Tag Archives: atheism

Thought for the day, “Dawkins and slavery”, Monday 20 February

Posted on by Fr Adam
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Here is the text for my forthcoming ‘Thought for the day’, to be broadcast on Monday 20 February on the subject of “Dawkins and slavery”.

Dawkins and slavery

The Sunday Telegraph carried an astonishingly stupid and ill spirited character assassination piece on Richard Dawkins this Sunday, in which it publishes “revelations” that one of his ancestors profited from slavery. The assets from that trade remain in the Dawkins family.

There is plenty to criticise Dawkins for without having to resort to grubby smears. So what really can we learn from this story?

Firstly, it’s a timely reminder of just how appalling and wicked slavery was. In a week that lazy left wing campaigners have accused Tesco of “slave labour” for having offered work experience to the unemployed instead of letting them languish on the dole, it’s highlight just how inappropriate that comparison is. Slaves did not have the freedom to walk away or to improve their lot. Benefit claimants do, even if it might be financially difficult.

Secondly, the Church of the Dead Dad rejects the notion that the son should be held accountable for the sins of the father. One should take responsibility only for one’s own sins. In Deuteronomy 24, verse 16, we find the following:

“Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

The message here being that you cannot be held responsible for your father’s sins (not that you should be put to death for sinning!). But by all means, use your father’s life as an opportunity to learn and to improve yourself. As the proverb goes, “A wise man learns by the mistakes of others, a fool by his own.” By this measure, we can reject calls for Dawkins to pay reparations. He was not the party that enslaved other people. Nor, even if you could make a case that he continues to benefit from that wrong, there is no person today who can legitimately claim to be the wronged party.

We should also pause to take Dawkins to task for his claim that “William Wilberforce may have been a devout Christian, but slavery is sanctioned throughout the Bible.” The Bible is a book about Love. Dawkins wouldn’t claim to understand the Bible, but it’s obvious that he doesn’t. Just because a book may have been used, wrongly, for a particular purpose, doesn’t change its true meaning. A man who uses a telephone directory to crush a spider doesn’t turn it into a treatise on animal cruelty. Similarly, we shouldn’t blame the Bible for the frailties of man.

The Sunday Telegraph piece is a woeful piece of journalism, which allows Dawkins to shed his bully image and appear as a victim. Instead, sensible Christians everywhere should reject this appalling article and refocus our efforts on rebutting Dawkins’s ill-informed and uncharitable attacks on people of faith everywhere.

The machine that can detect God

Posted on by Fr Adam
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I have a machine. It has a small LED display and a button. It’s very simple to operate; you just press the button and the LED display shows you a brief message: “God exists”.

This is no hoax. My machine really does do this. Why would I lie to you? I’m a priest.

Perhaps you feel you don’t need to see my machine. Perhaps you’re just comfortable with my assertion that it does indeed do what I tell you it does. So you might tell others that you know God exists because you believe in Adam’s machine.

There are other machines in the world. There’s one that has enormous computer displays and lots of buttons. It’s very complicated to operate and frequently breaks down. Its displays can tell you many weird and wonderful things. Such as whether the Higgs Boson exists.

This is also no hoax. The LHC really does do this. Why would the people behind it lie to you? They’re scientists.

Perhaps you feel you don’t need to see the LHC. Actually, that’s a good thing, because you’re not really allowed anywhere near it, and certainly nowhere near its most intimate workings. So you’ll just have to take it as read that it really does indeed do what the scientists tell you it does.  And, yes, you might tell others that you know the Higgs Boson (does? doesn’t?) exist because you believe in the scientists’ machine.

Now there are some people who love the scientific method and see no reason for the existence of God. In their view, because God isn’t necessary to the advancement of knowledge and can’t be detected using the scientific method, He simply doesn’t exist. This can lead to some hurtful and unkind comments about how belief in God is somehow illogical or superstitious.

Yet, qualitatively, there is no difference between the faith of the religious and the faith of the scientific. If anything, the faith of the religious is more likely to be acquired from first hand experience. It’s just that, due to its very personal and spiritual nature, it cannot be replicated by others. By contrast, the faith of the scientific purports to have rigid empirical roots. But, in the hands of an individual, it is just as likely to be built upon faith rather than first-hand, or even second-hand, empirical knowledge. The individual won’t ever have seen a Higgs Boson, or perhaps even an electron. His/her knowledge acquisition is based entirely upon years of academic study by others and is heavily reliant upon machines built by others and the workings of which cannot be verified. It would be as legitimate for most individuals to rely upon my machine as any particle accelerator. They’ve probed inside neither.

Without getting too sceptical about skepticism, it’s fair to say that both religion and science rely heavily upon faith. However, religion is at least honest about its use of faith. Skeptics would be advised to ponder the degree of faith essential for their own study before weighing too heavily on religion.

Yes, I’m aware of the principle of self-correction as a main line of defence against knowledge acquired by relying on others. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is effective in showing that self-correction as a principle is pretty seriously flawed.

Atheism at Christmas time

Posted on by Fr Adam
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This summer, I attended the funeral of my father. My father was, in the main, a good man. But he did some things that he wouldn’t have been proud of. At his funeral, I spoke for ten minutes about the highlights of his life. Was it a true representation of his life? Was it fair? For the purposes of a funeral, of course it was. If you were trying to write a balanced biography, perhaps it wouldn’t.

But it would have been easy for someone at his funeral – after all, they all knew him – to stand up and mention one of the more fruitier parts of his life. And it would have been thoroughly appalling to have done so. Luckily, those present had sufficient decorum and respected the sensibilities of those present.

Or let’s consider a starker example. Would anyone consider it kind, or a good idea, to walk into a pub full of Manchester United fans during a local derby in which City are winning 2-0 to tell them how poorly their team is performing and how much better City are?

Christmas is a challenging time for atheists, as they find themselves face to face with faith. While the vast majority conduct themselves with decorum, some feel obliged to seek refuge from their own unhappiness by bringing others down to their level. So they might seek to pour scorn on elements of the Christmas story that strike them as inconsistent. Or to deride faith itself in cruel and mocking terms. To those who are tempted to behave in such a way, imagine the losing football supporter or the grieving child at a parent’s funeral, and consider whether you would like to be on the receiving end of such unkind behaviour.

At the Church of the Dead Dad, we do not subscribe to the idea that only through the church can you find morality. So at Christmas time, I call upon atheists everywhere to show that you can find ethics in atheism as well, and to keep any unkind opinions about Christianity or faith firmly under wraps.