Some thoughts on the Television programmes introduced by Richard Dawkins

A few weeks ago I watched the second of two programmes by the well-known Oxford atheist and scientist, Richard Dawkins.  A fair minded viewer might have thought that he was making an unassailable case against all religious beliefs and ways of looking at the world.  All we had to do was to accept that life existed only in the here and now and that we needed to make the most of what we have been given without looking for any life beyond this one.

Richar Dawkins

As I watched the second programme I began to see how the argument against religion was being constructed.  Richard Dawkins, a scientist, knew well how to distinguish between good and bad methods of doing science.  To attack religion effectively all he had to do was to find religious people who thought that their faith was a form of science.  It is never too difficult to undermine claims that the world was created in 4004 BC or that the Bible is an accurate description both of history and geology which can stand up to scientific scrutiny.  Dawkins had no difficulty in making such claims look ridiculous and absurd.  If religion is making such ridiculous claims, who needs it?

The attack on religion that seemed so unassailable was in fact an attack on forms of faith, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian which see their task as opposing everything that the modern world and the world of science has created.  The common word to describe such forms of reactionary faith is fundamentalism.  But fundamentalism, while common among the world’s faiths, is in no way universal or even typical.  By rarely speaking to people who embrace a wider and less exclusive form of faith, Dawkins was contrasting himself against a sham and caricature of religion.

What should have been my response to begin to answer Dawkins’ onslaught?  I probably would not have found it easy to take on such a well polished adversary of the Christian faith, but I would have wanted to try to establish certain principles which seemed absent from the programme.  In the first place it is wrong to use only science to explain the meaning the word ‘true’  I for one live in a world where many things apart from science are ‘true’ and about which science has little or nothing to say.  Human beings experience the ‘truth’ of beauty, wonder and love.  None of these experiences can be reduced to the kind of analysis and explanations that science enjoys.  There may be wonder experienced in the world of discovery and invention but there is also wonder and mystery in many day to day events which really matter to us.  Religious claims belong to the dimension of experience we call the personal and this includes the daily encounter with other people.  The scientific examination of the world is a valid one but on its own it is incomplete and one dimensional.  There is no conflict between the world of science and religion.  There is however a recognition on the part of people of faith that their belief systems can fill out and give depth and colour to the often depersonalised descriptions of reality that are given by scientists. 

In the end the person of religious faith can be thought of as living in several dimensions.  At the basic level we all operate with material reality but the task of humanity is to develop beyond this into the personal.  The whole dimension of relationships which uses little by way of scientific method in its practice is for Christians and others a gateway to a further dimension, popularly know as the spiritual.  It is the experience of many human beings operating at this level that has given rise to the religious quest.  This notion of a religious quest embraces vast swathes of human experience over the centuries and has inspired the greatest art and music.  Such great art has fed the whole of humanity in countless ways.  In conclusion the debate about religion and science is not an ‘either-or’ question but a ‘both-and’ statement about the richness and wonder of the world seen in every dimension.

Stephen