I read Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion". And to clairify, by read, I mean listened to as read by the author. This is an extremely important fact which I'll comment on later.
Admittedly, I am terrible when it comes to reading a book. I read slow, I stop reading and have a hard time picking the book back up. This is why I love audio. It gives me the opportunity to listen while I'm driving, while I'm shopping, while I'm doing the dishes... I love my Blackberry.
As a brief background, Mr. Dawkins is the modern day champion of Darwinian natural selection. He also holds atheism as a virtue of the highest regard. That is all I will comment on his background, because his background has very little to do with the content of my rant.
Mr. Dawkins has made several fatal mistakes to his case which are so numerous I cannot faithfully go into them here without missing key points. If you would like to discuss/debate me on this topic, please mail mrprmiller@gmail.com or post your comments. This, also, is not the reason for my rant.
I will also say that something he does in most of his philosophical arguements and many of his ontological arguements is to use weak and mediocre examples that have very little to do with the topic he is discussing. I believe this is intentional. While this is not the topic of my rant either, it does have a least something to do with it. He's dumbing down his talk for his percieved audience.
Mr. Dawkins believes that all believers are stupid for their belief, not delusional. This is the reason for my rant. Roughy a third of the content of his book consists of quotations of many immediately unrecognizable people except to those who have knowledge and background in scientific fields. This is not the majority of readers. My question then is this: who was he writing this book for?
The next third or so of content is an onslaught of attacks aimed directly at the intellect of believers in God. (I can't specifically say Christianity as I would like, because he does attack all religions.) This seems to be in direct contrast to the title of his book.
Now, if I had read the book, I may be able to shrug it off as bad context. If another person read the book for the audio edition, I could say that he took it out of context. But it was read by Mr. Dawkins himself, and it is his ability to put the right emphasis in his sentences.
His audience then, by default, is atheists and "the scientific elite". Only a truly stupid man would write a book for agnostics and believers and proceed to insult over and over again one of the chief targets. People are, by nature, sympathetic to the plight of another, especially in America. We take a particular joy in championing the cause of the oppressed. And there is no mistaking the tone of Mr. Dawkins' book. Agnostics, I hope, see the mean-spirited writings for what they are: malicious and insulting in the best light.
With that said, I can draw a conclusion: this book is useless for the purposes of science or debate, but only good for the insulting of those Mr. Dawkins believes are unintelligent. But this also flies in the face of his title...
Which is it, Mr. Dawkins? Are we all delusional, or are we all stupid?
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Simply using quips and mean-spirited attacks does not prove your case. I intend to do it the right way, in regards to morality.
I will agree with Mr. Dawkins that atheists are much more effective that theists when it comes to a few matters.
When I combine the highest expected death tolls in the Spanish inquisition (110,000 from torture, but prision and malnutrition mainly), the European witch trials (110,000, which were much worse than the Salem witch trials double-digit worst case value) and the Crusades (5,000,000, which ALSO includes Christians), I come up with a number of 5,220,000. I'm sure there were more. I'm not naive to think there weren't more. So for arguments sake, let's double the value to 10,440,000. All these happened over the course of about 1,000 years. We will NOT double the time period, because that would skew the average per year in favor of Christianity.
I will not reinvent the wheel, nor will I push it aside as Mr. Dawkins did. Atheism and communism go hand-in-hand with the two biggest offenders (and I challenge anyone to say differently). Since the early 20th century, communist Russia and China have a body count of 131,000,000 in the low estimates.
The difference is it took Christianity 1,000 years of sin against it's fellow man. It only took atheism 100 years, and I've only included the most extreme examples. The Holocaust and totals from World War II bolster this number quite a bit.
To also clarify, to paraphrase Lewis, witch trials are not an issue of morality. We do not kill witches now because we do not believe they exist. If we did find out that there were people that had sold their souls to the devil for the power to kill their neighbors and countrymen, then surely those people would deserve death. It is a leap of logic and understanding. You wouldn't call a sheriff humane for not shooting criminals if there were no criminals to shoot.
Christianity does agree with atheism in this sense: the better the materials the man is made of, the worse he can become. If intellect can lead to genocide of this magnitude, I would prefer to remain blissfully ignorant than to become affiliated with murderers.
Christianity allows people to "raise their conciousness" to the idea that murder because of belief is a terrible thing on moral grounds. We not only believe that our murders were terrible, sinful catastrophes but can also believe that we should have never commited them because we believe God throughly disapproves of murder. Christians also believe that an atheist who wants nothing to do with God will not be let down. He will have nothing to do with them. He will respect their wishes, because Christianity at it's core is a fighting religion, but a respectful one. (I expect this will raise an objection or two.)
Despite an atheists' objections, they have no refuge from morality. Morality in the "refined and enlightened" sense is simply a matter of opinion or preference. If this is true, you can't blame the communists for murder anymore than for the color of their skin. And if you do object to murder as an atheist based on morality, you must take a strong look at who's morality you're judging them against. If it is against your own sense of morality, it is against your own preference. If not, then who's morality? I believe I know the end answer, but I will respect your wishes in this sense and not mention His name.
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My personal opinion of Mr. Dawkins cannot be much lower at this moment. With this in mind, had I not been a believer, I might feel slighted because of the vicious attacks on my intellect and feel I had the right to retribution. To insult a group on such an important topic as intelligence would be a dangerous thing to do to any other vast and numerous group of people. But I am a believer, and because of my belief, not only can I do him no harm but am under orders to pray for him and forgive him, should he ask for it some day in the distant future). All Christians are under common orders.
I believe he takes this fact for granted. If he does understand it and chooses to do it anyway, he is at the least prideful, but definitely a malicious and shameless man when it comes to the feelings of others.
But I am human and do take a hint of delight. I hope Mr. Dawkins goes batty knowing that the whole of Christianity is required to pray for him and does so daily. Nothing, I believe, should upset him more.
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