Tag: Richard Dawkins

Outgrowing God – 7 to 12

I decided to complete my review of the remaining chapters of Outgrowing God by Richard Dawkins in one go. This is Part Two of his book, subtitled “Evolution and beyond”. Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, as well as an atheist, and so would like evolution and science generally to explain everything. In some ways he is hoist on his own petard because he accuses theists of using God to explain the unexplained, whereas he uses unknowable science and evolution to explain the unexplained.

Chapter 7, the first chapter of Part Two is entitled “Surely there must be s designer?” and goes on to explain how evolution explains everything, except the origin of life which he cannot explain. The creation story of the Bible is largely regarded as mythical or allegorical and largely superseded by evolution with two tremendous gaps, namely the creation of the universe and the creation of life within it.

Those of us who believe in God, believe that He created the universe and that He created life. Dawkins believes that nature evolved naturally without a designer. It blows my mind, on the other hand, that God could create living organisms that would grow into so many wonderful species of animals and plants and ultimately into intelligent beings like ourselves. That takes a level of magnificent genius that far exceeds making it up as He goes along.

Dawkins asks a couple of questions about belief in God and about belief in good and evil. He asks the question whether we evolved to believe in gods and he tries to explain it. While not denying the possibility, I cannot deny the possibility that God puts it in people’s minds that there is a god. They may not fully understand the god and the evidence is that they didn’t. But the fact is that different races were physically evolving throughout the world, in their different ways, but mentally evolving in the same way to believe in god(s). What a coincidence! Dawkins’ explanation is no more plausible than belief in God.

Likewise, there is remarkable similarity in the moral code of people and societies throughout the world. This point is well argued in the book Mere Christianity by C.S.Lewis. Because societies that had no connection with each other and with physical and cultural differences came up with the same moral code adds to the possibility of a uniform external influence on all people.

Of course, if you are looking for an excuse not to believe in God, you can put everything down to coincidence and as yet unknown science. Dawkins does include a chapter on “Crystals and jigsaw puzzles” which I find rather surprising because crystals, which did not evolve, to my mind demonstrate the mind of the Creator in their wonderful beauty and geometry. Not at all what you would expect by accident. This whole chapter speaks to me of the wonders of creation. What a pity some don’t believe in it.

The last chapter of the book is “Take courage from science”, and is written as if science somehow does away with the need for God, as if it explains everything, In fact, all science does is tell us more about God’s creation. So what this book will do is give atheists more reason to reject God, but it does not give one good solid argument to deny God’s existence.

I will finish with a quote from 1 Corinthians 1:25 – “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”

Outgrowing God – 3&4

This is my third post reviewing the book Outgrowing God by Richard Dawkins. I have recently finished reading the whole book and find that it has not in the least shaken my faith. He is persuasive in what he writes, but really seems to be preaching to the converted – those who are atheists or pondering on becoming atheists. It is not reasonable to conclude that there is no God from what he writes, but atheists will like it because it superficially supports their contention that science explains, or will explain, everything and that we do not need to believe in a creator God.

In this post, I will cover Chapter 3, Myths And How They Start, and Chapter 4, The Good Book?. I am pretty much skipping over Chapter 3 because, though interesting, there is enough substance in the Bible to dispel it as a myth. I do concede that there might be an element of myth about Jesus’s life before his ministry, simply because the story will likely have been passed through several people before it was written down. However, what is written is consistent in message with what we can certainly declare as factual.

In all of Jesus’s ministry, he was accompanied by his twelve disciples. Paul was not a disciple, but got to know some of them after his conversion and he got to know Luke, who travelled with him and wrote the Gospel that bears his name and the Acts of the Apostles. Paul’s letters are a significant part of the New Testament. We therefore have a pretty good link to the ministry of Jesus, his death and resurrection. Forget myth – it is not as significant as Dawkins would want you to believe.

On to Chapter 4. The Bible is, or was, frequently referred to as “The Good Book”. Dawkins questions whether in fact it is “good”. The Bible is an easy target, especially the Old Testament, where you can select passages that are quite horrific and do not show God or his people in a good light. There is wholesale slaughter of some peoples, their women and children and animals, except preserving their unmarred daughters. Not nice. How do I explain it? I don’t. What we do have are some beautiful books, like Psalms, the Song of Solomon and good words from the various prophets which include passages relating to Jesus Christ some hundreds of years later. The good thing that comes out of Old Testament times is the survival of the Israelites, scripture, and the environment into which our saviour Jesus Christ could be born. (My words – Dawkins would not say such a thing).

Dawkins has less to say about the New Testament and believes that Jesus comes across as a good man. He mentions two things which give me some difficulty. First is causing a fig tree to wither and die because it did not bear any fruit. Sounds petty. Second is the story of the Gadarene swine. When Jesus casts demons out of a man, they ask to be sent to a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus complies, they go to the pigs who promptly charge down the hill into the sea and drown. I can’t get my head around this at all. Why would Jesus comply with their request? Why would the demons cause the pigs to die so that they are left without anything to occupy? The only thing I can get from this is “Be careful what you wish for”. They ended up with nothing.

Dawkins does say that the bits that people do not like, They tend to classify as allegorical – in other words, only included for the message it conveys. I am content to leave things unexplained and consider the Bible as a whole, and I find it very satisfactory as a whole with many valuable lessons for this day, 2,00 years after Jesus.

Dawkins is particularly scathing and mocking about the crucifixion of Jesus. John Stott, an eminent theologian wrote a whole book on The Cross of Christ, it is cogently argued and explains why the cruel death of Jesus was necessary for our salvation. Dawkins should have got together with his fellow atheist Stephen Hawking, who was of the opinion that God cannot break any laws. If God’s law is “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins”, then that is the way it is. Dawkins thinks that God could just forgive everybody anyway, since he is too obtuse to realise that God cannot break his own law. Paul wrote something very apt in one of his letters “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). It is as if Paul foresaw mocking Dawkins who clearly thinks it foolishness. The cross is central to the Christian faith and therefore its symbol.

Outgrowing God – 2 – But Is It True?

Chapter 2 of the book Outgrowing God by Richard Dawkins is titled But Is It True? and is entirely about the Bible, and what isn’t in the Bible, so concentrates on Christianity. I have only read a few chapters, but the list of contents seems to indicate that he does not give the same treatment to other religions.

He quotes “Chinese Whispers” as showing that a story changes with the telling from one person to another, so that it becomes unrecognizable after a few tellings. Because the Gospels are all written after the death of Jesus, he therefore calls their accuracy into question. He makes a big thing about the way that even to this day, erroneous and untrue stories make the rounds.

He mentions that it wasn’t finally decided what books go into the Bible until centuries later. He then makes a big thing about books which aren’t in the Bible – the gospel of Judas Iscariot and a book about the early life of Jesus. He did this just to heap on the ridicule. It may make a good read, but doesn’t add anything. The Christian answer is that the people deciding on which works belonged in the canon were guided by God. He goes on about historical accuracy, but I think excludes some important points.

He questions the authorship of the gospels, including Luke’s. But I think it worth examining this. Luke wrote two books of the Bible – The Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel that bears his name. There is little doubt that they are by the same person. The Acts starts with the aftermath of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, then Paul’s conversion and then Paul’s activity and travels. Much of it is written in the first person – the word “we” frequently appears – because Luke travelled with Paul and Paul mentions him in one of his letters. Paul also knew Jesus’s disciples, so Luke would have heard from him the details of what they did after Jesus’s death. We can therefore be very confident about the accuracy of The Acts of the Apostles and, of course, Paul’s letters.

Luke’s Gospel is of course after the fact, but his stated intention is to write as accurate a history as he can. My own view of the New Testament is that it may not be 100% accurate but that it is 100% true in its revelation of God. You can quibble about the genealogy of Jesus, but does it really matter?

The chapter includes a quote from Josephus, the first century Jewish historian. It is likely that the reference to Jesus being the Messiah is a later modification or insertion, but what he wrote about the death of John the Baptist is slightly different from the Bible account, and so is less likely to be a forgery, and he records the execution of Jesus’s brother James, which isn’t in the Bible so there was clearly no alteration of Josephus manuscript.

Dawkins does condescendingly agree that there was indeed a preacher called Yeshua who was executed, but that is about as far as it goes. So I will end with a quote from Acts 5 v 34-39:

“But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honoured by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed the Sanhedrin: ‘Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered. Therefore, in the present case I advise you: leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.’”

It stands up to Dawkins too.

Outgrowing God – 1 – So Many Gods

Outgrowing God is a book by Richard Dawkins, author of the better know (but rubbish) The God Delusion. So why would I, a committed Christian, read such a book? Certainly because of curiosity – I was interested to read what he had to say, especially since he is quoted so often and atheists repeat what he has to say as “justification” for their disbelief. I also wanted to be sure that my faith was strong enough to withstand his arguments against the existence of God.

I borrowed the book from our local library (there was no way that I was going to buy it) and have only read a few chapters so far. I shall try to write a chapter by chapter critique and this covers Chapter 1, titled So Many Gods. I should say at the outset that this book is written by someone who most definitely does not believe in any god, and he cannot resist mocking belief.

First, let me say that he says something very sensible, that children are ascribed the religion of their parents before they can even talk, e.g. a Catholic child, a Muslim child, a Protestant child and so on. It is as if religion is something inherited, as if it were race, whereas it is nothing of the sort. I have said before that I am grateful for my nominally Christian upbringing, but that is not the reason that I am a Christian, although it is impossible to say whether it made it more likely that I would be a Christian than have any other faith. In fact I wish children were not branded in this way and I think it a mistake to reinforce it with religious education. Children must be free to believe or disbelieve, rather than indoctrinated to think that they are right and that therefore others are wrong. That’s why people kill.

So this chapter is about the many different gods there have been through history in different societies. His point is that there are so many gods that we cannot logically believe in, that we cannot believe in any. If societies make up gods, then gods are made up.

Superficially, that might seem fairly convincing, but of course it is not a logical argument. The fact that people invent gods, does not logically mean that there is no God.

More interesting would be to know why societies have made up gods. It has to be the realisation that there is indeed a mighty power behind creation. People have not just accepted things the way they are, but thought there was something behind it. The question Dawkins does not ask, because he does not believe in God, is whether God might have put these thoughts into people’s heads. I say that as someone who could not get it out of my head that I simply had to get hold of a Bible. .I say it as someone who knows of extraordinary conversions to belief.

So if God gave people the idea of gods, why was it incomplete? There are many possible answers to that question, but it is worth considering that the story of God in the Bible took thousands of years to unfold. It is only with the New Testament that God is finally revealed.

So Chapter 1 is no argument against the existence of God. It is written so as to ridicule the idea that God exists and claims that existence is unlikely, but will only persuade those who are already persuaded.

Is There A God?

I have taken the title of this post from the title of a chapter in Stephen Hawking’s last book, which I have just read – “Brief Answers to the Big Questions“. This book was published posthumously. It is quite a good read in spite of our difference in knowing of God’s existence. He looks at the question from a scientific point of view. Seemingly, in my opinion, he starts out with the negative view and then tries to justify it scientifically.

It would probably take a whole book to refute all his arguments. I am rather left with the feeling that if that is the best an atheist can do, even someone with a brilliant mind like Stephen Hawking, then it adds to the probability of God’s existence. Kind of like I felt after reading “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins.

In matters of science, I have to accept what Hawking says. I don’t know enough to be able to refute his scientific statements, but I can detect the gaping holes in his reasoning.

Beginning of the Universe

His belief, currently widely accepted, was that the universe started as a “singularity” which is a point of no size and infinite density. Think of it as a tiny object that has lots and lots and lots of mass (mass is what causes things to have weight in the presence of gravity – feathers don’t have much mass, lead weights do). Apparently the mass of the known universe is often quoted as 1053 kilograms (that is a number 1 with 53 zeros behind it). Then this singularity exploded with a Big Bang to form the universe as we know it. Observation shows that it is still expanding and this led to the idea that it was all together at some point billions of years ago.

Hawking states that time does not exist within a singularity.

I have no reason to dispute these “facts”, nor do I need to.

First Error – Laws

I quote from his chapter “Is There a God?”: “The universe is a machine governed by principles or laws …..These laws of nature will tell us whether we need a god to explain the universe at all. ……… Unlike laws made by humans, the laws of nature cannot be broken“. He then goes on to say: “These laws may, or may not, have been decreed by God, but he cannot intervene to break the laws, or they would not be laws.”. The big problem with this is his huge assumption that God is subject to the laws that he made for the universe.

Looking at it from a Christian point of view actually makes more sense. If there are “laws of nature” they were established by God to govern the creation and evolution of the universe. The fact that God made laws to govern the universe does not at all mean that He made any laws, of nature or anything else, to govern His own actions. God is a free agent not constrained by any imaginary laws. He is perfectly free to intervene in any way He pleases. The beauty, elegance and consistency of the “laws of nature” is more of an argument in favour of God’s existence than against it. Many scientists believe in God.

Hawking then makes the assumption that everything since the Big Bang is governed by the laws of nature and that there is therefore no need for God because Hawking thinks Him constrained by those same laws. This is of course a nonsense and completely denies reality.

The second part of this error is Hawking’s questioning whether “the laws of nature will tell us whether we need a god to explain the universe at all“. How can you question whether the laws that God made tell us whether we need God? If God didn’t make the laws of nature, how were they made? Bearing in mind that nothing existed prior to God, how could there be laws that governed matter and energy and the relationship between them before they existed, unless He made them?

Hawking would either have us believe that the laws that govern the universe were spontaneously created at the same time as the universe, or that they existed before the universe, even though there was nothing for them to govern prior to creation. I think that is much more of a stretch than believing that there is a God.

Second Error – Time

As stated above, time does not exist within a singularity. So Hawking leaps to the conclusion that there was “no time before the Big Bang ……….. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator because there was no time for a creator to have existed in.“. Absolute nonsense! There is no time within the singularity, but that is not to say there isn’t time outside it for God to “exist in”. For proof just look at black holes. As Hawking says, at the heart of a black hole is a singularity and there is no time within them, but we know there is time outside them because the rest of the universe goes on regardless and we couldn’t observe them if it didn’t. By extension, this means that there was as much time as the creator God wanted to “exist in” prior to the Big Bang, because He was obviously outside the singularity. Hawking’s argument just doesn’t hold water.

Conclusion

So as I see it, these are the two glaring errors. There is plenty more to disagree with in his “answer”, but that would take too long and someone more patient and painstaking than I. On a personal note, I was surprised that Hawking’s reasoning was so weak. He did try, whereas some atheists, realising the futility of trying to prove that God doesn’t exist, demand that we prove He does. We have no need to.

At least Hawking limited his reasons for not believing in God to one chapter, whereas Richard Dawkins found it necessary to write a whole book of bad argument and non sequiturs to state the reasons for his atheism. It seems to me that scientists would be better to limit themselves to studying the wonders of God’s creation rather than trying, and failing, to explain that it wasn’t His creation. Slightly ironic that Hawking’s ashes reside in Westminster Abbey, a place dedicated to the glory of God.

There is obviously a problem that we cannot prove or disprove the being of God with repeatable experiments, which are what science demands. So we look at the evidence. Jesus repeatedly rejected the requests of sceptics to show “proof” of who He was. He left them to consider the evidence for themselves. Christians believe there is plenty of evidence. We find our own experience and others’ experience of the Holy Spirit compelling. We see miracles and answers to prayers rather than coincidences because there are so many of them. We believe in the resurrection of Jesus, not just because the Holy Spirit and scripture tell us so. Even after this length of time and with no contemporary news reports, we do know that His crucifixion left his disciples fearful and demoralised, and then His resurrection and the Holy Spirit energised them to preach the Gospel and even die for it. People are not generally prepared to suffer and die for something they don’t know to be true.

As Gamaliel said to the Sanhedrin “But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God” (Acts 5 v.39) . And that was 2,000 years ago and the Gospel is still going strong, in spite of the many attacks against it. It is worth reading the whole chapter because he describes sects that vanished when their leaders were killed, and therefore the expectation that Christianity would vanish unless it were from God. Paul experienced a miraculous conversion and got to know the disciples and wrote about it in his Epistles, and Luke travelled with Paul and wrote about it in the Acts of the Apostles and was motivated to write the Gospel account that bears his name .

And as Paul so succinctly put it in one of his letters: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God” (1 Corinthians 3 v.19). Which is one way of saying that God is immeasurably more powerful and wise than we are. Atheists using their “wisdom” to argue that He doesn’t exist would do well to bear this in mind. He created the universe and all the “laws” that govern its evolution. Awesome!

You will note that I have steered clear of Biblical creation as outlined in Genesis, because all I set out to do was demonstrate Hawking’s faulty reasoning. I am inclined to accept the Big Bang, or something like it, as the beginning of the universe. In fact, it completely blows my mind to think that God could create a singularity from which our planet evolved with all the life and resources that we need. Sad to say, we are not very smart and are in danger of mucking it all up even more than we have already.

I realise that faith has more to do with our receptiveness and the Holy Spirit than with intellectual argument. The best that argument can do is open someone’s mind to a point where they search for themselves and ask for help – “So I say to you: ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Luke 11 v.9).

Addendum

I am reading Hawking’s book “A Brief History Of Time” and interesting it is too. I mention this as an addendum here because he essentially contradicts what he wrote in his answer to the question “Is There A God?”.

One of his arguments is that the Big Bang was the beginning of time, so there was no time before it for God to exist in. But in “A Brief History Of Time” he plainly states that there was time before the Big Bang, and only that the Big Bang is taken to be the beginning of time because it coincides with the beginning of the universe and that what happened before is not relevant to the mathematical and physical analysis of the universe.

Therefore taking the beginning of the universe as the beginning of time is a purely human construct for human convenience, because we know nothing of what went before. To then conclude in a different book that there was no time in which God could exist is patently ridiculous.

Hawking should really have limited himself to the mathematics of God’s creation. He was certainly no philosopher if even I can pick holes in his logic. Richard Dawkins is equally ignorant of philosophy, which is why his book “The God Delusion” is such rubbish.

On the other hand, Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, and he wrote “Why I Am Not A Christian”. Looking where to buy that book, I came across another with the same title by another philosopher, Richard Carrier. So I seem to have set myself the challenge of reading their books and seeing whether their arguments hold water.

I certainly believe my faith is up to this challenge – and I couldn’t have confidence in it if it wasn’t. I’ll keep you posted!

On the other hand, I wouldn’t want it thought that faith is an intellectual exercise, because it most definitely isn’t. But if men are going to use their intellect to challenge it, then they need to be challenged.

Atheist Delusions

I have just started reading Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart. While reading the first paragraph of the first chapter, I realised that I was going to like this book, both for its style and its content. It was published in 2009, but is perhaps even more relevant today. The paragraph starts with the fact that today newspapers and book publishers have never before been so open to those who will denounce faith in general and Christianity in particular because it is such an easy target. To quote:

“As I write, Daniel Dennett’s latest attempts to wean a credulous humanity from its reliance on the preposterous fantasies of religion, Breaking the Spell, has arrived amid a clamor of indignant groans from the faithful and exultant bellowing from the godless. The God Delusion, an energetic attack on all religious belief, has just been released by Richard Dawkins, the zoologist and tireless tractarian, who – despite his embarrassing incapacity for philosophical reasoning – never fails to entrance his eager readers with his rhetorical recklessness. The journalist Christopher Hitchens, whose talent for intellectual caricature somewhat exceeds his mastery of consecutive logic, has just issued God Is Not Great, a book that raises the wild non sequitur almost to the level of a dialectical method. Over the past few years, Sam Harris’s extravagantly callow attack on all religious belief, The End of Faith, has enjoyed robust sales and the earnest praise of sympathetic reviewers. Over a slightly greater span, Philip Pullman’s evangelically atheist (and rather overrated) fantasy trilogy for children, His Dark Materials, has sold millions of copies, has been lavishly praised by numerous critics, has been adapted for the stage, and has received partial cinematic translation; its third volume, easily the weakest of the series, has even won the (formerly) respectable Whitbread Prize. And one need hardly mention the extraordinary sales achieved by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, already a major film and surely the most lucrative novel written by a borderline illiterate. I could go on.”

Of these, I have only read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. I do not consider that I was a Christian at the time I read it, though as stated elsewhere in this blog, I did at the time believe it probable that God existed. This book was so bad that it tended to reinforce my belief rather than consider it a delusion. I do not doubt that those already of an atheist mindset thought that it justified their opinion.

Christopher Hitchens I have heard in debate, but I have not read anything of his. I did not find him particularly convincing.

His Dark Materials was turned into a television series, and I only know it through having watched a few episodes. It was clearly a fantasy for children and, for me, unwatchable. I did not see enough to know whether it was “evangelically atheist”.

I saw the film of the Da Vinci Code, which was clearly nonsense and it in no way encouraged me to read the book. I was not a Christian at the time I saw it, which is perhaps why I did not see it as overtly anti-Christian, even though it is.

Resurrection

Still in the first chapter of Atheist Delusions, David Bentley Hart goes on to say something that is very important and that we should never forget:

“Harris is quite correct to say, for instance, that Christ’s resurrection – like any other historical event – is known only by way of the testimony of others. Indeed, Christianity is the only major faith built entirely around a single historical claim. It is, however, a claim quite unlike any other made, as any perceptive and scrupulous historian must recognize. Certainly it bears no resemblance to the vague fantasies of witless enthusiasts or to the cunning machinations of opportunistic charlatans. It is the report of men and women who had suffered the devastating defeat of their beloved master’s death, but who in a very short time were proclaiming an immediate experience of his living presence beyond the tomb, and who were, it seems, willing to suffer privation, imprisonment, torture, and death rather than deny that experience. And it is the report of a man who had never known Jesus before the crucifixion, and who had once persecuted Jesus’s followers, but who also believed that he had experienced the risen Christ, with such shattering power that he too preferred death to apostasy. And it is the report of countless others who have believed that they also – in a quite irreducibly personal way – have known the risen Christ.”

Beautifully expressed. I like this book.

Addendum

I have now finished reading this book and am very impressed. I certainly liked the way he dismissed the pronouncements of prominent atheists. As the book goes on, the author clearly outlines many of their errors in logic and their lack of knowledge of history. David Bentley-Hart is amongst other things, both a historian and a philosopher and he has put together an enthralling history of Christianity – the good and the not so good – in the context of the times. A very scholarly work.