The Richard Dawkins' interview in the Guardian last month frustrates me for the same reason that dogmatic religious leaders frustrate me. Anyone (even someone with vast intellectual capacity) who definitively says he has the answer ironically stakes claim to a position of omniscience that I just don't think any human being has the right to assume.
What Dawkins really seems torqued about is anti-rationalism. I appreciate and agree that a globe of religion-induced zombies is a sad prospect. Wouldn't it be amazing if more people explored possibilities . . . not limiting their imaginative intellects on the basis of beliefs handed down to them?
I expect Richard Dawkins would agree. So why the anti-religious intolerance? Well, if he views religion as akin to a drug that offers a placebo effect for the harried masses (which this article implies he does), it's understandable why he's so stridently anti-religion.
The critical question and concern is does this mean that Dawkins is anti-spiritual, as well? It would be easy to say, of course, it does. But I wonder.
Quantum mechanics hints at rules that we never deduced rationally before. We didn't have the means to do so. A prior generation's Richard Dawkins could confidently have demeaned any heretic who might have wondered if there are dimensions, beyond the three or four we readily perceive, where odd and amazing stuff occurs.
I have a friend, who wonders what to make of recent interactions with energetic phenomena that her western, rational upbringing would indicate results from some undiagnosed mental impairment. She's not alone. I've met other scientifically-trained individuals who've confronted the ubiquitous snake-oil salesmen, only to discover unexpectedly that some snake-oil seems to offer a tangible, measurable benefit.
I want to be careful not to be guilty of the very thing that I find off-putting about Professor Dawkins' position . . . I want to acknowledge that he may, indeed, be right.
But what if he's not?
It's worth considering.
I support anti-dogmatism, which is what I really think the professor is most troubled about. I hope his conversion is not a deathbed religious one so much as a tolerance for possibilities. That he seems determined to condemn what threatens his view of the world and cosmos seems such a shame. If he'd aim his intellect at considering the counterpoints to his views, we might all gain some additional wisdom.
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