Richard Dawkins Defines Atheism

Posted by Brian Tubbs May 14, 2007

"A quasi-mystical response to nature and the universe is common among scientists and rationalists," writes Richard Dawkins in the opening chapter of his book The God Delusion. However, he continues, "It has no connection with supernatural belief."

Dawkins cites Charles Darwin, who wrote that the complexity of our universe can be attributed to "laws acting around us." For Dawkins, this gives us a way around God - or a way without God. Only trouble with this is.....If there are "laws," there has to be a law-giver. But...more on this in future blog posts.

Dawkins also goes to some length to clarify that not everyone who says they believe in God really means it. Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking both have referenced God, but you see....they didn't really mean God. In fact, Dawkins labels Einstein as an "atheist."

Current Einstein biographer Walter Isaacson explains that the world-renowned scientist was really a Deist -- certainly NOT an atheist. According to Isaacson, Einstein's traits of "awe" and rebellion" (with respect to God and nature) played into Einstein's brilliance as a scientist. He explains:

The rebellion part comes in at the beginning of his life: he rejected at first his parents' secularism and later the concepts of religious ritual and of a personal God who intercedes in the daily workings of the world. But the awe part comes in his 50s when he settled into a deism based on what he called the "spirit manifest in the laws of the universe" and a sincere belief in a "God who reveals Himself in the harmony of all that exists."

Dawkins weaves and mixes around certain terms and definitions in a way that muddies the waters. On the one hand, he says that Einstein was an atheist. Later, he puts him the category of those who are "not very religious" and still later, labels him a pantheist. And Dawkins says pantheism is basically "sexed-up atheism." So, Einstein is essentially an atheist. This is literary gamesmanship and discerning readers should not let him get away with this sleight-of-hand.

What is the point of all this for Dawkins? He is defining his terms and framing the debate - all, of course, in his favor. "My title, The God Delusion, does not refer to the God of Einstein and the other enlightened scientists of the previous section....I am talking about supernatural gods, of which the most familiar to the majority of my readers will be Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament."

I have to hand it to him. He's brilliant. He very cleverfully merges atheism and pantheism into one happy family - and reaches out to deists as well, implying strongly that they are more or less with him already. According to Dawkins, pantheists and most deists don't believe in supernaturalism, so they are essentially atheists.

The problem with this is that pantheism and deism are very much SUPER-natural belief systems. They may not be very substantive or significant. Dawkins quotes Carl Sagan as saying that such a limited, remote god is "emotionally unsatisfying." Nevertheless, we're still talking about a supernatural deity or force of some kind.

A pantheist believes essentially that the universe itself is divine and somehow "alive" - that it is dynamic and thus able to produce life and all the wonders and complexities we marvel at. This is not atheism. Far from it. It's supernaturalism. And a deist even more so.

Bottom line...Richard Dawkins has a logically incoherent and very self-serving concept of atheism (not to mention deism and pantheism) - which he tries to foist on the reader at the outset. Those readers who buy into Dawkins' terminology are likely to find his book persuasive. Those that don't will likely see right through him.