Street Preacher

Was on the way home last night when I encountered a Christian giving out leaflets at Golders Green Station. I politely refused but the chap behind me felt it necessary to get into a ‘Haven’t you read Richard Dawkins…there is no God etc.’ and get all uppity about it. And the evangelist had no real comeback other than Dawkins- is- a- fool- type drivel.

I don’t like Dawkins because he receives an academic grant specifically to ‘popularise science’ which he has misinterpreted to mean ‘to gun down religion’. Also he tends to refute critics who are easy to refute (often non-academic evangelicals).
Never mind philosophy, Dawkins has many critics amidst his fellow biologists, notably Stephen Jay Gould and Gabriel Dover (I recommend the collection of essays against evolutionary psychology called ‘Alas poor Darwin’ edited by Rose and Rose). Gabriel Dover wrote an excellent critique of the non logic of the selfish gene theory and quite rightly concludes that there is far more to natural selection than the genome including molecular drive and neutral drift.

Professor Dawkins is associated with a particular world view that doesn’t logically follow on from his science. In a (poor I admit) nutshell, in the Selfish gene he says ‘this is how evolution makes us the way we are and therefore it is pointless to say life has any meaning’ which is a non sequitur of the worst kind because he leaps from his own discipline (biology) to one he has little knowledge of (philosophy) without seeing the need to build a bridge of reasoning between the two. He goes even further in his latest book by firstly talking about natural science and then shooting down that which he perceives as ridiculous or malevolent in religion. Because this is a famous Oxford professor writing, people assume that the conclusion naturally and logically follows from the first observations whereas even a fairly brief examination shows that this is not the case. His philosophical conclusions are parasitic on his esteemable biology. Before I get accused of being an anti-dawkinsian just because I am a religionist, I have a huge amount of respect for Daniel Dennett, the atheist philosopher and scientist who is often cited as an contemporary and advocate of Dawkins because Dennett tries (with some considerable success) to build the lines of reasoning from the gene-centric view of evolution and other elements of biological and natural science to his atheism.

So what do we have outside Golders Green Station; an evangelist without the wherewithal to present a coherent case for his beliefs being attacked by an anti-religionist either too lazy or too stupid to see that Dawkins has neither proved nor argued a robust and valid case against theism. And both of them feel the need to disturb the peace of my commute.

I wish British Transport police had arrested them both.