Atheist Chic,Steven Plaut

I suppose I should begin by explaining why I bothered to read the book The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (Bantam, 2006). Dawkins is Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and a zealot with a mission: to wipe out religious belief of all sorts. The God Delusion is his call to arms.

My reading of the book was largely in response to a triple dare made by a friend, Dr. M., a true Zionist Israeli, an outspoken Jewish patriot, and someone who describes himself as a militant agnostic. Dr. M. has long found it incomprehensible - indeed, a downright insult to his intelligence - that a nice educated fella like myself does not share his staunch agnosticism.

With a mixture of pity and annoyance, Dr. M. has been trying to enlighten me. Convinced that no one could read Dawkins and come away unpersuaded, he sent me the book and challenged me to read it.

The God Delusion - not to be confused with The Dawkins Delusion, an attack on Dawkins co-written by Alistair McGrath, a molecular biologist also from Oxford University - is one of a growing genre of books designed to market militant atheism to the reading public. (A recent entry that has sold rather briskly is God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens, who used to be a left-wing Israel basher and is now a quasi-right-wing Israel basher.)

"Promulgating atheism," the Wall Street Journal reports, "has become a lucrative business." Los Angeles-based radio host and popular columnist Dennis Prager recently wrote, "In my opinion the arguments put forth [in such books] are far more emotional than intellectual, and even secular liberal journals have written devastating reviews of the Hitchens and Dawkins books. The secular indoctrination of a generation that has grown into adulthood is bearing fruit."

* * * * *

What exactly is Dawkins's thesis and why is his book a bestseller?

Dawkins pushes his atheist arguments by setting up the weakest straw men he can find and then toppling them over. He briefly argues with Thomas Aquinas, but chooses most of his other sparring partners from among the dullest, most evil, and least sophisticated he can find. This is all a bit like claiming that if some foolish or unscrupulous people happen to believe the world is round, that in itself proves it is flat.

A more serious book would deal with the subject in a deeper manner, rather than with caricatures of its theological/ideological opponents. Dawkins often resorts to crude mockery of "believers." His writing style is hysterical, demagogic and at times juvenile. He tends to respond to claims he dislikes by barking out "That's an argument?"

Dawkins's general theme is that God's existence cannot be scientifically "proved" or even probabilistically established by using mathematical rules of likelihood. He then leaps to the "inference" that if one cannot prove scientifically that God exists, well, then, He must not exist. Much of the book is an attempt to establish as a given that belief in God is delusional, often by discrediting individual believers and specific religious groups or organizations.

Before he became arguably the leading academic advocate of atheism, Dawkins was best known for his books on popularized genetics. Dawkins invented the rather silly concept of "memes," which holds that pop tunes and cultural fads spread in similar fashion to genetic traits, via a process of mutation and "natural selection." I guess that explains hip-hop music, something no one would attribute to any Deity.

As it turns out, when Dawkins writes about "religion," he, like many similar writers, really means Western Christianity. He has at most a shallow passing familiarity with Islam and Judaism, and knows virtually nothing at all about other religions. His ideas about "Bible believers" are really all about fundamentalist Christians; he seems to have never met a Jewish biblical authority or scholar.

(Hitchens is little better; he spends a significant amount of time attacking the biblical pronouncement of an eye for an eye, apparently unaware that Judaism has always interpreted that as meaning the monetary value of losing an eye.)

Dawkins is at his best when he attacks the "scientific gaps" arguments made by some who argue that God must exist because humans cannot explain various mysteries of the universe, first and foremost the Big Bang itself. Dawkins argues that if scientists have been unable to explain this or that scientific mystery, one should be cautious about leaping to the conclusion that they will never be scientifically explained.

Many rabbis would agree: Insisting that acknowledgment of God's existence depends upon unsolved "gaps" in science is to make God a hostage to the pace of scientific advance. Too many things previously believed to be unsolvable have by now been solved, starting with genetics. But Dawkins's real problem appears when he claims that if scientists have indeedexplained many scientific mysteries, it somehow proves that God is a delusion.

To sum up his overly long and at times tedious book, these are Dawkins's main points:

· The existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like all others and must be subject to scientific testing. If God cannot be proven to exist, no proof that He does not exist is even needed. It just follows.

· Religion has nothing useful to teach about science (though one must not conclude the inverse). Creationists and those who have conducted experiments seeking empirical demonstration of the power of prayer are to be scorned.

· Religious scientists really are not so; they are really atheists for whom God and nature are synonyms. (Never mind that many of them wouldcompletely disagree.)

· Religious believers are too easily offended when people challenge their beliefs. (Hardly a serious argument against belief itself, especially from someone who takes offense at any criticism of atheism).

· Groups of religious believers are involved in bad things, like violence and political suppression. Some clergymen have engaged in sexual misconduct. Therefore God must not exist.

· The "God of the Old Testament" (or, more correctly, the caricature of that God with which Dawkins is familiar) is nasty and hysterical and ultimately a petty invention. All religions (especially monotheism) foster fanaticism. Therefore God must not exist.

Dawkins pooh-poohs the "primary cause" arguments ("everything must have a cause and so the first cause must be God"), but is left with little besides "things just get caused" in a natural world that is full of random noise.

The entire universe just popped out of a space the size of a pinhead for no reason at all (which is the Big Bang theory as science now understand it), certainly no thanks to God. Multiple or sequential universes, for which no evidence actually exists, would neither prove nor disprove God, but Dawkins keeps insisting they disprove God's existence.

While Dawkins properly dismisses those who say "If you cannot explain something, God must be the explanation," he is infatuated with the no less fatuous idea that if you cannot explain God's agenda/behavior/character, He must not exist.

Dawkins often contradicts himself. Lots of eminent scientists do not believe in God, writes Dawkins, somewhat mysteriously counting Einstein among them. Atheism is legitimate because the U.S. founding fathers were atheists, he adds. (Actually, not one of them was.)

At the same time, however, he goes to great lengths to dismiss those who argue for God's existence on the grounds that nearly all humans in all countries believe in at least one. That proves nothing, he insists - it's just an "anthropic principle" argument. In other words, sometimes "theological proof by straw poll" is acceptable and sometimes it is not.

Dawkins wants moral principles to be based on something other than religion or the Bible, but is not sure what should replace them other than his own personal moral preferences. His "atheists are moral too" mantra would not hold up well to empirical testing (there would be too many communists in the sample). His social science pronouncements are surprisingly thin (indeed, he seems never to have studied social science). He uses dime-store anthropology in his chapter - the book's weakest - on the development of religion among humans.

To "prove" his point that theology is not needed to foster morality, he cites some secular alternatives to the Ten Commandments taken from an atheist website: "Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice"; "Always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted." Yawn.

He then adds some original "commandments" of his own, like "Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else)"; "Value the future on a timescale longer than your own" and "Do not indoctrinate your children." No shofar blowing or mountain in flames here. We can just envision the little Dawkins children, if there are any, asking their anti-indoctrination daddy why he forbids them to read the Bible.

* * * * *

I suspect Dawkins and his copycats have been induced to turn out these Three Cheers for Atheism books by the growing popularity of the Intelligent Design school of thought: In recent years, a minority set of thinkers about evolution has emerged, including some serious scientists. Intelligent Design's main argument is that there are holes in the theory of evolution, things that cannot be explained by classical Darwinian biology. Commentary magazine has run several articles promoting their point of view.

The conclusion of Intelligent Design advocates is that only some form of "intelligence" imposed on random evolution can explain life on earth. Most biologists dismiss the argument, and opponents have filed a series of court petitions to prohibit its being mentioned in schools, even as a minority, dissident point of view.

The more zealous opponents of Intelligent Design unfairly denounce it as "creationism," or academic window dressing to biblical literalism, and as an unconstitutional attempt to impose religious fundamentalism on schoolchildren. Attacks on Intelligent Design often are hysterical and ad hominem in nature, and attempts to recruit the courts as classroom censors sometimes seem like Scopes monkey trials in reverse.

While liberal Jewish organizations have generally denounced Intelligent Design and have backed and aided attempts to ban it from the classroom, the Orthodox response has been less than uniform. Rabbi Avi Shafran, for example, while affirming that Jews respect science and scientific inquiry, sees the attempt to use the courts to suppress Intelligent Design as anti-scientific, amounting to an attempt to impose a pseudo-religion of Randomness.

Israeli Rabbi Natan Slifkin, who writes about science and theology, has been critical of Intelligent Design because it attempts to prove God's presence through the existence of the "scientific gaps" mentioned earlier. Slifkin argues instead that Judaism more properly should see proof of God and His presence in the parts of the universe that have been understood and explained; that is, in the miracles of mundane and ordinary life.

While some haredi rabbis have denounced Slifkin's writings - mainly for his suggesting that the Talmudic sages were not infallible on matters of science - a number of Modern and Centrist Orthodox rabbis have praised his work.

Meanwhile, like so many other haters of religion, Dawkins repeatedly tries to set up an artificial contest between theology and science, demanding that readers concede that each and every scientific discovery amounts to an additional nail in the coffin of religious belief (or religious "superstition," in his terminology).

Dawkins would have problems with a recent survey which found that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of professors at American colleges confirm they believe in God. I recently attended a lecture at the Technion by Nobel Prize winner Robert Aumann. His entire lecture consisted of citations from Maimonides and the Talmud.

All of which leaves me wondering how Dawkins would deal with Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics. With the arguable exception of Einstein, Newton contributed more to science than any other human. But Newton had a deep belief in a personal God and even something of an affinity for Hebrew scholarship.

Incidentally, if Dawkins and some of his more zealous followers were to have their way, Sir Isaac himself would today be prohibited from teaching science in any public school.

In an exhibit of some of his scientific papers now on display at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, there is one on which Newton had evidently written in his own hand the Hebrew phrase "Baruch shem kavod malchuto l'olam va'ed" - the verse from Ezekiel we repeat during the recitation of the Shema prayer. (The page can be viewed at www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/871781.html.)

The English translation of the verse transcribed by the giant of science reads: "Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom for all eternity."

Dawkins and his ilk must pity the poor, primitive, deluded Isaac Newton.

Steven Plaut, a frequent contributor to The Jewish Press, is a professor at Haifa University. His book "The Scout" is available at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@yahoo.com.

Read Comments (8)

GENTILE DISTORTION OF HEBREW SCRIPTURE
Date 03:07, 07-13, 08

Re message 5 anti Plaut. The author of message expresses a hackneyed Gentile distortion of the Hebrew Scripture.
(In all fairness, perhaps the writer was just summarizing Dawkins' bias on the subject.) In any event, it is important to stress that the notion of a vengeful Deity reflects a gross misunderstanding and distortion of Hebrew Scripture. (The writer erroneously describes the Hebrew Bible as the "Old Testament."
It is not old; it is eternal. Chaim Silver

Newton, his God and his Science.
Date 02:08, 08-29, 07

Newton devoted more time to prove the Chronology of the Bible than he did to science. Despite all that work, ALL of his contemporary theologians dismissed his work as something trivial. In the three centuries that followed no theological doctrine or school of thought or even a much maligned "meme" has come out of Newton's theological work. So why is this sudden adoption of Newton as a man of religion? Despite all the obvious gratification
Prof Plaut shows on Newton's religiosity, I am sure he does not
even know one single theological statement Newton made. Newton's theology is vacuous, trivial and totally useless, according to the consensus of three centuries of theologians!

Prof Plaut stresses repeatedly many scientists believe in God. Well, Michael Behe, is the most ardent supporter of Intelligent Design who has some qualifications as a scientist. The poster child for ID movement. What does he believe in? In common descent, that humans and chimpanzees descended from a common ancestor! He also believes that world is millions of years old, not 6000 years as believed by literalists. In fact he concedes much of
the claims of the theory of evolution and he struggles hard to find tiny gaps where God might lurk.

Anyway Prof Steven Plaut shows very shallow grasp of science and scientific arguments. I think he made a vow to trash the "God Delusion" even before he read it and made good on the vow. To borrow a phrase from Dawkins, Prof Plaut seems to be educated far beyond his ability to hold a rational thought.

Ravilyn Sanders (nom de internet)
U. S. A.

Newton
Date 02:08, 08-29, 07

Your final question about Newton is interesting, but I think your conclusions are incorrect.

Newton's theories refashioned the world governed by an interventionist God into a world crafted by a God that designs along rational and universal principles. Newton saw God as the master creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. But, the unforeseen theological consequence of this outlook, is that God is now entirely removed from the world's affairs, since the need for intervention would indicate an imperfection in God's creation, something impossible for a perfect and omnipotent creator.

This hardly sounds like a "personal" God to me, and is clearly not the God of the Bible. Despite his writings to the contrary, or perhaps because of them, it appears to me that Newton's scientific discoveries caused deep emotional internal conflict for Newton that was difficult for him to reconcile. Newton though brilliant, was a product of his times and upbringing. In addition to deep biblical studies and scientific endeavors, he also studied and truly believed in Alchemy. I think that if Newton were alive today, born into our evermore secular society, he would be just as brilliant, but less misled by pseudo-science and mysticism.

Newton supported his work through rigorous scientific methodology and documentation. I have no doubt that any contributions he would make, if alive today, would be no less rigorous, and thus would be widely accepted by the scientific community. This is in sharp contrast to current promoters of Intelligent Design, who are content to point at watches and claim them as "proof" of an intelligent creator. If ID enthusiasts would show the same devotion to the scientific method as Newton did, perhaps they would be taken more seriously.

Sean McCarthy

Corrections to claim of religiousness of some historical figures
Date 05:08, 08-29, 07

Einstein not an Atheist?
From a correspondence between Ensign Guy H. Raner and Albert Einstein in 1945 and 1949: "I have never talked to a Jesuit prest in my life. I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist."

Founding Fathers not Atheists? (strictly speaking atheists didn''t exist then, but they were the next nearest thing - agnostics/deists). By no means could you consider John Adams, George Washington, Thomase Paine, Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin religious.

RE: The God Delusion
Date 09:08, 08-29, 07

I've read the book and I felt that Dawkins put his point out quite well, if not him sounding a bit callous at some stages. The point he wants to stress is this:

There has NEVER been any scientific evidence for god. Espousing this fact, what's a good scientist to do? In your dismissing his dismissal of the evidences for the existence of god, you failed to show any reasonable evidence to support your stance. That's because there are none. None that are scientifically feasible anyway. Your line of thinking is captured in Chapter 2, I think.

And Dawkins never claimed that the founding fathers were atheists. They were deists. Please read the book more carefully.

Please
Date 01:08, 08-30, 07

This is a pretty intellectually dishonest article. Let me take one assertion at random:

"Dawkins says the God of the old testament was mean and cruel - and therefore God does not exist."

Dawkins never uses this obvious non sequitur. He makes his point about the vengeful God of the old testament to show that we needn't/shouldn't derive our morality from the bible.

All the other points that are made in this article are similarly dishonest.

Sam Wigginton

Atheist chic
Date 06:08, 08-31, 07

This is a Jewish newspaper. As a Jewish newspaper you're not going to agree with the atheist perspective as logical as it may sound. No,religious propaganda is about fear and control. Isn't that what it says in the old Testament,"Fear of God is the start of wisdom". Once logic, reason and evidence enters the picture, which is what we atheists believe in, what then becomes of religious faith?

Steven Plaut misrepresents Dawkins? views and does him a great injustice.
Date 01:09, 09-4, 07

Dawkins and Hitchens are critical thinkers who are hoping to persuade others to think critically; they are not zealots with the mission to wipe out religious belief. They are both intelligent enough to realize that would be a fool's errand, and they are fair enough to understand that their own freedom of thought and action depends on the freedom of thought and action of others. They may disagree strongly with religious beliefs, but they have no interest in interfering with the private thoughts of others. What they object to is (1) religion trying to hijack science and (2) people forcing their own beliefs and behaviors on others.

Religious believers feel threatened by Dawkins because he asks questions they can't answer. If two different people are each absolutely sure their beliefs are correct but they believe two different contradictory, mutually exclusive things, how are we to decide between them? At least some religious beliefs must be wrong, and we have no rational way of judging which is right or if any of them is. Someone has pointed out that we are all atheists with respect to all the gods outside our own religion; Dawkins and Hitchens just carry that to its logical conclusion. Jews reject Osiris, Jesus, Zeus, Ganesh, and all other gods except YHVH; atheists just reject one god more.

We all seek the truth. Scientists and critical thinkers demand evidence; religious believers are willing to believe on faith alone. The problem with believing without evidence is that different people come to different conclusions and believe different things. If they stayed home and minded their own business, there would be no problem. Unfortunately, they all too often try to act on their beliefs in the wider world, resulting in all sorts of unpleasantness including Inquisitions, wars, and genocides. With this track record, can you really blame Dawkins and Hitchens for suggesting that the world might be a better place with more scientific inquiry and less unquestioning religious belief?

There is only one science; scientists can agree on the evidence and it can be used to guide public policy, for instance when it shows that immunization programs improve public health. There are many religions; they disagree with each other. There can be no justification for using personal religious beliefs to dictate public policy.

What you believe depends largely on an accident of birth: if you are born in one country you are more likely to become a Christian; if you are born in other countries you are more likely to become a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, an animist, or whatever faith the majority of the population follows. Science, on the other hand, is universal. Imagine how ridiculous it would be if people born in one country tended to accept the law of conservation of matter and energy and people born in another country tended to reject it just because of an accident of birth.

Plaut characterizes Dawkins? style as ?hysterical, demagogic and at times juvenile.? It is no such thing. Not by a long shot! His prose is elegant, calm and reasoned. He is a master stylist of the English language, one of the great minds of the century, a sophisticated intellectual and an erudite gentleman.

I will list some of Plaut?s specific misinterpretations of Dawkins? thoughts, with my comments:

(1) ?The existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like all others and must be subject to scientific testing. If God cannot be proven to exist, no proof that He does not exist is even needed. It just follows.?

If one simply states a belief as a matter of faith, science can have nothing to say about its truth or falsity. If one makes a factual claim about the existence of an entity, that factual claim is clearly within the realm of scientific inquiry. If the Tooth Fairy cannot be proven to exist, I don?t feel any obligation to try to prove that she doesn?t exist. I can?t prove that she doesn?t exist, but I can determine that the probability of her existence is so small as to be negligible for all practical purposes. If I want to believe in her, I can continue to do so, but I can?t hope to persuade others of her existence by rational or scientific means. If there is a supernatural God, he either interferes in the natural world or he doesn?t. If he does, we should be able to detect that interference; if he doesn?t, then for all practical purposes he might just as well not exist ? the question of his existence or non-existence becomes meaningless speculation, like the Medieval debates about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

(2) ?Creationists and those who have conducted experiments seeking empirical demonstration of the power of prayer are to be scorned.?

I don?t think Dawkins scorns any scientific inquiry into how the world works. If creationists had any experimental evidence to offer, he would respect it and evaluate it just as he does any other experimental evidence. Attempts to demonstrate the power of prayer have uniformly failed, have usually been poorly designed, and have even been criticized on religious grounds.

(3) ?Religious believers are too easily offended when people challenge their beliefs. (Hardly a serious argument against belief itself?)?

Of course it isn?t an argument against belief; no one said it was. It?s an argument against suppression of free inquiry. The point is that religious believers expect special treatment. It is not ?politically correct? to question a religious hypothesis in the same way that we could question a scientific hypothesis. Dawkins and Hitchens argue that all hypotheses are fair game and should get equal treatment. In fact, doesn?t it diminish a religious hypothesis to suggest that it can?t stand up to questioning and requires special protection?

(4) ?Groups of religious believers are involved in bad things, like violence and political suppression. Some clergymen have engaged in sexual misconduct. Therefore God must not exist.?

Dawkins says no such thing. He?s way too smart to resort to that kind of faulty syllogism. He knows bad acts say nothing either for or against the existence of God. They do say something about the inability of religion to insure morality and about the effects of religion in public life.

(5) ?Dawkins pooh-poohs the ?primary cause? arguments (?everything must have a cause and so the first cause must be God?), but is left with little besides ?things just get caused? in a natural world that is full of random noise.?

Dawkins shows that first-cause arguments have a fatal flaw; they lead to an infinite regress. Logically, if a first cause is needed, a cause for that first cause is also needed. The whole concept of ?cause and effect? is a human construct that may not be useful in trying to explain why there is something rather than nothing.

(6) ?While Dawkins properly dismisses those who say ?If you cannot explain something, God must be the explanation,? he is infatuated with the no less fatuous idea that if you cannot explain God?s agenda/behavior/character, He must not exist.?

Wait a minute! How do you know there is an agenda/behavior/character? How can you assume there is any agenda/behavior/character to explain without first establishing there is a God to have that agenda/behavior/character? Not being able to explain it is not an argument for the non-existence of God, but the whole line of reasoning is specious.

(7) ?Lots of eminent scientists do not believe in God, writes Dawkins, somewhat mysteriously counting Einstein among them. Atheism is legitimate because the U.S. founding fathers were atheists, he adds. (Actually, not one of them was.)?

They may not have been classifiable as atheists, but there is good evidence that neither Einstein nor the founding fathers believed in a personal God. At most, they were Deists.

(8) ?Dawkins wants moral principles to be based on something other than religion or the Bible, but is not sure what should replace them??

Dawkins accepts the plausibility of natural explanations for the evolution of a moral sense in the human animal. Moral principles are a deeply engrained part of every human being; the details vary over time and culture, but the essence is always there. Trying to credit religion or the Bible is a post hoc exercise in rationalization. Julia Sweeney, in her ?Letting Go of God,? describes her thoughts when she lost her faith ? if there?s no God, then everything is permitted? no, wait! It isn?t. I still know it?s not right to go out and kill people! There are many recent books that explicate these ideas, for instance Michael Shermer?s The Science of Good and Evil.

(9) ?His ?atheists are moral too? mantra would not hold up well to empirical testing.?

It would and it has. There is plenty of empirical evidence. For instance, atheists are underrepresented in prisons, atheist doctors are more likely to provide free medical care to the indigent than religious doctors, and fundamentalist Christians have complained in their own studies that their co-religionists are more likely to be divorced than the non-born-again population. Some would even argue that atheists are more moral than religious believers: they are moral by instinct, not by coercion; if a religious believer is moral only because he obeys God?s commandments or fears punishment, how can we trust him to act morally if he loses his faith? It seems clear that religion has no monopoly on morality. Individuals act morally or immorally in spite of their religious beliefs, not because of them.

(10) ?We can just envision the little Dawkins children, if there are any, asking their anti-indoctrination daddy why he forbids them to read the Bible.?

I can?t imagine Dawkins forbidding anything! Anti-indoctrination does not mean forbidding Bible reading. One wag has said, ?The best cure for admiring the Bible is reading it.? Anti-indoctrination means not brainwashing your children into believing that your religion is the only possible belief. One nonreligious scholar I know is systematically introducing his home-schooled children to the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavadgita, folk mythologies, and all sorts of other texts. Children will grow up more tolerant if they learn at a very early age that not all adults hold the same beliefs.

(11) ?Intelligent Design?s main argument is that there are holes in the theory of evolution.?

That?s just it. ID has nothing to say for itself. All it can do is try to point out the few small points of uncertainty or controversy in a body of theory that is so well established that it is impossible to understand modern biology without it. There will always be ?holes? ? every time we find a missing link C between animals A and B, the ID folks can protest that there is still a missing link between C and A and another between C and B!

(12) ?Rabbi Avi Shafran, for example, while affirming that Jews respect science and scientific inquiry, sees the attempt to use the courts to suppress Intelligent Design as anti-scientific, amounting to an attempt to impose a pseudo-religion of Randomness.?

ID is not scientific, so declining to teach it can?t be anti-scientific. There is no pseudo-religion of randomness. Evolution is not just random, it is constrained in many ways by the environment and by the mechanisms of development, gene expression, and gene regulation. The eloquent text of the Dover court decision and recent books like Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom by Sean Carroll explain why Rabbi Shafran is mistaken. ID advocates consistently over-simplify and misunderstand this complex subject. They keep rehashing the same objections that have been more than adequately answered, over and over, by evolution experts.

(13) ?Dawkins repeatedly tries to set up an artificial contest between theology and science, demanding that readers concede that each and every scientific discovery amounts to an additional nail in the coffin of religious belief (or religious ?superstition,? in his terminology).?

That?s a misrepresentation. He does show that science has found natural explanations for many things that religions once sought to explain supernaturally. For instance, comets are no longer thought to be omens, and we can predict the date of their return. Such discoveries can never eliminate theology, but they do reduce its scope.

(14) ?Incidentally, if Dawkins and some of his more zealous followers were to have their way, Sir Isaac himself would today be prohibited from teaching science in any public school.?

This is a ridiculous calumny. No one is suggesting that religious people should not teach science. Religious people can teach science just as well as nonreligious people. We just don?t want them using science classes to teach religion ? or basketball or knitting or Republican politics, for that matter!

(15) ?Dawkins and his ilk must pity the poor, primitive, deluded Isaac Newton.?

Well, yes! Admiring him for his accomplishments doesn?t mean we can?t pity him for his errors. Newton was an alchemist. He lived in a time when alchemy had not yet developed into modern chemistry. He lived in an era when openly questioning the existence of God would have been unthinkable and possibly fatal. Today we can pity his alchemical delusions. One can only wonder what his brilliant mind would have accomplished had he been born in the 20th century. He surely would have understood the theory of relativity, the theory of evolution, quantum physics, and the Big Bang. Given the same opportunities, he might have asked the same questions Dawkins asks, and he might have written a book very much like Dawkins?.
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I am not a ?theist? but I personally object to the term ?atheist.? I see no evidence that there is a Tooth Fairy, but I don?t have to classify myself in terms of an imaginary being by calling myself an ?Atoothfairyist.? If I see no evidence that there is a God, why should I have to define myself in terms of gods by calling myself an atheist? If anything, I might call myself a ?Laplacian? - Laplace was the man who famously told Napoleon he had no need of that hypothesis (the God hypothesis).

Because I know how easily the foibles of the human mind can lead us into error, I am hesitant to accept any belief not based on evidence. Even when I believe on the basis of evidence, I remember those beliefs must always be provisional, and I?m willing to follow new evidence wherever it may lead. I can even imagine evidence that would make me, Dawkins, Hitchens, and everyone else believe in God. Can you imagine anything that would make you give up your belief? I suspect not. As Jonathan Swift said, "It is impossible to reason someone out of something that he did not reason himself into in the first place."

Jews and Muslims are fighting in Israel. Christians have bombed abortion clinics in the US. Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other in Iraq (in fact, different sects of Shiites are killing each other!). As long as the world is plagued by religious conflicts and suicide bombers, we need books like Dawkins? and Hitchens? to make us question our thinking. Whether there is a God or not, whether there is an afterlife or not, our survival in this world depends on our admitting that we might not be as absolutely right as we would like to think ? about religion, politics, or anything else. Critical thinking and free inquiry are our only hope.

Harriet A. Hall, MD