The God Delusion

1
The God Delusion

• Richard Dawkins
• An impassioned rebuttal of religion of all types
• (published 2006)

2
Richard Dawkins

• Professor for the public understanding of science
  at Oxford university
• Fellow of New College
• Fellow of the Royal Society
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 2005 Shakespeare Prize
• 2001 Kistler Prize
• 1997 international Cosmos Prize for achievement
  in human science
• 1990 Michael Faraday award of the Royal Society
• 1987 Royal Society of Literature Award

3
Richard Dawkins

• He is best known as an ethologist, evolutionary
  biologist and science writer
• He is also an atheist, a secular humanist, a
  sceptic, and an outspoken critic of creationism
• His early books include
• The Selfish Gene (1976), The Extended Phenotype
  (1982), The Blind Watchmaker (1986), River out of
  Eden (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996),
  Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), and The Ancestors
  Tale (2004).
• His latest publication and the most controversial
  is The God Delusion
• The English language version has sold over 1.5
  million copies and been translated into 31
  different languages
• It has become his most popular book

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The God Delusion Ten Chapters

• 1. A deeply religious non-believer
• 2. The God Hypothesis
• 3. Arguments for Gods existence
• 4. Why there almost certainly is no God
• 5. The roots of religion
• 6. The roots of morality why are we good?
• 7. The Good Book and the changing moral
  Zeitgeist
• 8. Whats wrong with religion? Why be so
  hostile?
• 9. Childhood, Abuse and the escape from religion
• 10. A much needed gap?

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H. Allen Orr New York Review of Books

• The God Delusion seems to me badly flawed.
  Though I once labelled Dawkins as a professional
  atheist, Im forced, after reading his new book,
  to conclude hes actually more an amateur.

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Some quotable quotes

• All religions are the same religion is basically
  guilt with different holidays (Anon)
• Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the
  opinion that has survived (Oscar Wilde)
• When enough people share a delusion, it loses its
  status as a psychosis and gets a religious tax
  exemption instead (Richard de Sousa)

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Three themes to be covered

• Is God amenable to scientific inquiry? (Don)
• Chapters 1,2 and 4
• The origins of religion (Lindsay)
• Chapter 5
• Does ethics depend on religion? (Don)
• Chapters 6 and 7

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Einsteinian religion

• Dawkins claims
• By religion, Einstein meant something entirely
  different from what is conventionally meant.
  (p.15)

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Some Einsteinian quotes

• I do not believe in a personal God and I have
  never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
  If something is in me which can be called
  religious, then it is the unbounded admiration
  for the structure of the world so far as our
  science can reveal it

10
Some more.

• The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me
  and seems even naive.
• I am a deeply religious non-believer. This is a
  somewhat new kind of religion.
• I believe in Spinozas God who reveals himself in
  the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God
  who concerns himself with fates and actions of
  human beings.

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.and finally

• I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a
  goal, or anything that could be understood as
  anthropomorphic. What I see in nature is a
  magnificent structure that we can comprehend only
  very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking
  person with a feeling of humility. This is a
  genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to
  do with mysticism.

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Dawkins sums up

• Einstein was using God in a purely
  metaphorical, poetic sense. So is Stephen
  Hawking (for then we should know the mind of
  God), and so are most of those physicists who
  occasionally slip into the language of religious
  metaphor.

13
Dawkins plea ( a sample of his angry mood)

• I wish that physicists would refrain from using
  the word God in their special metaphorical sense.
  The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the
  physicists is light years away from the
  interventionist, miracle-wreaking,
  thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering
  God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis,
  and of ordinary language. Deliberately to
  confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of
  intellectual high treason.

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The God Hypothesis

• There exists a super-human, supernatural
  intelligence who deliberately designed and
  created the universe and everything in it,
  including us.

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Agnosticism two types

• Permanent Agnosticism in Principle (PAP)
• Temporary Agnosticism in Practice (TAP)

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PAP example

• In 1835, the celebrated French philosopher
  Auguste Comte wrote, of the stars We shall
  never be able to study, by any method, their
  chemical composition or their mineralogical
  structure. Yet even before Comte had set down
  these words, Fraunhofer had begun using his
  spectroscope to analyse the chemical composition
  of the sun. Now spectroscopists daily confound
  Comtes agnosticism with their long distance
  analysis of the precise composition of even
  distant stars.

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TAP examples

• What caused the massive extinction of life at the
  end of the Permian period?
• We dont know, but one day we might find out at
  least a possible answer, just as we have with the
  Cretaceous extinction.
• Does life occur elsewhere in the universe?
• Again we dont know, but now we do know there are
  several hundred planets circling other stars.
  This was not known a few years ago.
• Dawkins comments. We must still be agnostic
  about life on other worlds but a little bit
  less agnostic. Science can chip away at
  agnosticism ..

18
Gods existence

• Gods existence or non-existence is a scientific
  fact about the universe, discoverable in
  principle if not in practice. (p.50)

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NOMA Non-Overlapping Magisteria

• Stephen Jay Gould
• The net, or magisterium , of science covers the
  empirical realm what is the universe made of
  (fact) and why does it work this way (theory).
  The magisterium of religion extends over
  questions of ultimate meaning and moral value.
  These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they
  encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the
  magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty).

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Dawkins Bottom Line

• A universe in which we are alone except for
  other slowly evolved intelligences is a very
  different universe from one with an original
  guiding agent whose intelligent design is
  responsible for its very existence.
• The presence or absence of a creative
  super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific
  question, even if it is not in practice or not
  yet a decided one.

21
Rephrasing

• If God interacts in any way with the natural
  world (or the universe), even if it is only at
  its creation, the world will be affected in some
  way there will be a change, some sort of
  result, and therefore, in principle, Gods action
  is amenable to scientific inquiry.

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Dawkins Alternative to The God Hypothesis

• Any creative intelligence, of sufficient
  complexity to design anything, comes into
  existence only as the end product of an extended
  process of gradual evolution
• Or, in other words
• Creative intelligences, being evolved,
  necessarily arrive late in the universe, and
  therefore cannot be responsible for designing it.

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Discuss

• Can Dawkins sideline the Einsteinian God?
• Is his formulation of The God Hypothesis valid?
• Do you think God is amenable to scientific
  inquiry?
• How about Dawkins extension of Darwinism to
  eliminate God?

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Chapter 5 The origins of religion

• Where does religion come from?
• Why do virtually all cultures have it?
• To answer these questions, Dawkins argues that
  religion is a by-product of something else
• Benefits of religion may include
• gt Providing consolation and comfort
• gt Fostering togetherness
• gt Satisfying our yearning for knowledge of
  existence

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A Darwinian approach

• The Darwinian question is
• What is the advantage generated by having a
  religion? Religion is wasteful of scarce
  resources
• Large quantities of time and energy used in the
  construction of temples and cathedrals
• Death of many who have died in religious wars
• Darwinian selection ruthlessly eliminates waste

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A Darwinian approach

• How has religion benefited the survival of an
  individuals genes?
• My suggestions
• Large families with the womans primary role
  being child bearing (traditional Roman
  Catholicism, Exclusive Brethren)
• Polygamy (traditional Mormons, Islam)

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Religion as a by-product

• Consider religion as a by-product
• Example - moths flying into lighted candles
  because their eyes use light from distant objects
  (moon) for navigation, not because they want to
  commit suicide
• Apply this to religious groups that utilise
  beliefs that are contradicted by science

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Some widely-held religious beliefs

• Examples are
• The virgin birth
• The raising of Lazarus
• The resurrection of Jesus
• God hearing everybodys thoughts
• The day of judgement
• Bread wine becoming the body of Christ

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Are humans psychologically primed for religion?

• Human tendency to dualism
• Deep-seated human belief that the mind and the
  body inhabit different worlds
• Mental illness being seen as possession by demons
• Striking similarities between the intense love
  that a worshipper feels for God and the love an
  admirer feels for his/her dearly beloved

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A Darwinian view of religion

• Religious groups use a lot of resources in
  pursuit of their religious activities
• Children initially trust those in authority who
  provide them with advice on how to live in this
  world
• Many attributes of religion are designed to help
  its survival
• This has probably occurred by a mixture of design
  and natural selection.

31
Belief and reason

• Martin Luther repeatedly warned Christians of the
  danger of reason
• Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has it
  never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but
  struggles against the Divine Word, treating with
  contempt all that emanates from God.
• Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear out
  the eyes of his reason.
• Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.

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A Darwinian approach to ideas

• Natural selection as it applies to ideas (memes)
  rather than to genetic material
• Gene pools for carnivores would contain a
  different groupings of genes compared with those
  for herbivores
• great sense of smell, sharp claws, meat-eating
  teeth, meat-digesting enzymes

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A Darwinian approach to ideas

• A meme pool of religious ideas
• You will survive your own death
• If you die a martyr, you will go to paradise
  and there will be 72 virgins waiting for you
• Heretics, blasphemers and apostates will be
  punished (by death, mutilation or ostracism)
• Belief in God is a supreme virtue. If you find
  your belief wavering, work hard at restoring it
  and beg God to help your unbelief.

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A Darwinian approach to ideas

• Faith (belief without evidence) is a virtue. The
  more your beliefs defy the evidence, the more
  virtuous you are.
• Religious beliefs must be accorded a higher level
  of respect than other beliefs.
• Do not try to understand mysterious things such
  as the trinity, transubstantiation or
  reincarnation. Become fulfilled by calling it a
  mystery.
• Beautiful music, art and scriptures are
  self-replicating tokens of religious ideas.

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A Darwinian view

• Some of these memes have absolute survival value
  and would flourish in any meme pool.
• Others would only survive with the right mix of
  memes.
• Consider Islam and Buddhism as two meme pools,
  with Islam analogous to a carnivorous gene
  complex and Buddhism analogous to a herbivorous
  one.

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An example of a meme - Cargo cults

• Evolution of ideas
• Cargo cults evolved at an astonishing speed
• They arose in both New Guinea and Pacific
  Melanesia the earliest ones from the 19th
  Century, the more recent ones from after WW2.
• The wondrous possessions that the immigrants
  brought.
• Broken ones were sent away and new ones kept
  arriving.

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Cargo cults

• No white man was ever seen to do anything that
  could be recognised as being useful.
• Sitting behind a desk shuffling paper was
  obviously a form of religious devotion
• Cargo was obviously of supernatural origin.
• The locals eventually figure out that these
  rituals are important to encourage the gods to
  send more cargo.
• More than 17 outbreaks in New Caledonia, the
  Solomons, Fiji and the Hebrides
• Over 50 in New Guinea.

38
Discuss

• What do you believe are the likely origins of
  religion?
• What have been the common roles for religion?
• Are these roles changing?

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Does Ethics depend on Religion?

• Chapter 6
• The roots of morality why are we good?
• Chapter 7
• The Good Book and the changing moral Zeitgeist

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Chapters 6 and 7, Contents

• Two Chapters 64 pages on Ethics?
• In fact, Chapters 6 and 7 are composed of
• 30 pages on the horrors of sacred scriptures or
  the behaviour of religious people,
• 12 pages on the evolution of altruism,
• 10 pages on the Moral Zeitgeist,
• 7 pages on Hitler and Stalin, and
• 5 pages on ethics

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On the Origin of the Moral Sense

• A Darwinian perspective
• Altruism kinship, reciprocation and
  symbiosis, reputation, conspicuous generosity
• Misfiring or the by-product theory
• Moral dilemmas across cultural and religious
  boundaries thought experiments

42
Moral Philosophers two types

• Absolutists Absolutists believe there are
  absolutes of right and wrong, imperatives whose
  rightness makes no reference to the consequences.
• Consequentialists Consequentialists hold that
  the morality of an action should be judged by its
  consequences.

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The Moral Zeitgeist

• Zeitgeist spirit of the times
• A broad liberal consensus of ethical principles
  A mysterious consensus which changes over the
  decades and moves in parallel, on a broad
  front, throughout the educated world.

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Conclusion on the Zeitgeist

• Where, then, have these concerted and steady
  changes in social consciousness come from?... For
  my purposes, it is sufficient that they certainly
  have not come from religion.

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Discuss

• Are there any absolutes?
• Has religion played a part in the development of
  the moral Zeitgeist?
• Will it continue to play a part in the future?