Delusional About God?

Who do we blame for life? -- Picture courtesy Bantam Books

by blogSpotter
I'm listening to Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. Dawkins is a well-known British science professor best know for his strident atheism; two of his other best-sellers are The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker. Much of his book targets organized religion rather than God per se. He describes the God of the Old Testament as a "sadomasochistic, capricious malevolent bully". He lambastes the Gospels of the New Testament, saying that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were cherry-picked from eight other Gospels that had their facts provably wrong. Dawkins says that the four Gospels chosen are inconsistent about such things as the whereabouts of Joseph and Mary. (Were they in Nazareth, going to Nazareth, why did they have to go to Bethlehem?) He says the translations from Aramaic are fraught with serious translation problems. The word for "virgin" also means "young lady". The word "carpenter" can also mean "learned man". And so forth ... I myself am not a fan of organized religion, so much of the critique made sense although it might be a bit on the nasty side.

Now Dawkins seems to be upset with scientists such as Michael Faraday or Fred Hoyle who have some kind of God belief. Fred Hoyle is noted for saying that life evolving on Earth by Natural Selection is about as likely as a wind blowing though a scrap yard, assembling a Boeing 747. Dawkins says that Hoyle knows nothing about Natural Selection (NS) and that NS is anything but chance. He waves the term NS around describing it as "elegant" and "beautiful" but never says to anyone's satisfaction how the molecular mutations are anything but chance. There's no suggestion as to why a collection of molecules has a motivation to grow, mutate or do anything in particular. What I'd say of Darwin's Natural Selection is what I once heard said of New Jersey -- "There's no there there". Even if you tried to go with that theory, there is some type of implied intelligence in something that does the "selecting". Fred Hoyle was absolutely right and he doesn't have to be talking about anything as advanced as a cricket. A complex protein or virus would never happen purely by random molecular collisions. I submit that Neo-Darwinists are a delusional group unto themselves.

Dawkins' other main argument is that someone would have to design God. I have a reply of sorts. Can you imagine the intelligence it would take to create you, fallible though you are? It might not take someone infinitely intelligent to create your cerebral lobes, etc but it would take someone pretty damned smart. Let's set our own goal as being merely that smart -- not at all smart enough to create the Universe. Now -- once we have achieved that state of awareness I submit that you only have to be a tad smarter to understand what created the creator. We answer one question at a time, and then we come closer to answering the Ultimate Question whatever that may be.

A second delusional group are people who are willing to ignore a mountain of geophysical and fossil evidence to claim a literal embrace of the Bible. This same group claims an all-powerful, omniscient, supernatural God who is external to the Universe. They believe that God created us like play dough figures, all in a single, highly productive swoop. Now, there are some problems with that idea. If we were an original handicraft why did God give us vestigial organs? We have an appendix which is a remnant of a herbivorous ceccum. We have a coccyx (tailbone) which is a remnant of a monkey tail. We also have ear muscles no longer in use. Not only is there monkey business here, but God also made some big "fubars". The human anatomy is full of mistakes -- many of them related to our recent bipedal status. We have hip joints ill suited to bearing the weight of the trunk. It leads to hip degeneration and even femoral neck fractures. We have knees with inadequate tibial cartilage, leading to frequent knee problems. The female pelvis is too small for the human baby's head leading to frequent birth problems (probably due to rapid evolution of head size). If starting from scratch, wouldn't God have done it flawlessly? As a computer programmer, I'm well aware of putting Band-Aids on old systems to add on something new. Because of time and budget constraints, we programmers don't get to "start fresh". Humans look like the product of corporate evolution, not instant infallible creation. As H.L. Mencken said, it's obvious that life was designed by committee.

So, what kind of God are we left with? One that is finite, fallible and within the Universe. If that is so, why can't we see Him? It could be that this Intelligent Wumpus doesn't want to be found -- he could be victimized by his own clumsy creations. It could also be that he exists in a different scale or dimension that makes him invisible to us anyway (though nevertheless real). Is he a God of magic and supernatural abilities? No -- he is more likely a God of practical approaches, frugal with resources and gradual in his achievements -- very much like us, his creations. The "miracles" to behold are those that you already see -- highly complex, organized matter.

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