But Why Dr. Dawkins?


Interesting story over at the New York Times on a conference held here in San Diego regarding science and religion. Unfortunately, most of the attendees were atheists, apparently. Richard Dawkins, among others, looks forward to the day that religion disappears from the scene. The question I have is, what will they replace it with? I have a colleague at work who, like many, looks to the ideal secular state - often times people cite Turkey, which was established as a secular state back in the '20's.

The problem, of course, is that Turkey isn't at all secular. It meddles in every aspect of religious life. Read this analysis by the State Department, keeping in mind that the U.S. is highly motivated to shed a positive light on an ally in the Middle East whose air bases they desperately need. Note how everyone is restricted, but there is general religious freedom. Sounds like something a politician would write. At any rate, it should be noted that the Orthodox population in Turkey is where its at because all of the Orthodox were transferred to Greece in 1923, and since then there has been little freedom to practice, and little opportunity for advancement in the workplace for non-Muslims.

This is probably the nicest example of a secular state. The largest, most successful secular states in the last 2 centuries have the Soviet Union and China. The Soviet Union was responsible for the deaths of some 30 million Christians, some 9 million Jews, and countless others. China is most well known these days for forced abortion, sterilization, and the selling of organs from executed prisoners. In other words, the value of an individual is seen in entirely pragmatic terms. They have no unique value.

We further have to realize that absent a religious base, we can end up following the teachings of folks like Peter Singer :
"As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents."

Now, the thing to note is that the non-religious states have been responsible for more killing, pain, and suffering in the last 200 years than you can probably accuse any religious institution of in the last 2000. So, I don't know if there is much to say for this brave new world that Dawkins and others are proposing. Dawkins wants a religiously free world where decisions are made about right and wrong not based on divine law handed down from an all knowing being but rather by the "fashionable" thinking of whichever ethicist is in vogue. Do we go back to looking for the supreme race of the Eugenicists? Why not? Dawkins and the others would have just that.

Similar to Singer's reversal of position when his mother was involved, I would love to see Dawkins opinions when someone decides that its his time to go because he is no longer publishing enough and perhaps has become expensive to care for.

So, the point of this entry is to simply ask Dawkins and others, why? Why should I want to eliminate religion from our existence? To get the new and improved world of the Soviet state? Or perhaps to get the society we see the U.S. turning into where angry children slaughter their schoolmates and slightly overwhelmed parents have no issue with the killing of their children ? Yeah, that seems appealing.

Posted: Wednesday - November 22, 2006 at 09:56 AM          

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