Now Richard Dawkins made a name for himself while Chair for the Public Understanding of Science taking on Creationists and also the wider religious community to argue that it was all nonsense and there are entirely rational reasons for the existence of the universe.
Youtube is full of Creationists making fools of themselves and for many Richard Dawkins stands as the beacon of light in a world of mediaeval superstition and ignorance.
However there is a problem. In order to attack Creationism and Religion as in "The God Delusion" amongst others, there needs to be an actual doctrine to attack. But find any two religious people who have the same idea. The goal posts are not as well defined as Dawkins would like to make out. This argument here is a variant of the Straw Man fallacy, but fundamentally different from the usual one which suggests that in order to defeat an opponent you make a simplified version of their argument that you can defeat.
The more fundamental problem for Dawkins is that not only is there no fixed Religious doctrine, but that people change their ideas all the time. The religious path is actually a path of evolution itself. And so is the scientific path. Science did not land on the table fully formed. It has developed and evolved over the centuries from for example a clock-work static world to the dynamic world of change that we believe in today that seems with every generation to become less certain as we had recently with the development of Chaos and Quantum theory and Gödel in Logic. This is not to say scientists and logicians are not sure, but that their theories have had to incorporate uncertainty.
What Dawkins appears not to grasp is that even his ideas have changed. He is famous for promoting the idea of the gene as the unit or atom of evolution. Obviously to get a name for this, it was not the prevailing wisdom before and perhaps in the future it will be superseded by other ideas. We are right now facing the possibility that the Big Bang theory is not correct. And who knows how much of what we believe will be over turned in the future.
Now scientists think they have a special advantage over the religious community because of evidence. You can do an experiment a hundred times and get the same result. You can demonstrate an indisputable, universal fact. Say for example the Newtonian separation of light into wavelength with a prism. But where science is on shaky ground is how we explain that. These explanations are in flux and will change forever! That is part of SRH. To suggest that there are theories that are unchanging is a contradiction. And obvious proof of that an unchanging theory must be with us now! To count as absolute Truth is must have been True at the start of Humanity. So lets scan those Hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs cos anything not there can't be unchangingly true! But if it can change then how do we know it won't change again? Indeed the knowledge of whether something is Absolutely True is what causes contradictions. If we can start making Truth statements about statements its a short step to "I am false."
Now some religious fundamentalists think that religion does not change. But how can this be true? We may start as a child thinking that God is a man who sits on a cloud like many Greeks used to think of Zeus. Then perhaps we develop to think God sits in a special realm called Heaven that is separate from the real world. And then perhaps we develop to think that God is not a physical human at all, but more a presence or personality. There are as many theories about God as there are people. How can anyone say that there is a single doctrine? Some religions like Hinduism and Christianity incorporate this by having many faces to God. Others like Judaism and Islam try out a Single God but have to be incredibly careful then not to make that God a definite. See even Humans collectively have different ideas about how to handle the expression of God.
And if there is no single doctrine then how can you argue with it. Perhaps you might want to argue with the whole thing like Dawkins and say "There is no God" but that falls foul of the same problem of creating a single doctrine and then challenging it. Its one thing to ask a person of Religious faith what God means to them, but what does it mean to Dawkins is just as interesting. What is he riling against? Why is it so dangerous to him?
The truth is that things change. For some the Resurrection of Jesus is too hard to believe in. But they accept other parts of Christianity. But perhaps in the future they will come to believe in it.
Dawkins is rather saying that there must be One Fixed Truth that everyone believes in unison, which actually rather deviates from his own Theory of Evolution with its emphasis on variation and change!
The implication of Evolution theory is that things change, and this must ultimately mean that Evolution Theory must change.
To be Religious is to walk a path, and be present on a journey. Where we are at any moment is not to be seen as an achievement in itself but must be seen as part of the journey. And when Dawkins rails against this he is rather missing the whole point of truth and God.
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Now what of that basic question "Does God Exist?" What is written above is extremely unsatisfying for a person of knowledge who wants to know the answer so they can answer a pub quiz correctly (UK culture - that's a quiz performed by teams at tables while drinking). Well its actually doesn't matter, God is not like that. Try out both. Decide that God doesn't exist if you like and see where it takes you. Alternatively try and believe he does and see where that takes you. "God" is so vast that actually both attitudes and searches are within the dominion of God. Any anything that vast is clearly not easily handled.
The point here in its simplest form is that we as individuals are not done growing yet. We will change and improve with time like a wine. Now the issue of God is just where is that path heading? It's not something we can answer now, we just have some faith that we will develop in a positive way. Life will throw many things at us, and struggle as we might to ignore them and stay the same, life will change us, and always for the best in the long term. Some people may appear to become broken by what life has thrown then, they have lost all spiritual will to live, there is no joy and they have no direction. This is because what they were doing no matter how wonderful before, become no longer beneficial in the long term and they needed to grow. How can we understand the greater picture this if we just go from day to day?
Subtle point here. Some will say well its all just dice throws and you end up making sense of them with a narrative you add afterwards to try and make sense of what is senseless. Well this is 1/2 true. We do no live in a pre written story and our lives are not guided by a benevolent God like that. But at the same time we can just say it is random dice throws. The process of it happening, and of us making a story of it go hand in hand. Making the story and meaning is part of what happens, they are inseparable. I am always reminded of Kierkegaard asking the reader to separate the dancer from the dance. When the story teller collides with the random we get a life.
So yes its wrong to think God holds our hand the whole way and conducts from Heaven, but its wrong to say we are a just leaf being washed down a river.
So does God exist? Its the very fact we don't even know what that means which gives God his potency. For people of faith, they stop expecting an answer and just run with this the question to find out where it takes them.
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Few things to say on that. So the greatest fear for the Religious person is what if it all turns out to be a lie and I have wasted my life. Well the thing I see most profoundly is we all waste our lives. That is the beauty of life. It was given to us for nothing, and we spend our lives completely wasting it. Is that a sad thing to say? Well that depends on your Ego.
The gnawing resistance at the heart of this fear all comes from the Ego. Spend Aug last year to this year discussing Ego in depth. The thing at the centre of our lives that won't budge and seems like a Russian doll inside the whole of our life, or a personal Sun around which everything orbits, this is the thing that also doesn't like talk of Death or even talk of God.
Controversial interpretation of Christianity coming. But what did Jesus do on the Cross? He forgave everyone and died a sinners death without demanding justice or even trying to escape and save himself. How different from the average person who will try everything to stay alive - even if they are guilty. The two robbers would have fled had they been given the chance, but Jesus (we believe) had the power to escape and didn't. Now he was either mad, was suicidal or had nothing to protect. And his desire to forgive suggests this one. Sad and Mad people don't go to any lengths to make peace. So Jesus had no Ego at this time, and there was nothing to defend. Yet he was certainly very human the previous night where the fear of dying was a great for him as any mortal.
Now for those who struggle with the Resurrection, it could be seen as metaphorical that without an Ego there is nothing to lose, and so death "loses its sting" already no need for anything else. But this doesn't explains the reports by hundreds of people of actually seeing Jesus. We know He looked different, so different that Magdalen didn't recognise him. But for those who doubt we even have Thomas becoming convinced when he sees Jesus. So its a mystery whether believers are the expect fully body resurrection: something the Church seems to have abandoned as Cremations has been legal in the UK now for over a century. So ideas change and the path is a forever changing.
But returning to the importance of Ego. The idea of "Life being Meaningful" is 100% the need of the Ego. It needs proof that it exists, and proof that it existed. So we look at achievements and memories and hold them as proof we existed. And then we weigh them up and start wondering if ours was a good life. Most probably the things that makes us doubt will be regrets or desires we never fulfilled. Perhaps we never married that person we felt we were destined to, or we never got famous, or never achieved the goals we set our self. Well its all good stories. but it doesn't have any meaning at all. Without an Ego there is no one to be great or a failure. Things just what they are. A failure of a life is the same as life of enormous achievement. Obviously not everyone can be Einstein.. but then do we need to be? And why would we need to be? Perhaps that makes us think well why did I bother then. If a life sitting in front the TV is as good as climbing Mount Everest then why bother? Well each person knows the answer to that! If you are the sort of person who has it in them to Climb Everest then do it. If you are not then don't. Its actually very simple. But don't do it just to be famous or prove yourself. That is the bit that is ultimately built on bad foundations. But perhaps this is what you need to grow, so even the pointless stuff done from a belief in Ego has a part to play in the greater picture.
Also said that the Ego hates God. Well obviously: the Ego IS God. Last thing the Ego wants is to have to accept that it is subordinate to a greater being, that is so vast that the Ego can't even start to grasp it. So the Ego creates huge resistance to belief and acceptance of God, and also resists all change and growth cos the Ego already is so what is there to do?
The world has a great way of punishing the Ego to encourage us to grow. But we always take that the wrong way and decide its unfair and we want justice. We do make the path much larder than it needs to be!
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