The Dawkins Type

Richard Dawkins- what a stupid asshole.

Not the most scholarly introduction to a post, but it cuts to the chase.

I recently watched an interview with Richard Dawkins in which he talked a little bit about his qualms with faith:

Interviewer: What's wrong, in your opinion, with believing in God?
RD: I think it's false. I think it's a matter of belief without evidence, and as a scientist and an educator I like the idea that we believe things because there's evidence. There's such a lot of evidence available now at the beginning of the twenty-first century that I think it's a real shame- it's a tragedy- to base your life upon something for which there is no evidence and never was any evidence, when the real truth is so wonderful.

This perspective smacks of false assurance, of the ring of irrefutable fact. But might this attitude emerge from mere fancy or prejudice? For Dawkins, "what matters... is the truth." By this, he is of course referring to scientific truths. "What other truths are there, when we are talking about the universe?" he asks with a smile.

But should this be merely a rhetorical question? The fact is that there are other truths besides those which belong to the realm of science and which are empirically demonstrable. Look at a table: what is the table? One scientific answer might be: a collection of wildly fluctuating subatomic particles. This is not what we actually experience, however. Might not the table be an heirloom, the last vestige of your grandfather- that by which you remember him? Might not the table be the place for your newspaper and coffee cup? Might not the table be a gift and sign of love from your mother? Might not the table be the beautiful object that matches the bookshelves and the floor and thus the object which "ties the room together"?

The table could be all or any of these things- but for a human being in the act of living rather than distanced and disinterested inquiry and chatter- for this person, I say, the table is not a collection of subatomic particles, or a reflector of light which sends the waves at this or that frequency into your eyeball. To engage in science is to convert the world around us into something meaningless and entirely counter-intuitive. We cannot walk around living science- indeed, much of what is "true" is only really true for us. So much about my world- what makes sense, what rises me to anger and indignation, what moves me to smile and laugh, what is bewildering and troubling, what I want, what I fear- so much of this is mine and is unshared with a person existing halfway around the world or a dozen centuries separated in time. Why, then, must we seek scientific truth- even if we are not a scientist? How much should we attempt to cobble together, knowing full well that we cannot all learn and take in even the most pathetically small fraction of scientific knowledge out there? And, once we have whatever little scientific understanding we can handle- what, then, should it do for us? Should it make our world friendly to us? Should it make us happy?

For Dawkins, we must seek out truth. More than this, truth must be objective and "absolute"- otherwise it is not truth at all. For the individual, truth is nothing- truth must be that which is agreed upon by all people regardless of historical, social, cultural, or personal context. By Richard's estimation, religion is no more than the gratification of man's need to understand, and thus it formed "before science was fully developed."

One might begin by asking at what point science attained this coveted "full development"- but let's let that pass today. I'm more interested in Dawkins's thought process and where it stops. Scientific, empirically demonstrable truth is important- but why? Of what use is scientific knowledge for the individual existence? To what end are we striving when we seek to understand further and further the workings- grand and subatomic- of the universe? To what end are we striving when we seek to come up with still yet more rigorous explanations of what this or that "really" is? Sure, we can all get together and share in scientific truths- they are beyond refutation and universal. But where does this "will to Truth" (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil) come from?

If you ask Richard Dawkins- or one of his many equivalents in the world today- "why the truth rather than lie," then he feels no need to answer that question. He is blindly operating from a cultural prejudice of the Western civilization which has been centuries in forming- truth has been defined, and so has lie, and they have been assigned arbitrary values. Dawkins may as well merely grunt "Truth is science, and science is good- all else is lying, and lying is bad."

But what Dawkins cannot seem to respect is the relationship of knowledge to living. What if the ruthless quest for a more and more vivid scientific account of the universe- what if the ruthless quest for greater and greater technological development (the two go hand-in-hand)- what if all of this were leading to a miserable world, a horrible place to live? What if it left the world stripped of all human meaning and utterly hostile to all human needs and pleas? Why should we equate progress with science when we have no goal in mind and we know not where we will ultimately end up? Why should objectivity and its promise of a shared and unbending vision be seen as something liberating rather than oppressive?

As it turns out, Richard Dawkins does not ask any of these questions. He thinks that "the real truth is so wonderful"- great for him. But he has reduced Christianity to a collection of myths taken down two thousand years ago. Perhaps Dawkins should think a bit more about the value of mythology, of literature, of fiction- one begins at some point to see that, so far as actual living is concerned, something truly baffling and unexpected happens: empirically demonstrable scientific data confuses and fiction clarifies and reveals truth.

I am not now a Christian, and I may never be. Nonetheless, I read the Bible- because humanity is unfolded in it. I also read poets and novelists, and partake of other arts as well- because they reveal truth. They give meaning and significance to my existence, and this is not- as Richard Dawkins would like to think- a retreat into blindness and ignorance for the sake of "consolation." This is truth. Those who mock the Bible, those who write off as a waste of time the reading of the poets- they may be happy, and that is good. But they have a narrow and highly prejudiced notion of "truth" and I will never share it with them.

Truth is different in every mind, and in every mind it is different in every moment- it does not have to be agreed upon.

Indeed, when you try to force one truth over all of humanity- not for any practical purpose like the preservation of the species or the keeping of the peace- then you are attempting to master and oppress humanity. As Blake once wrote: "One Law for the Lion and the Ox is Oppression." The project of a Richard Dawkins is to limit truth to science, to call all else fiction and delusion, and then to make the arbitrary and culturally-constructed (not scientific!) leap of attaching to that delusion the value of "bad." The Dawkins type would like to mock as fools those who are not willing be mastered by science, which is basically to surrender to the irrational and "human, all-too-human" impulse to make all of humanity the same whatever ways possible. Those violent and loud-mouthed atheists- do not let them bully you any more than any other authority figure from the realm of religion or politics. It's all the same, and it's all bullshit.

Science is not progress, nor is technology, nor is anything else. They can be for the individual, I suppose- but do not think that it's necessary by any means. If human history is a ship at sea, then it has no captain and it is going nowhere in particular- it never has been. Science and technology are mere contrivances which serve to give us a "Truth and Progress Delusion." But if they are to be considered markers of our progress, then we must attach certain values to them- and that is the subjective leap which goes unnoticed. That is has been so thoroughly carved into us that we often cannot come to realize the artifice, the arbitrary nature of it- and so we think we have our objectivity when we are merely locked in an invisible subjectivity.

I had hoped to make this a defense of relgion: so one last word. I see no reason to shy away from the subjective and the irrational. We are not goverend by reason, and the things which make our lives worth living are often private- they can only be shared so far, sometimes not at all. To the credit of Richard Dawkins, he is largely complaining about organized religion- and I can go with him on that. But he sees nothing else in religion, no other potential. That is merely because he has found his own religion- science. It explains the universe for him, and that makes him comfortable and happy. But I think that he- and all atheists- have unwittingly sought that end over all else, and so they cannot insist on their own religion and subjective set of values- subjective reality, if you will- without becoming hypocrites.