The famed evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins came to give a talk at Amazon.com to promote his new book The Greatest Show on Earth. Fishbowl, as it's called, is one of the limited perks Amazon employees get. The company will bring in a variety of authors to promote recently released books/media and the like. Former guests have included the likes of Tom Douglas, Chris Tomlin (I had never heard of the guy until a few months ago), and uhm… that's all I can remember right now. My point is that the event hosts a wide variety of characters, and not just militant atheists.
I think the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are some of the least productive voices of our time. As
Tim Keller says, the idea that religion is bad has been around for a long time. Atheists have been around since at least the time of King David (see
Psalm 14:1-3). Their idea is that
respect for religion is bad. That faith which gives people meaning, value, purpose, and spurs them on to perform great service for humanity. That this is bad and that culture should not honor it -- this idea is indeed somewhat new. Dawkins doesn't just put forth a strong argument for what he believes (or, heh, lack of believes -- see my previous post), he encourages others to mock and disdain those of faith. This, my friends, is poison.
So I decided to attend as part of the loyal opposition.
First, some observations about the event itself. Overwhelmingly male (moreso than normal). Extremely crowded (people spilling out of the room). Very high level of engagement from the audience. People asking questions. People nodding. People laughing at his jokes. He knew his audience and many times made allusions from biology to programming. He is a really good communicator.
Now on to the main event. My huge annoyance with Dawkins. He continually, again and again, draws a false dichotomy between accepting evolutionary science (in whole or in part) and believing in God. Christians have a wide variety of views on the interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2, many of which accommodate evolution perfectly well. His snide comments about creationists were a hit at the talk, and they were artfully intermixed with other other facets of Christian culture. Those who haven't had a chance to hear a more complete version of the Christian worldview are left thinking that if you go to a church with a cross on the front, that automatically means you think the Earth is 10,000 years old. This is dishonest. Someone asked later in the talk if they thought that creationism was popular because it was more simple -- easier to understand than the evolutionary story. I found this wholly ironic, because the story the Bible tells is far from simple, and the only reason it appears simple is because Dawkins is presenting a stripped down version, free from complexity or nuance in a way that's easy to attach to an out-group.
Another interesting question someone asked was if Dawkins believed that humans are evolved to believe in God. He had a very long and nuanced answer, but the essence was that he believed humans have evolved a predisposition to submit to authority. The implication, while not stated, was that this somehow makes belief in God not real, since it's a relic from tribal days or some such. I think the far more interesting question is whether we're evolved to believe in evolution and science, and trusting in our own rational self-sufficiency. For questions like these, evolution provides non-answers more than anything else.
That's about all I have to say. Oh… I was really disappointed they weren't
giving out t-shirts. Maybe next time.
Relevant/interesting links that I unsuccessfully tried to contextualize. Here they are anyway:
