Richard Dawkins: Atheist Shock-Jock

The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath. Though I hold a naturalistic world view, do not share the beliefs of any organized religion, and have been a long-time fan and admirer of Richard Dawkins’s science writing, I was surprised and disappointed with his book on atheism, The God Delusion. It is an ill-conceived and poorly researched polemic against religion, primarily Christianity, that does no credit to Richard Dawkins or atheism in general. Instead, the book showcases an accomplished science writer lowering himself to the level of a TV “shock-jock,” exhibiting the same lack of concern for accuracy, and the same simplistic, narrow-minded orientation.

The McGraths offer a much-needed response in this succinct and intelligent book, which I noticed in the New Books section of the Kansas City Public Library a few weekends ago. At 118 pages, including end notes, annotated bibliography, and author profiles, it is not a lengthy reading project. In their introduction the authors explain they do not intend a point-by-point rebuttal of all the inaccuracies, misstatements, and mistakes in The God Delusion, which would be tedious indeed given the long list of blunders it contains. Their approach, instead, is to challenge Dawkins “at representative points and let readers draw their own conclusions about the overall reliability of his evidence and judgment.” (p 13)

Their challenges are presented in four chapters, “Deluded About God?,” which critiques the distorted characterization of contemporary religious belief Dawkins presents; “Has Science Disproved God?” which explores scientism (a worldview insisting only scientific investigation can provide reliable knowledge) and takes exception with Dawkins’s argument that the vast majority of scientists are atheists; “What are the Origins of Religion” highlights gross mischaracterizations by Dawkins about research on the historical origins of religion and also demonstrates Dawkins’s conclusions about it have no evidentiary basis and are, in fact, nothing more than uninformed speculation; and “Is Religion Evil?,” which provides a balanced view of the healthy and unhealthy aspects of religious belief, as well as other sociological processes that can also lead to violence.

These chapters are not constructed as comprehensive arguments, but provide general overviews of the topics covered and direct readers to more detailed resources for further reading and evaluation. Alister McGrath, the principal author, has a tendency to repetition with increasingly emphatic statements. One rather imagines him typing away at the word processor, becoming more and more heated by some particularly irksome inanity in Dawkins’s book, pounding the keyboard with more and more force, until Joanna pokes her head into the study with a mildly admonishing “Alister, perhaps it’s time for some tea?”

One passage I found telling occurs in the chapter on the origins of religion. The authors discuss cognitive biases which “predispose us to fail to notice or to discount data that are inconsistent with our view. On the whole we do this because it is efficient — it takes effort and is upsetting to have to change one’s mind — even if change is in a positive direction.” The God Delusion is then presented as an example of such bias. “Without full awareness that he is doing so, Dawkins foregrounds evidence that fits his own views and discounts or distorts evidence that does not.” (p 62)

This struck me because I have had difficulty accounting for how an experienced science writer with a reputation for accuracy could distort and misrepresent so many reference sources. While reading the book, I began obtaining some of Dawkins’s references and found that he frequently does misrepresent them. Just one salient example is Max Jammer’s Einstein and Religion, which Dawkins uses to support a statement that Einstein was “repeatedly indignant” about being described as a theist; that is, one who believes in God (Dawkins, p 18). Jammer’s book demonstrates exactly the opposite: Einstein was repeatedly indignant about being described as an atheist. “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” (Jammer, p 97)

Such problems, and this is only one of many examples, demonstrate that Dawkins’s position regarding atheism is so strongly biased he cannot be objective about the evidence. He can’t even read references accurately.

Einstein’s phrase, the “harmony of the cosmos,” recalls another passage from The Dawkins Delusion, which sites an argument for the existence of God, as phrased by Richard Swinburne, “that the intelligibility of the universe itself requires an explanation.” In other words, what can account for the natural order of the cosmos which science has been so effective at discovering? Answers to this question seem clearly beyond the realm of science. Is faith not a legitimate response? Earlier in their book, the McGraths observe that much of the available evidence supports both atheistic and theistic interpretations. Fundamentalists on either side of the argument deny this, but the observation should give pause for thought to readers with more moderate views.

Sightings

Sightings: Extraordinay Encounters with Ordinary Birds by Sam Keen. Keen offers his take on naturalistic spirituality in a series of short essays, many of which center on the author’s experiences as a birdwatcher. More than a few of these present what sounds like a romanticized version of his childhood, as, for instance, when he describes his first sighting of an Indigo Bunting (at the age of 10) as effortlessly slipping “into a state of grace in which I felt honored by a magical being...”. Some of the personal revelations also seem unnecessarily confessional.

In one essay he makes the somewhat bizarre assertion that his DNA has been around since the Big Bang (p 53), indicating a decided lack of familiarity with astrophysics and genetics. He subsequently states he does not understand much about the Big Bang (p 80), which, unfortunately, does not prevent him from indulging in loopy speculation about it.

The theme of the book, experiencing the sacred through rapport with the natural world, is appealing, but the author fails to convey the essence of such experiences and his thinking is often muddled and confused. Despite these problems, the ideas he tries (somewhat ineptly) to explore are worth the attention of those interested in naturalism. Personally, I found myself in strong agreement with some of his arguments and enjoyed the book despite its flaws. My favorite among his essays, “Dwelling Among Familiars,” concerns a flock of wild turkeys that congregated around his house one year.

Mary Woodin’s lovely watercolor illustrations compensate to a certain extent for the shortcomings of the text. The book itself is beautifully designed, as Chronicle books tend to be.

Birds Today

We had ice and snow yesterday, but today dawned sunny and clear. Our home is in an urban, residential area, an older neighborhood that thankfully is near several parks and some bluffs which cannot be developed and are overgrown with trees and shrubbery — ideal habitat for birds. When winter weather strikes, birds like white-throated sparrows, which rarely venture away from the wooded areas, visit our backyard feeders.

This morning I surprised a Northern Mockingbird (above) when I stepped out on the front porch to check our rosemary bush to see if some of the sprigs are still good for cooking. It is next to our porch steps, with a southwest exposure. We have been surprised to find it generally lasts the whole winter. Rosemary is a very hardy plant, I guess.

The mockingbird was sunning itself in the hedge in front of our porch, which faces south. The stone facade collects heat from the sun. Many birds like the spot.

I took some fun pictures of this goldfinch and downy woodpecker on our feeding station in the afternoon sunlight. I saw the goldfinch in the morning, but the feeder was strongly backlit, not good for pictures. It often happens that birds which show up in the morning come back for more in the afternoon when the lighting is better for pictures. The downy is a male, indicated by the red marking on the back of its head. He is a regular visitor, seen often every day. It has been some time since we’ve seen a female downy, but one showed up a few days ago. The goldfinch may be a male or female. The winter coloring of the males is similar to that of the females, but in the spring the males turn brilliant yellow with jet black markings on their foreheads.

Here is a closeup of the goldfinch.



The male downy left and the female showed up on our peanut feeder, but had only been on it for a few moments when a starling zoomed in. This picture was taken the instant before the starling landed. Pretty funny.

The downy decided it was too crowded on the peanut feeder and joined the goldfinch on the sunflower chip feeder. In warmer weather, goldfinches confine their attentions to our niger feeder, which is just to the right of the super starling shot above. The feeder is constructed so only smaller birds can get the seed. In the winter, though, goldfinches switch over to sunflower chips, I guess because they need the energy boost. We have noticed that when grackles show up in late April (they mostly go south in the winter), the goldfinches immediately abandon the feeders and are not to be seen in our yard again until the grackles head south in the late fall. We have found a number of young sparrows killed by grackles. Their aggressiveness is undoubtedly the reason goldfinches (which are smaller than sparrows) avoid them.

The Great Invention of the West

“The great invention of the West was that of an immanent order in Nature, whose working could be systematically understood and explained on its own terms, leaving open the question whether this whole order had a deeper significance, and whether, if it did, we should infer a transcendent Creator beyond it. This notion of the ‘immanent’ involved denying — or at least isolating and problematizing — any form of interpenetration between the things of Nature, on the one hand, and ‘the supernatural’ on the other, be this understood in terms of the one transcendent God, or of Gods or spirits, or magic forces, or whatever.” (p 15)

A Secular Age by Charles Taylor

Galileo's Glassworks

Elly brought home Galileo’s Glassworks by Eileen Reeves this evening, a gift to me from John Haymon, the book buyer at the Nelson-Atkins Museum Store. John has a rare skill for selecting wonderful books, which is evident after perusing the book selection at the store for only a few moments. I was pleased and charmed by his gesture.

Eileen Reeves is Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. Her book concerns the period between the invention of the telescope, in the Hague in 1608, and Galileo’s acquaintance with the instrument ten months later. Reeves “explores how and why information about the telescope was transmitted, suppressed, or misconstrued...and, more generally, shows how documents typically outside the scope [pun intended?] of early modern natural philosophy — medieval romances, travel literature, and idle speculations — relate to two crucial events in the history of science.” Sounds like fun!

Emerson’s Science-Baffling Star

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all tings find their common origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we now not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed.

Emerson’s use of this lovely metaphor, his “science-baffling star,” to portray the divine element which he believes all people possess and which can manifest itself if only we will trust our inner nature, occurs in his essay “Self-Reliance,” which was published in a collection titled Essays: First Series in 1841. The essays are based on lectures given by Emerson during the preceding years.

Although one can enjoy and appreciate this passage purely in its own context, it is fun to know the star Emerson most likely had in mind can be observed on summer and fall evenings from northern latitudes.

Friedrich Wilhelm Bessell, a German astronomer, announced in 1838 that he had succeeded in measuring the stellar parallax of 61 Cygni using an extremely precise Fraunhofer 16-centimeter heliometer. Bessell was able to determine the distance, 11.4 light years, through mathematical computations on his parallax determination of 2/3s of an arc-second. 61 Cygni thus became the first star whose distance was accurately measured, a task that baffled scientists for centuries.

Parallax can be understood quite simply by holding one’s finger at arm’s length and sighting along it at the background while keeping one eye closed. After the initial sighting, open your second eye and close the first. Your finger will appear to have moved in relation to the background. This occurs because the distance between your eyes forms a triangle with its apex at your finger tip. Using math, the length of your arm can be determined by knowing the precise distance between your eyes (the triangle’s baseline) and measuring the apparent shift of your finger against the background, which establishes the angle of the triangle’s apex (your finger’s parallax). Of course, one’s arm can easily and more simply be measured by other means. The distance to a star cannot.

In the wake of Copernicus and Kepler, astronomers realized they could establish an enormous baseline, the width of the Earth’s orbit, by taking measurements six months appart of a star in relation to background stars. In fact, early arguments in favor of a geocentric solar system (i.e. the Earth being the center of the universe), included the point that stellar parallax had not been detected. If the Earth truly moved, it should be found. What the geocentric proponents did not count on was the vast distance of the stars, which makes the apparent shift of even the closest stars quite tiny indeed.

By Bessell’s day the heliocentric solar system had long since been established and the orbital elements of the planets had actually been worked out so the size of the Earth’s orbit was known. Still, one had to choose an appropriate star to measure. This was done using another form of stellar motion known as “proper” motion. Some stars, being closer to our own solar system than others, are seen to move over time in relation to more distant stars. That is, the motion would not be cyclic during the course of one year (resulting from Earth’s motion) but would actually be due to the motion of the star itself. The stars with the highest proper motion could be assumed to be the closest to us and the most likely to exhibit stellar parallax. 61 Cygni had the highest proper motion of any star known at that time — 5 arc-seconds annually — and was therefore of considerable interest to astronomers.

Successfully measuring its parallax, the equivallent of measuring the size of a small coin at several miles, was a major feat of technical innovation and design.

61 Cygni, can be found in the constellation Cygnus the Swan, whose primary asterism is commonly described as the “Northern Cross.” It is actually a double star consisting of two k spectrum red dwarfs which can be separated with a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope. They present a beautiful chrome orange color in telescopes, and are of interest not only because of their historical significance but because they are the coolest and least luminous dwarf stars visible to the naked eye (from a dark sky site). They can be readily observed with a small telescope from urban areas despite light pollution.

For more on 61 Cygni, see James B. Kaler’s The Hundred Greatest Stars. 61 Cygni is entry 87. Alan W. Hirshfeld’s book, Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos, tells the tale of the quest to find the distance of the stars.

Winter Evening Reading

Elly and I have spent our evenings reading for the past three nights, which has been relaxing and enjoyable. Kansas City was due for a major ice storm, but we got just enough to coat the trees and make a winter spectacle. The roads never iced over, thankfully, and much of the storm went around the metropolitan area. Unfortunately, Elly had a stomache flu Monday, which caused more than a little discomfort. She was still fighting the flu Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, but was not as sick as on the first night.

She read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, finishing it on Wednesday. It is one of the most enjoyable novels I have read in recent years. Harry Potter for adults is the inevitable comment, though it doesn't do justice to Susanna Clarke's magical prose or her skill as a storyteller. I'm not one of those who disparages J. K. Rowling's Potter series, which is fun, but not in Clarke's league.

I have been reading an eclectic selection of authors, including Emerson (more on him in another post), selections from Thoreau's journal, ( I to Myself edited by Stephen Cramer), Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (see previous post), some Martin Gardner essays, a chapter or two from The Lord of The Rings, which I dip into regularly, and John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things, which I find interesting but not as engaging as some readers have reported. I have also read three of Washington Irving's Christmas sketches, "Chistmas Eve," "Christmas Day," and "Christmas Dinner," each of which I found charming and enjoyable. I have to say that charm is a quality conspicuously lacking from Emerson. Irving provides a welcome and cheerful relief. Here is an excerpt from "Christmas Dinner" dinner, which harks to the traditional Christmas ghost story.

I am half inclined to think that the old gentleman was himself somewhat tinctured with superstition, as men are very apt to be who live a recluse and studious life in a sequestered part of the country, and pore over black-letter tracts, so often filled with the marvellous and supernatural. He gave us several anecdotes of the fancies of the neighbouring peasantry, concerning the effigy of the crusader which lay on the tomb by the church altar. As it was the only monument of the kind in that part of the country, it had always been regarded with feelings of superstition by the good wives of the village. It was said to get up from the tomb and walk the rounds of the churchyard in stormy nights, particularly when it thundered; and one old woman, whose cottage bordered on the churchyard, had seen it, through the windows of the church, when the moon shone, slowly pacing up and down the aisles. It was the belief that some wrong had been left unredressed by the deceased, or some treasure hidden, which kept the spirit in a state of trouble and restlessness. Some talked of gold and jewels buried in the tomb, over which the spectre kept watch; and there was a story current of a sexton in old times who endeavoured to break his way to the coffin at night; but just as he reached it, received a violent blow from the marble hand of the effigy, which stretched him senseless on the pavement. These tales were often laughed at by some of the sturdier among the rustics, yet when night came on, there were many of the stoutest unbelievers that were shy of venturing alone in the footpath that led across the churchyard.