From The Times Literary Supplement 26 January 2007
Dear Sir,
Steven Weinberg’s endorsement of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins leaves unanswered most of the fundamental questions many readers must be asking. How is it that when theologians modify their views in accordance with fresh developments in scientific knowledge this represents a “retreat”, whereas when scientists do the same it becomes an “advance”? Why, if religion evolved as a means of providing tribal cohesion to palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, was it not discarded when it became, as Dawkins holds, demonstrably harmful in its effect on human society? If theism has been so resoundingly discredited by the findings of biologists and cosmologists, how do scientists of equal eminence to Dawkins and Weinberg manage to remain believers? And if religious belief is on the point of vanishing in the face of Dawkins’s works, why do he and his supporters wax so hysterical about its baneful influence?
Could it be that it is the difficulty of answering questions like these which leads Dawkins to evince so marked a preference for debating the issue with rednecks living thousands of miles away in the southern United States, rather than crossing the High to confront (say) Richard Swinburne or Michael Burleigh?
(Note to non-Brits: The High is the Oxford High Street, Swinburne is a professor of theology and Burleigh is a historian)
Unfortunately, it seems to be true that Dawkins, brilliant man though he is, has been lured into a fierce debate with the religious (I avoid the word “Christian”, the word being inappropriate) extremists in the United States. His arguments deserve a better fate.
One aspect of this debate gets insufficient attention. One of the main questions asked by believers is “What is it all about?” and “Why are we here?”.
Another way of asking this question is , “We are just so wonderful, so clever, so damn superior to all creation- – surely we cannot just die and that’s the end of it? For such special creatures as us, there must be a point to it all, otherwise why would a creator have gone to all the trouble to make us so smart (well, by “us” I mean “me?”)
It is hard, and takes an uncharacteristic humility and self-knowledge, to admit that actually we ain’t so smart or important. We are rather a self-opinionated, violent and greedy lot, and when we die, we simply die. Some are remembered, most are not past the deaths of those who know them. Relative to the billion other galaxies and trillion other planets and their occupants (or otherwise), we are of no account. Do we matter? Not a lot. Does it matter? Regrettably, to many, it seems to.