Atheist Fundamentalism

The Religious Fundamentalist Nature of Militant Atheism
by Peter John




This quote from Dr. Richard Dawkins shows his willingness to embrace a false dichotomy rather than accept that some people have reasons beyond his own experience for believing as they do.
This is religious fundamentalism.

I respect the knowledge and experience of Dr. Richard Dawkins. I admire the logical genius of the late Christopher Hitchens. I appreciate their contributions to our culture and public dialogue, regardless of my differing beliefs. I respect that their atheism is a reasonable conclusion if they have never had any objective experience to support believing in God.

That is more than their ridicule of Christianity and religion in general offer any others who do believe in God. Dr. Dawkins' argument epitomizes a common fundamental attribution error common among atheist fundamentalists. Dawkins argues that the creation accounts from the Bible and other major religions have no supportive evidence, while the scientific account of how the universe began has extensive evidence. Were that comparison valid, concluding that those believing in a creator are simply fooling themselves might be valid as well.

This argument has two central problems. Its false assumption that the message of divine revelation demands literal interpretation comes first. This results in a false dichotomy -- the appearance of only two available and mutually exclusive options. Both of these not only constitute poor science, but serve as easy to spot earmarks of fundamentalism.

Many of the very heroes of science whose work created the scientific model of how the universe came to be believed in God. Despite the Church's harsh and erroneous judgments against him, Galileo still believed in God. Copernicus was a Roman Catholic deacon. Monsignor Charles LeMaitre, who proposed what we now call the Big Bang Theory, was a priest. By Dr. Dawkins' reasoning this means that either  their conclusions are the product of addled and illogical brains, rendering them untrustworthy, or these clear thinking men had some experience that Dr. Dawkins has not shared.

Just as any fundamentalist religious person, Dr. Dawkins imposes limitations on the arguments his theological opponents can make. His position leaves no room for the Historical Critical Method of Biblical interpretation, for example. In this method theologians consider scripture from the perspectives of the cultures and times from which they emerged. In our understanding now a "day" of creation can simply mean a non-specified period of time, so the Biblical account of creation need not mean it happened in six 24-hour days.

This blog does not seek to argue the details on creation or evolution at this time. Right now we simply seek to demonstrate the fundamentalist nature of Dr. Dawkins denunciation of religion. These non-scientific arguments disregard and demean those who accept the science, yet believe in God for reasons of their own. They serve no purpose to advance science, and in fact hinder its promulgation by constructing further ideological walls between science and religion. Since these arguments promote his system of belief more than science, depend on false assumptions, and advance through false dichotomies, they constitute religious fundamentalism.
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