The God Delusion

I've been meaning to post this essay for some time, but never got around to it. This is the latest installment in a long-going discussion between me and some of my nerd buddies about God. At one point, we each read British atheist Richard Dawkins' recent book, The God Delusion and have been offering our own takes on it. Knight of Nothing posted about it, then GeistX. (Well, actually GeistX confessed to having only read half the book when he wrote his review, so I guess his is only half a review.) Here's my take on it.

First, my general impression of the book, and of Richard Dawkins. He spent the first few chapters of his book blaming all the evil in the world on religion. And nobody, including (or especially) the truly devout of any faith would find it at all difficult coming up with any number of examples in world history of religion gone horribly wrong. Using these as proof that belief in God is delusion (rather than proof of human faithlessness) doesn't seem terribly bright. Instead of trotting out all the worst behavior, you need to show that the best, noblest, and most compassionate behavior is incompatible with belief in God. And the fact that Dawkins didn't seem to get that didn't leave me terribly impressed.

He then pulled the same prank with scholastic arguments in favor of the existence of God. Yes, yes. There have been lots of really, really bad arguments over the ages used to "prove" the existence of God, and demonstrating the fallacy of a thousand bad arguments still doesn't make your point. You need to disprove the best arguments, not the worst. And I think that's where Dawkins fell short.

Finally, his argument about the basis for morality -- namely that morality is universal, that it clearly does not come from the Bible or from belief in God -- is not an argument against God. Mormons call that universal ability to discern right and wrong "the Light of Christ," which our scripture says is "in all things" (D&C 88:13), and in all human beings, regardless of what they believe or don't believe. Other people of faith call it simply "conscience."

These first few chapters consisted of Dawkins blowing up straw man after straw man, and then proudly flexing his muscles over them. If I had stopped half way through, I would have been left with a very unfavorable impression. It was only after I'd managed to hold my nose and wade through his initial arguments that things finally started getting interesting. Once Dawkins got off his high horse and started talking about what he truly loves -- Science -- I began to discover some grudging respect for him. By the end of the book, I decided that I truly liked the man, even if I disagreed with his views, because I believe he is truly a man of compassion, if a bit annoying.

What intrigued me most about the book was his evolutionary or "crane" argument against the existence of God. And this argument should be particularly interesting to Mormons. Because the meat of Dawkins's argument was that something as vast and complex as the Universe could not be designed by something that was itself not far more complex than the Universe. In other words, a God capable of designing the Universe would himself have to come into being as the result of a long evolutionary process. This, Dawkins persuasively argues, is the only kind of God who could possibly exist. This very notion, of course, is at the heart of the Mormon conception of God, and is the key to understanding our relationship with him.

This alone, while interesting, remains theoretical without proof. And for devout Mormons (as well as for many other people of faith) the proof is in revelation. I will note that Dawkins had no argument at all against revelation other than sheer mockery. It was the "bah humbug" argument against revelation. Revelation "may be," to quote Scrooge, "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato." After making fun of a number of people of his acquaintance who heard things "go bump in the night," and got scared into belief in God, Dawkins essentially says, You may say you've received a revelation, but you can't make me believe it. My response is, don't believe in it then.

For Mormons, personal revelation plays a central role in our faith. Joseph Smith taught that we cannot be saved without it. So every Latter-day Saint expects to be the recipient of direct revelation from God, and many, though not all, have received such revelations. Most who have had this experience, as I have, would say that it is unmistakable, impossible to confuse with the call of an unfamiliar bird in the Australian wilderness, or an optical illusion of a face in the curtains, or the result of indigestion caused by a crumb of cheese.

It is possible to doubt or disbelieve such experiences. That's why, ultimately, we call it "faith." The term in the New Testament that is translated as "faith" could probably more appropriately be translated as "trust." And ultimately, whether to trust human reason alone versus some experience of transcendence -- no matter how intense that experience is -- is a matter of choice. Or, more appropriately, it is a matter of conscience.

For me, the decision to trust that revelation flowed from the fact that the revelation itself could best be described as an experience of the purest, most intense, most unconditional love. And I realized that to embrace it, while risky, would lead me into the path of that love, while to ignore it or turn away from it would leave me diminished and cut off. I chose to accept the risk and trust. I have never regretted it.

Mormons believe that we existed in the beginning in God's presence, and that we voluntarily agreed to enter a realm in which our memories of previous life with God would be blotted out and our awareness of God's existence would be muted. The reason for this was that we could not, in essence, learn the lessons we needed to learn with God constantly looking over our shoulders. We could only learn to stand on our own two feet and develop a mature moral consciousness in an environment which was essentially "godless".

By cultivating conscience, and by listening, we might eventually recover the awareness of God we once had -- through revelation. The path of revelation can lead us from light to greater light. Each new step in the process by which God reveals himself to us requires some new sacrifice, some higher level of risk and trust. And an unmistakable sign that the path is genuine is that we in fact more and more begin to resemble God in the trait that defines him so fundamentally that John the Evangelist described him by saying he is it: Love. So everything hinges on conscience.

In other words, whether or not we believe in God, the primary test of this life is to see how well we lend ourselves to that aspect of human nature which Dawkins himself agrees to be universal. So my answer to Dawkins is, believe what you wish, but do not neglect justice, mercy, and compassion. If you are willing to give your life for these things, if you spend your days concerned with "the least among us," the transcendent knowledge will eventually be added, if not in this life, in the next.

I believe Richard Dawkins to be a man of compassion, so I wish him well, and I trust he is in the path we all ought to be in.