By Lee Hwan-hee
Staff Reporter
British biologist Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion', published last year, has now appeared in a Korean translation, re-titled as "The Created God."
The faith vs. reason debate is an old one, but the rise of religious fundamentalism in various regions of the world today has made the issue a particularly relevant, if contentious, one. During the past two years, two other books by prominent intellectuals dealing with the subject have surfaced: 'Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon' by Daniel Dennett and 'God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' by Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins' book perhaps occupies a midposition between the two books.
Like Dennett's, Dawkins' book is essentially a defense of scientism, that science is the best way to understand reality; but more like Hitchens,' Dawkins' is more polemical in tone than Dennett's.
In the book, Dawkins emphasizes that by 'God' he does not mean the term in a 'pantheistic' sense, of being at awe with everything that exists, which he calls 'Einsteinian' conception of God. His specific target is God according to monotheistic religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Christianity; that God is a supernatural being who created the universe and oversees and influences the subsequent fate of his initial creation. Dawkins argues that the existence of this God is not only highly improbable, but ultimately irrational and illogical, for he finds the various arguments provided in support of it, by thinkers such Thomas Aquinas, Anselm and Pascal, entirely vacuous.
Dawkins believes such understanding of God is a ready-made recipe for war, tribalism, and xenophobia, as it makes absolute distinctions between believers and non-believers. Furthermore, God is often far from being benevolent, for how are we to explain the existence of evil in the world? Memorably, he describes the God of the Old Testament as 'arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.' On the level of a polemic against religious fanaticism, it will not be too difficult to find sympathy for Dawkins' arguments in the light of the actions of present-day Islamic fundamentalists, and the cultural battle raging in the United States over whether creationism should be taught in schools.
It can be argued, however, that the Islamic fundamentalism and the evolution/creationism debate are as ideological in nature as they are about religion per se, for there are Muslims who oppose violence, and a person who believes in creationism in the United States is more likely to be a political and cultural conservative than a liberal.
And another question that will always be directed at an atheist such as Dawkins is that can morality be explained without religion? If the universe is devoid of intrinsic value, so that no events should be thought of as acts of God, just morally neutral, then one may conclude that our sense of morality is ultimately nothing more than a projection based on our feelings and prejudices. Dawkins doesn't believe that our sense of morality is necessarily based on religious beliefs, and thinks its origin can be explained in Darwinian, biological terms. He believes morality should be legislated on utilitarian grounds.
Well, perhaps morality does not need religion. Even so, Dawkins' arguments are not always sound. Many examples can be given where what seems to be for the good of the whole is immoral; killing all criminals in a society may make the society as a whole a better place to live, but it doesn't make the society a moral one. And a purely scientific account of morality cannot account for the possibility of moral choice. If a criminal behavior is based on the criminal's genes, how are we to condemn his actions?
Maybe people seek God because of the existence of evil in the world, and it is an irrational, illogical place, rather than the other way around, as Dawkins intimates. One salient point by Dawkins, however, is that our view of ethics and morality is extremely human-centered.
While Dawkins' book is effective when it argues against religious tribalism and fanaticism, it has also been noted, by Marxist critic Terry Eagleton among others, that the book is marred by rhetoric and a superficial understanding of religion. Perhaps a necessary counterbalance to a book like Dawkins' is not a blind embrace of religion but a book by a writer who's serious about both science and religion, such as William James' 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'