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I find Dawkins troubling, because for every five intelligent things he says, he comes out with two really annoying things. He’s a proselytic atheist, which is sort of hard to wrap one’s head around. And he is the patron saint of atheists who think they are, axiomatically, intellectually superior to non-atheists. Typical conversation:

A: “Religious faith is for the weak-minded.”

B: “What? That’s an insulting thing to say.”

A: “I’m sorry if you thought I was being insulting. Really, what I meant to say was that only a childish idiot could believe in something as obviously ridiculous as an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do.”

B: “What? You can’t be serious. I guarantee you, people who are much more brilliant than you or I have been sincere religious believers.”

A: “I’m sorry if you feel I’m insulting your religious faith.”

B: “I don’t have any religious faith! I just think it’s incredibly arrogant of you to claim that you are intellectually superior to everyone who has ever had religious faith!”

A: “I never claimed to be intellectually superior. It’s just that religious beliefs are so obviously insane, how could a sane, intelligent person believe them?”

Anyway, in the interview above Dawkins makes some good points about how people need to start coming out the closet as atheists, and how society needs to be accepting of that. I believe that. I believe that people who are atheists should feel free to say so, and it shouldn’t negatively affect their chances of getting elected, or hired, or whatever.

But he also says a few things that I can’t agree with at all. For example, this:

Yet moderate religion makes the world safe for extremist religion by teaching that religious faith is a virtue, and by the immunity to criticism that religion enjoys.

The world is made safe for people like them and Osama Bin Laden because we’ve all been brainwashed to respect religious faith and not to criticize it with the same vigor we criticize political and other sorts of opinions that we disagree with.

Here, Dawkins is making the mistake — deliberately, it seems to me — of taking what religious extremists say about their own motivations at face value. That is, when the Bin Ladens of the world say things like “I am murdering The Great Satan in the holy name of Allah!” Dawkins is willing to say, “Ah, well, then, it is clearly religious faith that is motivating these monsters.”

When, of course, it is not. Religious faith has no more to do with the real motivations of most suicide bombers than video games had to do with the real motivations of the Columbine shooters.

People who kill and are mentally deranged may cite all sorts of “reasons” for what they do, and those reasons might include “God told me to.” But they might also include “Beatles records tell me to” or “saucer people tell me to” or “ladybugs tell me to.” You can see our own prejudices reflected in how we interpret these claims. Mainstream Christians might assume that “God told me to,” meaning their own god, is craziness having nothing to do with their actual religion. But then they think the claim that “Satan told me to” actually has some merit. “Beatles records told me to” won’t wash with your typical Baby Boomer. Yet, they might be genuinely worried about the effect of the music after hearing “Rob Zombie records told me to.”

There is another, more common reason that people kill in the name of religion — tribalism.

Religion encompasses three things: moral philosophy, metaphysics, and tribal identity.

Most religious people make no distinction between these facets, until they notice them come into conflict with each other. For example, the anti-gay practices of many Christian religions (tribal) is clearly at odds with Christ’s commandment to love your neighbor as yourself (moral philosophy). Some religious people don’t see the conflict because they don’t notice. But once you do notice, you have to make a choice. Which is more important to you? Moral philosophy, or tribal identity?

Religion as it is actually practiced in the larger world is primarily about the moral and tribal aspects. When Martin Luther King invoked Christianity in his fight for civil rights, he was invoking the moral philosophy of Christianity. When people kill in the name of their god, they are usually invoking tribal identity. Read more... (2686 words, estimated 10:45 mins reading time)

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