Richard Dawkins: I can't be sure God does not exist (Is world's foremost atheist an agnostic now?)

The Telegraph ^ | 02/24/2012 | John Bingham

[SeekAndFind]

He is regarded as the most famous atheist in the world but last night Professor Richard Dawkins admitted he could not be sure that God does not exist.

He told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that he preferred to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist. The two men were taking part in a public “dialogue” at Oxford University at the end of a week which has seen bitter debate about the role of religion in public life in Britain. Last week Baroness Warsi, the Tory party chairman, warned of a tide of “militant secularism” challenging the religious foundations of British society. The discussion, in Sir Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre, attracted attention from around the world. As well as being relayed to two other theatres, it was streamed live on the internet and promoted fierce debate on the Twitter social network.

For an hour and 20 minutes the two men politely discussed "The nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin" touching on the meaning of consciousness, the evolution of human language – and Dr Williams’s beard.

For much of the discussion the Archbishop sat quietly listening to Prof Dawkins’s explanations of human evolution.

At one point he told the professor that he was “inspired” by “elegance” of the professor’s explanation for the origins of life – and agreed with much of it. Prof Dawkins told him: “What I can’t understand is why you can’t see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing – that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?”

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO

[Pharmboy]

It is IMPOSSIBLE for a scientist...or someone who says they are...to be an atheist. Agnostic it must be...

[cuban leaf]

—Dawkins is finally being honest— Atheism actually takes more faith than a belief in a Designer.—

Precisely. He may not know it, but he is destroying the mythicism about atheism.

A true atheist would make Stalin and Hitler look like pikers. A true atheist is his own God and realizes that even society’s norms are mere rules to follow to keep from spending time in prison.

A true atheist sees himself as the sole source of any moral code. There is a great Dean Koontz book where the lead character is a True Atheist. It’s called From the Corner of His Eye. And the character is evil personified.

[Claud]

Can you explain how someone can suddenly believe something that only minutes before, they required proof for? How does one go about making themselves believe the unbelievable?

As far as believing in your heart goes, which I think you are asking about, in Christianity we call it "grace". It's a free gift of God that cannot be forced. It's like that first moment you realize you are falling in love, the flash of inspiration that scientists often have.

But you can also believe in the will without the heart.

I am a skeptical person by nature, so I analogize it to the scientific method. Before you run an experiment, you have to have a hypothesis. You can believe the hypothesis or not. You can be trying to prove it or disprove it--doesn't matter. But if you abandon it and then don't run the experiment, you can never ever find out the truth. You have to run your experiment as if the hypothesis were true, then see how the data shakes out.

How do you suddenly believe? You say, ok, I dunno if there's a God or not, but I am going to find out one way or the other. You run the experiment. You say "Ok, let's suppose that God DID exist. Then what? Who is He? Has He communicated with man? Does He still?"

A little less than 20 years ago, as an agnostic, I ran that experiment. I am happy to call myself a Christian today.

[Joe the Pimpernel]

None of our science touches the elephant in the room - human consciousness.

We have no idea what it is or how it works.

Pretty colors on an MRI screen when you think of the word "cat" are just pretty colors on an MRI screen.

Quantum mechanical phenomenon require a conscious observer, meaning that consciousness and the very existence of matter are intimately intertwined.

Dawkins and Hawking and other atheists/agnostics are blowing smoke out of their wazoo apertures when the pretend that science now explains everything.

[James C. Bennett]

This is so silly, it's borderline pathetic.

The following was a comment on one of the articles:

Everybody relax.

Dawkins has said repeatedly that it's impossible to disprove God, just as it's impossible to disprove the Celestial Teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He has mentioned his position on the scale of disbelief many times. This is not news.

It's certain that any and every faith-based organization will quote mine this article in an attempt to diminish Dawkins' work and words (as Ben Stein so dishonestly did for his film, "Expelled.")

[Johnny B.]

You're thinking of God as if existence were simply one of His properties. But He IS existence. His very nature is to be: "I am who am". It is impossible for Him not to exist, for then existence itself would not exist.

Or man made up God to explain scary lightning and why people die.

I find my version much more reasonable than yours.

But don't let me stop you from believing whatever you want to believe.

[Johnny B.]

Every single one, after a brief question and answer will ALWAYS end up saying something like, “well, maybe I’m really more agnostic than atheist...”

Nope.

I DON'T believe in God, any more than I believe in the Tooth Fairy. And, the Tooth Fairy has a better track record than God does, since I used to actually receive money under my pillow when I left a tooth there. God never came close to providing that much "proof".

If you want to believe in God, go right ahead. Have a good time. Just leave me out of it. I have better things to do with my life.

[stuartcr]

‘But you can also believe in the will without the heart.’...how would that be valid? Doesn’t a belief have to be all or nothing? Can we sort of believe?

If we do get belief from the heart that can’t be forced, then we really don’t have much to do with the process of believing, do we? All we have to do, is wait for God to provide it? Why do you think He lets some people spend their whole lives, without believing?

You must have received the free gift.

[James C. Bennett]

The opposite is impossible, because it would mean that an infinite series of causal events, or moments in time, would have had to have been realized for us to exist now.

And an infinite series cannot exist in actuality, because any actual series must be finite.

I had written this earlier:

"... the simple will never produce the complex... "

In that case, for God to be able to do all the wondrous things God does, God must be complex and intelligent. Who designed God? How can God's complexity arise from nothing?

If God is eternal, how does God choose a moment to begin Creation? The Infinite Regress becomes a problem, if it truly is a problem.

Another poster mentioned: “Since we cannot describe the past or the future using a finite number of causal events going backwards or forwards in time from the PRESENT, then the past and future must be eternal. You cannot traverse the past in a finite number of cause/effects to show Existence as VANISHING into nothingness. You cannot traverse the past and ever hope to find a point of Creation. Nope! No freakin’ way! Therefore the Universe is eternal - it had no beginning and will have no end. There is no "beginning" of time because to have a beginning would mean to have a universal reference point which would destroy the idea of relativity. In fact, we perceive the expansion of time as the passage of time.”

If God is outside Time, then how could God produce a change in the circumstances, given that change requires Time to pre-exist and elapse, in order to allow the change in the circumstances? If Time were a "created" thing, then the situation changes from one without Time to one with Time operating it. How can a demarcation exist to separate the two situations, if Time were yet to be "created"? In other words, without Time, the situation without Time and the situation with Time running in it would be super-imposed, in other words, the two situations would be simultaneous, which is a self-contradiction. You cannot do something and not do the same thing, simultaneously. Likewise.

Points to ponder, no doubt. 

[SeekAndFind]

RE: He has mentioned his position on the scale of disbelief many times. This is not news.

Dawkins said in the above article that he prefers to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist.

Does the above comment tell us that he ALWAYS WAS an agnostic?

[Claud]

Or man made up God to explain scary lightning and why people die.

They did? The God we are talking about here? When did that happen? I must've missed it.

[OldNavyVet]

So the question, "Why didn't Christ and Christianity appear earlier?" is probably best answered simply by saying that It couldn't have, and still be what It is.

History tells us that Christianity has evolved considerably over the past 2000 years, and what it is today is far-far different than what It was before.

[Claud]

I believe I did receive the free gift.

To a certain degree you are absolutely right. There is no convincing someone who just isn’t there yet. Volumes and volumes have been spilled about the way grace operates—and it is always a profound mystery.

Why do some never believe? Some plain don’t want to, and God honors that choice. I’ve talked to some atheists that told me—shockingly—they were “mad at God” for something or other. Weird, eh? But that’s what they said.

Most people I’d guess though are just not ready for whatever reason.

I think I was in that camp. But He was working on me the whole time. When I was studying theories on beauty and love, when I was learning science, when I read a beautiful story, I was coming to know God. When I was learning the hard way how not to live, I was being prepared for God. He has His own ways of bringing us toward Himself—for skeptics like me it’s sometimes a bit roundabout, but He will always give us a path toward Him in the end: which we can choose to follow or not, a choice which He in His infinite goodness will respect.

When the timing is right, when the clay is ready for the maker’s hand, then the Holy Ghost can do His work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1EOnVSSJYs

And we are never the same.

[Joe 6-pack]

"History tells us that Christianity has evolved considerably over the past 2000 years, and what it is today is far-far different than what It was before."

The way it is practiced certainly has (evolved), but not its core principles...but that's entirely beside my point.

Your original question was, if I understand correctly, why Christianity didn't appear sooner than it did. My response was simply that if it had, it most likely would not have had the human infrastructure to propogate and perpetuate itself. We have other religions that pre-dated Christianity which have died out entirely or thrive only in very specific and limited areas. We have the Roman cults which were, generally speaking, entirely overwhelmed by Christianity, and the empire they served became the western culture, or the springboard from which Christianity ultimately spread about the globe.

While I certainly believe that God is omnipotent, He is certainly not beyond asking humans to do a little work on His behalf. Asking why Christianity took so long to appear is, IMHO, like asking why a chef doesn't serve the meal before he's acquired all the ingredients.

[Johnny B.]

For what it's worth, if you want to read a wonderful book that speculates on how science might find God, I strongly recommend "Contact" by Carl Sagan.

The book speculates deeply on how science might prove or disprove the existence of God, and the conclusion of the book literally made me gasp.

It's not at all what you might expect from Sagan.

FYI, the movie almost completely ignored the theme that made the book so good. In fact, the movie didn't even attempt to portray the dramatic climax of the book.

[James C. Bennett]

Watch the video in your article's link, he that 'scale of disbelief' thing quite clearly.

He says he's always said that on the scale of 1-7 where 7 is Atheism, he places himself on a 6.9.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9102740/Richard-Dawkins-I-cant-be-sure-God-does-not-exist.html

This article and many posts above shamelessly sought to gain popularity by twisting his words, just as that commenter in my earlier reply to you predicted.

John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor

What a joke the Telegraph article author is, really. Mother Teresa in her letters:

"Where is my faith? Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness ... If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul ... How painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, ... What do I labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."

From Wiki (with citations provided at the end of the article):"Analyzing her deeds and achievements, John Paul II asked: "Where did Mother Teresa find the strength and perseverance to place herself completely at the service of others? She found it in prayer and in the silent contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy Face, his Sacred Heart." Privately, Mother Teresa experienced doubts and struggles over her religious beliefs which lasted nearly fifty years until the end of her life, during which "she felt no presence of God whatsoever", "neither in her heart or in the eucharist" as put by her postulator Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk."

Christopher Hitchens wrote: "So, which is the more striking: that the faithful should bravely confront the fact that one of their heroines all but lost her own faith, or that the Church should have gone on deploying, as an icon of favorable publicity, a confused old lady who it knew had for all practical purposes ceased to believe?"

The premise of this article would be akin to claiming Mother Teresa an Atheist for her doubts, or at least an Agnostic, although Richard Dawkins hasn't changed anything regarding his position as dramatically as Mother Teresa did.

[stuartcr]

Why do you think He creates souls He knows will never come to Him?

[stuartcr]

Why do you think He creates souls He knows will never come to Him?

[Alamo-Girl]

Indeed. Thank you for sharing your insights, dear hosepipe!

[boatbums]

If God is outside Time, then how could God produce a change in the circumstances, given that change requires Time to pre-exist and elapse, in order to allow the change in the circumstances? If Time were a "created" thing, then the situation changes from one without Time to one with Time operating it. How can a demarcation exist to separate the two situations, if Time were yet to be "created"? In other words, without Time, the situation without Time and the situation with Time running in it would be super-imposed, in other words, the two situations would be simultaneous, which is a self-contradiction. You cannot do something and not do the same thing, simultaneously. Likewise.

Several observations about your ideas. When you speak of a "situation" that is outside of time and one that is within time, you conclude they cannot both exist because they would need to be "simultaneous" and that destroys the idea of an eternity. But what I envision is there is a dimension that is eternal and within that dimension - or a separate dimension within it, there is a segment, so to speak, that is time. The old, "Time is an island in the sea of God's eternity.". So, time AND eternity most certainly can exist simultaneously without "time" infringing upon the eternal dimension's quality. God is far and above our ability to comprehend, so, therefore, trying to "fit" Him into whatever words we have to explain Him, will always fail to even partially do so.

Whatever we "know" about God, we know because He has chosen to reveal it to us. Even those who deny such an entity exists must have some sort of explanation for how it all came to be or else why so many different explanations? I think that is what sets us apart from all other animals. They, as far as we know just exist by instincts, learned behaviors and experiences and we have no evidence that they ponder the why and what for questions that we do. Granted plenty of people also live like that, but they at least at some point in their lives ask those questions. Have you done that and are you still seeking for the answers or have you reached a satisfactory conclusion and your mind is made up? I'm just curious.