all religions have these experiences, and there is no way to tell which if any are authentic.

Objection Two

If we don't need to invoke God as an explanatory principle for anything, and we have no evidence for his existence, it's pretty likely he doesn't exist. It is again, more parsinious to postuate atheism.

Objection Three

I think that Mr McGrath has failed to note the millions of Christians who do believe in a creator who created the world instantaniously in 6 days. They do exist, most notably in the United States but some British people also believe it.

Chapter Three: Proof And Faith

(This chapter's structure seems to me a little messier, so this review of ideas will be also.)

--Dawkins defines faith as belief without evidence.

--McGrath doesn't agree with this definition, and says that faith is based on the evidence, and cites and mentions Christian Theologians to make his points.

The problem with this is that if faith was based on evidence, it would be called knowledge! McGrath doesn't even try to argue that belief in God is based on evidence. I mean, this is the point where you would expect the typical theistic arguments to come out, eg. Argument from Design or Anthropic Coinicidences, Dembski's Information Theory, Moral Arguments, Arguement from Beauty for example. And he makes none of these! I was a little surprised at that, because he has made the assertion that belief in God is based on evidence, without attempting to present any evidence.

Another problem with his arguments is that he does what he accuses Dawkins of doing in Chapter 2: picking a group unreperaentaive of Christians. Christian Theologians, in general, only speak to intelligent, well educated, moderate [in politics and Biblical interpretation] Christians. They do not encompass the views of your average Bible Belt fundamentalist.

--God could have designed the universe to be self sustaining.

I'll just hand over to Sam Harris on this point: "The fact that a bowdlerized evangelical Christianity can still be rendered compatible with science (because of the gaps in science and the elasticity of religious thinking) does not mean that there are scientific reasons for being an evangelical Christian."

--God doesn't need to be explained as he could just be a brute fact.

The principle of Occam's Razor applies here. If God supposedly just exists, why can't the universe/muliverse/matter/energy just exist?

--Dawkins' atheism is overconfident and too brashly concluded, and he is too ferocious in promoting atheism.

So it isn't reasonable to believe that God doesn't exist because there's no evidence for it? Dawkins would change his mind if you gave him scientific evidence. And as for Dawkins promoting atheism, that's just the pot telling the kettle it's black. Yes, Dawkins promotes atheism as a rational worldview. But it often seems like if any atheist says "I don't believe in your religion" they are a "militant atheist", which is completely unfair.

--RD doesn't know anything about Christian theology, so he shouldn't talk about it so rashly and openly.

Christian theology is not the same thing as the God Question. One can have read quite a lot on the existence of God and know nothing about Christian theology and its history.

--radical theory change in science, one day the scientific ideas we believe to be true may turn out not to be so.

True. But that doesn't mean God will turn out to be right, and all we can do is go with the evidence we do have.

--Dawkins is wrong to call religion a source of human misery. Athough religious people do evil, they also do good.

--Science has been used to research bombs and other ethically dubious things. Dawkins would say this is an abuse of science, so why can't evils commited in religion's name be abuses of religion?

Is it immoral to know how to manufacture a bomb? Technically, if you gave me the right equipment and chemicals, I could make TNT(trinitrotoluene). It involves using methylbenzene and NO3 2- heated to fairly high temperature (to get all nitryl groups to bond - it's called listening in chemistry class). It's immoral to drop a bomb (in most circumstances at least) but that's a different question.

Evils commited in the name of religion aren't abuses in the name of religion, because many of them are imbedded in the tenets of religion. [cut in case of offense] Immorality has nothing to do with the tenets of science, which is/should be (ethical as in not involving human rights abuses) research.

--"Stalin was an atheist"

I'm not sure what point this is meant to make. It's Hitler Ate Sugar, basically.

Chaper Four: Cultural Darwinism

--Memetics is the theory of a cultural replicator that is passed on by imitation.

--McGrath has some objections to the theory of memetics:

1. There is nor reason to assume that cultural evolution is Darwinian, or that evolution has anything to do with culture. There is telelogy in memetics and some of it is Lamarckian;

2. There is no direct evidence for the existence of memes;

3. The analogy between the meme and the gene is flawed;

4. The meme is not needed as an explanatory hypothesis.

Objection One

There are some reasons to suggest a memetic view of culture. Blackmore's The Meme Machine has some interesting information on memetics, and some suggestions as to why it is a useful concept. It does explain some things harder to account for on other views, like a purely sociobiological one. (eg why do we have big brains? Why do we do so many things our genes "dislike" eg. Birth Control? Why is it so hard for us to stop thinking? Why do we talk constantly? etc)

Admittedly there is some teleology in cultural evolution. But is this really any different from human breeders selecting the features that they like in an animal and breeding for it, ie "artificial selection"? Artifical selection doesn't invalidate evolution.

As for the Lamarckian charge, yes some cultural evolution could be described as Lamarckian or "copy-the-product". But this doesn't really matter, because the real idea behind the meme is that of a replicator. How that replicator does it is not relevant to whether memetics is valid.

Objection Two

Admittedly we don't know how memes are stored in the brain. But Darwin never knew how heredity worked, as he never read the works of Mendel. We someday may know where memes are stored. The evidence is not in on this one.

Objection Three

There is no real problem of a false analogy. The idea is the idea of a replicator. It does not have to be a replicator analogous to the gene in every single way. In fact, everything else could be different. Provided memes are replicators, the analogy is fair.

Objection Four

As I mentioned above, Blackmore's book has some interesting work on how memetics explains things better than rival theories appear to.

Also, at one point, McGrath suggests that atheism and theism are both memes and thus both equally valid. This isn't necessarily true. Atheism nor theism don't have to be memes. Memes are spread by imitation. I did not become an atheist by imitating other atheists, thus my athiesm is not a meme. The same could occur for theism. Religion is a meme, but "theism" merely most likely is. Of course, them both being memes doesn't put them both on the same footing. "The Earth is billions of years old" and "The Earth is 6,000 years old" are both memes that are obviously not equally valid.

Chapter Five: Science And Religion

--Dawkins says Religion is a medieval and uninspiring way of looking at the universe, wheras science is a wonderful way of looking at everything.

--McGrath disagrees because he believes that religion can inspire awe and reverence of nature and creation.

This criteria is fairly subjective. Being as it is mainly aesthetics, it is down somewhat to opinion what a view inspires. I do agree with Dawkins somewhat on this point, because "because God" is not an inspiring answer to anything at all, wheras science is an interesting journey of discovery about the universe we live in. I don't believe I have grounds to say that my aesthetic opinion is "right" or better than anybody else's however.

Works Referenced/mentioned:

McGrath, Alister. Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and The Meaning Of Life, Blackwell Publishing 2005.(obviously!)

Blackmore, Susan. The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press 1999.

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion, Bantam Press 2006.

Dawkins, Richard. The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin Press 1986.

Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Penguin Press 1995.

Sam Harris quotation comes from this address: