Richard Dawkins: "even Jesus would have questioned the existence of God if he were living today"

[kpete]

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins claims that given today’s knowledge of science, even Jesus would have questioned the existence of God if he were living today.

“What about those Christians — and there are millions of them — who don’t have necessarily that hardened belief in creationism, for example, for whom a belief in God is less devout and less hardened than in other branches of Christianity, of other religions?” The Guardian‘s John Harris asked Dawkins during an interview broadcast Monday.

“To the extent that a religious person believes an obvious falsehood like the world is only 6,000 years old, I’m going to have an argument with them,” Dawkins explained. “Your tea-drinking vicar who doesn’t believe that… I mean, of course those people are very different and I would have a very different kind of argument with them.”

“I wrote and article called ‘Atheists for Jesus,’ I think it was… Somebody gave me a t-shirt: ‘Atheists for Jesus.’ Well, the point was that Jesus was a great moral teacher and I was suggesting that somebody as intelligent as Jesus would have been an atheist if he had known what we know today.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/24/richard-dawkins-jesus-would-have-been-an-atheist/

[Peace Patriot]

1. What a provocative and interesting statement!

I don't think it's true but still it stimulates thought. Why don't I think it's true? Well, that's a long story but I will sum it up this way: I've studied the Bible and I know what Jesus said, time and again--an essential message that has survived multiple translations, Bowdlerization (ill-intended editings) and every sort of effort to hide its meaning, over many centuries. I read it as: We aspire to be God and to do good. "The kingdom is within you."
This is a powerful, collective wish and it is about the future--what we could become if we overcome selfishness, greed, myopia, tribalism and other limits on our understanding.

Jesus said it very simply, in dozens of ways, but essentially, the way to realize the "kingdom" (power) "within you" is to : "Love thy neighbor." It is possible to really do this because the ability is within you. It means devotion to the common good, to cooperation, to sharing, and includes sacrificing the ego or putting the ego to a higher purpose. It also involves putting yourself in the other person's place and seeing things from his/her viewpoint--not from your own ego-centric or tribally-cultivated viewpoint. This is what we COULD become and Jesus saw that we are capable of it--of becoming all-compassionate like the best of the Gods that we project.

We are fast gaining god-like power over the physical world but we need to mature spiritually and socially, and become "father" and "mother" to the human race and all sentient beings. God. (Our translations have Jesus speaking of "the Father" but that was probably an interpolation or mistranslation. The earliest Christians--the Gnostics--worshipped both God the Mother and God the Father.)

There are a lot of God-concepts that are punishing or demonic or indifferent. Jesus aimed our God-concept (our collective future) higher--all merciful. Whether he was the notion of a collection of writers or an actual person, it doesn't really matter. The message is clear and it is not confined to the western world. Buddha preached much the same message.

I think the "Does God exist?" question is irrelevant--and would have been irrelevant to Jesus and/or his writers, as well as to Buddha. YOU are the "father" and "mother" of all sentient beings, not some distant, absurd, fantastic, all powerful Sky-God. YOU, collectively, with all sentient beings, ARE God--or rather, have the ability to become the all-merciful, all-knowing, all-powerful "father/mother" projection whom we, as individuals, love and are dependent upon in infancy, and whom we gradually realize, as we grow up, is actually a collection of people--family, friends, teachers, community, country, world--which sustains us. We need to grow up from this basic human experience and realize its potential: that collectively we sustain each other and can extend "father/mother" love and care to everyone.

If you analyze this OVERWHELMING DESIRE of human beings to find God or become God in a strictly rational way--as to evolution--it is obviously a survival mechanism and it is STILL evolving. We, as a species, have extended our care to the ill, to the elderly, to the weak. Scientifically speaking, perhaps this is because KNOWLEDGE is one of our chief survival tools--and the sick, the elderly, the weak may have knowledge that we, collectively, need. We recognize the VALUE of individuals, no matter their ability to keep up in the physical level. They cost us food and resources. Why do we sustain them--from a strictly scientific/rational viewpoint?

Different people and belief systems would give different answers to that question, but it is an overwhelming fact of human evolution that we NOW respect MORE than physical values--youth, strength, productiveness--and are devoted, for one reason or another, to HIGHER values: knowledge, love, respect, connectedness, compassion.

Children are another such matter--a special category of the weak--and how we treat them and how we educate them and why we do so. Why do we invest hopes and dreams in our children and take such care with them? Why don't we treat them as slaves as soon as they can walk and talk and do our bidding? We have HIGHER goals for them, which have evolved over the centuries and millennia and those goals almost all have to do with the future--a future that adults will NOT be alive in. There is an animal parallel of child care and nurturing but it is orders of magnitude below what human beings do with their children when we are at our best.

This CAN be described as a survival mechanism (care for the weak, the sick, the elderly), but it is aimed beyond individual survival. Indeed, many of us would die for our children and for others (for the weak, for family members, for our "buddies," for our country). In most "wild" contexts, the weak and the old fall by the wayside. The young are protected, as well as possible, and it's an interesting question, for instance, why does a Mother Bear care if her offspring survive? But obviously, we have that same mammalian trait of protecting the young.

But why do we protect the old and the sick? Steven Hawking, one of our greatest scientific thinkers, would be long dead in a "wild" context. Why have we preserved him, with very elaborate and expensive medical help (starting long before his genius was evident)? Thanks to British socialism, they do it pretty automatically in England, for anyone sick or weak--and we are all the beneficiary of this in someone like Stephen Hawking surviving and being able to live, think, lecture and write. Though in the U.S. we are far less compassionate, we have made efforts, such as Medicare and other medical help for the poor/elderly. It is pretty much the norm, these days, not to abandon the sick, the weak, the elderly and to ensure quality of life for people who cannot sustain themselves. Why?

It is a bitter irony that religious fundies--so-called 'christians'--who deny evolution nevertheless take the "Darwinian" view that society should abandon the sick, the weak and the elderly. It is a sign of where their funding is from: the Corporate Rulers and the super-rich, who want to make yet more money with NO social responsibility. To them, there is no future. There is only now and their power and wealth. Whether they or their rightwing fundie tools claim to believe in God or not, they are faithless.

There are MANY people--diabetics, heart patients, para- and quadriplegics, victims of various diseases and accidents--who are today contributing members of society--and many a child who, in other times, would not even have learned to read and write, let alone become a scientist, a teacher, an artist, a leader--without our remarkable care for the sick, the weak and the elderly. This we can see as an evolutionary survival mechanism. We--humanity, as a whole--have realized that the sick, the weak and the elderly, if properly cared for, can make important and sometimes huge contributions to our society and our knowledge. (We have had to be prodded by various political/social movements but those movements have succeeded in creating universal principles.)

It is the non-contributing people who are more of a puzzle. They do suffer cruelty and abandonment or near-abandonment, but the general ethical rule now is that they, too, have a right to live and to quality of life. This is a worldwide norm--often violated but not denied--accepted as a plank of human rights. Why do we do this? Is it merely that we now recognize the potential for valuable knowledge in any and all human brains?

You can speculate that we are evolving this unique characteristic (care for the sick and the elderly) because the Universe is a dangerous place (among other things--vast and beautiful beyond imagining). Solar systems can explode. Planetary bodies can be blown to bits. Even a mere asteroid can end all life on earth. As we gain knowledge of the Universe, perhaps we are evolving survival mechanisms (collective knowledge) to survive its dangers, as we have evolved emergency response systems to survive volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc., here on Earth. Passing knowledge along is vital to our (um, humanity's) survival. Not our own personal survival, necessarily--and, we won't ultimately survive; we will die--but everyone else's survival: the survival of our species and all that it means to us, even though each of us will die.

And maybe we even unconsciously perceive that the least among us can possess experience/knowledge that is vital to us all. But the scientific explanation of compassion--as an evolutionary tool of some kind--is too limited, it seems to me.

There may be a point at which science and spirituality come back together--as they once were the same endeavor in our early history--and our impetus to become God (a collectively powerful, merciful entity) joins with our struggle for power over the physical world.
Don't know. Don't understand everything, obviously. But I think I'm onto something. Is there a "God"? No. It is a collective projection. Is it therefore to be dismissed as superstition? Absolutely not! In defending science and scientific thought, we must not make the mistake of dismissing everything that seems irrational to us as nonsense. Peoples' desire for a higher good is NOT nonsense. It MIGHT be studyable by science, or it might be some parallel development that has other principles, beyond what we currently understand as scientific. One thing that science has demonstrated is that the Universe is one VERY strange place. Well, our brains may be strange as well, for instance with capacities--and I'm thinking particularly of cooperative/interconnective capacities--that we barely understand and mostly cannot even see (we are too immersed in its manifestations).
Some science fiction writers have expressed such ideas. (Arthur Clarke's "Childhood's End" comes to mind.) I think the lesson is, don't get hung up on a side issue ("Does God exist?"). Ask, instead, why do we ask that question?.

I'm NOT saying that religions and religious leaders have not gone horribly astray--as to Christianity, starting very early, 2nd-3rd centuries, capped by a devilish right turn into powermongering in the 5th century that Christianity's or Jesus' core message ("Love they neighbor") did not start to recover from for 1,500 years, and is still ravaged by. I'm not saying that religions have not been used for war, torture, oppression and enrichment of the rich. Though Buddhism has remained mostly innocent of these horrors, it is blatant and obvious that all the other major religions have been used for evil purposes at different times, including today. But, still, this does NOT account for the abiding belief of most religious believers in the core teachings of their religion--all of which have compassion at their center. Religious belief is not just a social organizing principle nor a vehicle for powermongering, nor personal denial of our inevitable death. There is something more there, embedded in our brains--perceivable in our hopes and desires and in our self-sacrificing actions.
We care for the non-contributing sick, weak and elderly because they are "God's children"--that is, because they are OUR children, in our projection of God and our desire to become like the best God we can imagine.

Maybe call it a collective wish to be better--to transcend our individual wants and needs with a higher purpose. Why do we have this wish? Is it explainable in the scientific terms that we know? Why do we ask, "Does God exist?"? Why do we have this imaginative, creative, projectionist quality? Is "God" not our own product?

Why do we produce this concept? Why is it so tenacious and widespread? Look beyond the history and manifestations of this belief, and also its denial, to the quality that it demonstrates in the human mind: The ability to imagine an all-powerful, all-merciful being; a perfect being (in some cases a mathematical being--the apex of ideal qualities); in other cases, a Great Father or Great Mother or Great Spirit, with unusual interest in human beings. Even to deny the existence of such a Being is to acknowledge it in our imaginations.
To take this further: Perhaps the ability to produce this concept is telling us something very important about ourselves and our abilities. For instance, if society--all of us collectively--become God, then we are all cared for, loved and sustained by each other, the way the best of mothers and fathers care for, love and sustain their children.

Good mothers and fathers allow their children freedom and they let them make mistakes, and their ultimate goal is to create free agents who can think for themselves. Why couldn't society do the same, for all us collectively? We have the bugaboo of dictatorial state socialism in the way of imagining how this would work without coercion and loss of freedom. Why couldn't it work just like good parenting works--to create free agents? And is this not what most believers in God think about God--that God is both all powerful and simultaneously allows people to fail, to sin, to disobey, to abandon belief? God doesn't want slave worshipers (not in any major and long-lasting religion) but rather free adherents!
Humans want to be free--and in their projection of God, imagine that God wants them to be free. And they ALSO want to be loved, cared for, understood, secure and helped along in expressing their creative energy. Combined, we have the human projection of what collective humanity could do for itself: be God to itself (and to any others we meet along the way, if we ever get off this planet into the Greater Universe).

And maybe, just maybe, in the convergence of science and spirituality, we will eventually transcend individual death and become immortal "gods." What kind of "gods" will we (or future humans) be? And will we even get there if we don't collectively project "love the neighbor" to all sentient beings? Power over the physical world can be extremely destructive--and is threatening all life on Earth as we speak. It can destroy those who wield such power. How do we achieve the wisdom to use our increasing power over the physical world for good and not for destruction (including self-destruction)?

That question--how do we become wise and good?--is not answerable by science. Some scientists have struggled with it, but scientific methods do not address it. It is outside of science (as we currently construe science).

What else is going on with humans outside of that which is scientifically measurable and outside of power over the physical world? There is obviously quite a lot going on outside of that realm (or apparently outside of that realm). And questions like, "Does God exist?"--and other more relevant questions, about human rights and ethics and right livelihood and environmental responsibility and fairness and care for the poor and the sick--are a fundamental part of that other realm. They intermix, of course, at some points. We all have both scientific rationalism and God projections--ideals of the good--within our cranial capacity. But the latter are the main questions among non-scientist religious/spiritual communities (intermixing also with political communities).

We shouldn't let the corporate media tell us what religion is about, because they lie about and distort this matter like many others. We should seek deeper understanding of what moves most people who say they believe in God. I have found, in a lot of instances, that "belief in God" is not superstition or simple-mindedness or merely social. What I have seen is that "other" thing about humans--the quality of projecting a better future. They call it "God" but actually they are seeking the qualities that they project into God--in the case of true Christians, for instance, the qualities that Jesus extolled: selflessness, love, the "kingdom within" that manifests in communal action, that is, action for the greater good. These qualities are by no means exclusive to one religion or to "believers." They are universal. Some call these qualities "God." Some don't. But everyone has the capacity to seek these higher qualities and to further humanity along that path.

Our very great intelligence (compared to other known species, except maybe dolphins) may be trying to ensure our survival, and may be manifesting the greater wisdom that we must achieve in order to survive, and is calling this effort to survive "belief in God" somewhat mistakenly. We maybe need a new name for it: belief in ourselves.

Why are we here? Why do we ache for immortality, fancy a God who loves and cares for us, get mind-boggled at the beauty of the night sky or the seashore or our little garden or a lovely spider's web, compose music, write novels and poems, create wondrous widgets, gaze in awe at great glittering cities, sacrifice ourselves and our material goods to send our children to college or to care for our aged parents, explore Mars, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and beyond, spends multi-millions on a telescope in outer space, just to SEE what it all looks like--that fantastic reality we call the Universe? Why did we evolve eyes to see and brains to understand? What is our evolution all about?

I don't think science can answer this question. Science, too, is our own product. Both things are: God and science. There is no contest between them. There was something of a war between religious powermongers and the rational men of the "Enlightenment" and neither side "won," really. Both human products need to be cleared of corruption, decadence and wrong paths. Science, in the hands of corrupt, powermongering Corporate Rulers, has taken some wrong--and possibly fatal--paths lately--just like the Catholic Church and other religions have taken wrong paths. But this does not mean that the impulse to know and the impulse to do good in the future are at odds with each other. In essence, they are nearly the same thing (and were, at one time, wedded together).

Both things--God and science--persistently express something fundamental about human beings. We are scientists (tinkerers, seekers of knowledge) and we want to be better and want the future to be better--a future we will never see. How is that rational? It isn't!

So there is something basic in human nature that is not rational and that seeks the good of all. There is also something in human nature that seeks scientific knowledge for the good of all--not for Nobel prizes and fat grants--but for the common good and for the future. Are those kind of scientists irrational? They probably wouldn't say that they were, but they believe something irrational or at least not easily explainable: that pure science is worth doing, regardless of personal rewards. Where does that idea come from? It comes from the "irrational" part of the brain that projects God: all-knowing, all-powerful, all-merciful. ("God" will see the merit in pure, idealistic scientific work for the common good--that is, WE--collective humanity--will see it, in the future!)

The question, "Does God exist?" is like a warrior cry--a battle cry--but against the wrong object (believers). And it is the wrong question. It is shallow, like an opinion poll question. Ask instead: Will the future of humanity exist? And what can we do to shape that future toward humanity's best and highest aspirations? And why do we want to? Eh? Why do we (or most of us, anyway) want to?

Why bother--when it doesn't stuff us with delicious foods, and satisfy our sexual urges and fill our caves with clever toys? Why do so many of us do so many things that don't make us rich and powerful but rather look to a better future for future human beings, not ourselves?

That has to be the "God projection" that comes with the human brain. God "doesn't exist." But WE do. And we have the ability to make "God"--our highest ideals of cooperation and compassion--real.

That, it seems to me, is what Jesus says in virtually every statement and parable. The human race is capable of becoming God and, by sacrificing yourself for that future, you are already part of that realized projection.

And maybe Jesus knew something that we don't yet know--that future humans will achieve godlike powers and wisdom, and will be able to travel "back" in time and rescue those who contributed to the good from their inevitable deaths. Or, maybe the Buddhists have it right, that you simply keep being reborn and living more lives until you "get it"--achieve Enlightenment. If that is the case, then keep your eyes open as you die, cuz you're in for quite a ride and, also, you may be able to pass some knowledge and wisdom forward.

[Humanist_Activist]

2. I think Dawkins is wrong for several reasons, the top one being that Jesus was a...

"great moral teacher" is just wrong. He in fact, greatly emphasized following Mosaic law, which by any modern standards is barbaric and immoral, he was also highly irrational, to the point of cursing a fig tree. Even his storming of the money changers in the temple was a moral outrage to him, but because the Pharisees no longer followed the Mosaic law. This is assuming he existed as portrayed in the gospels.