When Reason is Used Unreasonably

MercatorNet features an article by Canandian ethicist Margaret Somerville which notes contradictions and flaws in the arguments of the currently fashionable anti-theist arguments.

A few highlights are reproduced below. For the whole article, click here.

Dawkins confuses religion and the use of religion – I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt intellectually and assume he does so deliberately -- in order to promote his thesis that religion is evil. Religion itself is not evil – just as science is not evil – but it can be used for evil purposes, just as science can....

The primary "way of knowing" in science is reason and reason is fundamental to the scientific method that produces scientific knowledge. Dawkins’ mistake is that he sees reason (and probably science) as the only valid way of human knowing and, consequently, as the only appropriate tool to explore non-scientific questions, such as profound ethical issues....

We have multiple ways of human knowing in addition to reason, all of which are essential to ethics. They include history (human memory) -- this is beautifully encapsulated in aboriginal people’s practice in making ethical decisions of looking back seven generations. Imagination and creativity – looking forward seven generations to try to assess the ethical acceptability of the impact of what we plan to do on future generations. Intuition -- especially moral intuition. Common sense. Experiential knowledge – including what we can know, as the gym teachers tell us, by listening to our bodies. And "examined" emotions, to name just some....

In short Dawkins – who is a fundamentalist atheist (atheism is a secular religion) and religious fundamentalists are similar in an important respect: They take an either/or approach to everything: my beliefs or yours; religion or science; reason or Faith; and so on. They then seek to reconcile what they see as the conflicts between the two elements that make up each of these pairings, by dropping one or the other of them. Dawkins’ call for the elimination of religion demonstrates such a choice on his part. But it is an extremely dangerous proposal and likely to escalate the culture clashes and "religious wars" we are seeing....