The God Delusion 1

Like many people, I've been reading Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, a scientist's passionate effort to demonstrate "why there almost certainly is no God." I was pleased to find that on page 36 he anticipates my response to his work:

This is as good a moment as any to forestall an inevitable retort to the book, one that would otherwise--as sure as night follows day--turn up in a review: 'The God that Dawkins doesn't believe in is a God that I don't believe in either.'

He got me right. But in the rest of the paragraph, he trivializes my response:

'The God that Dawkins doesn't believe in is a God that I don't believe in either. I don't believe in an old man in the sky with a long white beard.' That old man is an old irrelevant distraction and his beard is as tedious as it is long. Indeed, the distraction is worse than irrelevant. Its very silliness is calculated to distract attention from the fact that what the speaker believes is not a whole lot less silly. I know you don't believe in an old bearded man sitting on a cloud, so let's not waste any more time on that. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented.

Even after all that, I still say, "The God that Dawkins doesn't believe in is a God I don't believe in either."

When I, and many other religious people, use the word God, we certainly don't mean a "thing" (as in Dawkins's "anything and everything") that is "supernatural" (that is, above nature).

And to that claim, Dawkins would reply that "God is not an appropriate name" for what I mean by it, "unless we very explicitly divest it of all the baggage that the word 'God' carries in the minds of most religious believers" (155).

And that assertion is, for me, the fundamental flaw in Dawkins's book. He insists, as he should, on defining scientific terms in a way that reflects his understanding of science. But he disallows religious people from defining God in a way that reflects their understanding of God. His book suffers from the same problems as would a book attacking evolution that reflected only the understanding of evolution held by most high-school graduates.

I realize that last paragraph may sound elitist, implying that I believe my knowledge of God superior to that carried "in the minds of most religious believers." I emphatically do not believe that. I believe that human beings understand God in a wide variety of ways that meet their experience and fill their needs, just as human beings understand science in a wide variety of ways that meet their experience and fill their needs.

A theologian and an astronomer found themselves sitting together on a plane. After some introductory talk, the astronomer said, "I don't see what you mean by studying theology. Can't all theology be reduced to 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'"? "Hmm," said the theologian, "you might be right. After all, can't all astronomy be reduced to 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star'?"