Dawkins: The Philosophical Naturalist
The first chapter of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is entitled “A Deeply Religious Non-Believer.” In it, Dawkins makes clear that he is a philosophical naturalist. He writes that he sees himself as:
“…somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles—except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand. If there is anything that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural.” (35).
This view is where he starts from—it is, if you will, his presuppositional base, his worldview. Now Dawkins, of course, would probably disagree with me, and say, “No, my worldview is not presuppositional; it is based in scientific fact.” And this, I submit is the very root of the problem.
Let’s look more closely at what he says: he believes there is nothing beyond the natural world; he believes that there is no supernatural intelligence; he believes that there is no soul that outlasts the body; he believes there are no miracles, unless they are simply natural phenomena we don’t yet understand. The fact is, none of those beliefs are scientifically provable…or scientifically disprovable for that matter. Not only are none of those statements are actually “scientific.” They are presuppositional assumptions about the extent of reality that shape how Dawkins looks and interprets the world around him.
For the sake of argument, I’m not even saying at this point that Dawkins is wrong. I’m simply pointing out that his worldview is not based in science. His worldview is based on certain metaphysical assumptions, and it is from those assumptions that he proceeds to understand reality. Science certainly is the way we understand the natural world, but the belief that the natural world is all there is to reality is, in itself, not a scientific claim. It can’t be. That is why it is called philosophical naturalism.
Is God a Lurker?
I would like to offer another observation about Dawkins’ initial statement: he betrays a fair amount of ignorance of, at the very least, traditional Christian belief. Yes, I know, he is not exclusively talking about Christianity in the above quote, but as we go through the book, it becomes clear that the object of his attacks is primarily the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with the majority of his criticisms aimed at Christian belief.
First, Christians do not believe that God is “lurking behind the observable universe,” as if the universe was a puppet stage, and God was hovering above it, with strings attached to various things on the stage. This concept stems from the heavily bifurcated concept of the universe that came about during the Enlightenment: once God became defined in this way, Enlightenment thinkers then took the next step by defining reality solely in natural terms, and voila! They had defined God right out of existence without ever really wrestling with what the actual biblical concept of God was.
The biblical concept of God and the spiritual realm is not one that sees it as radically divorced from the natural world. The biblical concept of God is that while he is not a part of the natural world, his presence nevertheless still permeates the natural world. This is what it means when Christians say God is both transcendent and immanent.
But to make things simpler, let me provide an analogy, however imperfect it may be: what is the relationship between you and your body? Your body is obviously a biological organism of a certain weight, size, etc. It consists of hands, feet, shoulders, eyes, etc. But are you, the person, the exact same thing as your body parts? No. Are you, the person, somehow “lurking behind your observable body?” No.
So even with a human being we see that we, as persons, are not the same thing as our physical bodies, but neither are we, as persons, somehow lurking behind our bodies. Our personhood is not the same thing as our bodies, but at the same time it permeates our physical bodies and acts through them and with them. Therefore, in the very person of a human being we see the intersecting and overlapping of the physical and the spiritual.
All that is to say that Dawkins’ criticism of a God who “lurks behind the physical universe,” while true (I don’t believe in a God who “lurks behind the physical universe” either), is nevertheless not the way the God of the Bible is understood. The God of the Bible is neither totally detached from his creation, nor is he a part of his creation.
Body and Soul, and the Resurrection
Another thing Dawkins gets wrong is his claim that the Bible teaches that “the soul will outlast the body.” This concept is actually much more pagan than it is Christian. The ancient Greeks believed that once you died, your body decomposed and your “soul” went down to Hades, the realm of the dead, and twittered away as a disembodied phantom for eternity. That was the end of it.
In the Bible though, the picture is much different. Now, certainly both in the Old and New Testaments, there is the belief that when the body dies, the soul will go down to Sheol as basically a disembodied phantom, but that’s not the end of the story. There develops within the Old Testament of a belief of a resurrection of the dead, and then in the New Testament there is the claim that Jesus had literally and physically been raised from the dead. Furthermore, part of the early Christian proclamation was that those who put their faith in the resurrected Christ will one day be physically raised from the dead as well.
Simply put, the Jewish and Christian belief is decidedly not that the “soul will outlast the body,” but rather that the body will be resurrected and transformed, and that creation itself will overcome corruption and death. The belief is that the soul and body will be reunited and reconstituted when the body is resurrected in the New Creation. That belief is central to Christianity because the early Christians claimed that it had in fact happened with Jesus.
Whether or one believes the Christian claim or not is not the issue. I am simply pointing out that what Dawkins is claiming is not, in fact, what the Bible actual claims. The Bible claims that the death of the body is only temporary.
Let’s Get Objective for a Moment about Religion
In any case, later in the chapter Dawkins criticizes a Jewish acquaintance of his who told him that Judaism “provided a good discipline to help him structure his life and lead a good one.” Dawkins’ reaction was rather curious. He said, “Perhaps it does; but that, of course, has not the smallest bearing on the truth value of any of its supernatural claims” (35).
Really? It doesn’t have the smallest bearing? Isn’t Dawkins overlooking a fundamental tenant of scientific and logical inquiry: that of studying cause and effect, and looking at evidence to infer the validity of a particular hypothesis or theory? Speaking from a completely agnostic point of view, it seems quite obvious that certain religious practices and traditions give meaning and structure to the lives of many people throughout history. I’m sure even Dawkins would begrudgingly agree that this is true.
Therefore, logic tells us that whatever/whoever it is that inspired these religious practices needs to at least be considered as being real and having value. Maybe these “supernatural claims” will end up being found either false or having naturalistic explanations. But still, one has to take seriously the fact that the very religions that provide so much structure, meaning, and goodness to a major portion of humanity also make supernatural claims. Therefore, one must consider the possibility that the structure, meaning, and goodness provided by religion has some bearing on the truth claims it makes regarding the supernatural world.
So when Dawkins dismisses the possibility of a supernatural reality out of hand, it takes on the same aura of a young-earth creationist saying, “I don’t care what the scientific evidence says, I just know the earth is only 6,000 years old!” Failure to even consider the implications of certain facts is, to my mind, very uncritical.
Should Religion Be Respected?
Dawkins then makes another claim, similar to that of Hitchens and Harris. He says:
“A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our society accepts—the non-religious included—is that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect that any human being should pay to any other” (42).
He then goes on to say:
“Religion…has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. …Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be” (43).
This is a very curious claim, being that the history of humanity clearly shows that religion has never been held in so much respect that is was invulnerable to criticism. Such a claim might be a way of justifying the bravado of the New Atheist Movement when they say, “We’re going to stand up to ‘religion,’” but it is a baseless claim, having about as much historical credibility as Ken Ham’s claim that Christians have always interpreted Genesis 1-11 as a historical/scientific text. Neither Dawkins’ claim nor Ham’s claim is backed up by the reality of history.
For that matter, the whole “Let’s just tolerate all faiths” idea is relatively a modern thing, spurred on by a relativistic mindset that says, “All beliefs are equal, because none of them are scientifically provable; therefore you’re free to believe whatever is true for you.” Now, I sort of agree with Dawkins here: that mindset is wrong. Any claim made by anybody, religious or not, is not immune from questioning and criticism.
Of course, there is a huge difference between questioning certain claims and being purposefully disrespectful and abrasive to the people who believe those claims. There is a way to respectfully discuss and point out things that are really wrong without being belligerent toward the person. As we will see, this is something that is lost on Dawkins. He clearly thinks that it is okay, not just to critique religion, but to savage it. The reason why we should treat any religion or religious person with respect isn’t because religion holds some special status over everything else. It’s because every human being is deserving of respect, no matter how wrong he/she might be. This is a concept Dawkins clearly doesn’t understand.
Therefore, when Dawkins says, “I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else” (50), he’s being disingenuous. This will become obvious in the course of his book. He purposely goes out of his way to offend, time and time again. If one took Dawkins’ tone against religion and then applied it to any other group or person, one would easily be able to tell just how arrogant, hateful, over-bearing and spiteful Dawkins comes across.
