You Ask the Questions: Richard Dawkins
The British newspaper The Independent has an interesting story where readers wrote questions to be answered by Richard Dawkins. These are fairly strong questions, and I think Dawkins’ answers are quite up to the challenge. My favorites:
What is there to distinguish your intolerance from that of a religious fanatic?
It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have. I merely give robust expression to views about the cosmos and morality with which you happen to disagree. You interpret that as ‘intolerance’ because of the weirdly privileged status of religion, which expects to get a free ride and not have to defend itself. If I wrote a book called The Socialist Delusion or The Monetarist Delusion, you would never use a word like intolerance. But The God Delusion sounds automatically intolerant. Why? What’s the difference?
I have a (you might say fanatical) desire for people to use their own minds and make their own choices, based upon publicly available evidence. Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private ‘revelation’. There is a huge difference.
Terrible things have been done in the name of Christ, but all he ever taught was peace and love. What’s wrong with that?
Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ’s followers seem to disagree. I once wrote an article called “Atheists for Jesus”, and was delighted to be presented with a T-shirt bearing the slogan.
Einstein, Newton, Bacon, Kepler, Pascal, Boyle and Faraday all believed in God. Does it bother you that such eminent scientists might not have been “deluded”?
It was hard to be an atheist before The Origin of Species. Einstein is the only member of your list who was born into the post-Darwinian world, and it is no accident that he was also the only one who didn’t believe in God. He declared: “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.”
What do you think happened to the body of Jesus, and how does that tally with the accounts of the resurrection?
Presumably what happened to Jesus was what happens to all of us when we die. We decompose. Accounts of Jesus’s resurrection and ascension are about as well-documented as Jack and the Beanstalk.
Are people who advocate intelligent design stupid, and do you think natural selection will operate to remove them from future generations?
The majority are ignorant, which is not the same thing as stupid. Natural selection will not remove ignorance from future generations. Education may, and that is the hope to which we must cling.
I salute your courage in questioning Christianity, but what do you do on Christmas Day when everyone is celebrating? I presume you do not send or receive cards or give/receive presents.
Why do you presume that? Do you seriously imagine that all - or even a majority of - the people who send cards and presents are followers of Jesus? Why, even the music we have to endure in shops is usually “White Christmas”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, and the nauseating “Jingle Bells”. What’s religious about that?
If you died and arrived at the gates of Heaven, what would you say to God to justify your lifelong atheism?
I’d quote Bertrand Russell: “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence.” But why is God assumed to care so much about whether you believe in him? Maybe he wants you to be generous, kind, loving, and honest - and never mind what you believe.
