Wednesday, April 04, 2007
While doing dishes last week, I heard Terry Gross interview a scientist named Richard Dawkins, who wrote a book called "The God Delusion." I normally have no patience with people who argue against religion, mainly because I don't like their smugness and sense of intellectual superiority and the feeling that they believe they know it all about the universe and have pity and contempt for the rest of us writhing about in the muck of religion. But Dawkins didn't take cheap shots. He just methodically listed his reasons why he thinks God is a delusion.
I'm not going to pick apart his argument here, but he did say something interesting about why we are they way we are, and I'm always looking for clues that explains our weird behavior. He said humans' empathy and altruism towards others, and even towards non-humans like dogs and trees, can be explained by evolution. When we were all lesser creatures living together in groups, we found that taking care of others we encountered was good for us because they in turn would take care of us. That instinct has since overshot itself, he says. (He referred to it as "a blessed mistake," ironic coming from the mouth of an atheist.) Fascinating, no? I love hearing about the biological roots of our behavior.
I read a summary of the book on Wikipedia, but I don't really need my beliefs challenged right now. The truth is, if I started peeling away the layers of my faith, I'm not sure what I'd find in the middle. It would probably be a combination of upbringing, a need to believe in God and a desire not to alienate myself from the rest of my family. But I do also believe in the mystery, and I bow to it.
I'm not going to pick apart his argument here, but he did say something interesting about why we are they way we are, and I'm always looking for clues that explains our weird behavior. He said humans' empathy and altruism towards others, and even towards non-humans like dogs and trees, can be explained by evolution. When we were all lesser creatures living together in groups, we found that taking care of others we encountered was good for us because they in turn would take care of us. That instinct has since overshot itself, he says. (He referred to it as "a blessed mistake," ironic coming from the mouth of an atheist.) Fascinating, no? I love hearing about the biological roots of our behavior.
I read a summary of the book on Wikipedia, but I don't really need my beliefs challenged right now. The truth is, if I started peeling away the layers of my faith, I'm not sure what I'd find in the middle. It would probably be a combination of upbringing, a need to believe in God and a desire not to alienate myself from the rest of my family. But I do also believe in the mystery, and I bow to it.
