A Much Needed Gap - A Reading of "The God Delusion"

[Tim Bourke]

I just wanted to share this article which I wrote after recently reading "The God Delusion" by biologist Richard Dawkins. Hope you get something out of it if you can struggle through to the end!

It can be difficult to understand a person’s point of view when they are “on the attack”, so to speak, criticising ideas which they believe to be false. In his book, “The God Delusion”, biologist Richard Dawkins starts out well and truly on the attack as he sets out to prove to the reader that all belief in God, and hence all religion, is a delusion.

As a result, it may be necessary to persevere with the book for a while to come to understand more fully Dawkins’ own thoughts on the universe, the place of the human being in the universe, morality, religion, the origin of life, the meaning of life and other such topics. For myself, I didn’t feel I had really understood his point of view well until I had finished the last chapter and reflected on the experience of reading the book for a while.

Dawkins begins the last chapter of his book with the humorous quote, “this book fills a much needed gap”. The chapter is also entitled “A much needed gap?”, and one wonders whether he may even have considered this as an alternative (but obviously less attention grabbing) title for the whole book. The title is deliberately tongue-in-cheek and typifies something of the spirit of the book – throughout it, Dawkins displays his fondness for clever humour as light relief, to illustrate a point and even to score rhetorical points against opposing points of view.

Indeed, a quick search of the Internet for the phrase “fills a much needed gap” reveals that it has been used intentionally by people aware of the humour inherent in the phrase, presumably even more now since the publication of this book. However, the search also reveals that it also continues to be used unintentionally by people who presumably mean something more like “fills a gap that needed to be filled”.

In any case, in this last chapter Dawkins sets out to seriously answer the initially humorous question “does religion fill a much needed gap?”

In the previous chapters of the book, Dawkins has already driven belief in a God and the phenomenon of organised religion from the field, showing, to his own satisfaction at least, why belief in God and organised religion are irrational, outdated and even harmful.

So, with the smoke from the intellectual field of battle at last clearing, Dawkins comes into view and we are finally able to meet the man himself and understand more clearly some of his most dearly held and cherished beliefs and values.

In the book up to this point, Dawkins has mentioned and grappled with two different but related “gaps”:

1. The “God of the gaps” beloved of Creationists – that is, a God who miraculously fills in any gap not explained by science, for example if it is alleged that the human eye is too complex to have evolved gradually then it must have been created by God.

2. The gap, hole or vacuum referred to in the popular paraphrase of Blaise Pascal that “inside every human being there is a God-shaped hole that needs to be filled”

Taking these two “gaps” one by one, we could say that Dawkins’ belief is that:

(i) Every belief in God is a belief in the “God of the gaps”, i.e. a God who does things which cannot be understood rationally;

(ii) The progress of science, and especially Darwinist evolutionary theory, is gradually filling in these gaps by providing rational and testable explanations of all of the observable phenomena of the universe, none of which require the assumption of an intelligent Creator;

(iii) Therefore, God does not exist.

With regard to the “God shaped hole” in the human being, one could attempt to summarise Dawkins’ views along these lines:

(i) Religion is an irrational but widespread human activity based on a belief in a God or gods;

(ii) There exists a scientific (but not yet fully worked out) explanation for the existence and propagation of religion in human society based on Darwin’s theory of evolution extended to the realm of “memes”, a word which Dawkins himself coined as a catch-all phrase to describe such cultural phenomena as tunes, catch-phrases, fashions and so on which replicate themselves from person to person in a manner which could be compared to the way in which genes propagate themselves from one generation of living creatures to the next;

(iii) If we look at the results of religion in our society quite apart from the question of its truth or falsity, we can see that on balance it has more negatives than positives, for example Dawkins claims religion generally promotes evil rather than good behaviour in its adherents;

(iv) Therefore religion is unnecessary and in fact harmful to humanity and we would be better off without it.

So, at this point in the book one can see Dawkins looking back, as it were, at organised religion and belief in God and asking something like “if there is no God, then what can fill the ‘God shaped hole’ in every human being?”

Dawkins then seeks for human needs that delineate this God shaped hole and identifies the following four main roles which, in his opinion, religion has traditionally filled in human life:

1. Explanation – Religion attempts to explain our existence and the universe in which we live;

2. Exhortation – Religion exhorts, encourages, nags, even perhaps sometimes orders the human being to behave morally, that is to strive to be good;

3. Consolation – Religion consoles the human being for suffering and apparent injustice in life; and

4. Inspiration – Religion has inspired human beings to live fulfilled, meaningful and satisfying lives

Looking back with Dawkins at this point, we may be able to see that his book is structured broadly along these lines to enable Dawkins to address these areas of human need. Indeed, the following is one way we could classify the chapters of the book along these lines:

Introduction – What is the book about, why was it written?
Preface
Chapter 1 – A Deeply Religious Non-Believer

Explanation – Why scientifically based atheism is the only rational world view.
Chapter 2 – The God Hypothesis
Chapter 3 – Arguments for God’s Existence
Chapter 4 – Why there almost certainly is no God

Exhortation – Why religion is (at best) irrelevant to human morality.
Chapter 5 – The roots of religion
Chapter 6 – The roots of morality: why are we good?
Chapter 7 – The ‘Good’ Book and the changing moral Zeitgeist

Consolation and Inspiration – What can console us and inspire us in everyday life if there is no belief in God and no religion?
Chapter 8 – What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?
Chapter 9 – Childhood, abuse and religion
Chapter 10 – A much needed gap?

In Chapter 10, Dawkins asserts that he has already addressed how the world view he is promoting based on atheism, science and Darwinism can meet human needs in the areas of Explanation and Exhortation – the kinds of answers he offers should be obvious from the above.

He then moves on to the more difficult areas of Consolation and Inspiration.

Dawkins first addresses Consolation – here, he identifies two different kinds of consolation:

Physical Consolation – here, Dawkins admits that merely having the thought of an (imaginary) comforting God could have a real physical effect, similar to the effect the embrace of a real person or a swig of the brandy in the cask around the neck of a St. Bernard’s dog in the snow might have. Dawkins answers this with a single sentence “But of course scientific medicine can also offer comfort – usually more effectively than brandy”.

Non-physical (“Type 2”) Consolation – here, Dawkins devotes several pages to displaying alleged absurdities and inconsistencies in religions thought and behaviour through the ages. At the end of all this he asks “Is it a similar infantilism that really lies behind the ‘need’ for God?” Then he offers the following paragraph:

“The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed. If science gives consolation of a non-material kind, it merges into my final topic, inspiration.”

All of the above should make it clear that Dawkins is trying his level best in this book to break down the “problem” (religion and belief in God) into discrete parts and address each one separately. It is interesting that it is only in the final chapter, where he wishes to share with the reader what consoles him and gives him inspiration, that he recognizes that this approach becomes unsatisfactory.

And here is where he becomes most human – for example:

“If the demise of God will leave a gap, different people will fill it in different ways. My way includes a good dose of science, the honest and systematic endeavour to find out the truth about the real world.”

Dawkins then leads on to a final metaphor – in a concluding section titled “The Mother of all Burkas” he begins:

“One of the unhappiest spectacles to be seen on our streets today is the image of a woman swathed in shapeless black from head to toe, peering out at the world through a tiny slit. … I want to use the narrow slit in the veil [the burka] as a symbol…”

Here Dawkins opens up and shows us where his sense of wonder is, what he values in life… for he wants us to see the burka as a symbol of the human being’s world view without science. But science, in Dawkins’ opinion, can free us from this “mother of all burkas”:

“What science does for us is widen the window. It opens up so wide that the imprisoning black garment drops away almost completely, exposing our senses to airy and exhilarating freedom.”

From here, he wanders into the more speculative, philosophical realms of science: strolling from quantum theory to evolution and then back to the picture of the “burka” as a representation of the possible limitations of our thinking because of our position in the universe, then to the observation that we are not the matter that momentarily makes up our bodies, then to the idea that a miracle is just an extremely improbable event, then to touch on the idea of a “multiverse” or “spectrum of possible universes”. His rational approach is abandoned as he delights in the possibilities of knowing things more truly.

To quote Dawkins again, getting near the end of the book now:

“We are liberated by calculation and reason to visit regions of possibility that once seemed out of bounds or inhabited by dragons.”

Having traveled thus far with an active and passionate mind, it’s unlikely we will have agreed with everything he has asserted. Possibly we don’t believe, as he seems to, that everything is accessible to understanding using calculation, statistics, experimentation and reason. Possibly we don’t agree with his assertion that God almost certainly doesn’t exist. Perhaps we may think the way he has split the “God problem” up into supposedly logical pieces and then solved each one without any connection to the other is unfair. Perhaps we think he tends to mock and dismiss things he doesn’t understand sometimes. Perhaps we believe Dawkins has not really grasped the essence of spiritual belief, or that the religion and the God he discredits and disproves are just “straw men” that he has set up for his own target practice. Perhaps we believe his own passionate adherence to Darwinism could constitute his own “burka” or “meme” he has yet to throw off. And so on.

But perhaps these reservations are not as important when at the end of all this, Dawkins closes with the following memorable question:

“Could we, by training and practice, emancipate ourselves…, tear off our black burka, and achieve some sort of intuitive – as well as just mathematical – understanding of the very small, the very large, and the very fast? I genuinely don’t know the answer, but I am thrilled to be alive at a time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.”

This surely is a perspective that reaffirms the position of the human being in the cosmos and expresses faith in our ability to understand (though perhaps here I can hear a little voice in my head whispering: ‘Richard, haven’t you ever wondered whether there might be more in heaven and earth for human beings to understand than just ‘the very small, the very large and the very fast’?”).

It matters not… Dawkins stands up for the human being who strives to understand, to observe, to think, to reason to the best of his or her ability. Perhaps one day we will all be able to throw off our burkas and recognise that we were all, atheists and creationists, scientists and priests, philosophers and poets, striving by different paths for knowledge of the one reality. Perhaps one day.

Somebody told me recently that some scientists are saying that Dawkins has said “the last word” on evolution and creation. Having read this book, I doubt that Dawkins himself would agree with this statement – his faith is in something bigger than Richard Dawkins.

While I and many others will not agree with everything Dawkins says in this book, I am happy to live at a time and in a place where a book like this, whatever its shortcomings, can be freely distributed, read and discussed along with many others – may it continue to be so, and may we all continue to strive in our own way to “tear off our burkas!”

[northjetty]

Excellent post Tim We use Dawkins on the main site for evolutionary commentary and so fourth. I've been involved in some debating over "The God Delusion" book in a religious formatted forum. I agree with it for the most part, but I feel that the 'addition' of a 'space wave knowledge' could possibly do it some justice with respect to the theist's. Dawkins seems to be dreaming of the day that we can have the sort of 'advancements' that we have right now, via 'wave physics'. The time is right now actually. Any human conception of a 'God', has to come to the level of 'space waves' and there 'interconnected' expanses of 'information and energy exchange' at some point. This is a 'primary consideration' in furthering Dawkins world view. The theist's certainly hate his guts right now. They call him a fundamentalist, and an extremist. When the theist's are in the majority in the world, they are then and therefore a major consideration in process of global unity, as I'm sure we agree. They have to see a 'necessary' place for the 'God belief' coming through the science.

I'm hoping to see this cosmology open up the 'central way' where the two worlds can merge and meet as one. It could be said that The 'spirit' of space is it's 'motion', it's 'vibration'. This is very real, this is science, this is also a way that people can imagine and believe in something, yet be rooted in 'scientific truth' all the while. Hell, the way I see it they can imagine the 'vibration of space' to mean just about anything. They can personify it, literalize it, do whatever they want with it, because ultimately it's the 'truth' of our existence. If the cosmology doesn't directly threaten the ability to believe in something eternal and interconnected, then it will obviously be accepted on a broader scale than trying to run a 'holocaust' on belief.

This wsm physics has an intricate understanding of 'energy and information exchange' and 'interconnection between all things'. This is very easily integrated into peoples existing belief's. I don't think that the wsm cosmology is nearly as threatening to peoples personal belief's as is Dawkins 'point particle/closed system universe' understandings of religion and science. It's lacks in the 'necessary connections' that we are discovering now through the wsm. 'God' is a word that we use in this cosmology and it's reference is to 'eternal space', the 'one' thing that exists that is in everything. This is a pretty unifying cosmology that people of belief should find easier to come to terms with. The only 'delusion' here, is to get off thinking that there is something that exists 'outside of space', and is 'not space'. Being that it's eternal, there is no 'outside of space', or 'beyond space'. Because of the 'closed universe' model, people have become accustomed to thinking that God must be 'outside of the universe', out in the 'mystery of the beyond'. The 'mystery' here, thus the 'God', can only be 'space', the eternal existent in motion that has created every form and image that exists.

north jetty/the cosmos

[Steve Anthony]

Hi,

Nothing anyone says on the subject of 'God' has any meaning whatsoever, unless you can define what 'God' is. WSM does that on a Universal scale. They are essentially the same thing. However, there is also the question of our personal connection to 'it', which is all other aspects of Reality. And WSM does that too! - In fact, it IS that.

I think Richard Dawkins attempts to do that, but is without the essential ingredient of WSM to back him up, and it comes across as another arrogant 'anti-religionist'.

I would say that it is not so much a 'delusion' as a 'mis-interpretation'.

Also, 'organised religion' has very little to do with religion (our personal interconnection with the rest of existence), but an awful lot to do with 'organisation'.


Steve.

[nisarga]

Hey Steve,

Are you familiar with this story?

Two men are strolling along, one of which is the Devil; a third man is walking a ways ahead of them. The man in front stops, bends down and picks something up, and then continues on.

The two men behind see this, and the man asks the Devil, "What do you suppose he found?" The devil says, "Why, he found the truth." So the first man asked, "But isn't that bad for your business?" And the Devil said, "Oh no, not at all. I'm going to help him organize it."

Namaste'
James

[northjetty]

That abruptly summarizes organised religion now doesn't it.

north jetty/the cosmos

[Rob Peritz]

Some thought on the subject of Organized Religion

When Humanity first began to question existence there was so much that was unknown. There was a mystery to existence that appeared to be organized or designed. It was assumed that there had to be a designer or organizer behind the scenes. We gave this invisible manager of the details a name and I assume that this is how humanity came up with the God concept. Fear of the unknown became fear of, the God, and the early leaders of men used this fear against us, to control us. This has continued throughout human history.

Contrary to ancient myth and imagined meetings with, the God, it is unfortunate for humanity that there was no instruction manual, no cosmic library, no teacher to explain the in’s and out’s of existence. Had there been a teacher on the magnitude of, the God, I suspect that fear of the unknown would have been eliminated long ago. So, the noticeable connection of one thing to another would simply require the passage of time for humanity to fully understand it and also to come to know that which is unknown as well as to solve the mystery behind the apparent organization of existence.

After several steps forward and as many steps back humanity survived the passage of time...

Organized Religion would have us give up our future out of fear of the unknown. Taken to its proclaimed conclusion this world will be destroyed by, the God, but actually what the religious leaders and their fanatic followers are doing is pushing humanity to the brink of global suicide... Don’t be fooled, humanity is destroying this world. It is our own fear that is destroying us and this world, not some invisible loving God.

We stand at the crossroads...

This is the only world that we can survive on. There is no future here for humanity if we do not overcome our fear of the unknown...

There is no such thing as death, only change. We do not die we simply change form. But to destroy the opportunity for future entities to experience this world because we are afraid is crazy.

Think of it this way, If we allow organized religion to destroy this world humanity will never have the opportunity to write an instruction manual that explains the in’s and out’s of existence to fledgling entities who find themselves in this existence alone and afraid and in need of some comfort in an oftentimes harsh and cruel reality.

To become a teacher and caretaker on the magnitude of, the God, should be our goal now that we know that the only thing to fear is fear itself...

I am an optimist, a romantic, a philosopher, a father, a husband, a son, a brother, a friend, a human. I am connected to all that exists. I am not alone, I am not afraid.
~rob

[northjetty]

Rob, that just about hit the nail on the head. We now have taken the "unknown universe" and made it known, via space waves. Oddly, I've found in conversing that some people have a tendency to fear the 'known' as it turns out. A lot of them don't want to believe that the 'unknown' is 'knowable'. We now have to face a fear of the 'known', mostly by the post-modern academia, in terms of science discovering the 'interconnected relationship between all things'. There seems to be a fear of measuring the electron and making it 'known'.

This should be overcome by the question of 'what is there to fear anyway' since there is only 'space waves' in existence and we are the space waves that do exist, and that we can accurately measure now. The scary 'unknown God', that 'moves and combines things' has been all of us all the while. It's funny how space 'moves and combines things' in order for us to 'evolve' into this 'form', which inturn goes around 'moving and combining things'. We, this form of space, 'move and combine things' into automobiles, planes, skyscrapers, Guns, explosives, drugs, swords, knives, and just about anything that people are afraid of these days.

So really, as we've mentioned in the past, 'space' has been doing all of the 'moving and combining' that we do through 'us' all the while. Why is 'space' so 'self-destructive' in it's 'moving and combining' activities? Probably because it hasn't 'realized itself' fully here on the planet. Now that 'space' is 'self-realizing' through physical self knowledge, and seeing 'itself', the one, here among the 'many', through our gained physical knowledge, perhaps the 'moving and combining' will take on a different approach entirely, a less self-destructive approach perhaps?

That would be a more advanced space dwelling society for sure. I think that you're on point with your optimism Rob. This seems to be what Dawkins wants to see happen in the long run. I wonder if he would be willing abandon our long held 'preconceived' point particle physics and turn his attention to our new wave physics? This is what he certainly needs in order to take on the 'mystery of the universe'. But he would have no choice but to admit an error on his big bang cosmological approaches in the past, and then re-direct his attention towards an eternal space in motion, non-origin.

What a dilemma! A certain degree of humility is required on his part now to gain the 'ultimate truth of the cosmos' and essentially the 'truth of self' that he seems to be searching for. It seems like it is the very 'message of deception' to have us believing that we can never know the 'truth' about 'ourselves' and the 'cosmos' of which we are. From this view, the 'deception of our senses' is at work in both our sciences and our religions, as we've discussed in the past. We here at the space and motion forum stand to 'correct' the deceptive senses, as you've suggested. That certainly puts all of us here on the forum at 'odds' with our 'internal senses of deception' that currently plague human thought and conceptualization. This is no conspiracy of course, this is simply the natural deceptive senses that exist 'of space', and we appear to be getting past them at this point in our evolution. I have an optimism about these new understandings as well, and I do feel that we've gained considerable ground in terms of finally realizing the truth.



north jetty/the cosmos

[Steve Anthony]

[Rob Peritz]

Well said my friends.
Perhaps we should work on a one page letter. Address it to the religious mass majority. We can distribute it via e-mail with a note to pass it along for the good of humanity and this world. Of course this is already being done with all sorts of ideas and such. I get forwarded e-mail all the time, most of it is junk...

If you think that this is a good idea then let us begin a post and thread that unites our best ideas and then shave the wording down with Ockham's razor. We can copy and paste the best of what we have written and spread the word...

We can write several open letters as time passes and let them go like messages in a bottle.

If we keep the letters short (one page) and easy to understand we may help to attract a few more people to the Spaceandmotion.com website. Thus to the truth, the Dynamic Unity of Reality and to the Wave Structure of Matter.
~rob

[northjetty]

Here's a quote that goes along with the subject matter of this thread. This coming from a man that is trying to expose the 'deceptive factor' of how our organized institutional leadership have been promoting the mythological symbols of our religions, which have then led to confusion that has become associated between science and religion.


" Many of the elements of the bible seem 'lifeless and unbelievable' because they have been regarded as HISTORICAL FACTS instead of 'metaphorical representations' of SPIRITUAL REALITIES. They have been applied in a 'concrete way' to great figures, such as moses and john the baptist, as if they were 'real-time accounts' of their actions. That this heavy emphasis on the 'historical' rather than the 'spiritual' should have continued into the twenty-first century illustrates the lag-time that the 'leaders of institutional religions' have allowed to open up between their 'static ideas' and the 'rapidly developing understandings of solid scholarship'.

There is little evident progress in formal religious teaching-it fails to incorporate or even to acknowledge the advances in research that allow us to read with renewed understanding the great documents and traditions of the dominant Western religions. The 'spiritual needs' of people are 'neglected' by 'religious leaders' who insist on reasserting the 'historical-factual' character of religious METAPHORS, thereby DISTORTING and DEBASING their meaning...the tragic consequences that follow when, for the best of intentions and the worst of reasons, 'men battle against truth to defend their outdated belief's'. Thus institutional religious leaders unnecessarily embrace a 'frail caricature of religion' which is easily demolished by popular lecturers, totally out of their depths in 'theology', such as the late astronomer Carl Sagan.
Men mount expensive expeditions to locate the remains of Noah's ark on Mt. Ararat but, of course, they never find it. They believe that they have just missed it for the ark must have 'literally existed'. The ark, however, can be found easily and without travel by those who understand that it is a 'mythological vessel' in an extraordinary story whose point is 'not historical documentation' but SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT. To appreciate Genesis as myth is not to destroy that book but to discover again its spiritual vitality and relevance."-Eugene Kennedy, Ph.D.


This is the direction that world is headed. We know, at least in the intellectual circles, where the problem with our religions is located. Now, in certain intellectual circles, we know where our problem with science is located. In both cases, the problem is in following our deceptive senses that tell us that things are not the same, A is not B. The mythologies are trying to tell us that A is B, and so is our physics nowadays by showing that 'space is space'. I'm game for sending out an E-mail, count me in.

north jetty/the cosmos

[haselhurst]

Hi All,
Great posts.

"The 'spiritual needs' of people are 'neglected' by 'religious leaders' who insist on reasserting the 'historical-factual' character of religious METAPHORS, thereby DISTORTING and DEBASING their meaning...the tragic consequences that follow when, for the best of intentions and the worst of reasons, 'men battle against truth to defend their outdated belief's'."


That sums up the problem for humanity pretty dam well I think.

A letter is great.

Also!!

How about thinking about content you can write for spaceandmotion website? I desperately need help. My work is going well - but a lot of time recently has been diverted to helping Karene get over the hump with our sexuality pages (which are beautiful and have some great research info).

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/sex/evolution-female-sexuality.htm


So still a few week away from new layout, and simple science section completed (which I think is very important - as its central emphasis is that we can deduce the most simple science theory of reality (WSM in Space) - then we can deduce from WSM that it works.
The point is that there are no opinions (and it is opinions that are destroying our planet!)

We also have the second 'completed articles' section of this forum to complete - you are welcome / encouraged to add stuff there as you come across it - I will do some over the next 2 moths.

Karene and i are both working hard.
So please excuse me if I am a bit abrupt at times (or even irritable!). I am a bit obsessive and I am trying to get over my own battles with this website (conquer the beast) - to present WSM in a simple sensible obvious way.

Best to all,
Geoff

PS - Tim, great post on the god delusion. I would really like to be able to use an edited version of it on our spaceandmotion website - and i would love you (and others) to think about other essays you can write that I can put on site.
It is silly that Karene and i work on site when there is much more talent here with you guys. So help us - the site ranks well - your work will be read!

[Tim Bourke]

Hi Geoff and all,

Thanks for taking the time to read my article and for your very interesting comments.

Geoff - if you wish to edit the article and post it somewhere else that's fine, I'm glad to think that there's something there that you see is of value to the website - I only ask that you give me the chance to comment on your changes before you post the edited version.

Regards,
Tim Bourke

[haselhurst]

Thanks Tim. I will post a copy here for your comments before putting on website.
Keep up the good work!
Geoff