Why Dawkins Is Worth Reading, Especially for Religious Believers

Richard Dawkins has received severe criticism from religious believers all over the world. The tone of his critics, who most often are complaining about Dawkins' own tone (curious, isn't it?), suggests that Dawkins' commentary on religion has nothing to offer religious believers. Such responses may be an attempt to ensure that believers don't actually read his arguments and ideas first-hand and thus perhaps be influenced by them. If all believers ever hear are the caricatures from his critics, then Dawkins' potential influence can be halted before it starts.

Elliot Jager writes in The Jerusalem Post:

Dawkins taunts readers who view religion in a favorable light: "Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral certitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it?" Have they read Deuteronomy 20, which advocates "genocide"; or Leviticus 20, which would get you stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath?

And he has no patience whatsoever for those who, as he sees it, pick and choose those parts of the Bible they take literally while either interpreting or dismissing as archaic those elements they're uncomfortable with.

There's A lot in The God Delusion to grapple with. I'll leave it for Bible scholars and theologians to pick up the gauntlet. But Dawkins is worth reading because he forces non-Orthodox traditionalists like me to distinguish between God and religion, to contemplate what we mean when we speak about God; to reflect on why we pray; to wrestle with Dawkins's critique of the moral conduct of even God, let alone that of Abraham, Moses and Joshua - which, let's face it, frequently leaves us baffled.

Elliot Jager doesn't agree with Dawkins and doesn't approve of how he expresses his ideas. Jager is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a "fan" of Richard Dawkins but he does recognize that the honest and sincere criticism, however mistaken it might be in his opinion, can have something valuable and useful to offer.

Because Dawkins doesn't come at religion from a perspective like Jager's and thus doesn't take any of Jager's own normal assumptions for granted, he forces people like Jager to take another look at those assumptions and their religious beliefs from a new angle. People who are part of a religious tradition can get in the habit of only talking about religion almost solely to those who share most of their religious assumptions. At most, they might discuss things with adherents of another, but related, religious tradition and who share most of the same religious assumptions.

This sort of "intellectual in-breeding" prevents new ideas, perspectives, and question from being introduced into the mix. Stagnation and irrelevancy are the inevitable, long-term consequences. Critics like Dawkins don't even need to ask entirely new questions or make new points in order to have an effect because older questions and arguments can be forgotten or neglected. This is a problem that can afflict any field — it's not just in religion where people get comfortable with their beliefs and assumptions, neglecting the hard, difficult, and pointed questions which reveal potential flaws or holes in their reasoning.

That said, Elliot Jager still makes serious errors in his appraisal of Dawkins' critiques:

It's the job of polemicists to frame the debate categorically, but the rest of us need not cede the field to those who abhor the possibility of a middle ground. Dawkins's straw man is absolutist religion - his antidote, absolutist atheism. He paints faith as inherently fundamentalist and those who embrace it as dangerously delusional. ...

Yet his atheist alternative to faith leaves me cold. What matters is whether humanity can soar higher with God or with humanism. Even if we grant that Karl Marx had a point in arguing that "religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world... the opium of the people" - what solace do the atheists have to offer humanity in its place?

Dawkins retorts: "Religion's power to console doesn't make it true." If the demise of God leaves a yawning gap, so be it.

There is no such thing as "absolutist atheism" because atheism isn't something that a person can be "absolutist" about. Atheism is simply the absence of belief in gods — nothing more, nothing less. What could a person possibly be "absolutist" about with regards to that? Can you be "absolutist" in your disbelief in elves or fairies? An atheist can perhaps be rude, inconsiderate, or annoying when it comes to expressing their atheism, but that isn't "absolutist." An atheist might also be unwilling to listen very closely to what others have to say, but that isn't "absolutist" either.

Does it really matter if atheism is "cold," though? Some truths are cold; some fantasies are pleasing. How many people are willing to state publicly that they would rather believe a pleasing, happy fantasy rather than accept a cold, hard truth? I'm sure this is the case with some people, but I don't know how many would openly and unapologetically own up to such a thing. Atheism isn't a philosophy or belief system so it cannot be expected to provide solace for people, but it also doesn't create room for people to create fantasies they call "god" in order to find solace. If people want solace, they'll have to find it in reality and on their own. That may be hard for some, but no one ever said life would be easy.