Features » December 8, 2006

The Godless Fundamentalist

In The Root of All Evil, biologist Richard Dawkins reveals his own lust for certainty

By Lakshmi Chaudhry

Religion fucking blows!” declares comedian Roseanne Barr in her latest HBO special. Her pronouncement, both in its declarative certainty and self-congratulatory defiance, could easily serve as the succinct moral of Richard Dawkins’ documentary, The Root of All Evil.

The big-screen version of a two-part British television series follows the noted biologist as he embarks on a global road-trip to the veritable bastions of theological conviction—the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a Christian conservative stronghold in Colorado Springs, a Hassidic community in the heart of London—bullying, berating and heckling the devoutly faithful he encounters along his way.

Confronting cancer patients who have traveled to Lourdes in hopes of a cure, Dawkins tells the viewer in the first scene, “It may seem tough to question the beliefs of these poor, desperate people’s faith.” By the end of the documentary, Dawkins’ bravado is not in doubt. When talking to Ted Haggard, a New Life Church pastor (more recently infamous for his predilection for crystal meth and gay prostitutes), after witnessing one of his sermons, Dawkins tells him, “I was almost reminded of the Nuremberg rallies … Dr. Goebbels would have been proud.” To a hapless guide at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, he taunts, “Do you really believe that Jesus’ body lay here?” And then there’s his remark—”I’m really worried for the well-being of your children”—to a Hassidic school teacher, Rabbi Herschel Gluck, whom Dawkins accuses of brainwashing innocent kids.

As he storms his way around the world in the state of high dudgeon, Dawkins’ attitude can be best described as apocalyptic outrage. The effect is in turns bewildering, embarrassing, grating and even unintentionally comic, as we watch the distinguished Oxford University Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science channel his inner Borat. When the astonished rabbi exclaims, “You are a fundamentalist believer,” even a sympathetic, true-blue San Francisco audience cannot help but chuckle in assent.

As his rabbinical nemesis rightly suspects, Dawkins’ fondness for sweeping generalizations reflects his own deep-seated fundamentalism, a virulent form of atheism that mirrors the polarized worldview of the religious extremists it claims to oppose. “They condemn not just belief in God, but respect for belief in God. Religion is not just wrong; it’s evil,” writes Gary Wolf in his Wired Magazine cover story, “The New Atheism,” whose leading exponents include—in addition to Dawkins—Daniel Dennett, a philosophy professor at Yale, punk rocker Greg Graffin and Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. These are the self-styled “Brights,” the moniker of choice for Dawkins to describe “a person whose worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements.”

The “bright” worldview is also remarkably free of complexity. Dawkins’ view of faith can be summed up thus: Religion is dangerous because it requires that we suspend our powers of reason to place our faith in the shared delusion that is God. This, he asserts, is the first step on that “slippery slope” to hatred and violence.

When we cede our “critical faculties” to believe in the idea of a higher power, Dawkins claims, we are immediately invested in a panoply of increasingly ludicrous propositions: that the Virgin Mary ascended directly to heaven, Moses parted the seas, God created the world in seven days, or beautiful virgins await good Muslims in heaven. Why not, he asks, believe in fairies or hobgoblins?

Faith, in his universe, is interchangeable with superstition, eccentricity, madness, and, at its most benign, infantilism. Religious conviction is a marker of human backwardness, both in a historical and psychological sense. According to Dawkins, human beings invented religion as a “crutch” for ignorance. Without science to help us understand the world around us, we turned to gods/faith/superstition to cope with our sense of helplessness. Today, religion remains a source of succor to those unable to outgrow their childish desire to see the world in terms of “black and white, as a battle between good and evil”—unlike atheists who are “responsible adults and accept that life is complex.”

“We’re brought from cradle to believe that there is something good about faith,” says Dawkins, as he compares this belief to “a virus that infects the young, for generation after generation.” Fortunate are the “responsible adults” who grow up to shake off these beliefs, unlike the rest of humanity who remain trapped in their infantile desire to be taken care of by an all-powerful deity.

Unlike fairytales, however, our religious beliefs are not harmless, says Dawkins, they instead lay the foundation for the murder and mayhem inevitably wreaked by true believers. His evidence: the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the 9/11 attacks, and less spectacular crimes against humanity like suicide bombers, anti-abortion killers, and so on.

This broad-stroked caricature of faith is delivered with a breathtaking disregard for historical context, in which social, political or economic conditions are simply ignored or discounted. “[Dawkins] has a simple-as-that, plain-as-day approach to the grandest questions, unencumbered by doubt, consistency, or countervailing information,” writes Marilynne Robinson in the November Harpers’, while reviewing his bestselling book, The God Delusion. And on screen he is no different. Of course, there are sound political causes for the Palestinian conflict, Dawkins hurriedly acknowledges—only to assert in the same breath that the real culprit is religion, which teaches its adherents to think, “I’m right and you’re wrong.”

Not unlike the religious simpletons he claims to disdain, Dawkins sees the world in terms of a battle of Good vs. Evil, cloaked here as Science vs. Religion. Where Religion is corrupt, tyrannical and false, Science offers intellectual integrity, freedom and truth. As Robinson notes, Dawkins fails to acknowledge Science’s less admirable achievements, be they eugenics, Hiroshima, or the more mundane travesties committed by unethical doctors or fat-cat researchers in service of corporate funding.

“Dawkins implicitly defines science as a clear-eyed quest for truth, chaste as an algorithm, while religion is atavistic, mad, and mired in crime,” Robinson writes.

In this version of atheist theology, Science attains the same status as Dawkins’ loathed “alpha male in sky,” whose laws rule all things known and unknown. If we do not quite understand how the universe was created or the human brain works—or the competing, contradictory claims about the virtues of, say, table salt—all we need to do is wait and keep faith in the scientific method, which will reveal all in good time. The ways of Science are no less sacred or mysterious than that of God.

Like his fellow fundamentalists, Dawkins has no use for moderation or its practitioners. The people of faith featured in his documentary are strict, true believers, who adhere to the most rigid interpretations of their respective faiths. There are no Muslim doctors, church-going geneticists or Catholics who support abortion rights. Anyone who believes in evolution and God is just as deluded or in denial, and, as he tells Wired, “really on the side of the fundamentalists.”

Nothing less than a complete renunciation of all things spiritual will suffice. “As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers,” he writes in The God Delusion, in an eerie echo of President Bush’s post-9/11 point of view: “You’re either with us or against us.”

It would be silly to argue that the new atheists’ crusade is as dangerous as the so-called war on terror, but that crusade does give aid and comfort to fundamentalists everywhere by affirming their view of faith: one, science and religion are mutually opposed and exclusive worldviews; two, religion is immutable and outside history; and therefore, three, the Bible (or the Quran, for that matter) must be taken literally, and is not open to interpretation. For both camps, ignoring one law or moderating a single injunction is the first step toward rejecting the faith in its entirety.

This great war of ontologies, seductive though it may be in our beleaguered times, becomes immediately absurd if we remind ourselves of one simple fact: Science and Religion are historical in the richest sense of the word. They both inform and reflect our changing ideas about ourselves and the world around us. From the practice of throwing a woman on her husband’s funeral pyre in India to determining intelligence by the shape of person’s skull in Europe—both of which seem hateful today—religious and scientific beliefs ebb, rise and transmute themselves over time. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the vast bulk of what we call History, which the Brights seem just as willing to rewrite as their theological adversaries.

As innately human endeavors, religion and science are therefore as unreasonable, noble, immoral, kind, tyrannical, odious, compassionate—in other words, irredeemably human—as the people who literally embody them. Yes, the laws of nature and those of God might still exist without human beings, but there would be no one to name or know them as such, or act on that knowledge. Taken together, they express our need to both submit and to control, to know and to believe, to be in the visible world and to transcend it.

That the vast majority of us would find it difficult to choose between the two should be hardly surprising. The antidote to fanaticism is not a new puritanism of reason, but the contradictory, ambiguous, compromised reality of ordinary human experience.

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• Reader Comments

  I find Lakshmi Chaudhry’s account of atheist Richard Dawkins’ positions to be inaccurate and self-serving.

  To my knowledge, never has Dawkins asserted that one needs to have “faith” in the scientific method.  The scientific method is a procedure—something one does—not the object of faith.  It makes as much sense to say that one has faith that when they bathe they wash behind their ears.

  The practice of faith and the practice of science are polar opposites: the former relies on dogmatic resistance to change, and the latter thrives on change.  Yes, of course religious beliefs have evolved, but only over long time periods.  Religion and tradition may be considered synonymous over most individuals’ lifetimes.  By contrast, science challenges itself every second it is practiced, with the advancement of objective knowledge being the only goal, and all else, even the most tried-and-true theories, are always subject to revision as we develop our understanding further.  This is the very essence of the scientific method.

  Dawkins would never suggest that the scientific method will reveal “all” in good time, a flawed premise which she then uses to assert that Dawkins treats science the same way religious extremists treat faith.  In a televised lecture, Dawkins specificially allowed that some things may remain forever unknowable.  However, he was clear that because some things may elude our understanding, that is no reason to ascribe them to some invisible man who lives in the sky.

  I do agree with the proposition that religion does represent an integral part of what defines us as human and must be acknowledged as such.  But in my reading of history, the ones who have murdered to protect their views against challenge were, and still are, the religious zealots, not the scientists.  Conflating the two is profane.

  Posted by trippin on Dec 8, 2006 at 2:35 PM

  The author’s comments on Dr. Dawkins are often typical of those who attack atheists.  The attacks attempt to equate atheism and belief in the scientific method as just another form of “religion” that is just as dogmatic as the faiths that are “disrespected”.  This approach reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of science itself and what it means to be an atheist or skeptic.  As a trained scientist, I understand that you can never prove a negative.  I cannot prove God exists, however, I would say that there has never been any real world proof that God does exist, and that all the scientific evidence would clearly point in the direction that no “personal God” that involves himself/herself in human events exists.

  What does amaze me is that rationale people who would expect proof of any other extraordinary claims accept the existence of God with no proof whatsoever.  If I told you that I could fly or levitate, you would expect me to prove it by demonstrating it.  But if I were to tell you that an ancient book of susperstitious writngs is either the literal or metaphorical word of God it is accepted as true.  The reason for this is simple.  Religion gets you when you are young.  Very few people are wiling to question the set of beliefs handed down to them by their parents and culture. 

  The beauty of science as a way to understand the world is that it requires that experiments be proveable and subject to the kind of scrutiny that religion forbids.  In science it is the “heretic” who overtturns the existing scientific understanding of the world who is rewarded, men such as Einstein and Darwin.  The scientist that developed a new theory that overturned either of these two’s theories would be immensely rewarded.  A religious heretic can look forward to the possibility of being killed.  Terrible things have been done using scientific knowledge, but that is not the fault of science, it is how it is used by humans.  The response to that line is religion has been manipulated by bad people too, however a wonder ful saying that I like to use follows “It goes without saying that bad people will do bad things, but for good people to do bad things takes religion.”

  I will close with one more thought that I tell religious people when talking with them.  “You are just as much of an atheist as I am, I just happen to believe in one less god than you do.  When you realize why you reject all the other gods and religions, you will realize why I reject yours.”

  Posted by Wisceptic on Dec 8, 2006 at 8:12 PM

  This essay is mental slop. Religion means belief in the supernatural.
  One can reject such a notion without being a total materialist.
  We know the physical world exists, why not start there ?
  If we say consciousness created existence we are stuck in a maze.
  Who created consciousness if it didn’t exist out of the material world ?
  Who created the god who created the god who created the god…..........
  If you say one god, who and when ? He or she ? Black or white ?
  Moderate or rightwing of the GOP ?
  Break down a- the-ism into three syllables and you’ll feel less frightened. An atheist is simply an a-theist.
  I don’t think the intellectual schizophrenia the author endorses is admirable.
  We have philosophy as an alternative to religion and most science originally out of philosophy when they became specialized enough.
  Philosophy of science is with us today. Even if Dawkins is a totally
  arrogant ass that doesn’t make a case for god.

  Posted by blondemike on Dec 8, 2006 at 10:09 PM

  I’m really surprised In These Times would print such a puerile essay. As many who argue against Dawkins, Dennet, Harris and the like, this essay begins from an assertion that God and revealed-religions are supported by objective evidence.  It is this foundation these authors suggest you re-consider. I suggest reading Dennet’s “Breaking the Spell”—but you must do it with an open mind, that is, “as if God might not exist” to understand his thought experiments.

  This essay says the following: “Yes, the laws of nature and those of God might still exist without human beings….That the vast majority of us would find it difficult to choose between the two should be hardly surprising. The antidote to fanaticism is not a new puritanism of reason, but the contradictory, ambiguous, compromised reality of ordinary human experience.”  Dawkins and his ilk are questioning, what evidence do you have for these “laws of God?” Scientists have plenty of objective evidence for their laws and theories.  What the essay really shows is a lack of understanding of much current scholarship—well referenced especially by Dawkins and Dennet,  that shows the evolution of mind, of moral behavior etc.  The so-called “laws of God” come from books who derive their authority—essentially from the books themselves.  I would ask the author to pick any relgion she disdains—maybe Scientology is an example—word revealed from a supernatural source to a human.  She probably wouldn’t accept it. Why? not enough evidence.

  Posted by timeforchange on Dec 9, 2006 at 5:29 AM

  On the contrary,  she is simpy trying to express the balance that is necessary to manuever thru this dicotomy .“Taken together, (both religion and science) express our need to both submit and to control, to know and to believe, to be in the visible world and to transcend it.”  Its about being a rational human being.  So what if the conclusions we come to are not neat and tidy.  Being a human is not that neat and tidy and neither must our thoughts and conclusions always be.  But western dualism   —either or—thinking—- demands this of us. If its not this way—its that way . Your are either with us our against us. Lakshmi Chaudhry is succintly presenting us with a third more Humanistic approach.

  Posted by katann59 on Dec 9, 2006 at 9:05 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

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