The Atheist’s Dogma
As much as I respect the minds of men such as Richard Dawkins – whose theory of memetics and applications of Darwin course throughout my personal philosophy – I am forced to separate his ideas from his dogma. His fanatical crusade against religion puts me an ideological odds with him insofar as he is completely unwilling to accept alternative viewpoints. Dawkins clearly demonstrates what I call the Atheists’ Dogma. Atheists – and here I am referring to the strong variety – have identified religion as the stuff of Jews and Christians and Muslims, of Hindus and Shintoists and probably to a lesser extent Buddhists.
These people are to the Atheists “irrational”, because their beliefs have no rational, i.e. scientific “proof” to support them. Atheists would criticize faith as being belief without proof, but what they are unable to grasp is that the kind of proof derived from the Western scientific method is not the only kind of proof there is in the world. I may or may not come back to that point, but for now I’ll let it simmer. What is more important is that Atheists, for all of their soapboxing, are just as faithful and “religious” as the people they criticize.
Dawkins, for example, has applied the idea of natural selection to purport that the entire universe in all of its seeming complexity could have come about by way of miniscule changes to existent phenomena over billions of years. These changes are so trivial as to not require any intelligence, but over the course of a long period of time, the accumulation of these changes can give the impression of infinite complexity which on its own suggests an intelligent designer. There are two words that must be recognized – “could” and “have”. For all of Dawkins’ brilliance in devising an alternative to the intelligent design argument, he did not at all disprove the existence of that designer. It is exactly the same on the other side. Citing natural selection and evolution as theory does not in any way discount their possible roles in creation, nor that Dawkins may be right in that they are the only explanation.
Both Dawkins and the ID advocates are guilty of the same type of dogmatic practice. They argue their theories as far as human knowledge and reason will take them – and when those reach their limits they traverse the remaining gap between known and unknown by means of a leap of faith. That’s right. FAITH. Every single Atheist is a person of faith, because they believe in something one hundred percent without one hundred percent certainty. And since there is, and probably never will be, any such thing as 100% certainty – every single person, whether an atheist or a Christian or an Australian Aborigine – in some way relies upon faith. The moment you fail to acknowledge this is the moment that you become dogmatic.
If you’re reading this and you even know who Richard Dawkins is, then perhaps you’ve seen a video or at least some footage where he embarasses a young woman who dares to question him. As he goes on his usual lengthy diatribe about how religion is inherently flawed, how there is no god, how all belief in such is based on a delusion, etc. etc. – she asks him a very simple question.
“What if you’re wrong?”
Dawkins does not answer this question, but instead falls back on the same rhetoric that has made him famous as “Darwin’s bulldog”. Instead of answering the question he attacks the validity of the question itself. The girl’s question probably did come from some place of belief, or perhaps a simple hope that Dawkins is wrong about the universe. Even if she was the most dogmatic, devout, and radical Christian conservative, it would not change the validity of the question. You cannot answer the question of “What if you’re wrong?” with “Well, what if you’re wrong, too?”, and this is basically the neener-neener rubber-and-glue argument that Dawkins makes to a storm of applause, leaving the girl’s question unanswered, and most likely humiliating the girl herself.
This is one of the products of the Atheists’ dogma. In my view, Atheists are people who are completely dissatisfied with the world – at least in terms of coming to any real physical or metaphysical conclusion about all of the hows and whys of its existence. They are people for whom religion has failed – and for all sorts of reasons – but for whom science does not offer a completely satisfying alternative. Yet at the other end of the perceived ideological spectrum are who they deem the “religious” folk, many of whom do not appear to have the great dissatisfaction or existential angst that consumes the atheists. Since the atheists are unable to attain this satisfaction – delusional or misguided as it may or may not be – they seek instead to destroy the satisfaction of others.
Damned if those “religious folk” are going to be happy and satisfied with what is clearly a delusion, clearly the product of underdeveloped and uninquisitive minds, clearly WRONG! How dare they be happy in their ignorance while we suffer in all of our infinite wisdom and rationality! We won’t stand for it!
This is the mantra of the Atheists. This is their driving force. Once they have reached the limit to what modern science can explain, and once they’ve exhausted all of their ideas for how the universe may or may not function, they completely stop contributing to the greater ideosphere of humanity. Unable to contribute or create once they’ve reached the self-constructed walls of Western rationality, they can only destroy. Where else do we witness this kind of radical and destructive ideology? Amongst the “religious fanatics” that atheists use as the primary subjects of their ire. How ironic it is that the two form a counter-extremist dichotomy, two corresponding points on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. As they launch their assaults against one another, most of their dogmatic banter flies over the heads of the majority of people, who are a mix of the scientific and religious, and who are humble enough to at least consider other points of view.
So what if you’re wrong, Dawkins? Atheists? The answer is just as simple as the question. If they’re wrong, they’re wrong. And the world goes on. If that turns out to be the case, then all that means is that it becomes time to re-evaluate the universe and to come up with new ideas. This ability to accept falsifiability, to acknowledge that one’s ideas – no matter how much “evidence” appears to support them – is vital to humanity’s continued social, cultural, and intellectual development, and in the pursuit of that ever-evasive ideal called “truth”.
In their dogmatic ideological stances, Dawkins and the atheists actually betray the tradition on which they so depend. Just like all other religious people, they question and examine the universe only as far as they care to – or are able to – and the rest is conjecture. They gather as much “evidence” as they need to support within their own minds a preconceived thesis – that there is no god – just as Christians or Muslims stake their opposing thesis on the “evidence” they gather from scripture or mystical experience. The two share a near identical epistemology.
So until the atheists open their minds to the possibility of their own error, it is as pointless to discuss religion with them as it is to discuss it with the fanatical Bible-thumping Christian. Observe them as they fail to contribute anything new to the age-old discussion – never acting, only reacting – as they point the finger at everyone else. They cannot field any questions because they do not have any answers, other than to say that no one else has the answers either.
The difference is…that the rest of us (i.e. the non-fanatics) are okay with that, whether we attribute it to the mystery of God or our own inadequacy as mere human beings. But the more forward-thinking amongst us continue to try and work towards those answers using whatever methods are at our disposal – be it “religion” or “science” or any combination of the two.
And the journey – the inquiry, the pondering, the meditation, the study – is the real fun of it all.
A very introspective article. nice site as well.