The speech in question was arguably one of the biggest viral sensations of new atheism. It was certainly one of the clips that gave me a big nudge or two towards my proposition that atheism was a more reasonable position than any form of theism, perhaps it made me believe that atheism was even true, which would denote a positive statement and therefore a stronger claim. And with good reason because this was a damn good speech, it's Richard Dawkins at the height of his powers and with some impressive rhetorical flare to boot. But now that so many years have passed, does this speech still hold up? And now that I've criticized ten arguments in favor of atheism here, and another ten here, do I still hold to the argument that Dawkins presents in this brief speech? I'm not so sure I do, at least not quite in the same way. In a nutshell, I believe that what is being defended here is something somewhat similar to Pascal's wager, an argument that, though kinda weak in philosophical terms, is still rather interesting in psychological terms, and as such I do wonder about what goes through Dawkins' mind whenever he thinks this way, or whenever he's presented with something that ought to be welcomed in the mind of any atheist – doubt.
If I may spoil the ending right now it is rather clear that, in typical atheistic fashion, Dawkins didn't really answer the question. Like I said in previous articles, atheism is an all-out attack, so you can't really defend very well because atheism isn't necessarily a belief system. Well, I kinda think it is but it's a weak one, and either way, most atheists do see atheism as empty, as simply a negation of belief, they see it as a rejection of something, and not necessarily a thing in and of itself. In other words, atheism is a sword, not a castle. So when attacked you can't really hide behind a blade, you can only swing it. But anyway, the speech, which I will transcribe in full, begins with an apparently shy girl going up to the microphone and, with a slight tremble in her voice, she asks,
This is probably gonna be the most simplest one for you to answer but... what if you're wrong?
I think at the time this speech was given, christianity had been in charge for a little while, and as such it had gotten sluggish, christians simply weren't used to defending their faith. Old lion, young lion sort of thing. So a lot of their arguments were presented rather meekly, as evidenced by the girl's brief prologue. And then in response, in pretty much most of the debates and whatnot, the atheist would usually give an eloquent speech that would give way to clickbaity titles that, if I'm honest, were kinda accurate because most of the time it was a complete slaughter... Still, in retrospect, how good were those answers? After all this time has passed I've come to believe some of them weren't all that good, and some others weren't good at all. Because firstly, as it often happened with Christopher Hitchens, namely when he brought up the Fritzl case, which I've briefly addressed before and might someday return to, atheists never really defended, they just flipped the answer into another attack. And secondly, nowadays that a defense of atheism or secular humanism or what have you is warranted, they all appear to mostly come up short, at least in my view, or to have a much harder time than they used to, and when that happens, they often resort to an offensive strategy. But that's a story for another time, the prelude to which you can read here. In any case, Dawkins did avoid the question, but is that such a bad thing? In philosophy some silly questions are meant to be avoided because if they're silly there can be no answer, but is it the case with this one? Dawkins begins,
Well, what if I'm wrong, I mean... Anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the flying spaghetti monster and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot.
It's impressive the speed with which he went from “I” to “anybody” isn't it? The question was – What if you, Clinton Richard Dawkins, are wrong? It wasn't about anybody else, it was about him. I for one would have liked to have heard a Bertrand Russell-esque response but alas, I suppose he has given one on some other occasion. Still, I suppose it is true, anybody could be wrong, so I guess Dawkins is going more Descartes than Russell in this particular instance. In fact he goes so Descartes that he apparently considers made-up religions to be in equal standing with “proper” religions. Yes, I know he considers all religions to be made-up but can he seriously see no difference between, say, christianity or islam or hinduism, and a religion made-up by atheists as a parody, or even a deity that, to my knowledge, no single person ever claimed to worship? Does he seriously think there's a chance, however slim, that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists and that atheists, just by sheer coincidence, managed to get it right without realizing it? I wouldn't think so, it seems that on this point atheists suddenly lose all their reason so as to give way to the idea that all propositions have an equal likelihood of being true, almost as if the standard of truth for anything is the mere possibility of it being linguistically asserted. If atheists truly live their lives by giving equal weight to all propositions then, well, I got me some magic beans to sell them.
You happen to have been brought up, I would presume, in the christian faith. You know what it's like not to believe in a particular faith because you're not a muslim, you're not a hindu. Why aren't you a hindu? Because you happened to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you had been brought up in India you'd be a hindu.
The speech now shifts into “proper” religions as Dawkins appears to have regained his rationality. He makes the leap of faith, or inductive reasoning if you prefer, that the girl who asked the question was a christian. He knows that he was presently in the United States of America, speaking in an evangelical university, being asked a question by a student who spoke fluent english in an american accent. Knowing what he knows about the world it makes sense to assume she was brought up christian. I do wonder though why he couldn't have used some of those same skills to realize that, if there's any use for a scientist, it would be to prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist. Because I reckon if he can't do that, then scientists might have even less of a purpose than philosophers... Then he goes on to give the argument that I think he popularized to the point of owning it. In a way it makes a lot of sense, by and large people appear to adopt the religion their geographical circumstances dictate, but this argument does seem to ignore the phenomenon of conversions and it also seems to all of the sudden reduce all claims of faith to the same level. It is possible that, psychologically speaking, people don't try too hard to look into other religions, they just ease into the one they already have due to the forces of habit. But that still doesn't change the fact that to verify any truth claims by any religion you have to look into the religion itself. What makes no sense is that Dawkins isn't concerned with the empiric test to discover how religions differ, at least not at this stage, he instead just concludes that, first, all religions are likely to be false, and two, that all religions are equally likely to be true. Maybe the first premise is reasonable but the second seems more empiric and therefore less reasonable to believe in so readily, unless Dawkins is automatically discounting any religion that contains so-called supernatural claims. But then the answer to the girl's question would be simply to say – I'm not wrong.
If you were brought up in Denmark in the time of the vikings you'd be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece you'd be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up in central Africa you'd be believing in the Great Juju up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the judeo-christian god in which by the sheerest accident you happened to have been brought up and ask me the question – what if I'm wrong. What if you're wrong about the Great Juju at the bottom of the sea?
At this point Dawkins goes on to add an historical dimension to the geographical one, namely by bringing up the ancient religions of the norse and the greeks. Yes, fair enough, it'd be kinda difficult to be a christian before the time of christianity, or a muslim before islam, but it's not impossible. Christians and muslims alike believe in the existence of christians and muslims before Christ and Muhammad respectively, they kinda even believe it all the way to Adam, so that's already somewhat of a wrong assumption by Dawkins. But yes, if you had lived in those eras you'd mostly likely end up believing in Thor and Zeus, but that still says nothing about the likelihood of Thor and Zeus being true gods. Because remember, that's what the question is all about, it's all about one big if. It's all about if atheism is wrong what is Richard Dawkins prepared to do?
Then in this final bit he makes the worst mistake of all, at least in my opinion. He brings up the Great Juju, which appears to be a concept related to a spiritual practice in Africa, so as to really drive home the point that all religions are equally silly. But the fact that he has to try so hard, and the fact that the audience for some reason chuckled at mention of this deity, maybe it all seems to suggest that not all religions are created equally. Shocking idea, I know. There are logical reasons to ascertain the truths or untruths of any religion, there are ways to tell how sophisticated a religion is or isn't, there are ways to take some religions more seriously than others, pretty much the same way we take some scientific theories more seriously than others. This just seems like a case of willful ignorance, almost exactly like a weird inversion of Pascal's wager. To say that there's no particular reason to pick the judeo-christian god over the flying teapot is the philosophical equivalent of the mobster saying he ain't seen nothin', it's just Dawkins trying to play dumb in case at least one of these gods actually does exist, almost as if to say – Well, my Lord, I didn't believe in you, but at least, unlike those other heathens, I didn't believe in anyone else neither...
And is it that big an accident that the girl was born into the judeo-christian faith? It sounds like a reasonable statistic to me. Because last time I checked there still existed people who still believe in Zeus, so why wasn't the girl born to one of them? Because they are far fewer than the ones who do believe in christianity. And why are there so many adherents to christianity? Well, the christian would say it's because christianity is inherently true, but not me, I admit I don't know exactly why but, for the sake of this article, I don't think I need to, I just need to defend that christianity is far more sophisticated, and also, to play into this game, far more likely to be true than the flying something or other. It almost makes me wanna ask Dawkins, a man with extensive biological knowledge, if he's ever found a Squirtle. If he hasn't, and if he tells me they don't exist, I wanna ask him how he can be so sure, and then, if he has good reasons to be sure, I wanna ask the same question the girl asked, just in case.
And at the end of it all the question is completely flipped. Dawkins fulfills his dodge by turning the question onto the questioner. And the reason I tried to psychoanalyze Dawkins is because, all philosophy aside, this dodge seems, at least to me, to suggest nothing but fear. It's like I said, it's the comfort in knowing that if he'll go to hell then at least he won't be alone, it's a way to assuage his doubts whenever they do creep in, and I almost wanna say it's jealousy at the certainty, however irrational, that some people have in their own faiths. It certainly explains why a man who went to such lengths to demolish every aspect of the big religions is now all of the sudden open to the possibility of every single one of them being true. All of the sudden, Dawkins is open to the possibility that, not just some of the major religions are true, but that all of them, even extinct or made-up ones, could be true. But why though? It's certainly not to show loving-kindness to their respective believers, so I assume it is to show loving-kindness to himself. So in what could have been an honest moment of doubt and introspection, Dawkins instead turned it back onto the alleged believer, almost as if strengthening his faith by weakening someone else's. Because I guess at the end of the day, why should you waste your life believing in God when he might not exist? In that case you might realize, though you won't be around to do so, that you actually could have eaten that slice of bacon, whereas if you spend your life believing, you might come to regret all the nice things you've denied yourself.
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