Richard Dawkins on God's Non-Existence: The Argument from Admired Religious Scientists

In his recent book The God Delusion, amongst other things, Richard Dawkins provides compelling counterarguments and evidence against a range of arguments for God’s existence. One argument not usually addressed so explicitly he labels ‘The Argument from Admired Religious Scientists’. This is, in Dawkins’ words, the bad argument:

‘Newton was religious. Who are you to set yourself up as superior to Newton, Gallileo, Kepler, etc. etc. etc.? If God was good enough for the likes of them, just who do you thin you are?’ (P.97).

This seems a rather weak form of the argument: it is fairly obvious that the scientists mentioned here were living at times when atheism was not an easy option (a point Dawkins makes). A stronger form of the argument, still vulnerable to the kind of attack Dawkins mounts, would be this: Many contemporary eminent scientists are religious believers, who are we then to presume that we are clever than them, and declare the non-existence of God?’

Dawkins refutation of The Argument from Admired Religious Scientists consists of his demonstration that its most important premise is false. According to Dawkins, there are very few great scientists today who believe in God and that research seems to indicate that religious belief is inversely proportional to intelligence and/or education (see p.103)..So, if Dawkins has accurately described the situation, this argument for God’s existence is a non-starter.

What Dawkins omits to point out is that even if a large number of very clever people believed in God’s existence, this wouldn’t make it true. Great scientists aren’t necessarily universal experts: they may be highly intelligent, but this does not guarantee that their every deliberation on every subject is even likely to be true; nor that their beliefs in these fields should have a higher status than other people’s.  Einstein’s misunderstood statements about his attitude to God, as Dawkins shows in his book, are an example of how a great scientist’s non-scientific pronouncements (or in this case misunderstood non-scientific pronouncements, see The God Delusion, p.15) can have a disproportionate and inappropriate influence on other people’s views. Talk of Charles Darwin’s alleged deathbed re-conversion is also somehow supposed by some to support the view that the theory of evolution leaves religion untouched. This is absurd: just because Darwin was one of the first to state the theory of evolution clearly and provide evidence in support of it, it doesn’t follow that he has the power to determine its implications personally.

Even if a majority of the greatest scientists in the world believed in God’s existence, it wouldn’t follow that God existed. The truth is unaffected by what the majority believes.

The question remains though, if some clever people believe something that is outside their accepted field of evidence, what weight should we give to their beliefs? My own view is that genuine universal expertise is extremely rare, and extremely intelligent people, geniuses even, are as capable as the rest of us of holding dogmatic and false beliefs about matters which fall outside their area of expertise (as well as sometimes about matters which fall within it).

I discuss other arguments for God's existence in Philosophy: The Basics, and the idea of Universal Expertise in Thinking from A to Z.

Comments

[Melanie Steffen]

God said that Richard Dawkins goes to Heaven, Leona Helmsley goes to Hell and Jerry Falwell just disappears.
What that means is, that you don't have to believe in Jesus or God to get into Heaven. On the other hand just believing in God does not necessarily get you into Heaven. Good atheist' go to Heaven. Bad christians can go to Hell. Melanie Steffen