Critical review: ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins (2006)

I’m really getting behind on my blog posts when a draft has been hanging around for almost a year.

The God Delusion is a book that has done it’s (rather extended) run on the New York Time Bestseller’s list, stimulated much debate, got on many people’s nerves and driven more than one theologian to publish an act of academic fraud (when you read a book published by a university press that wrongly labels Dawkins a Social Darwinist*, look to the spine to discover the author – you’ll see the name of someone who by the most cursory academic standard should be fired).

Most of the reviews of this book to put it mildly, have been utter crap. I’ve read the book three times and I’ve read more than a dozen unfavourable and prominent (eg NYT) reviews and so far the number of unfavourable reviews that haven’t been misleading either through incompetence, deception or both… Well, I’m yet to find an unfavourable review that doesn’t mislead the reader (there’s a challenge for someone with too much time on their hands).

Dawkins starts out with a more or less concise elaboration of his terms and definitions, which is the first place to look when a mendacious critic mis-attributes an allegation of bigotry against Dawkins; this is usually the part where his work is in contradiction with what they attribute to him.

From there, he moves onto concise discussion about proofs of God, elegantly discussing the necessary complexity of God (to which I’ve yet to see a theist give a convincing rebuttal – Swinburne’s cited work included of course) and giving Aquinas all the time that Aquinas deserves (Jim Holt of the NYT was unkind on this, pointing out that Dawkins hadn’t addressed the new improved versions of the ontological argument, neglecting to mention that the problem identified by Dawkins is present in all of them as well).

I think the part that lagged a little, at least in terms of persuasive power to the scientifically literate, was when Dawkins got stuck into the cosmology, much of which was speculative natural philosophy rather than naturalisic science. Here, he’s up against the Paul Davies of the world, although at this part of the debate the narrative of the bearded, in-his-image, sky-God who watches when you masturbate doesn’t get any more support than the flying spaghetti monster. It’s not atheism versus theism at this level but rather adeism versus deism.

I say lagged a little rather than failed, because Dawkins didn’t fail. His solutions may have been more ambiguous than for the problems posed by theology (as opposed to those posed by natural philosophy) and the fact that it wasn’t his area of expertise did limit him relative to discussion other areas, but still, it’s worthy of reading and I don’t think he made any crucial mistakes (if indeed any at all).

That’s not to say that there isn’t grounds for one to criticise the book. There are.

The main point of the book is that religion is a best ultimately useless (where it may be useful it being redundant) and at worst harmful. Aside from religious faith (as opposed to faith in your neighbor to return your power drill) being argued to be anathema to primary reasoning, religion is presented as yet another means by which to segregate people into out-groups as a precondition of discrimination, bigotry and intolerance.

Two things strike me about this. Firstly, what is meant by “religious” in this context and secondly is having the means to discriminate really morally or even functionally equivalent to actually discriminating. I don’t have a problem with the way he argues that (his definition of) religious faith is problematic in its ability to stiffle the intellect.

I’ll discuss the second thing that strikes me first.

Say you chose a sporting club. Say you like to wear your team colours when you are out and about on your days off work. You don’t discriminate against people on the basis of what club they join (other than hoping that their side doesn’t beat yours). Indeed, amongst your friends a number of competing clubs are present and you all get along just fine.

This is neither an unrealistic scenario, nor an unrealistic analogy and indeed Dawkins uses sporting clubs as an example of out-groups himself. Now like in my example, I’ve seen people from varying faiths as well as atheists get together and get along just fine on more than a couple of occasions and generally when not hanging out together, in the broader community, people of various beliefs for the most part have the capacity to behave themselves.

So you are walking down the street and you are set upon by a group of thugs from a rival club. They beat the stuffing out of you for wearing your team colours. In this situation are you the causal agent for your own head-kicking because you deemed fit of your own free will to wear your team colours?

To highlight the point I’m trying to make, another bunch of hooligans comes along this time they kick the crap out of your for your team colours even though they don’t have a team and indeed seem to find the idea of sporting teams silly. Unlike most people who find your sport absurd or are just agnostic toward your sport, these one’s will kick the crap out of anyone wearing team colours rather than just live and let live.

Anyone can discriminate on any given criteria and that’s my point. Having a criteria to discriminate upon is not enough and just because one decides to be of a sporting team or a religion of their own free will (unlike skin colour which for the most part isn’t a choice) it doesn’t somehow make the discrimination the result of the exercise of this choice. It takes someone to select a difference as a criteria for bigotry.  If it didn’t, we’d have fans of Guitar Hero storming piano recitals to beat people up and people losing their jobs because they’re folders, not scrunchers.

I’m not saying that Dawkins would disagree with what I’ve just said and given that he’s expressed the opinion on more than one occasion that people should be free to make these choices for themselves, I wouldn’t expect him to be entirely unsympathetic. What I am saying is that I think that Dawkins has placed too much emphasis on difference itself as a causal factor in divisiveness, rather than the fixation upon difference (upon which one could write many, many books about organised religion).

Sure, without religion we would have one less criteria upon which to discriminate that is undeniable (the same would also be true if we all bleached our hair and dyed our eyes blue) and Dawkins did expand with examples of the fixation upon difference (like the Rabbis who wouldn’t officiate over marriages that involved “marrying out”) but I don’t think that Dawkins convincingly made the case that religion necessarily had to fixate like this (which I think that you would have to do in order to right religion off as intrinsically harmful). Indeed, the fact that there are interfaith marriages and so on does suggest that the fixation upon difference isn’t necessarily a part of religion and that therefore these is the possibility for religion to be free of it.

I wonder if the work of Norval D. Glenn (whom Dawkins cites) had been able to continue (beyond 1978) into contemporary years, and with larger sample groups across various nations, what trends would have turned up. If not a reduction of religious bigotry at least we may have seen that the harm caused by it isn’t fixed.
I think the the internecine spats and ill-motives between religious groups can be resolved without religion itself having to disappear. Moreover, I think that unlike a government policy against religion (not that Dawkins is suggesting such state intervention – he clearly doesn’t) a policy to address religious discrimination and promote good-will across religious divides without the government taking sides, could be implemented in a liberal democracy without violating church-state division.

The first thing that caught me in reading The God Delusion though was Dawkins’ definition of the word “religion”. Dawkins (rightly) saw fit to draw a distinction between “Einsteinian religion” and (ordinary) religion. The latter being supernatural and the former being naturalistic (a distinction conveniently overlooked by creationists looking to cast Einstein as one of their own).

Dawkins makes further qualifications and points of distinction when making criticisms and these are very important not to overlook. I’ve seen many a theist state “but I’m not like that” and all too-often they haven’t realised that Dawkins wasn’t intending to talk about them anyway. While I think the reader somewhat responsible in making an effort to ascertain Dawkins’ intent when he defines his scope of criticism, I don’t think the confusion is entirely their fault either.

I think that Dawkins’ definitions needed just a little bit more nuance and even a recognition that the term “religious” is somewhat subjective especially in regards to its use in matters of identity. I’ve for example met more than one Christian that identifies as religious, but by Dawkins’ terms could be cast as a non-religious, culturally-Christian, deist (ie not a religious person). I think that an acknowledgement of cases like this in relation to his terms of reference could have helped smooth over some confusion.

Aside from these main points I have a couple of minor criticisms. For a start, “Aborigine” (or Aboriginal person) instead of “Aboriginal”; the latter (an adjective) has  in some parts of Australia been substituted for the former noun as a dehumanising, perjorative term, which in consideration of the book’s message against such treatment of out-groups seems a poor choice of words. Not that I’m trying to be “PC” or censorious but it is a bit contradictory.

Another pet peeve I have would probably be best called “High Anglophonic auto-eroticism”, in play in this statement;

“It seems deliciously appropriate that this avowedly superfluous book is all about Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva and other icons of haute francophonyism.”

(The God Delusion, p 347)

Not that I’m advocating for any of these authors (I’m not) but this is just beneath Dawkins and quite frankly like the “Aboriginal” gaffe, Dawkins contra Dawkins. Sure, the French have produced some truly rubbish philosophy but they aren’t alone. The Sokal Hoax (as unethical as its implementation was) exposed scientific illiteracy in parts of the (French) humanities. I’ve myself had to witness an academic make an complete mess of the theory of evolution (positing vegetarians as maybe “the next stage” as if they will replace instead of co-exist with meat eating humans) and of ecology (by asserting that science considers that being a high order heterotroph is a position of high status.)

I don’t do apologetics for academic frauds or incompetents. But…

Of those criticisms of Foucault that I’ve read, all have turned out to be supremely dodgy and all written from the same anti-Franco, out-grouping prejudice. I’m not expecting Dawkins to be anything more generous than incredulous, but he’s leveled an unsubstantiated (and utterly unoriginal) slur against academics who perhaps while not the best history has had to offer and aren’t anywhere near as vapid as the theologians Dawkins is regularly dismissive of.

As slurs go, it’s relatively innocuous and even a little funny (especially in light of the “much needed gap witticism”) and I’m aware that Dawkins doesn’t rest his argument upon it. It’s just a rhetorical garnish. Still, I think it does detract from his message somewhat. As bad as some French philosophy is and as bad as inept as some of the treatment of science has been, Dawkins’ anti-Franco slur is a meme and an example of out-grouping that has run its way through Anglophonic academia ever since the death of Kant.

Given that religion is presented as a memeplex with out-grouping tendencies, this irony shouldn’t be lost on anyone. Not that it invalidates Dawkins’ argument (indeed with a bit of thought one can see it only contributing to his case about memes and out-grouping if only slightly) but I think it does detract from the persuasive power of the book, at least for those that aren’t willing to see past this minor incident of Anglophonic snobbery.

Still, my criticisms both major and minor haven’t done much in the way of eroding what Dawkins has argued (which in part is why I recommend the book) and they don’t provide a life boat to desperate theologians. It has been telling the lengths of distortion, exaggeration, misrepresentation through inability and blatant lying that the chip-on-shoulder critics have had to engage in just to appear to have a counter argument (especially those from a certain University in a long standing rivalry with Oxford who for now will remain unnamed), which really speaks to the content of the book.

~ Bruce

* Aside from being grossly offensive which isn’t the point, it is something that is popularly known to be wrong, even well outside of academia. Even if an academic didn’t know this to be false, the most cursory research (and I mean high school assignment level) would reveal it to be so. Deception is the most credible explanation and the alternative (that someone could obtain post-graduate qualifications at such prominent universities and yet still be incompetent by high school standards) is far more disturbing.

PPS. I may re-work this critique at a later date. I’m done for working on it for now.