Richard Dawkins Quote and Some Thoughts

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!
- Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene and other secular atheist books)

Well, I have a couple of things to say about that. Now, I get into trouble when I comment on world authorities because a lot of times, I think I am a world authority. It usually follows in a painful way that I am not. In one case, I was actually trying to debate with Jimmy Dunn (the man who brought the New Perspective on Paul to conservative Christianity). What resulted was pretty messy and embarrassing from my perspective. In the middle of the conversation, I decided that what I needed was a nice, hot cup of shut the **** up. Hopefully, I will never forget that experience.

Anyway, I do want to say a couple of things about the Dawkins quote. First of all, I can sympathize with him on one score. Not necessarily agree, but sympathize. He said religion was dangerous because it "gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness." Well, Alister McGrath apparently criticized Dawkins because he did not believe that he had an adequate understanding of the teaching of Christianity. I agree with that criticism. Dawkins does not have an adequate understanding of the Christian message.

Neither do almost all Christians. When ethics are emphasized and the entire reason for Christian faith becomes inherent righteousness and self-improvement, the end result happens to be Christians who place confidence in their own righteousness. In that respect, I can certainly see Dawkins's complaint.

What he misses is the radical and totally "sub contrario" nature of what Christianity has to say. I am sad to say that Christendom misses the whole thing, too. Christianity teaches that human beings are radically unrighteous and totally depraved. It teaches that, because of the Fall, mankind is made up of beggars who totally forsake God and one another for the pursuit of empty temporal power and sexual conquest. God then became flesh in Christ to atone for our sin and reconcile us to our Maker (without our permission, by the way). Would that Christian ministers would preach this! Would that Christian people would understand this!

This is totally opposite of every other religion that ever existed. All of the rest are totally based on Law (karma, merit, or whatever). "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." "You are the sum of your actions." "You have a right to have a Big Mac, etc." Christianity flies in the face of this morbidly normal way of thinking. It is also totally opposite to the "survival of the fittest" mentality of secular-sort-of-nihilist-types.

Another thing I want to say is a more direct challenge to Dawkins himself. It is disappointing that he is either intellectually lazy or rabidly myopic enough to say that religion is the cause of evil in the world. That is, unless he is willing to admit that secular atheism is a religion just like all other beliefs (which he very well may be). If anyone has read A Tale of Two Cities or anything about the Reign of Terror, one will see the result of zealous worship of reason. One can also take a look at Nazi Germany and see the result of "triumph of the will"-style nihilism or Stalinist Russia for the same thing (millions of dead later). Pol Pot would be another good one to look at (see Killing Fields). All of this is to say that human being and their institutions are the source of evil (with help from the devil), regardless of how that manifests itself. That is, if you can actually define "evil" without God.

Dawkins is obsessed and mistaken.

He makes a good point, though. Christendom has lost the gospel.