Thoughts on Dawkins 4 - Debate

Dawkins and Debate

When we look at Dawkins giving his opinions on how we define religion, what the meaning of the Bible is, the psychological basis of religious belief, religion as a cause of violence, his views in relation to philosophy and theology and so on we can see that in every area he is giving views that relate to a specific area of study and expertise, yet he himself does not engage with that area - he does not acknowledge other views in the areas he is opinionating on - why is this?

There seem to be two obvious reasons.

Firstly, in engaging with other opinions he would have to show some humility and lose some arrogance as clearly he doesn’t have all the answers, and would have to acknowledge that where genuine issues exist in these areas of study and expertise he has no more answers than anyone else. Yet of course he doesn’t want his opinions to appear as one among many - his opinions are different to everyone else, as he is right and they are wrong.

Secondly he would have to make it clear how little he knows in each area - in addressing arguments by the experts of a given field - theology, philosophy, biblical studies, psychology etc -  he would have to actually read up in the given area, yet his arrogance tells him he doesn’t need to do this. He isn’t engaging with the field of religion in order to understand it or learn more about it, he is engaging to show everyone his shallow and ill-thought through opinions are right and everyone else is wrong.

So Dawkins isn’t really interested in any sort of debate or discussion - for him the only purpose of debate is to show his opponent how wrong they are, he isn’t there to listen, he isn’t there to learn anything. Although he pays lip-service to liberal ideas of respecting the opinion of others, his arrogance and refusal to learn anything about the areas he is speaking about prevents him actually being able to engage in genuine dialogue.

By contrast religious groups are typically much better able that Dawkins and the New Atheists to collaborate and work together. Religion by default creates multiple patterns of belief. Where there is no hierarchical structure (often imposed by the state) within a religious group, beliefs and practises multiply. Even within the Catholic church many different orders and groups established themselves (different orders of Monk - Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Augustinians, different order of Nun within the Benedictine order alone are Benedictines, Cistercians, Camaldolese, and Trappists, among others). Amongst Protestants there are thought to be around 30,000 different denominations.

The fact that the vast majority of the time religious groups live peacefully side by side belies the idea that religion is the cause of much division in the world. There are many different versions of Hinduism, yet they have all lived together in general very amicably. Even in the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades, Christians, Jews and Muslims were living together quite happily until the Crusaders came along and attacked all of them (Christians included).

So hatred and violence can pick up on almost anything to stir up conflict - but there are plenty of examples through history of religions living together, listening to each other and learning from each other.