Dawkins and the morality of the bible.(Religion)

MOST OF THE PUBLISHED responses to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins have focused on his atheism, and have either given general support to his ideas or else dismissed them as extreme and simplistic. They have not given much attention to something I think is significant in the book, namely its clear and forceful criticism of the morality of aspects of major religions, including Christianity and Judaism, criticism that deserves to be taken seriously by reasonable adherents of these religions.

I see this as a notable omission. Many of the central stories of the Bible attribute to God and God's followers actions of grossly immoral violence. I do not believe the immorality in these stories has been adequately recognised by Christians and Jews; and in this article, I argue that this has serious implications and should be remedied.

Another notable omission from responses to the book is any reasoned identification of weaknesses in Dawkins' arguments for atheism; and in this article I also set out what I see as the three main weaknesses of his position. I will start with this, to make it clear that my concern about the morality of the Bible is associated with respect for religion, not opposition to it.

WHERE DAWKINS IS WRONG

DAWKINS (pages 13-14) adopts the following statement of atheistic belief by Julian Baggini: "Although there is only one kind of stuff in the universe and it is physical, out of this stuff comes minds, beauty, emotions, moral values--in short, the full gamut of phenomena that gives richness to human life." He goes on to assert his belief that "there is nothing beyond the natural physical world".

Dawkins offers an evolutionary explanation for our moral values in terms of the advantages, for survival and reproduction of genes, of being prepared to adopt and follow moral opinions and attitudes. But as Dawkins himself seems to recognise (270-72), to give an explanation of moral opinions and attitudes does not provide any justification for them. Dawkins passes moral judgments, for example about the God of the Old Testament (227-50), in such a way as to suggest that his moral judgments are not mere opinions but have objective truth or validity; but what he does not see, or does not acknowledge, is that this requires an appeal to something beyond the physical and beyond evolutionary explanations.

The question of whether moral judgments have any objective truth or validity is a controversial philosophical issue; but I firmly believe that at least some conduct is objectively wrong. This is partly because of the universality of appeals to right and wrong, partly because of other reasons I will not go into here, and partly because I cannot accept that my belief that some conduct is wrong is just an opinion with no better foundation than evolutionary selection or culture. To take an extreme example, I believe that, quite apart from what the law may say, it is wrong to torture a child for amusement. I cannot believe this is just an opinion, and that all that could be said against someone who does such a thing and sees nothing wrong in it is that they are breaking the law, and their genes or culture must be different from mine and those of most people I know. In relation to conduct as appalling as that, wrongness is I believe a matter of undeniable truth; and I challenge anyone who disputes this to put their hand on their heart and say, no, its wrongness is only a matter of opinion which can be explained by evolution and culture but has no other justification.