Chp 5 – The God Delusion – The roots of religion – my initial thoughts

Chp 5 – The God Delusion – The roots of religion – my initial thoughts

This chapter is essentially Professor Dawkins’ Darwinian explanation as to why religion is so ubiquitous in the sense that there must have been a Darwinian benefit of it not to say that this means that God exists.

As an overall remark, I found this chapter to be weak insofar as it is more of guess work by Professor Dawkins as he tries to provide a Darwinian explanation for religion. I can understand the argument that children have learnt to follow the advice of their parents and are therefore inclined to follow whatever their parents tell them BUT this doesn’t explain why parents would pass on religious beliefs in the first place.  If Professor Dawkins is explaining the roots it seems he didn’t cover the seed. In Professor Dawkins own style I think he would describe the by-product of an unknown something else argument as a cop-out. 

I also thought that if everything is the product of Darwinian evolution, including religion, then isn’t it futile to protest about it? I suppose it is a bit like a creature that is protesting during the evolution of its eye. If Darwinian evolution by natural selection will produce an eye then there’s not much point protesting about it? Why protest about the belief of God if it came about through Darwinian evolution by natural selection? If it has no Darwinian benefit won't it become extinct?

Professor Dawkins notes that we observe people who hold religious beliefs that flatly contradict demonstrable scientific facts – I don’t see how this statement applies to Islam – what scientific facts does Islam contradict? Why does Professor Dawkins refer to "demonstrable" facts and not just facts? I guess Professor Dawkins is referring to Darwinian evolution here which he cannot say is a scientific fact (but he believes it to be) so refers to it as a demonstrable fact (without explaining the shortcomings of the demonstrable aspects).

I also note Professor Dawkins’ comment that “Natural selection “makes no intuitive sense””. I don’t see how he can say this and still say that belief in God (even say the Einsteinian God) is delusional.

With regard to the comment that children are intuitively theists – this complies with Islamic thinking regarding “fitrah” that children are born with a natural belief in God.  Certainly Professor Dawkins seems to acknowledge that the human is predisposed to believe in a God so again I question the very title of his book – The God Delusion.

I enjoyed the explanation of “stances” as to how humans make decisions and the explanation of “intentional stance” whereby the human short cuts its decision making process. I imagine that this is how most people come to the decision that they believe in God. I don’t see how belief can easily come about through study – I would imagine that belief starts as an inkling – our innate dualism as Professor Dawkins remarks. 

I can certainly see how this chapter is useful to explain how religions can start up – but I felt that the chapter failed to establish how we seem to be predisposed to believe in God in the first place. What is the Darwinian explanation of this? Also, I felt that you can dream up Darwinian explanations for anything – this is fine but should not be confused with science in the sense that such explanations are not supported by the scientific method.

Having said all of that, I enjoyed the chapter a great deal and must acknowledge that it is thought provoking.