The Root of All Evil?

I thought the opening programme was slightly disappointing. I think Richard Dawkins is a great thinker, but I don’t think he’s a great salesman. I think the programme was flawed in a few ways.

Richard Dawkins, not the root of all evil

One was that the conclusions were in the commentary, so despite saying that science questions authority he was presenting the answers as part of the case against religion. It’s a bit of a shame because he was looking at fair targets, but perhaps missing opportunities to make his point. His trip to Lourdes was a good example. He asked people what they got from the trip and they replied faith, trust and a sense of love and so on. “What about a cure?” He stated that you’d be more likely to get an ailment than a cure because of all the people bathing in the water. These are great one-liners, but perhaps (like this) he often falls into the trap of telling rather than showing. How much more powerful would it be to compare the success rate of Lourdes with spontaneous remission rates around the world. Then an analysis of the water and all the bugs in it. Then the interview with the authorities where he could ask, “…and how many people become ill after visiting Lourdes?” You could show the existence of sample bias, give the viewers the recorded data and they could come to their own conclusion on whether Lourdes is a place of healing.

I think that Lourdes gives people hope of a cure. Dawkins would agree, with the proviso it’s false hope. Is false hope a bad thing if you’re terminally ill? Is the profit made by Lourdes justified by the provision of hope? Dawkins might feel that false hope has no value, but I’m not sure that it’s that simple. Of course, there’s a big difference between being terminally and being chronically ill with deep pockets for return visits.

A contradictory feature of the programme is endearing. Dawkins assumes everyone is rational when they talk with him and can be reasoned with. It’s an optimistic side of him which doesn’t get talked about much. How would you cope if someone told you something foolish like “evolutionists say the eye just came into existence”? He copes very badly. If you ever want to win a public debate against Dawkins then logic would be a waste of time. I think the winning strategy would be to patiently explain that you appreciate he’s been seduced by Satan and that Jesus forgives him – and then watch him explode. Perhaps by insisting on talking to people with reason he misses part of what drives faith. Did he really think a Jewish settler who converted to Islam would be a person capable of seeing both sides of the argument? Perhaps asking what caused him to flip from one extreme to another (the question would have to me more diplomatic than that) would have illustrated the relationship between faith and evidence.

Another problem is conflating the non-existence of God with the idea that belief in a non-existent is automatically a Bad Thing. I’m not sure the one leads to the other. Could ignorance sometimes be bliss? It might seem unscientific to argue that, but as thought experiment, you’re about to undergo heart surgery and there’ll a strong possibility that it won’t be a success. Is now the right time to learn your daughter has cancer? Is there room for humanity in Dawkins’ world-view?

I think there is, but that’s from reading his books. I’m not sure the television programme brought this out. It’s helpful that he spoke to some of the extremists like the evangelical preacher. But perma-tanned pastors with hotlines to God and Bush or psychotic bearded maniacs are not my experience of religious people in everyday life. I think if he’d talked closer to home and talked to the clergy against women bishops citing God as their moral source, then he could make a much more powerful case that faith gives us nothing that isn’t already inside us – and stops us from making out thinking explicit. It also would have shown that substituting faith for reason can be a problem at home as well as in exotic places I’ll only see on the telly. I have these slight niggles because when he’s at his best he’s outstanding.

[FLASH]http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/provenancedesign/napoleon.swf, 352, 252[/FLASH]Richard Dawkins has a Napoleon moment.

Thought-provoking, but still leaves many points on the value of faith open to question. Given his goal is to get people questioning, could it all be a cunning ploy into tricking people into thinking about the basis of faith?

Additional: I took so long with trying to get various electrical things around the house to work today that there are plenty of other opinions on the web.

Dan Jones at The Proper Study of Mankind liked it. (hat-tip PZ Myers)

Onegoodmove has audio of the whole programme. There’s also a QuickTime move of Ted Haggard correcting Prof Dawkins on the basics of evolution.

Gert at Developing Your Web Presence mentions it briefly.

In the interests of balance I would like to link to some people who didn’t like it. There’s no shortage of candidates. Unless you also want them to have watched the programme and listened to it. Tony Keen is less enamoured of the programme than I am.

You can find more views at Technorati. —–