books
I was wondering if anyone has read, or has any sort of opinion on, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion?
I picked it up in the bookstore and looked through it for a while- very interestingly written and I kept thinking about how much it would appeal to my atheist friends. At the same time, not being an atheist myself, I kept wondering how someone might respond to his arguments and his rhetoric.
Me, I think Dawkins is missing the point entirely trying to scientifically disprove faith. Faith, unlike institutionalised religion, is a private experience, and I think there's really not much you can say about it. It's a completely subjective kind of experience that doesn't really lend itself to being described. So, when it comes to what I might call my own faith, I personally couldn't care less what anyone has to say about it- let alone, to quote Jane Austen, "someone so wholly unconnected with me."
Institutionalised religion is a completely different story. Then you could get into the territory of dogma, social control, obsession, or even straight-out warfare; so much to attack, so much to make fun of. That's not to say it's inherently bad, just that if I was out to attack some part of what you might call the religious experience, that's probably what I would go for. Not the private, highly personal connection that someone could feel to whatever they want to call their higher power. How is that internal experience anyone else's business, and how could it by itself cause any trouble?
From what I saw of the book, it seems to assume a direct link between personal faith and all kinds of bad stuff. Indoctrination of others, intellectual blindness, fundamentalism, you name it. Anyone who considers themselves to be a person of faith seems to become a potential monster, because if it came down to it, they would sacrifice anything that conflicted with their religion: family, job, and most definitely, any intellectual questioning or growth.
These things do seem to happen a lot, but then you're not talking about personal faith anymore or about the existence of God. Taken by itself, the feeling that there is a God won't do anything harmful. That just happens when that "neutral" idea of God gets filled with lots and lots of interpretations of who exactly this God person is, what rules and ideas he has set out for humans to live by, and what might happen if you if you don't choose to follow his rules. In other words, then you're talking about institutionalised religion used as a control system.
So what I don't get is why Dawkins is taking his argument out of the realm where he might potentially have a point. He connects all those harmful effects not to specific religious institutions but to faith itself, the pure belief in God. But taken outside of traditional religious contexts, faith, and a person's idea of God, can be anything. Good, bad or neutral. Why spend so much time attacking something that's so elusive and vague and personal?
Any thoughts or ideas are more than welcome.