The root of all evil?

I’ve just started watching Dawkin’s documentary “The Root of All Evil”. From what I understand it’s the moving pictures version of his renowned book “The God Delusion”.

I’ve never really had any inclination to read the book and so with the ABC putting it on over the past few weeks I thought I’d give it a watch.

Initially my impression of Dawkins was that of an nice, but eccentric scientist, however over the course of the first hour (I haven’t started watching the second episode – “The Virus of Faith” yet) his tone of disgust at the notion of “god” was tiring.

Lots of the things that disgusted and disappointed Dawkins about religious belief, had the same effect on me to. For example, the crowds heading towards Lourdes for healing was a depressing sight – for both atheist and protestant. (Whilst we’re talking about Lourdes, the documentary pointed out that the odds of being miraculously healed after visiting Lourdes is disappointing. The Roman Catholic church has recognised 66 miracles at Lourdes, which is a trifle compared with the 80 000 sick who visit each year. Though Dawkins, in his typical style, dismissed the 66 cases without any investigation.)

Despite having some points of resonance, there were a some elements of the documentary that I thought were quite flawed. Here’s two of them.

Attacks the general idea of God (not any specific God)

In this documentary, Dawkins (as is his want) attacks, not a specific religion and it’s beliefs but the belief in god in general. His argument is about the necessity of the philosopher’s “god” to explain the natural world rather than the specific reasons why particular religions hold that their god is real.

From his atheist position, this makes sense. His belief is that there is no god (or at least that there’s no good reason for there to be one) and so it is that philosophical position that he is defending (and the opposite of which that he is attacking). However in doing this, he fails to deal adequately with the particular reasons and arguments that various religious have to defend their own truthfulness. He does not deal with the person of Jesus and the witnesses to his life, death and resurrection in the gospels. He does not deal with the historical questions surrounding Jesus and the apostolic church. He instead attacks a vague, philosophical notion of god.

Blind faith in a book

At a few points, Dawkins protests that theists are ignorant people who blindly place their faith “in a book”.

From one level I can see where he’s coming from. You’ll often hear Christians (rightly) say that they believe something or do something “because the bible tells them so”. However, (most) Christians also have a reason (though I’m sure Dawkins would say it’s a pathetic one) for believing the testimony of the bible. That reason may be because of experience (I know, that I know, that I know, that I know – as one interviewee on Andrew Denton’s “With God on my Side” said) or because they’ve come to the conclusion that the only reasonable explanation for the “empty tomb” is that Jesus is risen – as the biblical authors attest.

Either way, just because something is written in an ancient text, doesn’t make it false. And just because you believe something because it’s written, doesn’t make you a blind faith fool. At some level, isn’t faith in scientific knowledge also “faith in a book”. Faith that the experiments were done well, in controlled conditions and repeated many time. Faith that the author isn’t just pulling your leg. Although in theory you believe in a particular scientific explanation because of the gathered evidence – for the vast majority of us, we believe it because our teacher, or the text book tells us so.

Watching “The root of all evil?” is not the worst way to spend a few hours. In fact, as the “man on the street” continues to hold the belief that Dawkins has categorically proved that belief in god is a lie, it will be helpful for Christians to actually know what he preaches.  And whilst we’re here – you may want to read some articles I’ve bookmarked over the recent months that relate to Dawkins/atheism.

So have you seen “The root of all evil?”? What did you think? Where did you agree/disagree with what is said?