The Root Of All Evil
Jan. 10th, 2006 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloIt's refreshing that militant Darwinist Richard Dawkins has been given the opportunity to attack religion- all religion- in his new TV series The Root Of All Evil.
On the other hand there's something a bit stringy and gristly about his case.
While it's quite true that the worldwide revival of fundamentalist religion- Islamic, Christian, Hindu- is one of the scariest developments of recent years, it's quite false to argue that religion has been behind all that is bad in human history.
The greatest atrocities of the 20th century were committed by atheist or areligious regimes- Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Communist China, Communist Cambodia. The First World War had little to do with religion and everything to do with nationalism.
Human beings like to believe. They like to believe en masse. It keeps them warm. But they don't particularly need to believe in God. Any ideology will do.
And Dawkins igonores the good that religion can accomplish. It was evangelical Christians, as I wrote the other day, who broke the slave trade. And- on a different tack- recent research has shown that, as a matter of statistics, believers are more likely to be happy and fulfilled than unbelievers.
Religion is a stalk, a branch, a tendril- not a root.
On the other hand there's something a bit stringy and gristly about his case.
While it's quite true that the worldwide revival of fundamentalist religion- Islamic, Christian, Hindu- is one of the scariest developments of recent years, it's quite false to argue that religion has been behind all that is bad in human history.
The greatest atrocities of the 20th century were committed by atheist or areligious regimes- Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Communist China, Communist Cambodia. The First World War had little to do with religion and everything to do with nationalism.
Human beings like to believe. They like to believe en masse. It keeps them warm. But they don't particularly need to believe in God. Any ideology will do.
And Dawkins igonores the good that religion can accomplish. It was evangelical Christians, as I wrote the other day, who broke the slave trade. And- on a different tack- recent research has shown that, as a matter of statistics, believers are more likely to be happy and fulfilled than unbelievers.
Religion is a stalk, a branch, a tendril- not a root.
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Re: That fool Dawkins
Date: 2006-01-11 01:33 am (UTC)nailed it for me. The man's an amateur.
Thanks for introducing me to this ljer. I'm immediately befriending him. I could do with some good, lefty Anglo-catholicism in my life. :)
Re: That fool Dawkins
Date: 2006-01-11 09:21 am (UTC)I agree with G.K. Chesterton that some things are best left to amateurs -- politics, for example (which is one of the fundamental presuppositions of democracy). Noam Chomsky is not a political scientist, but I believe that many of his political utterances deserve to be taken seriously.
And even in fields like history, amateurs who take the trouble to familiarise themselves with basic historical method can make a useful contribution.
But Dawkins appears to go beyond this, and to all acounts seems to cross over into pure bigotry.
Re: That fool Dawkins
Date: 2006-01-11 09:57 am (UTC)Bigotry? Well, I'm torn here. I like the robustness of Dawkins' attack, but I just wish he'd allow himself a little empathy along the way.
And the guys he went up against were such straw dogs.
Did you see Jonathan Miller's History of Atheism? Now that I wholeheartedly admired.