...as it is written, 'There is none righteous, not even one'. Romans 3:10
The God Delusion (part 3)
Go to: The God Delusion (part 2)
The next portion of Dawkins’s book to which we turn is morality. In his chapter “The roots of morality: why are we good?” I would of course first point out that none of us are. If you truly believe that human nature is naturally good and that we just happen to do bad things once in a while, consider these questions: did someone have to teach you how to lie? Did someone have to teach you how to steal? How to hate? How to lust? How to take the Lords’ name in vain? No, because sin comes naturally to us. We are sinners to the core, rebellious, wicked, and deceitful (for more information on this topic, please see my article ‘The innate goodness of man?’). But, despite this fatal flaw in the chapter title, we will still look at some of Dawkins’s claims.
Survival of the fittest according to dictionary.com is, “a 19th-century concept of human society, inspired by the principle of natural selection, postulating that those who are eliminated in the struggle for existence are the unfit.” According to Oregon State’s ‘definition of anthropological terms’, survival if the fittest is:
So, in a nutshell: the strongest survive. If you are not strong enough to survive, you are deemed ‘unfit’. What is the obvious implication of this principal? The goal of life is to survive, no matter what it takes. If you grab the last milk jug, but I am strong enough to take it from you, then morally there is nothing wrong me with taking that action. Morality is relative. All that is absolute is the idea to survive, no matter what it takes. If, somewhere along the way, you are killed or murdered by another, you were ‘unfit’, end of story.
Of course, evolutionists mock the above assertions. They declare that, “It is better for the species if we all work together.” If anyone proposes what evolution truly implies, they are considered ignorant or uneducated. Which, of course, is what Dawkins implies in The God Delusion:
Dawkins also makes this claim when discussing Stalin and Hitler,
In this article, I am not going to go into detail on the whole Hitler/evolution debate. I do think it is obvious that Darwinian evolution had a very strong influence on Hitler, and lead to the Holocaust. But, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter one way or the other. I would like to concentrate more on Dawkins’s statements, “Individual atheists may do evil things but they don’t do evil things in the name of atheism” and “Religious wars really are fought in the name of religion”. In other words, if the blood falls on atheist, those people just happened to be evil. If the blood falls on religion, religion all together is evil? This seems like an inconsistent view in the highest degree. Dawkins goes on to say,
This statement is either not true, or Dawkins is living in denial. Perhaps Alister McGrath and his wife, Joanna, put it best in their book, The Dawkins Delusion:
They go on to say,
If you are an atheist reading this, perhaps you are thinking, “Even if there has been some death in the name of atheism, Dawkins is still right when he points out that religious wars are much more frequent and result in many more deaths.” For this topic, we turn to Robert Hutchinson’s book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible:
He continues,
Hutchinson goes on to also state that the “witch hunts” (another favorite of atheists who wish to argue against religion) resulted in the deaths of about 50,000 people over a four-hundred-year period (which averages out to about 125 people a year). He goes on to make a claim rarely heard in today’s secular world,
Near the end of his chapter on morality, Dawkins quotes a Spanish film director (Luis Buñuel) as saying, “God and country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.” Again, we turn to Hutchinson:
After listing a complete breakdown of these 170 million deaths, Hutchinson adds:
In closing, Hutchinson adds:
Was Buñuel correct in his statement that God and government hold the records for bloodshed and oppression? Not at all, atheistic regimes hold that position.
In the portion of this article where I discussed the ‘design designer’ analogy, I pointed out that Romans 1:20, in my opinion, has never shown brighter than in The God Delusion. This scripture isn’t the only one that shows itself true in Dawkins’s observations. Romans 2:14-25 says:
God has instilled in each of us a conscience, which ‘bears witness’ to our actions. It is that still small voice in your mind that tells you that you shouldn’t be stealing that piece of gum, or that tells you (without anybody else needing to say a word) that murder is wrong. Dawkins admits the presence of this universal standard:
He later goes on to discuss a study done by Marc Hauser and Peter Singer. In the study, Hauser and Singer presented a mix of people (atheists and religious believers) with a variety of ‘morality scenarios’. For example, if pulling a lever will cause a rock to fall and kill one man, but prevent the rock from falling to kill 100 men, women, and children, is it morally acceptable to pull the lever? (This is not one of the exact examples provided in the book. I am simply trying to give you an idea of what the examples were like.) After presenting the results of the studies, Dawkins notes:
My reaction was immediate: of course there isn’t! The Bible has said that. We each live according to a universal standard, the Law of God, which has been written on our hearts. Biblically, it makes perfect sense that atheists and ‘religious believers’ would come to similar conclusions. Whether one is saved or lost; they still have the gift of their God-given conscience. Dawkins, however, comes to a different conclusion:
Exact same information, yet two completely different reactions. Interesting, to say the least.
I would like to close out the section on morality by mentioning one other claim made by Dawkins. In his section ‘If there is no God, why be good?’ he begins by saying:
I would like to first point out that, this comment shows, on Dawkins’s behalf, a complete lack of understanding of Biblical Christianity. A human being trying to do good in order to ‘earn God’s approval’ is the equivalent of a man who has raped and murdered 20 teenage-girls trying to get off by offering the judge a 10 dollar bill. We are saved by grace, through faith. Titus 3:5 makes it so clear, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit”.
This aside, Dawkins goes on to say:
Again, the situations Dawkins puts forth do not apply (at least, not in my Biblically based mind). I (and no other human being) cannot possibly “continue to be a good person” if the belief in God were dropped, because we are not good people to begin with (see Romans 3:10). As for Dawkins’s statement on “should the belief in God vanish” I respond by simply saying, the belief in God hasn’t needed to vanish for that to happen. Even with so many Americans claiming faith in the Lord, our country is almost a mirror image of the hypothetical Dawkins puts forth. How can anyone say we don’t live in a world that is full of, “callous and selfish hedonists, with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would deserve the name of goodness”? Watch the news for more than ten minutes. What is more selfish than it being legal for women to kill an innocent child, simply because the child would be a financial burden? What is more callous than millions of men and women (not necessarily adults) driving while under the influence, and not even considering that they could easily drift across a double yellow and kill a mother and her two-year-old child? What is more hedonistic than millions of Americans watching pornography and attending strip clubs, while they leave a mother and child at home alone? Please, do not tell me how wonderful or how good our world is. Everywhere we look we see murder, theft, rape, pedophilia, and other horrific actions. You don’t need a, “low self-regard” to imagine the “fictional” world Dawkins proposes. You simply need a television set, the internet, or even easier, a Bible.
But still, Dawkins tells his readers:
When I read this, I couldn’t help but wonder if he applied the same principle to the mentally ill who take drugs to help suppress their illness. Dawkins (and other secularists like him) often refer to religion as “brainwashing”. They think it causes otherwise normal human beings to do inconceivable things such as kill, fast, pray, or even die for their faith. If this is the case, is religion or the belief in God (assuming God does not exist) really any different than a drug? I think an honest atheist would have to say no. Dawkins touches on the idea of religion being a psychological mishap. In the secular worldview, that is exactly what the belief in God is: a drug. It alters the way we think, act, and live our lives, what else would you call it? Yet, I feel safe in saying that Dawkins would never write to a reader who happens to be taking medicine to help prevent suicide: “Do we really need policing from drugs, in order to stop ourselves from committing suicide, or doing other horrific things? I don’t, nor, dear reader, do you.” But, if you use the reasoning Dawkins is using here, why not? God alters the way people act. Drugs alter the way people act. God alters the way people think. Drugs alter the way people think. If the belief in God prevents a person from committing suicide (and I have seen this happen on more than one occasion) why does Dawkins really care if it is the belief in God that does it or not? Why does he feel the need to tell his readers, “You don’t need God in order to be good” but would surely never say in public, “the mentally ill do not need drugs to refrain themselves from suicide, or murder, or anything else”?