I wrote on Sunday on the preaction to Dawkins' The Root of All Evil. I finally got around to watching it last night. The great economist Ludwig von Mises once said: "Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook". 
Dawkins and his bretheren do not overlook. His critics and interviewees have mastered this better than anybody else. The interview with Pastor Ted Haggard seems to be as good a précis of the religious criticisms of Richard Dawkins as any other I have come across.
Dawkins criticisms are based, as any good philosophy is, on humble suppositions and, if followed, provide a devestating critique. The other thinker who does this well is none other than the Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer whose has a simple credo:
"I approach each issue by seeking the solution that has the best consequences for all affected. By 'best consequences', I understand that which satisfies the most preferences, weighted in accordance with the strength of the preferences. Thus my ethical position is a form of preference-utilitarianism"
From this, Singer argues for animal rights and wealth redistribution. What annoys his opponents the most is that they believe his positions to be based on emotion not logic, and react in kind. Dawkins' positions are held to be "arrogant", emotional and scientistic. But this shows absolute ignorance of Dawkins' positions, a reaction to his more quoted media statements and not the more delicate and philosophical questions.
The religious critics will say things like "Dawkins is a biologist. How exactly does that let him talk about philosophy and theology?". Of course, this is no real criticism at all. The religious people - the theologians and philosophers - have been waffling on about things outside of their disciplines for centuries, including the sciences of physics and biology. The difference is they have been wrong and are unwilling to meaningfully correct their errors all of this time.
Of course, there are sophisticated theologians, and the previous statements do not aply so much to them. While religion deals in dishonest duplicity, they think in slightly more honest doublespeak. Dawkins hits them right on the button by criticising them as much for the substance of their belief as for the belief in authority. Authority has to be persuaded, and is then co-opted. We now know that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, not as a result of the authority of a scientist or their private revelation. We know it thorugh experimental means.
The religious then co-opt this experimentation and claim it as supporting their authority all along, despite their frequent mistreatment of anyone who doubted their authority or revelations. Anyone who doubts the possibility of miracles may explore that in the field of the philosophy of religion, but never in Theology - despite the claim, in the dictionary at least, that it is "reasonable discourse concerning God". And here we hit the nub of the matter: Dawkins, despite the protestations to the contrary, does offer a reasonable discourse concerning God.
Of course, in practice, "reasonable discourse concerning God" has almost no place in theology. What actually takes place is, as this glossary states, "[t]he science of the knowledge of God. Theology seeks to think God's thoughts after Him, insofar as He allows man through the Sripture to enter into His thinking".
A systematic look at Dawkins' statements is refreshing, because it shows simple statements of truth rather than any immoralist lurking under the cover of atheism.
"People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over centuries. That's tradition... The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up, it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was." (A Devil's Chaplain, p. 286)
"Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing it because you are told to believe it by somebody important." (A Devil's Chaplain, p. 287)
"We all have inside feelings ['revelations'] from time to time, and sometimes they turn out to be right and sometimes they don't. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so how are we to decide whose feeling is right?" (A Devil's Chaplain, p. 288)
Why is that so shocking? Well, it's shocking because for many people it's scarily obvious. And this is as true for both the religious and the secular world. One only needs to look to the dishonesty perpetrated by politicians after July the 7th of last year. Many recitements of the "Islam is a religon of peace" brand of hogwash. Of course, Islam is a religion of peace, but only if you use a debased definition of peace.
The famous 'arrogance' which Dawkins supposedly has disappears in to irrelevance when placed next to the statements made Yousef Al-Khattab seems to equivocate the faith-based violence that goes on in the Middle East with Western women's "dressing like a whore". Dawkins is seen as an anti-religious zealot, someone who will even take away the tradition as well as the faith. But this isn't true:
"Loving the cadences of the Authorized Version and the Book of Common Prayer as I do..." (A Devil's Chaplain, p. 191)
What Dawkins does object to is how a "cowardly flabbiness of the intellect afflicts otherwise rational people confronted with long-established religions" (Kurtz, ed., Science and Religion: Are They Compatible, p. 205). I have conducted a search for a few years now, looking for some way of reconciling science and religion that gives due weight to the honesty required. Religion really cannot be anything more than, to flip Kierkegaard, the historical.
Dawkins brings, in both this programme and his other writings, an admirable moral zeal. His secular critics seem to object to this moral vision, believing instead the superstition that moral facts can arise from mere circumstance. This superstition is most plain to see when you watch people talk about politics on television. For instance, they'll say things like "So many people are now using drugs! We must do something!". By the very fact of their drug use, we have a moral imperative? Of course not! Either we believe that drug use is justified in banning drugs, or we do not. It does not depend on the number of users. Would murder be justified if everybody did it?
Is the state-sponsored indoctrination of young children in to quite nonsensical belief systems justified? Well, of course, you say. They're Christian children, like their Christian parents. Okay, why not the same for Scientology? The Nation of Islam? Al-Qaeda? NAMBLA? Why is it okay if America's evangelicans do it, and not NAMBLA? This is all unprincipled indoctrination, and that kicks right in to the teeth of your faith. (I have remarked elsewhere, as a friend reminded me today, that NAMBLA membership would be less destructive to one's electoral success in the United States than the mere whiff of atheism. How sad.)
Dawkins, using science and morality - the former the land of undateable nerds making nuclear bombs, and the latter is supposed to be a light morning tonic (Radio 4's Thought for the Day, to give an example) after a night of immorality - should be enough to give the nutters in robes nightmares, and, hopefully, give the guilt-ridden wooly agnostics, who criticised it so irrationally, in the Radio 4 commentariat even bigger nightmares.
The next part airs on Monday at 8pm on Channel 4. I'll be tuned in.
