richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion
A D E E P L Y R E L I G I O U S N O N - B E L I E V E R 19into the language of religious metaphor. Paul Davies's The Mind ofGod seems to hover somewhere between Einsteinian pantheism andan obscure form of deism - for which he was rewarded with theTempleton Prize (a very large sum of money given annually bythe Templeton Foundation, usually to a scientist who is prepared tosay something nice about religion).Let me sum up Einsteinian religion in one more quotation fromEinstein himself: 'To sense that behind anything that can be experiencedthere is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whosebeauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeblereflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.' In thissense I too am religious, with the reservation that 'cannot grasp'does not have to mean 'forever ungraspable'. But I prefer not tocall myself religious because it is misleading. It is destructively misleadingbecause, for the vast majority of people, 'religion' implies'supernatural'. Carl Sagan put it well: '. . . if by "God" one meansthe set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly thereis such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying ... it does notmake much sense to pray to the law of gravity.'Amusingly, Sagan's last point was foreshadowed by theReverend Dr Fulton J. Sheen, a professor at the Catholic Universityof America, as part of a fierce attack upon Einstein's 1940 disavowalof a personal God. Sheen sarcastically asked whetheranyone would be prepared to lay down his life for the Milky Way.He seemed to think he was making a point against Einstein, ratherthan* for him, for he added: 'There is only one fault with hiscosmical religion: he put an extra letter in the word - the letter "s".'There is nothing comical about Einstein's beliefs. Nevertheless, Iwish that physicists would refrain from using the word God in theirspecial metaphorical sense. The metaphorical or pantheistic God ofthe physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miraclewreaking,thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering Godof the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinarylanguage. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an actof intellectual high treason.
20 T H E G O D D E L U S I O NUNDESERVED RESPECTMy title, The God Delusion, does not refer to the God of Einsteinand the other enlightened scientists of the previous section. That iswhy I needed to get Einsteinian religion out of the way to beginwith: it has a proven capacity to confuse. In the rest of this book Iam talking only about supernatural gods, of which the mostfamiliar to the majority of my readers will be Yahweh, the God ofthe Old Testament. I shall come to him in a moment. But beforeleaving this preliminary chapter I need to deal with one morematter that would otherwise bedevil the whole book. This time it isa matter of etiquette. It is possible that religious readers will beoffended by what I have to say, and will find in these pages insufficientrespect for their own particular beliefs (if not the beliefsthat others treasure). It would be a shame if such offence preventedthem from reading on, so I want to sort it out here, at the outset.A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in oursociety accepts - the non-religious included - is that religious faithis especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by anabnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from therespect that any human being should pay to any other. DouglasAdams put it so well, in an impromptu speech made in Cambridgeshortly before his death, 5 that I never tire of sharing his words:Religion . . . has certain ideas at the heart of it which wecall sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here isan idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anythingbad about; you're just not. Why not? - becauseyou're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don'tagree with, you're free to argue about it as much as youlike; everybody will have an argument but nobody feelsaggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up ordown you are free to have an argument about it. But onthe other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a lightswitch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'.Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to supportthe Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicansor Democrats, this model of economics versus that,
- Page 2 and 3: Also by Richard DawkinsThe Selfish
- Page 4 and 5: TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS61-63 Uxbridge
- Page 6 and 7: ContentsPrefaceChapter 1Chapter 2Ch
- Page 8 and 9: Tread softly, because you tread onm
- Page 10 and 11: PrefaceAs a child, my wife hated he
- Page 12 and 13: PREFACE 3If you feel trapped in the
- Page 14 and 15: PREFACE 5herding cats, because they
- Page 16 and 17: PREFACE 7Free Inquiry, especially,
- Page 18 and 19: A D E E P L Y R E L I G I O U S N O
- Page 20 and 21: A DEEPLY RELIGIOUS N O N - B E L I
- Page 22 and 23: A D E E P L Y R E L I G I O U S N O
- Page 24 and 25: A D E E PLY R E L I G I O U S N O N
- Page 28 and 29: A D E E P L Y RE L 1 G I O U S N O
- Page 30 and 31: A D E E P L Y R E L I G I O U S N O
- Page 32 and 33: A DEEPLY R E L I G I O U S N O N -
- Page 34 and 35: A D E E P L Y R E L I G I O U S N O
- Page 36 and 37: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 31The God of the
- Page 38 and 39: T H E G O D H Y P O T II E S I S 33
- Page 40 and 41: T II E G O D H Y P O T H E S 1 S 35
- Page 42 and 43: T H E G O D H Y P O T H E S I S 37M
- Page 44 and 45: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 39although it ha
- Page 46 and 47: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 41enterprise. Ri
- Page 48 and 49: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 43God; because,
- Page 50 and 51: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 45Anecdotes of s
- Page 52 and 53: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 47Carl Sagan was
- Page 54 and 55: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 49Huxley was not
- Page 56 and 57: T H E G O D H Y P O T H E SIS 51can
- Page 58 and 59: T H E G O D H Y P O T H E SIS 53in
- Page 60 and 61: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 55McGrath goes o
- Page 62 and 63: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 57the Cambridge
- Page 64 and 65: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 59unequivocally
- Page 66 and 67: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 61non-interventi
- Page 68 and 69: T H E G O D H Y P O T H E S I S 63s
- Page 70 and 71: THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 65Another typica
- Page 72 and 73: T H E G O D H Y P O THESIS 67NOMA -
- Page 74 and 75: T H E G O D II Y P O T H E S I S 69
20 T H E G O D D E L U S I O N
UNDESERVED RESPECT
My title, The God Delusion, does not refer to the God of Einstein
and the other enlightened scientists of the previous section. That is
why I needed to get Einsteinian religion out of the way to begin
with: it has a proven capacity to confuse. In the rest of this book I
am talking only about supernatural gods, of which the most
familiar to the majority of my readers will be Yahweh, the God of
the Old Testament. I shall come to him in a moment. But before
leaving this preliminary chapter I need to deal with one more
matter that would otherwise bedevil the whole book. This time it is
a matter of etiquette. It is possible that religious readers will be
offended by what I have to say, and will find in these pages insufficient
respect for their own particular beliefs (if not the beliefs
that others treasure). It would be a shame if such offence prevented
them from reading on, so I want to sort it out here, at the outset.
A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our
society accepts - the non-religious included - is that religious faith
is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an
abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the
respect that any human being should pay to any other. Douglas
Adams put it so well, in an impromptu speech made in Cambridge
shortly before his death, 5 that I never tire of sharing his words:
Religion . . . has certain ideas at the heart of it which we
call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is
an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything
bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because
you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't
agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you
like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels
aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or
down you are free to have an argument about it. But on
the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light
switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'.
Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support
the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans
or Democrats, this model of economics versus that,
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