Richard Dawkins and the God of the Old Testament

[Jenny A]

Richard Dawkins undoubtedly spoke for many when he wrote:

"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."

Indeed.  The god of the OT is all of those things though the the misogynistic homophobic part is really just a footnote compared to the racism and genocide.

Devastating stuff at first blush. But Dr. Benjamin Wiker takes Dawkins' ideas and goes a little deeper with them. Wiker asks:

Suppose upon reading his devastating attack on the God of the Old Testament, we would reject the Bible and embrace Dawkins' atheism—exactly what Dawkins wishes to be the effect on readers. What then? Would we be any better off?

Yep.  Not taking our morals from an obviously "a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully," is certainly a step forward.   If someone's role model and mentor is Hitler, don't you think giving up Hitler is step forward even if they don't replace Hitler with anyone else?  Unless they are worse than Hitler themselves, it has to be a step up. 

Wiker notes that in coming over to the atheist side, we face a number of new problems that arise.

First of all, as he himself admits in his book River out of Eden, in coming over to Dawkins' side, we have thereby embraced a cosmos indifferent to good or evil. As a consequence, we immediately face a dilemma: we have no moral grounds for condemning the actions of God (He doesn't exist) or the characters in the Bible (good and evil don't exist). Since God doesn't exist, there is no reason to work up a froth of indignation against Him, anymore than against the lunkheaded Zeus in Homer's Iliad.

Not really.  We understand that cosmos is indifferent to good and evil.  And it is.  Frankly, everything we know except humans and perhaps some very intelligent animals is indifferent to good and evil.  The stars, gravity, the weather, disease, evolution, the big bang, etc. are all amoral.

But humans are moral.  Morality is a human concept, if not invented by, at least strongly felt by virtually all humans (sociopaths excepted).   And while evolution itself is amoral, it is the means by which humans developed empathy, cooperation, socialness, hierarchy, and as consequence morality.  Most social animals have some rudimentary rules that are a kind of morality having to do with care of young and treatment of each other.  Even solitary, territorial animals often limit intra-species violence to avoid serious injury or death.  Why natural selection would favor a species that doesn't kill each other off except in extreme circumstances is fairly obvious, as a species that mass murdered regularly wouldn't survive long.

Yet now another, more amusing problem arises for Dawkins as the champion of Darwinism today. It would seem that a good many of the complaints made by Dawkins against the God of the Old Testament could with equal justice be made against natural selection itself. To say the least, that puts himself in a paradoxical position.

Not really.  Natural selection is not a moral thing.  It is in fact amoral.  Nor is it a being. Unlike the god, it isn't sentient and has no motives.  It isn't really even a thing.  It's merely a description of way species evolve, just as gravity is a description of the way mass attracts.  No one worships natural selection anymore than anyone worships gravity.  And taking one's morals from the rules of evolution isn't an idea proposed by either Dawkins or anyone else I've ever met.  Morality is an evolved trait of humans, but morality is not a reflection of the laws of evolution any more than another evolved trait (really all traits).  Is green a reflection of the laws of evolution?  Green is an evolved trait.  Many plants are green.  And like greeness, not everything created by evolution is morally aware.

Applying the principles and logic of natural selection to an "Evolution God", Wiker asks a number of questions:

...many sociologists of religion argue that primitive people tend to fashion their notions of the gods according to the way they experience nature, as nature deified .... What would evolution look like if we tried to deify evolution's principles?

Would the Evolution God (EG) be "unjust" in its callous indifference "to all suffering," and supremely so, for continually picking off the weak and sickly?

Would EG be an "unforgiving control-freak," "megalomaniacal," and "petty" since (as Darwin stated), "It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relations to its organic and inorganic conditions of life"?

Would EG be "sadomasochistic" in his use of suffering, destruction, and death as the means to create new forms of life? A "capriciously malevolent bully" in his "lacking all purpose" and being "callous"? A "bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser," "genocidal," and "racist" in his continually pitting one species population against another in severe struggle, the struggles among humans taking place between tribe and tribe, race and race? And what adjective would describe EG, who uses these deadly struggles as the very vehicle responsible for the upward climb of human evolution?

Once again evolution is amoral.  It is irrelevant to the question of morality, except to explain how humans and perhaps a few other species became moral.  But the rules of evolution are no more moral than they are fast, green, carnivorous, warmblooded, or egg laying.  

So we've rejected the God of the Old Testament for Dawkins' atheistic account of evolution, only to find out that many of the traits Dawkins marked as repugnant are ensconced in natural selection (except that now, as a new and even more unfortunate kind of Job, we have no one against whom to complain).

Well, welcome to reality.  We have no one to complain to.  Nature and the universe is what it is.  At least we can avoid worshiping it and rather approach our problems from the standpoint of fact rather than wishful thinking or fear of bogymen.

Clearly, a deified Evolution is no less objectionable than the God of the Old Testament. But what of the people of the OT, the Jews themselves? Wiker notes:

On Dawkins' own grounds, it would be hard to imagine a people who more assiduously pursued a better set of evolutionary strategies for ensuring that its gene pool was carried forward, undiluted by rival tribes and races, than the ancient Jews. They were genetic geniuses!

Really?  Really?  Culturally they are still with us.  Genetically, not so sure.  To the extent there are still Jews there are still Greeks, Egyptians, Romans (now called Italians), Germans, British, and many others. And even if they were?  What then?  Does their success mean that their belief in god is correct?  Or merely that their belief and it's accompanying customs are a successful kind of culture?

Consequently, it seems to me that the atheists who reject the God of the OT on moral grounds are hoisted by their own petard. As Wiker concludes:

What, then, is left of Dawkins' case against the God of the Old Testament? Nothing at all.

Seriously?  The god of the OT is immoral.  Not amoral, but immoral.  So much so that if he were a person, he'd be more infamous than Hitler.That's a very good reason for not worshiping god.  It has nothing to do with whether he exists.    That's quite different from evolution which is amoral. It is not malicious because it is not sentient.  It just is.  Which is a very good reason for not worshiping evolution.  And as far as I know, no one does worship evolution.