A while back I watched a You-Tube video of Richard Dawkins,* whom was interviewed by Sir Jonathan Miller. Miller has never been on my radar screen, but is quite a character with a very interesting history. He started as a physician, and then went on to produce numerous BBC television programs in the ‘60s through the ‘80s. Some were satirical comedy shows, but he also produced operas and Shakespeare plays. Also in the ‘70s, Miller held a research fellowship in the history of medicine at University College, London, and in 1985 was a Research Fellow in Neuropsychology at Sussex University. More recently he has written and presented programs on atheism, being one of our own. Quite the polymath.
I was very impressed with Miller’s questions, and his ability to frame the discussion about atheism in current popular culture. He asked Dawkins is arguing against the notion of supernatural design so important? Dawkins replied that theists can’t argue that their views are not amenable to scientific examination. When someone has the notion of a designer, it’s a hypothesis just like any other. He or she is advancing a scientific hypothesis, but it’s one in universe in which supernatural works are being performed.
Miller plays the ‘devil’s’ advocate for the theists, and ask Dawkins how he would respond to those who say that their faith in the supernatural “belongs to a domain of entities in which direct information is irrelevant.” Dawkins has no truck with this position. Personal revelation that can’t be shared by anyone else sounds like mental delusion.
Then Miller framed a question that I don’t think has been expressed anywhere in the literature in any cogent way, but I think reflects the smug mindset of many religionists. Miller asks why they, who take the leap of faith to explain their universe, invoke their faith, “not as a weakness on their part, but…some sort of virtue that atheists lack, a particular willingness that indicates some form of spiritual generosity that we don’t have?”
Dawkins replies, “Now we are talking about someone who is a very sophisticated animal than the run-of-the-mill creationist…not those people really would think that there’s some sort of supernatural intervention in the world…, because then they would have to concede that the existence of God is a scientific question after all. The domain in which It works [operations of the natural world?] seems to be strangely detached from the world domain they internally and privately have to the exclusion of others.”
There is a sense that the religious believe that acceptance of authority over their personal lives by, and the transference of responsibility of creative power to a supernatural deity has a deeply affective beauty that atheists can not appreciate. Believers subsequently take for granted the alternative majesty of secular interpretations. Miller called it “a lack of talent generosity.” Dawkins added that it’s almost like an instance “such as one might not know what it’s like to fall in love. Like someone is sort of deficient in some way.” Perhaps it simply is a gnostic viewpoint that atheists just aren’t getting the same revelation to which the pious have access. Too bad atheists are incapable of experiencing God’s love, but can they appreciate the creative power found in nature?
Evolutionists and perhaps atheists do experience an awe of all existence in the natural world akin to what a mystic might feel, but Dawkins warns the fanatic not conflate this with the mysticism of the religious. That would be a dishonest use of the concept of being religious.
Oh well. Dishonesty was never really a problem, I suppose. Any time you give up the locus of your own control to a delusion that you’re in league with the King of the Universe, I suppose you’re bound to do just about anything.
* Jonathan Miller interviews Richard Dawkins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TMnySUTokA&feature=related
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