As previously mentioned, Channel 4 are showing the two part Richard Dawkin’s documentary The Root of all Evil, and I duly settled down to watch it having been looking forward to it since seeing the first trailers.
I was, I confess, a mite disappointed, primarily because of the polemic that would only serve to inflame opinion. Dawkins is well known as one of the most outspoken critics of religion in all its forms, but his consistent choice of emotive words (”herd” to describe a group of devotees at Lourdes, “animals” to describe humans in general, and so forth) was only going to put people from an undecided point of view, off of watching. I do confess I laughed more than perhaps I should have because it was - to me - entirely refreshing to have a well respected and outspoken atheist putting forward his views in such forthright terms.
His choice of interviewees was curious and certainly brave. Full marks are deserved for going in at the deep end! Leading evangelical’s (Ted Haggard) with a hotline to George W. Bush, Passionately vocal Muslim who was previously a Jewish settler, to name but the two most strident. Curious in both their rhetorical attacks on Dawkins was, I felt, their stunning naivety about who precisely they were talking to: Atheism aside, they failed to realise they were talking with one of the worlds most respected evolutionary biologists and practitioner of the scientific method they sought to discount. Or perhaps it’s me that’s being naive that they might treat a man such as Dawkins with respect. However, the editing managed to portray - to me - a stunning arrogance on the interviewees part, especially the evangelical who himself accused Dawkins of arrogance. However, it was clear there was never going to be any mutual understanding, and the bizarre eviction of Dawkins from the Church must have served only to enforce Dawkins’, and many viewers’ (including me) opinion that disagreement with those of strong “faith” is a lost cause.
Control of the classroom, with such nonsense as “Intelligent Design” is of course the new battle ground, and this selfsame arrogance is concerning given the control the religious seek to influence over the, until now, secular education system in the US. Concerning to myself as a Britain, is that in this country an “act of worship” is a legal requirement on a daily basis for state schools - something that should be changed in my view.
The portrayal of the free thinkers as a newly persecuted group was startling, especially from a country such as America that seeks to enforce an image of “land of the free”. Discrimination in more rural areas seems rife to anybody who is publicly atheist. To misuse a common phrase: You can have any faith you like, so long as it’s ours.
There has been other criticism, such as this piece from last Saturday’s Guardian, which attacks the supposed lack of rigour in Dawkins’ arguments. However, this loses sight of the fact that the two hours available to the subject is insufficient to do the subject justice, especially when compared to the hours of religious programming given over in the weekly television schedule. Dawkins made an admirable attempt to outline how evolution and science rely on understanding evidence and proving, or disproving, theories to explain the natural world about us, but having read some of his seminal books, it’s perhaps unsurprising the television version would be disappointingly brief. He was always bound to upset people of strong religious convictions, as anybody saying they were believing in a work of fiction and fabrication would. It really isn’t possible to mitigate the two.
As for why religion is growing, rather than declining remained largely unanswered. It puzzles me still that despite our growing understanding of the natural processes around us, it continues to gather pace.The main premise put forward was simply a growing sense of insecurity (thanks largely to the seemingly intractable disagreements in the middle east), and some internal need to belong to, and be reinforced by, some group belief.
Anyway, despite my minor misgivings, I thoroughly enjoyed the program, and am very much looking forward to the second part next week.
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January 13th, 2006 at 9:40 am
[...] A few years ago, prominent atheist Richard Dawkins gave an alternate Thought for the Day, to demonstrate that those of a religious persuasion don’t have a monopoly on a moral and respectful outlook on life. Of interest too might be this radio interview with Dawkins from BBC Radio 5, addressing many of the issues raised by his “Root of all evil?” programme. [...]
January 17th, 2006 at 1:24 am
Madeleine Bunting of the Guardian (in the article you’ve linked to above, Richard) sums up this programme perfectly as being “intellectually lazy”. She also says that it isn’t worthy of a great scientist, acknowledging that Dawkins is well respected in his own field of evolutionary biology.
I hadn’t heard of Richard Dawkins before seeing this programme, and after seeing it I was surprised to learn that Dawkins was well respected in any field. I won’t be rushing out to buy his books after seeing his stunted thinking in action in this programme.
It’s strange that a man who is apparently respected for his logical thinking and application of the “scientific method” feels that he has to resort to such inflammatory rhetoric at every turn, as you’ve mentioned above, Richard. Throughout the programme, Dawkins fails to demonstrate any ability to construct a sound line of reasoning. (As I’ve said, I haven’t read any of his books – perhaps he’s a little more thorough in his writing). He pulls up pitifully short of the mark on every path he sets out on. Take a look at Madeleine Bunting’s article in the Guardian for a number of ideas that should have been obvious to Dawkins but that, it turns out, he is too blinkered, irresponsible or lazy to consider himself.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the programme is Dawkins’s complete disdain and lack of respect for the ideas of anyone with a different world view from his own. As Bunting notes, “a misanthropy is increasingly evident in Dawkins’s anti-religious polemic.” Dawkins talks about religious extremists, and once or twice mentions suicide bombers. It doesn’t occur to him, however, to consider that he himself has something in common with these people - an unquestioning acceptance of his own belief systems and a complete disrespect for, and misunderstanding of, everyone else’s.
It’s difficult to know whether it was stupidity or shameless calculation that led Dawkins to select his particular interviewees. Most of the people he spoke to seemed as incapable of rational reflective thinking as Dawkins himself. But then, clearly, reasoned discussion was never an aim of Dawkins’s programme – on the odd occasion when an interviewee finds a chance to say something sensible and encourages Dawkins to look at his own beliefs, Dawkins merely throws out of the window what little reason he seemed capable up until then of employing and resorts instead to a temper tantrum. At one point he talks to a Jewish rabbi, and ends the scene shouting at the rabbi that his beliefs are “ridiculous!” after the rabbi interestingly touches upon the idea that Dawkins is a scientific fundamentalist.
One of Dawkins’s most remarkable statements was made to the evangelical, Ted Haggard, when Dawkins, after upsetting Haggard with some inane and provocative question, claims that he has “come to try and understand.” Unfortunately, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Dawkins makes no visible attempt to understand anything in the course of the programme. His “conversation” with Haggard, like the rest of the programme, was an exercise in criticism and attack. Rather than take the opportunity to engage Haggard in a sensible discussion and work with him to try to explore and understand his initial comments, Dawkins reduces the situation to a squabble when Haggard doesn’t immediately pay him the adulation to which Dawkins, for some reason, thinks he’s entitled. The most sensible statement in the programme comes at this point from Haggard when he says, “…you’ll find yourself right in some things, wrong in other things. But please, in the process of it, don’t be arrogant.” Here, Dawkins appears not to know quite what to do with himself, as he probably realises that he has been criticised rightly in what were probably the very terms in which he had intended to criticise Haggard. At this point, Dawkins looks like he doesn’t know whether to cry or to launch himself at Haggard.
Following this embarrassing scene, Dawkins tells the story of an old professor who one day was shown that his work over many years was fundamentally flawed. The professor in the story, seeing a large body of his work effectively being torn apart at the foundations, sincerely thanks the person who has shown him the error of his ways. Unfortunately, though, for all that Dawkins relates this story to us, it is precisely the professor’s sense of detachment that Dawkins miserably fails to bring to a programme that sorely needs it.
February 12th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Richard Dawkins: The Root of All Evil
For those who didn’t catch them, Dawkins’s recent TV programmes are summarised to about 1/3 original length on my website at
http://www.bytrent.demon.co.uk/dawkins00.html
Also, under the general title of The Protestant Atheism of Richard Dawkins, I am producing a critique of the ideology contained in the programmes. The latest page is The Historicism of Richard Dawkins 2: Scientific Capitalism.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
[...] But above all, I hope that people (that includes you, dear reader) simply try to find out for themselves the truth of the matter. A belligerent CofE/agnostic is hardly going to be the basis for a balanced documentary, almost every post/e-mail I’ve received on the matter has agreed on this point. But neither is a belligerant atheist (here and here for Dawkins’ piece on Channel 4 earlier this eyar) going to win ‘converts’ on the merit of a short television programme. There are plenty of good books on the matter, be it The God Delusion, The Atheist Universe, or even the bible itself (be sure to check in with The Skeptics Annoted Bible, and start at the beginning. A piece of paper and a pen for death, injustice and vengeful-god-fit-of-pique counting is advisable). [...]