The brilliant American satirical magazine, The Onion, recently headlined a new development in education in the United States: ‘Evangelical scientists refute gravity with new ‘intelligent falling’ theoryâ€.
Its report continued: ‘Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held ‘theory of gravity’ is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling. ‘Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God†if you will, is pushing them down,’ said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied scripture and physics from Oral Roberts University.â€
This tongue-in-cheek invention is not as bizarre as it sounds. It echoes ‘intelligent design†theory, which revives creationism to explain the existence of the universe. Creationists are still keeping science at bay in the schools of the world’s richest, most powerful nation, retarding scientific education by centuries.
It is only natural, then, that Richard Dawkins, the leading populariser of Darwinism, should take issue with such notions. And natural, too, that he should attack the basis of creationism: the belief in the existence of God and Christian doctrine, particularly in the US, where most people count themselves Christians and whose beliefs deeply influence who gets into power and what they do.
That Dawkins and Sam Harris’s books attacking religious faith have become bestsellers indicates that the time has come for such debates to go public.
The Guardian’s Madeleine Bunting decries this atheist ‘extremismâ€, displaying a very British distaste for the rudeness of questioning others’ religious beliefs. She thinks Dawkins and Harris’s stridency will work against them.
What’s wrong with strong polemic? Dawkins and Harris confront people who support their case with threats of eternal damnation and hellfire; who argue like the South African dominee who claimed that God sent the Laingsburg flood to punish Sun City’s gamblers.
Robust argument is necessary to counter such nonsense. Some Christians gave similar reasons for the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina — as ‘acts of Godâ€.
Liberal tolerance of others’ beliefs is all very well, until those beliefs start to destroy tolerance itself. South Africa’s rights of religious freedom, in theory, tolerate ideas that would mete out death to unbelievers or who contravene religious rules.
Those who argue for secular explanations of the world and secular solutions to its problems face extremists far more dangerous than they are. The atrocities of 9/11 were committed by men acting out of a particular interpretation of a thousand-year-old sacred text. There were political and other reasons for it, but 9/11 is unimaginable without the over-arching religious justification and perceived sanction of Allah.
Similarly, the Christian Bible was used for centuries to justify slavery, colonialism, apartheid, the oppression of women and the persecution of homosexuals.
Religion, particularly monotheism, demonises non-believers, sanctifying murder and oppression. Christianity did this in the Crusades and the wholesale massacre of heretics during the Middle Ages, just as the Qur’an does for Al-Qaeda. Add religion to ethnic conflict and you get slaughter, whether it’s Catholics versus Protestants in Northern Ireland or Christians versus Muslims in Bosnia.
Such tendencies are still apparent in those who, today, take up cudgels against ‘ungodly†behaviour and beliefs that differ from their own, even if they are immeasurably more susceptible of proof. I like Dawkins’s insistence that atheists should not have to ‘prove†God does not exist — the burden of proof should lie with those who believe in God, divine creation, and other dogmas derived from ancient scriptures.
God’s existence is just as much a theory as evolution — with the difference that a vast body evidence supports evolution. It is a theory that works; which explains our existence and our universe.
Of course there are still questions to be answered; there always will be. The point is to keep asking questions.
Religious fundamentalists want to end such inquiry. To explain the mystery of the universe, they posit an even bigger mystery — God. There is no evidence that God exists, and to argue the case from scriptures that claim to be the Word of God is circular. The rest is wishful thinking and probably the result of childhood indoctrination. As Harris points out, faith kicks in when reason fails.
Bunting is correct to say that Dawkins fails to explain why religious belief persists. Perhaps he is too much of a positivist to imagine that some evolutionary adaptations (if religion is such) can become maladaptive. Psychologists know how helpful defence mechanisms can develop into crippling cognitive constraints. It might take someone a part-sociologist, part-psychologist, part-historian, and even perhaps part-mystic, to unravel why so many still believe the unproven and derive irrational comfort from it.
Voltaire said that to make a man commit atrocities, you must first make him believe absurdities. Ethical atheists, rationalists and secular humanists have to fight — if necessary, fiercely — for everyone’s freedom from nonsensical beliefs and the bizarre, life-destroying behaviours they spawn.