Fact and Faith
By (some name)
Richard Dawkins opens his first chapter with this statement "More than 40 per cent of Americans deny that humans evolved from other animals, and think that we – and by implication all of life – were created by God within the last 10,000 years." (Dawkins, 2009, page 14), a statement which is the core of his latest book, "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution". Richard Dawkins is a well-known evolutionary biologist, author and ethologist. He was born in Nairobi, Kenya, but spent the most of his life in Oxford, England. First as a student at 'Oundle School' with the Nobel Prize winning Nikolaas Tinbergen as his lecturer, studying biology; ethology and ornithology. (the study of animal behavior and the study of birds). After his graduation, he continued his studies at the University of Oxford, receiving his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. He returned to University of Oxford in 1970 as a lecturer, his position at Oxford was a driving-force for his first book "The Selfish Gene" released in 1976. "The Selfish Gene" tries to explain evolution through a gene-centered view, the word "meme(s)" was for the first time introduced in biology by Richard Dawkins. His book was an instant success among the scientific community and biology students, it has been called "the last chapter of On The Origin of Species", a book by Charles Darwin. His more recent books, "A Devil's Chaplain", "The Ancestor's Tale" and "The God Delusion" has been seen as a direct attack on religion and its followers. And in 2006 he established "Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science", to promote atheism, rationality, logic and scientific education.
Richard Dawkins is known for his direct approach to religion, not holding back anything from his speculated mouth.
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
Richard Dawkins is stretching his vocabulary to explain the Abrahamic God in the old testament in the most grotesque manner. As we all know, the old testament is not the nicest part of the bible. That's why Christianity today use the new testament as the source for their religion, the first testament starts with the story of Jesus, how he sacrifices himself to remove the sins of humanity. The old testament portrays many battles between different groups of people, a good example is written in genesis " 8 Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) marched out and drew up their battle lines in the Valley of Siddim" followed by (later in genesis) " 32 The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep, 33 72,000 cattle, 34 61,000 donkeys 35 and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man." (New Int. Edt. Genesis 8) which sums up most of what Richard Dawkins was explaining in his quote. I think you should be able to say whatever you want about anything, but it's still a bit unfair to point out all the bad things and not the good things. He could may have said the opposite about the new testament, but it's very difficult to be neutral and objective in such an important conflict as religion and science.
If we look back at the first statement, the books core, what makes a human brain go against all rationality, all evidence and proof, all logic and scientific thinking? Where or what is the force that drives us into believing in world creators, supreme beings or ancient scripts? "The God Delusion" and "The Greatest Show on Earth: Evidence for evolution" will be used to find an answer to these questions.
Let us first take a look at the vast amount of contradicting evidence there is for what those 40%-ers believe. We can't exactly pinpoint how old the earth is, but we can date it within a 1% margin of error, using radioactive clocks. When a material is radioactive, it decays into another material, if we know when material was formed, it can be dated by measuring the ratio of those two materials. If we take the radioactive metal 'Uranium' (isotope 238) as an example, it has a half-life of 704 million years and decays to 'lead' (isotope 207). So if you start with a lump of uranium, you will after 704 million years have a lump which is 50/50 uranium and lead. 704 million years is not long when calculating on a cosmological scale, the metal 'thorium' can be found almost anywhere in the earth's crust, it's four to five times more abundant than uranium. Its half-life of 14 billion years makes it an ideal candidate for dating the earth, thorium also decays to lead, but a different isotope of lead. A piece of rock in Canada was in 2008 dated to be 4,28 billion years old using thorium-lead dating. We know these radioactive clocks works because we have so many of them, all control-checking each other. You can even count the rings on a trunk further back than 10,000 years, with a method called "dendrochronology".
These dating methods easily disproves the idea of a "young earth", an idea proposed by theologians and priests worldwide. The idea of a young earth is very important for Christianity, Islam, and Judaism because of the book of Genesis. The Book of Genesis explains how God created the earth, the sky and anything on it. All this is explained on one A4 page, or 30 sentences "31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day."
For God to have left a 2 billion years gap between the creation of living creatures and the creation of man, generates and enormous amount of questions that God did not want to answer.
The most common and well-known dating method is carbon dating, it has been used to debunk religious artifacts whenever scientists could get a hold of them. Carbon dating is a relatively difficult dating method, where the amount of carbon (isotope 14) in a dead organism is compared to calibration graphs of the amount of carbon 14 there was in the atmosphere at the time. Carbon 14 has a half-life of 5730 years, so it can only be used to date things a maximum of 60,000 years back. "Shroud of Turin" was supposedly from Jesus' grave, but was dated by 3 individual universities to be around year 1300.
There has been no scientific proof of Jesus' existence or any of the significant stories in the Bible, the Koran, the Torah or the Book of Mormon (on the exception that Joseph Smith did exist and publish these scripts). But we can say the same about Aristotle, Genghis Khan, Archimedes, or Jack the Ripper for that matter, too. What separates their existence from Jesus or Muhammad? The difference between these people are that one group tells you how to live your life, what you can do and what you can't do, they have answers to question which can't be answered. We know and have the works of both Aristotle and Archimedes, their actual existence is irrelevant. The story of Genghis Khan is extraordinary whether he lived or not, it would make no difference to the way we live, our meaning of morality or how the society works. Jesus' or Muhammad's existence is important because the modern society is largely based upon their lives.
- I will have to change my source of information to "The God Delusion" to look at the psychological reasons behind religion, the roots of religion, the roots of morality and what's wrong with religion?
Putting the usual theories on the roots of religion aside, like consolation, togetherness and the need for understanding. Richard Dawkins starts with an evolutionary approach to the question concerning the roots of religion. As we are a product of Darwinian evolution, our brain must be understood within evolutionary terms. Evolution most somehow have favored religion and secured its survival. There are three possible evolutionary benefits with religion, one being the theory of group selection.
Group selection is the idea that religion reinforced loyalty and in-group love, creating a safer environment for members in the group. Religion has also been used to control groups, a leader using religion as a threat for people to do what he wants. In the same sense Bin Laden is using Islam as tool to manipulate his holy soldiers and suicide bombers.
Richard Dawkin's second theory is that religion is a by-product of something else. Like a moth constantly flying into a light bulb, taking suicide. This is not suicidal behavior, because suicidal behavior has no evolutionary benefit. But a moth has been programmed through evolution to navigate in a 30 degrees from the light coming from the moon and sun (which is always parallel)
When a child is born, the only way for this child to survive is to accumulate information around him, from his or hers authorities, from his or hers parents. It is not a coincidence that a child most often have the same religious belief as their parents. A person's best ability for survival backfires and the brain borrows traditions, beliefs, norms and rules of conduct from the parents. This is called 'childhood indoctrination'.
It's also very difficult for people to leave a religious belief, and it's difficult to understand other views..
The third theory is quite simple, the human mind and its curiosity has always been looking for answers. We have only started to understand the world for the last 300 years, while religion can be traced back to the origin of humanity. People have been looking for answers all the time, answers we have been unable to find. Like the ancient Greeks believed that the earth was made out of the five element; air, fire, water, earth and ether. People have also been looking for a reason as long as they have been looking for answers, a reason in life, a reason to live. It's hard for most people to imagine one life, this life, only this life.
It is a fact that many people find comfort and consolation in religion, people are given a meaning in life and some good rules to live by. "What's wrong with religion, why be so hostile?", Chapter 8. Religion is in many cases, plain evil. You can say that most wars, many political decisions, the crusades, 9/11, the inquisition, arranged marriage, suppression of women, hatred towards homosexuals, ethnic cleansing, honor killings, human sacrifice, suicide bombings, condoning slavery, banning contraception, banning stem cell research and abortion and killing abortion doctors are all related to religion.
There's a lot more religious based organizations working with humanitarian causes, helping poor people in other countries and after natural catastrophes. But isn't it quite ignorant to help people because a "higher power or being" tells you to? Shouldn't we help other people because we, as human beings, want to help others? We must be able to help each others without an ideology or belief that tell you to do so?
Greed and selfishness is indeed basic human instincts, easily explained with Darwinian principles. As evolution have supported the survival of the individual, or smaller groups. There are problems with a purely scientific outlook on life, according to evolution, we are not formed to help others, and why would we protect endangered animal species? The extermination of animals is a fundamental part of evolution. It is difficult to live without a meaning, without knowing why, or what will happen after it. We should embrace other views of life, find a balance between science and religion. The world today is extremely imbalanced on science and religion, it is still very important to understand and seek the truth about the planet we inhabit, whatever religion or philosophy.
"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." (On The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, 1904)
This is a perfect way to end this articles, a quote from Charles Darwin himself, his one and only poetic text ever written. The quote is taken from the last chapter in "On The Origin of Species", arguable the most famous book ever written. Charles Darwin was raised very religious, both the society and his wife were deeply religious, he himself was also frequent visitor of the church. Charles Darwin was afraid to make the connection between apes and humans, but couldn't deny the resemblance. He asked himself, what is the difference between a 3 year old human and a chimpanzee in the same stage of development? He couldn't find any satisfying answers. Being very ill most of his life, Charles Darwin lost his faith gradually over the years of discovery and constant pain, becoming more of a philosopher when he was unable to work. To find a reason in his own life, he found it a lot more interesting and satisfying to be the product of a 3 billion year old evolutionary process. He found a reason in his current position in the world, with his relation to other species, the nature and the processes which drives it. He found grandeur in life. This was in his last chapter of "On the Origin of Species" called "Recapitulation and Conclusion", this is also my conclusion.
References:
Richard Dawkins, "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution" (2009) page 14, line 25-28.
Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" (2006), page 31, line 1-6.
(New International Version, The Bible) Genesis 14:8
(New International Version, The Bible) Numbers 31:32
Dendrochronology, "The Greatest Show on Earth" - Richard Dawkins, 2009, ISBN 9780593061732, page 88-90 "Tree Rings".
(New International Version, The Bible) Genesis 1:31
Richard Dawkins, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection", Grant Richards publishers, 1904.
Sources:
"Shroud of Turin", Skeptic'sDictionary", 4 mars 2010. (shroud of Turin - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com)
Bill Maher, HBO stand-up comedy special, film: "Bill Maher's - But I'm not Wrong".
Richard Dawkins, 6th of march, 2010, (Richard Dawkins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) 
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
The God Delusion - School Project 
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Funny Man 
