Taking the Edge off Dawkins

When Richard Dawkins preaches to the choir, or takes a bully pulpit, or climbs on a soapbox, his zeal against the bogeyman of fundamentalist religion is apostolic ... and boring. Things get interesting, though, when he's faced with the reality of articulate Christianity.

For example, Jeremy Paxman's interview with Dawkins (BBC original) starts off the same as, e.g., Huw Edwards' (BBC): another vector for the scientist's meme. However, Paxman turns the heat up a bit when he asks whether "all religiously inclined scientists are bad scientists." Dawkins looses tempo, and Paxman presses for a real answer. Watch what happens:

The action runs from 7:18 through 8:24. It should cue up if you just hit "Play."

When Dawkins finally admits that there are indeed prominent Christian scientists, he is baffled by them. They must "do it by a kind of compartmentalization of the mind." He doesn't understand them, or barely so.

One such prominent Christian scientist is Francis Collins. Happily, TIME magazine recently brought the two together for a "spirited exchange". The conversation peaks when Collins raises the classic worldview questions--"Why am I here?", "What happens after we die?", "Is there a God?"--suggesting that religion has a place in answering such questions. Dawkins doesn't disagree outright, but rather objects to the particularity of religion:

DAWKINS: To me, the right approach is to say we are profoundly ignorant of these matters. We need to work on them. But to suddenly say the answer is God--it's that that seems to me to close off the discussion.

TIME: Could the answer be God?

DAWKINS: There could be something incredibly grand and incomprehensible and beyond our present understanding.

COLLINS: That's God.

DAWKINS: Yes. But it could be any of a billion Gods. It could be God of the Martians or of the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri. The chance of its being a particular God, Yahweh, the God of Jesus, is vanishingly small--at the least, the onus is on you to demonstrate why you think that's the case.

I suggest this volley was central to the conversation because Dawkins refers to it again in his closing remarks:

When we started out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constants, I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable--but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don't see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

Whoa! A supernatural intelligent designer is a worthy idea?! Not exactly the sinner's prayer, but there's much more common ground here than Dawkins' usually controversial public persona would prepare us for. From here we actually have the possibility of a humane and interesting conversation. Feed back to Chad Whitacre.