Speaking from, ironically, the sanctuary of the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 19, 2006, Professor Richard Dawkins proclaimed to a capacity crowd that Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, was “an evil monster.”
In an event sponsored by Harvard Book Store as part of Richard Dawkins’s tour to promote his new book, The God Delusion, the Oxford professor and avowed atheist boldly bashed belief in a supernatural God as a “pernicious delusion.”
Offering this excerpt from his book, Dawkins declared with disdain, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Author Dawkins revealed that he was raised as an Anglican until age 15 when he discovered Darwinian evolution. It was at this point that he began his escape from traditional religion to atheism. The underlying premise of his message is that the existence of a supernatural God who designed and created everything including human beings is indefensible because “any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.”
Consistent with his corollary of complex intelligence evolving from simple beginnings, Dawkins suggested that there may well be other intelligent beings in the universe. He mused that if we met them we would most likely worship them because of their superior intelligence. However, according to him, the only way they could have gained that intelligence is through the process of evolution.
From his perspective, atheists are independent thinkers, and believers in a supernatural God are simply victims of childhood indoctrination. The kindest thought he could convey for the deluded and duped is that “ignorance is not a crime.”
PURPOSE OF BOOK
His primary purpose in writing The God Delusion is to assist others in their rejection of “the God Hypothesis.” “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down. Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination.”
As a biologist and respected scientist, Dawkins understands that “a quasi-mystical response to nature and the universe is common among scientists.” He attributes the theological language employed by other preeminent scientists such as Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawkings as the picturesque language of scientific wonder of the structure and complexity of the universe. He hastens to add that it reflects a “reverence for the cosmos,” but has nothing to do with supernatural belief.
When asked by a student in the audience what language should be used today to describe the awe-inspiring feeling one has in appreciating the intricacy and beauty of the universe without confusing it with religious sounding terms, Dawkins advised “you might try emancipating the term spirituality.”
In one conciliatory note, Dawkins did admit that the origin of the universe was “deeply mysterious,” and when asked where the materials came from prior to the Big Bang, he stipulated that “Darwin’s theory works for biology, but not for cosmology.” He suggested that we give the physicists more time and they will come up with an explanation for what took place before the Big Bang.
From Dawkins's perspective then, it’s okay to believe that there might well be other beings of superior intelligence out there in the cosmos—as long as it's not God. It’s okay to use terms of spirituality to describe the awe-inspiring feeling that overcomes us when we consider the beauty of the universe. It’s acceptable to have faith in physicists to solve the questions of how everything came into existence. They just need more time.
It would appear that we all need faith in something to pursue answers to the profound questions of the origin and destiny of the universe. Apparently, then, having faith is not the problem. It’s all about where we place our faith.
TOM FITZPATRICK
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