richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

THE GOD HYPOTHESIS 57
the Cambridge nor the Oxford astronomer really believed that
theologians have any expertise that enables them to answer
questions that are too deep for science. I suspect that both
astronomers were, yet again, bending over backwards to be polite:
theologians have nothing worthwhile to say about anything else;
let's throw them a sop and let them worry away at a couple of
questions that nobody can answer and maybe never will. Unlike my
astronomer friends, I don't think we should even throw them a sop.
I have yet to see any good reason to suppose that theology (as
opposed to biblical history, literature, etc.) is a subject at all.
Similarly, we can all agree that science's entitlement to advise us
on moral values is problematic, to say the least. But does Gould
really want to cede to religion the right to tell us what is good and
what is bad? The fact that it has nothing else to contribute to
human wisdom is no reason to hand religion a free licence to tell us
what to do. Which religion, anyway? The one in which we happen
to have been brought up? To which chapter, then, of which book of
the Bible should we turn - for they are far from unanimous and
some of them are odious by any reasonable standards. How many
literalists have read enough of the Bible to know that the death
penalty is prescribed for adultery, for gathering sticks on the
sabbath and for cheeking your parents? If we reject Deuteronomy
and Leviticus (as all enlightened moderns do), by what criteria do
we then decide which of religion's moral values to accept} Or
should we pick and choose among all the world's religions until we
find one whose moral teaching suits us? If so, again we must ask,
by what criterion do we choose? And if we have independent
criteria for choosing among religious moralities, why not cut out
the middle man and go straight for the moral choice without the
religion? I shall return to such questions in Chapter 7.
I simply do not believe that Gould could possibly have meant
much of what he wrote in Rocks of Ages. As I say, we have all been
guilty of bending over backwards to be nice to an unworthy but
powerful opponent, and I can only think that this is what Gould
was doing. It is conceivable that he really did intend his unequivocally
strong statement that science has nothing whatever to
say about the question of God's existence: 'We neither affirm nor
deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists.' This sounds