Dawkins, Target of Idiots
Saturday, September 1st, 2007What is supposed to be a review of a completely different book brings us the latest attack on Richard Dawkins’s book, The God Delusion, written by Salley Vickers, and she only proves herself to be an utter idiot.
John Cornwell’s mouthpiece is a likeable seraph, who follows the dictum of G. K. Chesterton that angels fly “because they take themselves lightlyâ€. Cornwell clearly believes, as I do, that angels are not wispy, winged beings in ethereal nightgowns, but something far more subtle and profound: archetypal images that dramatise the invisible realities. As such, they can act as symbols for the formless elements of physics; but also for the creative imagination.
It takes some serious chutzpah to write pseudo-intellectual garbage like that, but at least it sounds like Ms. Vickers may be writing about Cornwell’s book, not Dawkins’s.
The seraph begins by politely nailing Dawkins’s first sleight of hand which, as loads of people have now pointed out, dishonestly bundles all religious belief and practice into one crude bag that supposedly equals fanaticism. … It is child’s play to denounce a subject by pointing to the myriad ways in which it may be misapplied; misuse and misapplication are rife in all areas of human understanding: politics, science, education, medicine, religion. But it is faulty logic to conclude that this is necessarily the fault of the set of ideas being traduced.
This is like shooting fish in a barrel. First, in what way is religion like any of the other “areas of human understanding” Ms. Vickers mentions? Religion is, fundamentally, the creation, analysis, and application of made-up ideas that are not verifiable, falsifiable, or provable. Since it is nothing more than pulling assertions out of one’s ass, it can literally be used to assert that anything is true, even contradictions. Despite Vickers’s assertion to the contrary, Dawkins’s makes a point to distinguish moderated religion from religious fanaticism—and then to point out why moderated religion is just as, if not more dangerous than its fanatical blood brother: Moderated religion, in its moral muddiness and slipshod approach to truth, is the ultimate launching pad for religious fanaticism. And in any case, there is really no difference between a “moderated” adoption of asinine, unprovable bullshit and a fanatical adoption of the same. I can claim that it’s okay to believe that Poseidon is responsible for the world’s troubles, and that we must pray to him for forgiveness, but since I have abandoned reason with this claim, why is it any more unreasonable for someone else to claim that we should kill all coastal dwellers because they anger Poseidon’s dominance of the seas?
His account of the Bible is equally undiscriminating. For a start, only religious nutcases take the Creation story literally[.]
Really? By what standard does Vickers judge these people to be “nutcases”? Their assertion that the earth is 6,000 years old is no more unreasonable or illogical than the idea that God exists at all. There is absolutely no evidence for either.
[I]t is perfectly respectable to “pick and choose†when reading the Bible, something that Dawkins takes Christians to task for.
Really? By what standard does Vickers pick and choose between arbitrary, unprovable, untestable assertions? By her own sense of morality, I would guess. It’s certainly not from any sense of morality that religion teaches—or from any sense of reason and logic that science teaches. These are points that Dawkins makes time and again in The God Delusion. They are directed at the “moderately” religious, as Vickers appears to be, and I can only guess that she is a bit defensive at the light he shines on the illogic of her and her “moderate” ilk.
Those who think that not knowing is safer and more attractive than its opposite should treat themselves to this elegant little book.
Ah, the politically correct retreat into agnosticism. How noble of Vickers to treat with equal intellectual hospitality those who claim that there is no evidence that God exists and point out the glaringly obvious harm that all religion does … and those who believe assertions pulled out of the ass of some ancient witch doctor that fly in the face of the reality we know by science and are based on nothing verifiable, testable, or falsifiable.
But I digress. Vickers really should be directing this criticism at me and my ilk. Dawkins never once makes the assertion that he is 100% sure that God does not exist. (I do, but again, I digress.) Dawkins is all about the probability of God’s existence, and concludes that it is next-to-nothing but not nothing itself—though near enough to be reasonably disregarded.
I have no idea who Vickers is, but I can tell you that she’s an idiot.
