When I dreamt, I found the spaces in between…

Okay, I read The God Delusion and my verdict is in: Richard Dawkins is a smarmy one. Which is a shame because he has a number good points about the dangers of both mainstream and fundamentalist religions, the beauty of evolution, the wonders of science in seeking to understand the universe, and the absurdity around so many belief systems. But I doubt that he will convince many people who have organized religion in their lives to become atheists unless they were already on that path anyway. And he certainly doesn’t address the more nebulous spiritual sorts of practices that others keep in their lives, with or without religion (except to call them stupid). His inability to convince comes down to two issues: his elitist tone and his lack of understanding regarding the very rich and complex ways that humans have come to understand their worlds, their subjectivity, their trauma, and their existential mysteries. Maybe someone will come around who’s a little more savvy in their understanding of culture, ideology, and language, and be able to make a bridge between his argument and other viewpoints.

His tone is just (ironically) holier-than-thou, condescending, and self-righteous. Regardless of if he’s right or not (and in so many ways, I think he is, which is the most frustrating thing), he’s so bought into his own rhetoric that I can’t quite help but roll my eyes and laugh. What’s so funny to me is that he winds up portraying himself as a classist (without meaning to do so) by the way he talks about all those uneducated (read: poor) folk. *yawn*

In a nutshell, he spends most of the book detailing how fundamentalists are wrong and dangerous and how the triumverate of religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have ridiculous belief systems that don’t make sense when reading their scriptures and following their rules. Well, yes, duh, fundamentalists are wrong and dangerous. And the scriptures and belief systems of organized religions are usually pretty self-contradictory and absurd if you actually read the texts (seriously, have you read the old testament? the gospels?). Unfortunately, his lynchpin argument about how moderate religion helps fundamentalism along its merry way is incredibly weak, and quite frankly, not compelling. He states that moderate religion indoctrinates children into believing things that are absurd, and that this ability to believe the absurd is what makes people convert to, support, and maintain fundamentalist religion. So we must abolish it all.

Well, yes Richard, it does indoctrinate children. It also can provide meaning to people’s lives, can provide cultural significance, can create narratives and ancestral connection, can uphold beautiful rituals, and can support incredibly peaceful, mindful, and respectful practices. It can also, unfortunately, create a system of thought that emphasizes personal (and needless) guilt, and applauds aversion to normal, healthy human behavior (sex, people!). And then at the same time it can also offer an open, creative, wondrous system to make sense of humanity, existence, and beauty. My point is, there are the good, there are the bad, and I’m not sure it’s quite wise to banish all religion and spirituality simply because we say science is the pinnacle of understanding and anyone who doesn’t think so is just a lowly middle or working class uneducated dumbass.

What’s so fascinating to me is that he seems to think that somehow all those problems our world has around sexism, racism, nationalism, etc, will somehow cease to be so pervasive once religion is abolished. Because we will all be perfect scientific rationalists? Because we will see the error of our ways through the doctrine of rationalist thought? Uh, dude, it’s about *power*, and humans can rationalize anything. Sure, religion is a great system in which to gain power and tell people you’re right and kill them for it, but my guess is that something else, some other belief system, would simply take religion’s place if we somehow abolished it. We’ve even seen this before in secular, atheist dictators, just as we’ve seen it in religious nutjob dictators. Scientific rationalism (especially in a world full of marketing, lack of education, global power struggles, weapons races, and dictators) is a great ideal to strive for in so many respects, and I do strive for it, but it’s also something that’s going to take a great deal more work than just telling people that if they have religion in their lives, they are somehow socially retarded. And it’s also something that really should humble itself in the face of human psychology, narrative, language, culture, and subjectivity. As well as recognize that it is a rhetoric in itself, one that might be turned on its head in the coming centuries or millenia. Seriously. Humility, people.

So, I guess my main problem with this dude is his own rhetoric, his attitude, and his seeming inability to understand socio-political issues. That and the fact that he totally dissed Foucault and the poststructuralists in the last chapter (he’s gonna pay for that… ).

On a side note, I found it very interesting how Dawkins decided to only cursorily address religions such as Buddhism, because they didn’t fit his definition of religion. His exact words are, “I shall not be concerned at all with other religions such as Buddhism or Confucianism. Indeed, there is something to be said for treating these not as religions at all but as ethical systems or philosophies of life”. Well, this is a very convenient little decision to make. Buddhism has its own share of weird, unprovable belief systems (uh, reincarnation anyone?), a lack of bureaucracy and top down structure (at least as it’s practiced in the West, I hear it can often be different in the countries the practices originated in), and deep spiritual connection. How easy and pat it is to so easily disregard that religion as a philosophy, simply because it doesn’t fit into your argument, when really it shares many of the characteristics you don’t like about the triumverate, it’s just nicer. Good one, Richard. Well done.