A Cheerleader of Hopelessness
By Miguel Guanipa (10/06/07)
Reading Richard Dawkins' comments about the underreported plight of nonbelievers in the U.S. gives one the impression that America is a country where drinking fountains for "Atheists Only" and draconian laws prohibiting them from exercising their freedoms of choice, speech, and "religion" (pardon the oxymoron) are practically the norm.
To combat this imaginary social calamity, Dawkins has created an organization which aims to “challenge the dominance of religion in every day life and in politics” and encourage the persecuted Atheists of the world - languishing in private agony - to come out of the proverbial closet.
According to Dawkins, his main goal is to “free children from being indoctrinated with the religion of their parents or their community” and to encourage Atheists to “rejoice in the world in which they find themselves…and take full advantage of the tiny slice of eternity they have been granted."; quite a purposeful objective for someone who believes that life only accidentally hints at the “appearance of having been designed for a purpose”.
Dawkins also believes that if Atheists could achieve a small fraction of the influence that religious groups have achieved “…the world would be a better place." But it’s not clear what Dawkins means by a “better place”, as history is littered with elapsed social and political arrangements that once embraced the trendy “religion free” model; today they serve only as tragic reminders of what happens when social engineers and leaders intoxicated with utopian delusions choose to go that route.
Dawkins is convinced that Atheism is a preferable medium to achieving a better life; the problem with this proposition is that it assumes that religion - which is the opposite - is inherently harmful and repressive, when in fact, many people often find it to be a source of strength and a guide towards repairing the broken pieces of their lives that were once led astray by their own self-guiding principles.
Besides, Americans are not so much consumed by their religious beliefs as they are rather half-hearted spiritualists, which is arguably far worse than being an Atheist. A full-fledged Atheist is at least sincere about his or her beliefs - if that is what one should call them. The religion of the average American that Dawkins disdains is less enthusiastic than that.
Americans practice a safe religion, which they only allow to interfere with their personal lives in so far as it does not make any stringent demands upon them, other than the obligatory church participation on designated religious holidays. They are, at most, distant worshipers of a generic, consumer oriented deity that is invoked chiefly during times of extreme duress, not unlike earlier civilizations that beseeched their pagan idols hoping to appease their capricious ventings of wrath.
One may think that this would present a golden opportunity for Dawkins to add a few still undecided skeptics to his organization. But Dawkins is probably more concerned with the people who take their religion seriously, and wants to reach out to Atheists who are as committed to their principles of unbelief as these believers are to their God.
Perhaps he has resigned himself to the fact that he can not persuade the latter to renounce that which is their only reservoir of real hope and direction, in exchange for the philosophy of the former, which only offers a glorified opportunity to develop one’s own makeshift veneer of transcendence.
Thus he has focused his efforts in trying to reawaken the slumbering Atheists of the world to the notion that they indeed matter.
But this plea unwittingly points at the inescapable clause that significance transcends mere existence, and is a closer kin of purpose than of chance, which implies that there was a willful directive outside of us that bestows purpose to that existence. Believing that purpose is merely a random benefit fortuitously embedded in the gene pool that may be summoned at will through our own internal cajoling is like believing it is possible to pull ourselves up by our own shoe laces.
What do purpose and mere chance have in common is a question that Dawkins and his fawning disciples dare not ask themselves, for fear that it may point to the necessity of an active agent of creation who willed that purpose in his creation, thus wresting them back to the very thing they are so desperately trying to deny.
As this appears to be an ongoing objective, one has to wonder, when the legions of exiled Atheists finally come out of the closet as Dawkins expects - what then? What sort of revelry do people who feel that their lives are ultimately meaningless engage in? And what, pray tell, do people who do not believe they were created for a purpose rejoice in that is of so much significance?
Ultimately, Dawkins must be aware that by positing questions of hope, meaning and purpose within a context of strict materialism - the cardinal staple of the Darwinist’s repertory - it is unlikely that the template he is straining will yield the answers he is so eager to provide his potential followers.
In spite of it all, you have to give him some credit for managing to make quite a handsome profit by peddling such blatant sophistry.
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