Why Dawkins ‘The God Delusion’ is the Worst Work of Popular Philosophy Ever Written

Popular as it was, Dawkins work is riddled with inane school boy arguments, bad philosophy and undisguised prejudice

Dawkins era feels long over. Atheism in popular forms still exists, even if in the the general population a more apathetic agnosticism or benign spirituality has largely won over. But the era in which scientists putting down seven day creationists in debates garnered popularity is long over, the trend of apologetics aimed against the new atheists has dimmed, and the enthusiasm for militant atheism has largely waned. People for the most part, Christian or non-believer, don’t seem to care that much.

Yet at its peak Dawkins work was part of a movement that actually took up a lot of bandwidth in the world of popular philosophy. Dawkins and his co stars became the spokespeople of a generation rejecting establishment religion, their slogans and arguments becoming substitutes for the “up yours mum and dad” attitude towards a previous generation.

Yet part of the problem with this polemic was that like many public debates, the two sides were pitched against each other in a way that never really allowed much sense to be made. You were either with Dawkins, or with the creationists, and to admit Dawkins arguments were wobbly was to give the other side points in what was, sadly, a zero sum game.

The problem with this, however, is that Dawkins writing is absolutely awful. His earlier popular science works, besides the odd side-swipe at creationism, were largely brilliant. But once he became radicalised and stepped out of his expertise as popular biologist into the role of self styled philosopher, nothing was produced but childish diatribes and beating down of straw men. Here are a couple of his worst.

On Scripture

The brief section on the argument for religion from scripture essentially represents how Dawkin’s approach works: take the most literalist, fundamentalist approach you can find, deride it, and then conclude that this represents all religious people and the answer must be the total opposite.

Dawkins begins here by using the example of the nativity stories in the gospels. Luke’s gospel describes a census that requires Joseph to travel to Bethlehem because he was the ancestor of David, and as Dawkins gleefully points out, this is historically troubling. The Romans caring about who was descended from David is unlikely, at this point King David was a thousand years earlier, and it is akin to someone today caring that I am descended from William the conqueror. Not only that, the dates of Herod’s death and the census, both of which we know, don’t match.

Now for Dawkins, this is enough for him to compare the bible to the DaVinci Code, “fabricated from start to finish”. He describes Luke’s writing as “tactless” and, saying he “screws up his dating”, and even says “the four gospels that made it were into the official canon were chosen, more or less arbitrarily, out of a larger sample of at least a dozen..”

The problem with Dawkins views is that no serious scholar thinks this. You cannot approach any kind of historical scholarship with Dawkin’s attitude, because he is seeking spurious and deceitful motives at every point. No scholar unless they are literalist Christians are arguing that Luke is going to literally get every minute fact of the nativity correct. Instead you are trying to understand why Luke has the salient pieces of story he has, why he is putting them together and how we can piece together some element somewhere beneath it of who the historical Jesus might have been. Luke being wrong doesn’t make it “fiction” to anyone with half a brain — Luke is writing decades after the event, a event he and no one he could of spoken to was present at, of course he is going to get it wrong.

Suggesting the gospels then are “fabricated from start to finish” is simply pointless. This implies deceit and intention and does nothing to make any effort to understand how and why Christianity is spreading, why people are believing it, or what we can reconstruct of the historical figure at its core. No one would die for a belief they are deliberately lying about. Dawkins is only interesting in creating a literalist straw man he can fire potshots at in order to deride people as stupid and disingenuous.

And more to the point, it is uninteresting. Many people who study this area are not fundamentalists but simply find the enticing historical questions fascinating, and the goal of trying to reconstruct the history behind the documents we end up with is a difficult and interesting endeavor. Swiping at literalism is like learning enough geology just so you can prove the earth isn’t flat then going to geology conferences and wanging on about it. None of the geologists care because they are more interested in, you know, actual geology. Dawkins is using a scant grasp of a historical discipline as a cheap way of putting people down he doesn’t like.

On Beauty

Like the chapter on scripture, Dawkins offers about a page or so on “the argument from beauty”. In it he essentially characterises the argument from beauty as “Shakespeare's sonnets are beautiful God did it”, he then derides this view as ridiculous then moves on.

In case you think I’m oversimplifying Dawkins prose for the sake of my own straw-man-ing, I’m not. Sadly it really is that childish. He says “I have given up counting the number of times I have received the more or less truculent challenge ‘How do you account for Shakespeare then?’”

Who this challenge is from, or what exactly it means, Dawkins chooses to ignore, in fact he follows this with “the argument will be so familiar I needn't document it further. But the logic behind it is never spelled out, and the more you think about it the more vacuous you realise it to be.”

O….k. Except the problem here is that the reader of Dawkins’ book has not heard whoever this imaginary person is who said ‘How do you account for Shakespeare then?’, nor do they know what follows in their argument. You think that Dawkins would be beholden as the author to a) either find this person and ask them for the sake of research, or b) take some consideration of the actual argument from beauty that a serious philosopher might make.

But no, Dawkins is only interested in shadow boxing with caricatures of religious people we can largely assume he had made up based on a kind of conflation of snippets of apologetics or debates with fundamentalists. The chapter on the argument of beauty just ends after a page, with Dawkins sarcastically saying “How dare another another human being make such beautiful music/poetry/art, when I can’t? It must be that God did it”

I mean, if Dawkins bothered for five minutes to even consider this argument, he would have to consider how idiotic his responses are. No one is literally substituting the creator of a piece of art for God. No one anywhere is saying that God made Mozart write the String Quintet in G minor. Who is Dawkins arguing with?

You’d think as an evolutionary biologist Dawkins might now offer some genuine evolutionary explanation for beauty. Perhaps String Quintet in G minor is just an elaborate hypertrophying of a kind of mating ritual, who knows, I would imagine Dawkins hasn’t got this far because such sophistication would require an acknowledgement of the irreducible or at least difficult conscious qualities of beauty that are so hard to explain from a materialist position. No one with any seriousness is just saying “God did it”. But that is all Dawkins is interested in arguing with.

Conclusion: Cheap Goals

So I’ve gone on too long already. You might see a trend here. If you want to make serious ground as a thinker or a philosopher you are beholden to take the best of your opponents arguments. Dawkins consistently picks arguments that are the absolute worst representations of those anyone with any seriousness is actually making. The God Delusion as an actual work of philosophy is like Dawkins claiming to be an elite footballer then showing a video of himself scoring ten goals against an under 12s club in a school playing field. Yes, you scored ten goals, but you won’t be getting any calls from Bayern Munich.

Popular scientist Dawkins was insightful and educational, and ironically in this phase he did far more to combat fundamentalism than in subsequent years because he showed a genuine love of the truth. In his religion hating phase he offered nothing to anyone except those looking for easy answers and the pleasure of pointless put downs. It is not surprising then that everyone has lost interest.