Feb 072006
Richard Dawkins is one cranky atheist. Dawkins, a well-known British scientist who has penned several popular science books on evolution, recently did a two-part documentary entitled The Root of All Evil. It’s an unabashedly critical look at religion’s role in global culture and history. The series aired only in the UK, but I harnessed the arcane powers of the internets to score myself a copy.
I don’t disagree with much of the substance of Dawkin’s arguments. I spent several years struggling to believe in some vague notion of a watchful, if distant, God. But in the end, it never added up for me. To believe in a supernatural agent that has ultimate authority over the universe seems to diminish the chaotic elegance of this reality. It’s too pat an explanation. I can’t believe in a divinely created universe anymore than I can believe that the tooth fairy left all that pocket change under my pillow when I was a kid or that UFOs are responsible for all those crop circles.
But back to Dawkins. Sure, I chuckled when I watched him verbally spar with a rather smug evangelical pastor. But I’m not sure I would have told the pastor that his megachurch service reminded me of the Nuremberg rallies . Dawkins sees religious faith as a dangerous relic of less enlightened times that has no place in this age of scientific reason, which explains his blunt words to the pastor. And after living through the last five years under a president who, like the Blues Brothers, believes he’s on a mission from God, it’s hard to deny Dawkins this point. But I’m a little less willing to condemn the faithful. If biologists like E.O. Wilson are correct, humans are genetically hard-wired to believe in the supernatural. A genetic legacy like that, reinforced by thousands of years of human history, is not likely to disappear anytime soon.
Which means I’m a mutant in more ways than one.
Go, Mutants, Go!