15. On Deluded Polemic and Christian Reality

Dearly Beloved,

To survive the latest prospect of social isolation to evade the virus, my wife, Josephine, has enlisted for a course with Cambridge's Institute of Continuing Education on evolutionary biology, a balance to her earlier learning as a historian and art historian. As my post grad work was in that subject I have been confronted with familiar volumes, notably Richard Dawkins's entitled The Selfish Gene (1976) in which evolutionary action is pinned on the gene rather than the individual manifesting the species. This is wonderful, easily comprehended biological science. Unfortunately by 2006 Dawkins had moved from science to polemic. He had become thoroughly alarmed by the anti-science movement in the USA which clung to a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation story. Dawkins believed it threatened to distance mankind from the practical and philosophical benefits of the application of Science and attainment of knowledge and felt it was imperative for him to oppose it.

In his book The God Delusion 2006 he attacks religion relentlessly. The tone in which he disparages the rather different attitudes to religion in the US and England is typical:

“What works for soap flakes works for God, and the result is something approaching religious mania among today's less educated classes (in the USA). In England, by contrast, religion under the aegis of the established church has become little more than a pleasant social pastime, scarcely recognizable as religious at all.” p.41

Despite devoting a chapter to The Roots of Religion Dawkins seem oblivious to what seems obvious to anyone familiar with them, that all religions set out how people should live their lives which essentially means that each individual knows his obligations to others and knows what to expect from others in return. In the debate with Dawkins at the Cambridge University Union, Bishop Rowan Williams expressed it much better than I am able to do when he said:

"Religion, has always been a matter of community building; a matter of building precisely those relations of compassion, fellow feeling and – I dare to use the word – inclusion, which would otherwise be absent from our societies." (2013)

That in general leads to more peaceful and prosperous societies despite often observed human tendencies to dominate others, and sometimes to do so aggressively and violently. Dawkins readily acknowledges those tendencies but he fails to recognise that participation in a religious society enhances the survival of individuals within those societies. Instead he gets diverted into academic arguments against group selection which even he finally rejects (p169-172).

Surely Christianity has been a victim of its own success? With our emphasis on humility and support for others, Christian societies have largely thrived over the 2000 years of their existence and they have become powerful as a result. In turn those powerful societies have attracted individuals who wish to dominate others and are prepared to use violence to do so. Such individuals have co-opted Christian institutions or insinuated themselves into Christian churches because they could not afford to ignore powerful and influential Christian societies as they pursued their personal ambition. So we have suffered under “Princes of the Church” instead of being supported by “Shepherds of their flocks”. We can explore this idea in the context of what was probably Christianity's worst period -- the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). In that war rulers identified themselves with Catholicism, Lutherans or Calvinists so closely that it has only recently become apparent that the Thirty Years war was a long political war between secular powers, (to hugely oversimplify: Catholic Bourbons vs Catholic Hapsburg fighting over small, mainly Protestant states with Protestant Sweden intervening relatively late to “win” and dominate the peace settlement in a devastated Europe). It was not primarily a religious war between different religious factions. It remains a Christian failure because Christians and their institutions were unable to prevent it and the consequence was that the armies of dominant families laid waste to much of central Europe. It should nevertheless be realised that these were substantially political wars. After such European conflicts The Christian ethos rebuilds societies until the next political disaster lays waste to their efforts.

It is perhaps Dawkins tragedy that in his attempt to defend science he chose to attack religions in general including all their highly evolved mechanisms for getting people to live together in relative peace and harmony. Today he risks being remembered for his atheism and obsessive attacks on religion and the religious, rather than for the important evolutionary theory which he helped develop, interpret and publicise, or indeed, for his attempts to defend science and the benefits that it can bestow on humanity.

Peace,

Paul.

Originally completed 29/09/20

Photo: Paul Munton.
A wasp feeding on apple mint. Wasps are a complex group of highly evolved, specialised species.



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