avevale_intelligencer | Richard Dawkins is wrong (Reply)

"If this post works correctly, any supporter of Dawkins who opens this post will be an opponent of Dawkins by the time they finish reading."

So how did that sentence make you feel?

Did you perhaps think "Now hold on just a cotton-bud-picking minute here, matey boy. Am I not a reasoning being? Don't I have both the ability and the sovereign right to make up my own mind of my own volition? Is he saying that his words have the power to alter my thinking, subvert my free will and convert me without my consent, and if they fail to do so that's simply because they're malfunctioning? Does he claim to have some Jedi mind trick that can infallibly turn people around a hundred and eighty degrees? Would it perhaps not have been slightly more persuasive to say that his post would provide me with more information on the subject which might possibly influence my opinion?"

If you did, then perhaps you then thought "Right, monkey, let's see what you've got," and are reading this post now with all your defences up and your mind clenched against any sneaky spell or cantrip I might have embedded within these syllables. Or maybe, if you were more like me, you decided that it wasn't worth the risk and didn't click on the cut-tag at all. Either way, by putting that sentence up there I have certainly defeated any chance I might have had of persuading you of anything.

And yet it is with a sentence very similar to the above load of piffle that Richard Dawkins opens "The God Delusion."

Dawkins makes two mistakes here, I think (though I am not so confident as to say I am sure). Firstly, he believes, or believed at the time he wrote that book, that ideas are stronger than the minds that contain them. He it was who coined the concept of the meme, and before that he wrote about religion as being a "virus of the mind" which could infect "even the best minds," whether they wanted it to or not. Clearly, in making that somewhat grandiose claim about "The God Delusion," he was articulating the same belief about his own ideas; that they would invade and conquer any mind exposed to his words, and clean out all vestige of religious thought like a white tornado. Bang, and the God is gone. I've never believed in memes myself, being rather big on free will, and I don't share his view of religion, or atheism, as a disease passed on by talking...but I am not so confident as to say I might not be wrong. And that is why, despite my firm belief in giving all sides a fair hearing, I have not read any of Dawkins' books and do not intend to do so. Just in case. I like choosing what I want to think.

And the other mistake he makes in advancing that ineffably smug, condescending vaunt about his book, is in being disastrously wrong about people. Because the number of confirmedly religious people who will read that book with an open mind, once they have read that sentence, is, I think, vanishingly small. Just as the number of Dawkins supporters who will have read this post without their hackles being up and all their gun ports open will, I suspect, be close to nil.

Fortunately, I have no interest in converting anyone. And, quite possibly, neither does he. Which raises the question of why he said it in the first place...but that's beyond me to answer.

A friend has pointed out to me that there are much more pleasant ways of engaging my passionate nature than starting internet arguments about irresoluble issues, and that friend is quite right. All I can say is that this thought grabbed me in Waterstones and would not let go till I'd articulated it. I am sorry if any part of this post has caused offence. None is intended.