What can Christians learn from Richard Dawkins? 3

The setting: A London district superintendents residential meeting. The speaker: The general secretary of the Methodist Church. The subject: "Deeks on Dawkins". The hope: That David Deeks, being both theologically astute and scientifically well-informed, would come up with some good logical counter-arguments to Richard Dawkins. The reality: An interesting and thought-provoking discussion on the Dawkins / Hitchens / Hawking / Pullman phenomenon, which failed to address any of the specific issues raised in The God Delusion.

Never mind. On the way to the meeting I was trying to frame a question to ask if opportunity arose, and I came up with further thoughts (following on from earlier post) on finding evidence for God's existence.

The issue boils down to this. If there exists objective evidence that can be presented to any reasonably intelligent person to convince them of God's existence (in the way that there is evidence which 'proves' to all but the ignorant or blinkered that the world is round rather than flat), then where is it? Believers in God would love to be able to prove their case in such a way. In the absence of objective evidence, all we are left with is subjective evidence - feelings, experiences, visions etc. - which (as Dawkins points out) could be explained as a trick of the mind.

My insight as I drove to the superintendents meeting was this. There does exist a category of personal objective facts which cannot be communicated to the general public. Here comes a trivial example. I remember a party where I noticed a cream bun had been left on my chair. I decided to act as if I hadn't seen it and pretended to sit down. The people on either side shouted last second warnings to save me from a creamy bottom. When I admitted I was only pretending they didn't believe me. I grew quite frustrated in trying to convince them. In the end I decided to regard their disbelief as a tribute to my acting skills. The point is that I saw the cream bun before I returned to my seat. This is an objective fact and not in any sense a trick of the mind. Yet I was totally unable to persuade other people of this truth.

In my lifetime I have had experiences which others may see as subjective (and if I'm honest they are far enough removed in time that my present self could see them as subjective too), but which were to me as clear and objective evidence of God's presence as anyone could wish for.

What can Christians learn from Richard Dawkins? 1

I have been reading Dawkins’ latest book, “The God Delusion” for at least three reasons.

• a) A quick browse through suggested that it could be interesting, enjoyable and intellectually stimulating.
• b) His arguments are becoming increasingly well known. Even if I don’t agree with his conclusions, I ought to have a clear enough grasp of his reasoning to be able to debate the issues.
• c) If the Christian world-view is true, then it ought to stand up to robust counter-arguments of the kind that Dawkins presents. Therefore I have nothing to worry about in seriously examining the factual and logical evidence that denies God’s existence. I’ll go further. Unless I can start with the same facts Dawkins draws our attention to, and employ the same rigorous powers of logic he brings to bear, and be honest enough with myself that I don’t jump to a foregone conclusion and ignore evidence that doesn’t fit... unless I can do all that and still reason my way to a Christian understanding of God, then my world-view is frankly not worth believing in.

In case any reader thinks I am in danger of actively supporting Richard Dawkins, I should point out that I baulked at the thought of him receiving royalties from my purchase of his book – so I borrowed it from the local library!

Perhaps I shouldn’t begrudge him his royalties, because I have found myself provoked and stimulated. I agree with him at many points (though not his key point, that God is a hugely improbable hypothesis) and he has helped me think through deep issues with greater clarity. Here’s the first of my reflections.

“Science deals with HOW and theology deals with WHY” is a popular cop-out. I agree with Dawkins that theology should not be immune to scientific enquiry. One point he makes is that a universe created and sustained by a personal God who interacts with it (and with its inhabitants) on a daily basis should look different to a universe without God. I have long argued that a God who never interferes with his world or his people might as well not exist. And it impossible to remove such interference from the physical realm. Even if God is limited (and I don’t believe he is) to nudging our thoughts in the right direction, then this constitutes interfering with the firing of neurons in our brain (a physical process).

So, as I look at the kind of universe we live in, does it seem to be a universe with God or a universe without God? It certainly looks to me like the former. I can’t justify this on the basis of scientific experiment. It just the overall impression I get. I know this is hardly very rigorous logic, but maybe I can explain it with an analogy. How do I know my wife is anything more than a physical entity simply responding to external stimuli in particular ways? How do I know that she exists as a ‘person’ like me, with the ability to make free choices, express love and form relationships? My wife with such a personal aspect ought to be different from my wife without it. Yet the difference would be hard to describe in purely scientific terms. It is only by living with her over time that I become convinced that she is a person and not a sophisticated biological automaton.

I know that Dawkins dismisses personal experience as too susceptible to wishful thinking or self-deception. But all I can say is that my experience of the world is that it looks, feels and behaves very much as if it were a world graced by the presence of a loving God.

(see also later post)