By Douglas Anele

Dawkins discussed an experiment led by Dr. Herbert Benson and funded by the Templeton Foundation, to test whether praying for sick people actually improves their health (p. 86-88). The results showed that there was no measurable difference between the recovery rate of those that received intercessory prayers and those that didn’t. But there was a difference between patients who knew that they had been prayed for and those who did not know one way or the other: the former group suffered significantly more complications than the latter.

Probably, according to Dawkins, the sick patients who knew that they were being prayed for experienced additional stress as a result of what the experimenters called “performance anxiety” (p. 88). Predictably, theologians and religious leaders condemned the experiment and rejected the conclusion drawn from it, based on the tendentious argument that supernatural interventions are by definition beyond the reach of science.

Certainly, if the outcome had been positive, believers would have hailed it as a scientific proof that God exists and can answer prayers. It is ironic and hypocritical that when the result of scientific research appears to support religious doctrines, religious apologists claim it as evidence of the truth of religion, but when such result contradicts theological dogma, as virtually all such results tend to do, it is rejected on the ground that science cannot adjudicate on faith.

Dawkins rejected the idea of appeasing religionists who accept, or are sympathetic to, evolution, because the issue is not just about creationism versus the theory of evolution; it is about superstition and rationalism. Therefore, it is imperative that the absurdities of religion must be exposed through merciless criticism. In Chapter 3, reasons usually presented for belief in the existence of God were dissected. The cosmological, ontological and teleological arguments were examined and rejected as fallacious.

Generally, the cosmological argument, irrespective of its diverse formulations, relies on the notion of regress, and invokes God to terminate it. However, there is nothing in the argument which demonstrates that the alleged supernatural terminator has all the attributes usually attributed it – omnipotence, omniscience, and other human qualities such as creativity, moral goodness, listening and responding to prayers, and so on. The ontological argument is pure hogwash as well, and although some apologists still recycle it, the “proof” has been definitely laid to rest by philosophers such as David Hume (1711-1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

The most celebrated version of the argument is ascribed to St. Anselm of Canterbury (1078). In a nutshell, Anselm argued that everyone, including the atheist, can conceive of a being greater than which nothing can be conceived. But such a being, to be the greatest possible being, must exist, since if it were non-existent, then it would not be the greatest possible being. Therefore, God exists. But, as Dawkins shrewdly remarks, such reasoning which concludes by affirming the existence of anything without feeding in a single piece of data from the real world is dubious.

Obviously, an object or entity either exists or does not exist. Thus, existence is not a predicate that can be added to or subtracted to objects, whether real or imagined, in a manner that makes a real difference ontologically (p. 107). Other attempts to prove God’s existence, such as arguments from beauty or art, argument from personal experience, argument from scripture and argument from admired scientists were discussed, but none of them withstood Dawkins’ criticism.

On the argument from personal (or so-called religious) experience, for instance, Dawkins asserted that the delusional and hallucinatory experiences that people interpret as encounters with the divine can be satisfactorily explained by the relevant disciplines of brain science, physiology etc.

Religious apologists rely almost exclusively on scripture as evidence; but the “holy books” contain an intimate blend of fact and fiction such that most times it is difficult to separate one from the other. Moreover, many people think that since great scientists and intellectuals such as Descartes, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Faraday and so on believed in God, that is enough reason for accepting that there is God. Dawkins quoted Bertrand Russell who disclosed that most intellectually eminent people disbelieve in Christian religion, but conceal the fact in public because they are scared of losing their means of livelihood (p. 123).

Before the 20th century, the majority of scientists professed religion. However, as Dawkins observed (p. 125) the number has dwindled significantly since then. A point often glossed over or unnoticed by apologists too eager to claim great scientific geniuses like Einstein as one of their own, is that contemporary scientists who claim to be religious basically conceive God in a pantheistic or metaphorical sense, that is, in the sense of God as the set of physical laws that govern the universe, which is far different from the anthropomorphic God of conventional religions. Nest, Dawkins reexamined Pascal’s Wager. You would recall that the eminent French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, has suggested that, however, long the odds against God’s existence might be, there is an even greater asymmetry for guessing wrong.

Consequently, it is better to believe that God exists, because if your belief is correct you will enjoy eternal life in heaven, and if it is wrong it won’t make any difference anyway. On the other hand, if you are an unbeliever and it turns out that God indeed exists, you are condemned to eternal damnation, whereas if you are right it makes no difference. Dawkins noted that Pascal’s wager is just an argument for feigning belief in God; it cannot actually convince anyone to believe if the person does not believe at all (p. 130). In any case Pascal, by concentrating on monotheism only, was too restrictive in his wager. What about other potential Gods and Goddesses on whom one might bet? Does this possibility not fatally impugn Pascal’s logic?

In fact, Pascal was wrong in thinking that it does not really matter if one believes in a God that later turns out to be fictitious; for one would have missed so many pleasurable experiences on account of religion. In the words of Dawkins “…it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on his not existing than if you bet on his existing and therefore squander your precious time on worshipping him, sacrificing to him, fighting and dying for him, etc.” (p. 132)

To be continued.