Undermining Our Mines

We like to think that common sense and common values provide a solid and unquestioned foundation, so that even the most obtuse and cerebral academician might find some conversation possible with Joe at the bar. Real life always intrudes and leaks the helium from almost any metaphysical balloon. Most of us find unconscious comfort in the belief that deep down inside, we are all the same. But are we, and how can we know?

In an interview with Salon.com, Richard Dawkins said:

"[The] child brain is preprogrammed by natural selection to obey and believe what parents and other adults tell it. In general, it's a good thing that child brains should be susceptible to being taught what to do and what to believe by adults. But this necessarily carries the down side that bad ideas, useless ideas, waste of time ideas like rain dances and other religious customs, will also be passed down the generations. The child brain is very susceptible to this kind of infection. And it also spreads sideways by cross infection when a charismatic preacher goes around infecting new minds that were previously uninfected."

But like the stranded Antarctic scientists in "The Thing", how can we tell who is carrying the infection, or even the nature of the infection? Using Dawkins insidious logic, once we are infected we no longer have the intellectual capacity to recognize the disease. Dawkins impales himself, and latter day Western civilization, on a pike with two sharp ends. If human beings are susceptible to "bad logic" and the virus alters our perception and understanding of the world, then we cannot know truth unless it is pure empirical fact. There is no meta-anything, only observation and prediction, stimulus and response.

Once rationalism becomes unhinged from objective truth, we can no longer discern the difference between good thoughts and bad thoughts. If the code with which we process our information has itself been altered, then how can truth be known? If truth cannot be known, then how does Richard Dawkins know that his own mind has not been infected with a sinister viral agent, causing him to place blind faith in naturalism and rendering his soul incapable of knowing God? Who is fooling who?

In his classic book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton wrote:

The new rebel is a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore, he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus, he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then writes another book, a novel, in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then as a philosopher that all life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts. Then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality, and in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

Once we doubt our doubting machine, no doubt we will lose our minds. Perhaps the virus was consumed long ago in some primordial garden, and we have never recovered from the deadly effects. Without a transcendent super-rational Being as a reference, how can we know one way or the other?

By calling religion a disease passed on from generation to generation, Dawkins cleverly discounts any need to discuss the matter. It now goes without saying: the poor chaps are simply deluded and out of their minds. Their rational being has been infected and distorted by parental implants; their worldview has been altered in such a way that they cannot escape from their imaginary God unless... Unless what? Unless they worship Dawkins? Like Frazier in Walden Two, he is very smug about his ability to discern the truth, but who plans for the planner? Or using his own metaphor, who determines which virus is healthy DNA and which virus is malignant?

Strident atheism has replaced reasonable discourse with cheap shots. Why bother with discussion and debate when an ad hominem slam against all who have faith will do the trick. Let us go further and do the Spartan thing; take the children away from their infected parents so that they can be raised in a healthy and rational environment by benevolent Master Planners. Let us outlaw churches and their bilious ideologies so that the plague can be brought under control and ultimately purged from human consciousness.

Oh my! I forgot, we tried this already, in two different flavors, Stalinism and Maoism. Well, mistakes were made, as with all scientific experiments. We need to learn from our failures and try again.