Dawkins
If Leonard Richardson is going to link to my diary saying that I've provided a "summary of the Richard Dawkins speech", I guess I actually ought to provide one.
But I think it's a bit late for that. I've forgotten a lot already.
Dawkins said that there were five ways of knowing things: Evidence, Tradition, Authority, [personal] Revelation, and Faith. He said that science only uses Evidence, while organized religions use the other four and don't care much for Evidence.
Dawkins has dealt elsewhere with some religions' claim that Faith is good, but he didn't address it directly in this talk (except along the lines of "why do you have faith in X instead of Y?", kind of like the old standby Invisible Pink Unicorn argument). (It is interesting to note that some atheists purport to believe in invisible pink unicorns and some in invisible purple unicorns. I wonder whether this schism will have tragic consequences for the atheist worldview.) Some argument in support of religious faith is given by arch-rationalist and skeptic Martin Gardner (a self-proclaimed philosophical theist!) in some of his books; I guess The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener and The Night is Large would cover it, but you'd probably also want to read The Flight of Peter Fromm.
There are some traditionally religious people who believe that Evidence does support their religious beliefs. This is actually an abiding division in Christianity, where a huge proportion of believers suspect that they can't prove their religion empirically (although I've heard some people say that this is because the proof isn't there, and some that this is because the proof is there but evil prevents unbelievers from accepting it). Judaism and Islam have strong rationalist apologetics traditions which I think are mainstream, but I'm not sure. (One source of apologetic evidence is the "unparalleled" item or event -- in Judaism, the unparalled character of the national revelation at Sinai, and, for some, the unparalled accuracy of the Torah. In recent times a few groups have added unparalled statistical anomalies in the text of the Torah. In Islam, the unparalled literary character of the Koran. In Christianity, the unparalled nature of the reported statements of Jesus -- the "trilemma" argument -- and of the broad public consensus on the truth of the miracles attributed to him.)
Phillip Johnson is one of the leading advocates in the American Protestant world of the view that Evidence does support his religious beliefs. But that view is common to a number of authors who share his publisher, InterVarsity Press. The word "Evidence" even shows up in the title of one of the best-selling apologetic works being given out in vast quantities to American college students -- Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. (Postscript: I mistakenly thought that IVP also published Evidence; it was actually published by Here's Life Press.)
Nobody seems to endorse Tradition and Authority, although Dawkins associated them strongly with religions, and quoted some statements like an ex cathedra papal teaching on the Assumption of Mary.
There are definitely people who endorse Revelation, in the sense of belief informed by personal religious experience which is not shared as Evidence with others. Dawkins suggested (I think) that Revelations might be unreliable (as they seem to contradict one another) and that in any case they didn't count as Evidence.
The audience repeatedly burst out laughing at some of the parodies Dawkins put together showing scientists behaving in some of the ways he attributed to religions -- for example, a mock journal issue on extinctions where scientists reported that they had faith in or had experienced revelations in support of or had been raised to believe the theory that a comet killed the dinosaurs. He showed a scientist issuing a fatwa condemning to death a rival; he showed a world map and reported on the scientific wars that had broken out between countries where scientists believed contrasting doctrines. He showed a preacher telling an audience that "The Origin of Species is the inspired Word of the Prophet Darwin (peace be upon him); every word of it is true!".
Dawkins thought that American scientists who disagreed with religious belief were generally afraid to speak out and were under social pressure to say that science and religion were not incompatible. He criticized Gould's Rocks of Ages, with its "non-overlapping magisteria", on two grounds: first, he said that religions do routinely make factual claims which scientists should consider false on the basis of evidence. He said that it is definitely the place of scientists to dispute these claims, just as they could dispute any other claims about events in the natural world. (He quoted various lists of miracles which the Roman Catholic Church teaches as fact and argued that scientists could definitely disagree.) Second, he doesn't think that science can give any insight into the "magisterium" of morality and values, but he doesn't think that revealed religion can either -- so while he accepts that science can't teach us about right and wrong, he would dispute that Christianity can.
Dawkins also took issue with the claim that religious doctrines about historical events are "symbolic" (and so immune from criticism as historically false). First, he said that these doctrines used to be believed as fact and that only scientific progress has made that belief less tenable. Next, he suggested that the idea that something formerly considered real and then disproved should live on as "symbolic" was silly. He gave the example of a scientist in the future responding to hypothetical news that the theory of the double helix structure of DNA was mistaken: "Well, it's true that DNA isn't really a double helix, but look at the wonderful symbolism in this picture, what it shows us about human Love!"
Additionally, Dawkins said that many religious leaders would claim that their doctrines were symbolic "in front of sophisticated audiences like this one" and then tell their (unsophisticated?) religious communities that the doctrines were actually literally true after all. So he accused these leaders of being disingenuous and wanting to have it both ways -- shielding their beliefs from hostile criticism, yet maintaining them firmly among friends.
I've already mentioned the "religion runs in families" argument, so I won't repeat it. But Dawkins showed a slide arguing that, once a particular religious belief is started, it continues to be passed down by tradition and is generally not questioned or examined. By contrast, he said, scientific beliefs are held in conflict and fight against each other on the basis of evidence, so that mistakes are detected and science makes progress.
This isn't true for everyone, though! There are lots of religious converts. Jack Chick converted to his Protestant views from Catholicism and retains great animosity toward Catholic belief and practice. But I think Dawkins is saying that religious conversion doesn't happen as often as it would if people really routinely seriously questioned the religious beliefs they acquired as children. Also, religious belief doesn't appear to make the same kind of progress that scientific belief does (in the sense of detecting and refuting errors and finding a consensus based on public evidence). But maybe that is a matter of perspective; maybe religious belief is making progress and it's just the people with mistaken beliefs who don't see this. Still, the process seems very chaotic; it's at least the case that the mills of God grind slow.
I did say there were some "cheap shots", and I think that's the case; in particular, some parodies directed at one religious group raised laughter directed at all religious belief -- unfair stereotyping. There is greater diversity of religious belief in the world than Dawkins seems to admit; not all of it is subject to all of his criticisms.
And the "sophisticated audience" thing was a bit much -- Dawkins kept on saying that the Bay Area atheists and geeks who turned out to hear him were a "sophisticated audience", unlike religious believers. What an appeal to vanity! "Ah, but ye, the Elect..."
Yes, that audience was sophisticated, and there are lots of unsophisticated audiences in the world, but it's not as though all religious believers are uneducated and backward congregations driven to a frenzy by preachers of (R.) Hofstadter's "religion of the heart". Some of the smartest and best-educated people in the world and some scientists (including some working evolutionary biologists) are believers in traditional organized religions. Dawkins should not appeal to vanity and stereotypes by suggesting that we all who came to hear him are sophisticated and that everyone else is unsophisticated.
There is a negative correlation between education and some forms of religious belief. And this is important. But remember that Francis Bacon (an unbelievably powerful advocate of science whose works may have undermined religious belief on more than one occasion) said "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion". Can anyone doubt that this is a serious charge, coming from Francis Bacon? (Oops, is that an appeal to authority?)
