Professor Richard Dawkins: Religion Is A Barrier To Science

They want to be accepted as men of science, yet desire to be viewed as Christians. They believe in some type of god. Despite claims to the contrary, their belief conflicts with the Bible and its teaching about God as creator. The term “theistic evolution” is an

If humans are projecting their own natures onto the idea of God, what follows is that when we understand religion we are not coming to knowledge of God, but rather of ourselves. Feuerbach says this quite explicitly: "Consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. " What Feuerbach is getting at is that the idea of God is reducible to humankind, it is in essence anthropology. One leading scholar on Feuerbach, Eugene Kamenka, notes this reduction: "Feuerbach presents each of these reductions so forcefully, with so much rhetoric, that he appears to regard each of them as the true essence in terms of which the whole of religion should be explained." If religion is, strictly speaking, anthropology then we must, if we are religious persons, grow up and realize that God and man are identical.

In this case the Bible does not give a detailed explanation about how the world was created but only talks about who created the worlds, on the other hand science explains how old the earth is and how it was made. Like Augustine says that the two books of God cannot contradict each other, which means that conflicts arise when any of these Books are interpreted wrong. Conflict arise only if one has a presupposition that science is false, but making science and theology interact with each other through dialogue will shed some light on the truths that they claim.

Dawkins main argument towards religious leaders is much like scripture where people follow certain ones they deem good while avoiding bad examples such as Charles Manson. Dawkins has tried to disprove the most in his life is the church's views on evolution. Evolution is the idea that humanity has evolved from creatures before them and all other living things have done the same over time. This theory is backed by science; and is far from what Christianity claims which is the story of creation. Dawkins has had many scientific breakthroughs in his life, with the concept of memes and having his foundation where he was able to give scientist the funding they needed to further their research.

This is also an example of compare and contrast, he compares certainty with uncertantiy. By using these words he tells the reader that to be a scientist you need both certainty as well as uncertainty. The first paragraph also includes examples of logos; when Barry says “to be a scientist requires not only intelligence and curiosity, but passion, patience, creativity, self sufficient, and courage”. One can agree that the sentence is an example of logos because it is a logical statement that to be a scientist you have to have all of those traits. The whole passage is about scientists as well as scientific research, Barry writes with a purpose and the purpose is to tell people about scientists as well as what it takes.

Some major themes in her book are nature, religion and science, three things that can work together or clash. Some forward thinkers of the enlightenment used the new logical mathematics and science of nature to reaffirm the validity of religion. Only a god could organize such a world, whereas others feared they contradict each other and that is was these rules of nature that made it seem unnecessary to have a god in the first place. Something significant about this is that science is in Mary’s book and in her world, seen as simultaneously good and bad, Something to be revered and feared. Its powers can create awesome things or bring about destruction.

Such view can be applied not only to the supernatural, but also to science including ideas and explanations, since the taming of diversity and contradiction into one cognitive system takes place in both (Geest, 2005). Hence, the process of deriving explanations and emotional comfort from science can be seen as a secularized religious belief as well. Comparing sacraments to medical interventions, medicine becomes Christian virtues necessary to achieve spiritual health (Kraft, 2001). Another common signature of religion and medical science is their opposition to death.

We can view this in three different yet overlapping aspects. The first one is learning God’s creative secrets. In genetics, knowing or decoding the secrets of God’s creation and thus knowing how creatures are being created. The ‘mystery’ of life is being revealed. As thus, ‘we’ acquire ‘power’ like God.

Mindell tells us that “proponents of intelligent design claim that some features of life are too complicated to have evolved naturally. Although they emphasize that the designer is not necessarily God, proponents uniformly believe that God is the designer…” Mindell quotes law professor, Phillip Johnson, a proponent of intelligent design and author of Darwin on Trial: “Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.” “Intelligent design proponents clearly believe that God is an active participant in creation, though they are divided as to whether this activity takes the form of front-loading all outcomes at the Big Bang, episodic intervention of the progressive creationism form, or other, less well-articulated possibilities. Theistic evolution, however, is ruled out or at best viewed as an ill-advised accommodation.” Intelligent design can be seen as “faith” taking “fact” seriously by arguing that the complexity of origins cannot be adequately explained by evolutionists.

Eddington insisted his colleague to be open minded. According to him, a scientist should be open for every idea that has the possibility to exist. If a theory does not hold in a particular situation, even if the consequence affects religion, a scientist should find a way to disprove it and replace it with what it should be. Eddington, despite knowing that religion favors Newton’s theories and disproving it might destroy people’s faith, he still insisted on disproving Newton’s law and prove Einstein’s theory for the sake of scientific truth. Eddington, also despite the conflict between his country and Einstein’s country still continued to consult Einstein regarding the theory, even if to prove Einstein’s theory would bring humiliation to his country but an honor to Einstein’s country.

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion In Dawkin’s The God Delusion, he makes the obvious argument that this self-proclaimed ‘good god’ is not actually any real good–in fact–this god seems to be denying precisely what he is and does. Assuming that this higher power exists, the god of the Bible, specifically the god of the Old Testament, radiates evil. He allows, some would argue condones, slavery, rape, incest, baby killing and racial and sexual discrimination. Is it a coincidence that said beliefs and principles seem rather aptly fitting of the practices of that time period?

God in the Old Testament is perceived in many ways, from violent to loving, to unjust and fair-minded. David Lamb and Richard Dawkins both explain contradicting perceptions of God. Dawkins’ quote from, “The God Delusion” gives off a negative tone of God’s image. Dawkins uses words such as: misogynistic, megalomaniacal, and a capriciously malevolent bully.” While Lamb applauds Dawkins’ attempt to bring the issues up to the surface, Lamb believes that Dawkins exaggerates the negative side of God.