Reflecting on the new Atheist, Richard Dawkins claim that there is no meaning, or purpose of this life. If that is true then I can not help but notice how self-contradicting his claim is. In his famous book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkin claims:
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” p.133
Questions:
How can we explain the hurting if we have no idea what “not hurting” feels? How can we explain “luck” if we do not know what “unlucky” means? How can we explain “injustice” if we do not have any knowledge of what “justice” is?
If at the bottom, there is no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, why are we(including Dawkin) wants the fairness, “Justice”, and not ready to pretend we are not in pain, “getting hurt” when fair-play is not exercised?
If it is true that there is no evil and no good, then I am not in a position to point these things out. If no purpose, fairness, including Dawkins’ own claim is “nothing but blind pitiless indifference” which is absurd.
Dawkin wishes his reader to take his claims serious namely “becoming an atheist after reading to the end of his God Delusion book” Are Richard Dawkins’ claims also “at the bottom … nothing but blind pitiless indifference?” (You ought to ponder these one by yourself)
Dawkins’ Self-exception Fallacy:
In his best selling book, God Delusion, Richard Dawkin attacks the evilness of religion throughout his entire book. “Religion: Root of All Evil” but I am at lost! Help me understand here! If, by his own words “there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference” how then is Religion evil?
More over, if Religion is the root of all evil, then there are other evil to which Dawkin knows they exist but rationally deny them by his own definition which again is absurd.
Dawkins’ Self-Deluded Logic:
There is no A and no B
There is A and B
There is no evil and no good,
Religion is evil, not good.
There is No A and there is A can not all be true at the same time. Accepting there is evil i.e. “Religion is the root of all evil” and not accept there is evil i.e. “there is at the bottom … no evil” is simply absurd because either one is wrong, or both are wrong. They can not all be true.
Dawkins’ claim fails to satisfy Logical Thinking on the light of The Law of Non-contradiction . A cannot be B and non-B at the same time and in the same sense.
Therefore, Richard Dawkins’ New Atheist claim commits a “Self-Deluded” Logic namely A is evil and not-evil at the same time and in the same sense.
Dawkins’ Self-Exceptional Fallacy:
If I at the bottom, accepts no evil and no good, I will have to accept and apply it to all my views, not just on my hobbies as Dawkin does on his hatred-of-Religion dogma.
Moreover, If I were to accept Dawkins’ atheistic idea, the only an avoidable conclusion I would reach is, Religion is no evil, no good, just a blind pitiless indifference. Attacking Religion as evil is simply absurd from Dawkins’ own chain of thinking.
Therefore, claiming no evil and no good to all things except Religion is simply a self-exceptional fallacious.
Now What?:
There has to be purpose to trace a seemingly purposeless life. Seemingly purposeless life does not mean life is purposeless, but it looks like it purposeless, no meaning(as the new Atheistic calm to which I beg to differ). If there is no God, then there is no meaning to our lives, no purposes, no values, no fairness, nothing, we live, reproduce and die.
If there is no God, why should I be fair? why should I not have my own standards, say murdering babies for no reasons, raping, stealing, lying? Social conduct? You help me I help you? But why do you need to help me if at the bottom all is meaningless? It is normal for animals to rape, steal, kill each other! If at the bottom, there is no evil and no good why am I ought to act like evil and good exists?
Can I stand in front of the courtroom charged with killing, raping, and stealing and bravery state that “Judge! at the bottom, all these is nothing but blind pitiless indifference” without the Judge thinking I am self-deluded?
Meaning of our Universe:
From C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, comes a very interesting argument for the meaning of our universe.
“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” p.45-46
I will try to put his argument in Contrapositive form to which I believe is easy to follow:
If not A, not B
B
Therefore A
not A = Universe has no meaning
A = Universe has meaning
not B = Never(not) have found out the universe has no meaning
B= Have found out the universe has no meaning
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning,
We have found out the universe has no meaning,
Therefore, the universe has meaning.
I am open for your views,comments, corrections or something I overlooked or over reacted on, and most if I have committed a logical fallacy.
P:S I am officially banned from Dawkins’ Website Discussion for pointing Dawkins’ Self-Delude Logic, Don’t Feed A Troll is their Motto; “You don’t have the ability to comment” And they call themselves Truth-Seeker. I beg to differ, Dawkins-Discussion is no better than a religious cult! Say something different and you are out.
Prayson Daniel
I you’re going to try and critique the guy, the very least you could do is get his name right – it’s Richard Dawkins.
I think with the point about evil, people like Dawkins use the term linguistically; it is like Einstein saying ‘God dosn’t play dice’, he wasn’t refering to any specific God, rather to the laws of the universe, which do not play chance. Evil as an absolute is a thing of religions – ie ‘to love another God is evil’, but Atheists use the term to label things which they find abhorent, in a relativistic sense if you like.
You keep using the phrase ‘nothing but blind pitiless indifference’, but this is simply describing the universe; not the people in it. He goes to lengths in a great many of his books to try and inspire his readers with just how tremendous the world – as revealed to use by science – is, and how we as beings alive on this planet owe it to the incalculably low odds of our existance to make the most of the short time we have.
Dear Cambridgechris,
Thank you so much for pointing out the right name. I so much mix Darwin and Dawkins when I write or speak about the two
I have tried to correct the name. Thank you so much:)
Yet I think from your reasoning we miss the author meaning and create our own-like meaning namely “simply describing the universe; and not the people in it”.
Does the Universe as itself be describe as justice? good or evil? I do not think so for these properties namely justice,evilness and goodness apply to or are described by beings with rational mind namely “the people”.
See how “Dawkins” put it:
We should expect in peoples lives hurt,sometimes luckiness, no justice, not purpose, no evil, no good, all we have is relativist ideas “indifference”.
Funny enough Dawkins is not alone seeing this problem in Atheistic Worldview which is self-refuting. Here are some other great atheists thinkers on the same issue namely seeing no meaning if God does not exist “If Atheism is true”:
Science as I can say has no Objective moral values”good and evil” nor duties “right and wrong”. It cannot put what Nazis did to the Jews in test tube and find out if the Nazis were wrong or right. This lead me to conclude that science is thus impotent to explain the meaning or purposes of our existence if in the end “at bottom” our universe will go cold and die ” The end of Universe”
In short, Dawkins apply his meaning to people response to meaning, design, justice, value and duties if the Universe has no designer namely God.
Please let me know what you think
Hi,
Just thought I’d chip in here, hope you don’t mind. I agree that the neo-Darwinian worldview struggles to address the problem of evil. Anyone who has encountered evil in this world knows that it is a real and active force. And it needs to be explained. I don’t think that Dawkins can explain it.
Dawkins chose to deny evil exist in first place, thus avoid to answer it
This is something I have played over in my mind. Almost playing the devils advocate with myself in trying to find a solution to this problem.
In that if you accept atheism to be true (and I mean for all I know it could be) then you must also accept the universe itself to be random chance, without meaning, and Dawkins does. The issue with this is that if the universe is without meaning then by deffinition all parts of the universe are without meaning or at least only have meaning relative to the universe which leads to all parts being ultimately without meaning.
Now most atheists I know almost seem to ignore this. Why? Well its because to accept this in it’s fullest would lead to a nihilistic approach to life, and trust me nihilism is depressing. So they have good reason not to want to go down that road.
The issue with this is that for most atheists what they believe and the life they lead are in conflict with each other. In that they live as if life has meaning but they do not believe any intrinsic meaning does/can exist.
Most are just as outraged as theists by moral attrosities. There is no reason to be so if morality is a mere evolutionary tool, because the attrosity is not intrinsically wrong. It is merely someone going against the crowd.
Richard Dawkins has always puzzled me. IMO, even if it turns out there is no God, he is still more deluded than any person who believes in God(s).
Who is more illogical, the person who believes Santa is real and so leaves out cookies and milk so he does not go hungry, or the person who says they do not believe in Santa, yet leaves out milk and cookies for him because he does not want him to go hungry?
Dawkins’ rants about the evils of religion after saying he does not believe evil exists is silly.
I do not believe animals can be evil. If I had a dog and it mauled me because it didn’t care for me, I may not like the dog, but I’d simply get it put down and that is it. I would not go on a big rant about the evils of the dog, because I do not believe they can be evil. I would not say a police dog trained to catch criminals is “more dog-like” or “superior” to the other dog. They’re both just dogs, acting on whatever impulses they have due to genetics and upbringing.
Even chimpanzees, which are highly intelligent, will steal, dismember and eat the young of other chimps. I’m sure they’re at least intelligent enough to know that they are causing the infant pain and killing it. However, even most atheists wouldn’t say a chimp is being “evil” or is violating its evolved moral compass or whatever.
So if Dawkins doesn’t believe human evil exists, why does he go on such long rants about things humans do that he does not like? Why do most atheists call rapists and murderers “sub-human” and pretend they are somehow “more evolved” than them?
He is either self-deluding himself or trying to profit from his books by appealing to the emotions of illogical atheists who enjoy feeling superior to others after reading his books.
I can admit that if there is no some sort of God that has given me some sort of moral code in my brain, then the only reason I or anyone else doesn’t rape/murder/steal etc. is the same reason why a vegan doesn’t eat meat. They either have no desire to and/or it would make them feel bad if they did.
Most atheists will not admit this though because it doesn’t sound as noble as “I don’t rape because I know it is wrong and I don’t need a smelly old book full of lies to tell me that!” To admit that there is no such thing as a “good” person in any meaningful sense would take away the good feeling they have inside themselves, for all it takes to be a “good” person is to believe whatever you are doing is good. If Hitler thought what he was doing was good, he is just as much a “good” person as I am.
Dear Aardvark,
Thank you for sharing puzzlement of Richard Dawkins. Even great atheist philosopher like Michael Ruse conclude that:
“The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist”
On Moral:
One is good not because of belief in God “those need an old smelly book”But on existence of God.
It is so important to know the difference.