Richard Dawkins spoke at Gammage auditorium with ASU professor Lawrence Krauss on Saturday.
Author of “The God Delusion,” Dawkins is among the world’s most famous atheists, or “anti-theists,” to quote the late Christopher Hitchens. Anti-theists, Dawkins explained Saturday, do not claim to prove God’s nonexistence. Instead, they explain the universe without a God of any kind, rendering divinity “irrelevant.”
The night’s discussion returned several times to a quote by Steven Weinberg, who claimed that “science does not make it impossible to believe in God,” but that it “makes it possible to not believe in God.” Dawkins spent a good deal of the night on our ability to see the world without God, which he attributes to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Before Darwin, Dawkins argued, it was difficult if not impossible to contemplate the origin of life without a God. But evolution is a theory of creator-less creation in which life changes and develops and simply becomes over a great time span, without a master plan or guiding hand.
Dawkins doesn’t hold up evolution as an explanation of the origin of life, but as an explanation of the “origin of the diversity of life,” beginning with the first self-replicating molecules.
That understanding is increasingly uncontroversial. Growing numbers of people from a range of faiths now accept evolution as a theory that’s compatible with God, who kicked off the whole process by creating “something out of nothing.”
But for Dawkins and Krauss, that is an unworthy compromise. Dawkins mocks it as a version of the “God of the gaps,” in which gaps in our scientific knowledge are attributed to God. In his view, the argument breaks down to, “I don’t understand it, therefore God did it.”
Krauss has actually developed a new theory, which he thinks fills that first and biggest “gap.” In his latest book, which he simply could not help plugging a hundred times throughout the night, Krauss suggests when you include gravity, you get a scientific theory in which matter rises out of non-matter spontaneously. Because empty space has energy, and is essentially unstable, Krauss says this is not just possible, but likely.
The two agreed, repeatedly, that personal beliefs on God and evolution matter greatly, especially for doctors and politicians.
But Dawkins takes that further. In response to questions from the audience, he expressed quite a vehement rejection of religion as it is practiced by the poor throughout the world. All people should be weaned off of “the crutch” of religion, he insisted, asking, “Who cares what makes you feel good? What matters is what’s true.”
After two hours spent merrily excoriating the religious for their obstinacy, wrongheadedness and unwillingness to think critically, it was interesting to hear such vicious certainty.
It seems a strange social phenomenon to see scientists become dogmatic, going after faith as though it threatened their existence, the way organized religions once pursued men like Copernicus.
The current scientific consensus is one which allows even astrophysicists to trust in God. In that context, isn’t this crusade against religion “making something out of nothing?”
Reach the columnist at john.a.gaylord@asu.edu
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