The doctrine of man
Still reading Richard Dawkins’ book…
Well chapter two sure starts off with a bang (I couldn’t resist the pun). Dawkins violently dishes out a string of adjectives describing who God (supposedly) is. The rant, several lines in length, is all one sentence. Are you ready?…
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, capriously malevolent bully. -Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (p. 31)
I have read the entire Bible cover to cover. Dawkins’ assesment seriously discredits him as a researcher and author. His attempt to rip verses severely out of context, pervert their meaning and piece them together for his own cause, may only be obvious to some. Unfortunately, many of his target readers have probably not read much of the Bible and they just eat up what Dawkins spoons out.
I have to wonder how Dawkins would describe humans? I imagine he’d be considerably gracious.
If the above quote by Dawkins were attributed to humans, than I would whole heartedly subscribe to it. If our parents disciplined us, then we hopefully have learned some manners. But who of us ever needed to learn how to do wrong? Seriously, how many children do you know readily admit their fault? Children know when they are in trouble, and they’ll do what they can to get away with it and escape discipline. And what child isn’t familiar with justice? From a very young age they know too well when they have been “stiffed”. They know it almost instinctively and scream, “THAT’S NOT FAIR!” We still scream that slogan. This isn’t learned behavior, it’s in us from the very beginning. We are selfish and proud beings dead in our sin. Doing right, however, is something we constantly battle. It goes against our nature.
If you don’t believe me just watch how people drive on the road! If THAT isn’t enough…listen to the verbal lashings we give each other when we lose control of our tongue. Notice how horribly we mistreat those we love after a bad day at work. Observe the madness on black Friday when shoppers trample each other for a hot item. See how we fight our pride when we know we are wrong and need to apologize. Look how easily we lose our patience when we’ve been wronged, or EVEN just merely inconvenienced!–a telemarketer calls, a retailer loses our order, we get stuck behind a slow bus, my burger is missing the fixings, someone cuts in line, the world doesn’t bow to ME!
To think we can live moral lives on our own is like the blind leading the blind. It is not our nature to love, serve or do what is right. If it was our nature, it would come easy for us. Forgiveness would be our first impulse and we’d have to count to ten to get mad!
All of us ponder the question “why does God allow bad things to happen?” We do it ourselves! We deserve to be damned. If left alone we’d destroy ourselves completely. God is not oblidged to redeem us. The question ought to be, why (WHY!) would God restrain evil? WHY does He allow good to happen to us? WHY does He, in His great mercy, spare us from what we justly deserve?
16 May 2008 at 6:06 am
First off, that passage was written largely for comedic value. Although I don’t think he would disagree at all that the statement is nonetheless true. I don’t have my Bible with me as I sent it home with most of my other stuff last weekend, so I can’t look up the verses that offend me most. I do know that Deuteronomy as a whole I find extremely repulsive. It is often said in atheist circles “I am an atheist specifically because I have read the Bible.”
I’ll not comment on the rest because I have found discussions on where morality comes from with believers to be extremely frustrating for all involved and for the most part unfruitful, over than to say that I think you are guilty of constructing a huge straw man. Certainly he (and I am leery of doing this, cause I start to sound like I’m trying to defend my “god figure” or something, but hey, you made the charges) has heavy criticisms for human beings. I think he would say (and I agree) that humans are certainly capable of doing great good, but we have evolutionary roots in selfish behavior, as well as in altruistic behavior, for which I recommend Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, and as such the internal struggle over the rather squishy concept of morality will always exist, and frequently we will get it wrong. We are the products of a biological process prone to creating organisms with major flaws, and human injustice is definitely a big one.