Dawkins Letters, The by Robertson David

Author:Robertson, David [Robertson, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781845506520
Publisher: Christian Focus Publications
Published: 2010-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

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22. Gollancz (1963)

23. Cited in McGrath, Dawkins’ God.

24. From Simon Morris, Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, Cambridge University Press (2003)

25. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952)

26. The Spectator (30 July 2005)

27. Abingdon Press, USA (1994)

LETTER 8 – THE MYTH OF GODLESS MORALITY

Dear Dr Dawkins,

As a young boy I watched with fascination The World at War on our TV screens (the whole series is now available on DVD and is regularly repeated on the History Channel). One scene in particular has stuck in my mind. A group of French Jewish men, women and children were herded into a large barn by Nazi soldiers. The barn was set on fire and the Jews were given a simple choice – they could come out of the barn and be shot or they could stay in and be burnt to death. It horrified me then and it horrifies me now. In fact, it so disturbed me that when I took the opportunity to do Sixth Year Studies at school, I determined to look at Weimar Germany and then went on to study history at the University of Edinburgh in order to try and answer the question, ‘why?’ The same question that was displayed on the poster hanging in my bed-sit, superimposed over the soldier being shot in the back and the young naked girl running across a bridge screaming as napalm burned into her flesh. This question of morality is thus of great importance – not only for me but I suspect for most people.

You address this issue of morality in chapter six and in particular the question as to why we are good. As far as I can understand it, your case seems to be as follows: you define goodness as altruism and therefore point out that we tend to be altruistic towards those of our own kin because we are genetically programmed to care for those who are most likely to have copies of the same genes that are in us. In addition to this there is reciprocal altruism – the ‘you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours’ theory. Kinship and reciprocal altruism are the twin pillars on which a Darwinian explanation of morality is based. To these you add reputation (we want to be seen to be ‘good’) and then the notion that altruistic giving may be seen as a form of superiority – a way of buying self-advertising. You also explain ‘kindness’ or ‘sympathy’ as a blessed Darwinian mistake. And that's it. That is the Darwinian explanation of morality. There are so many problems with this approach.

First, it does not seem much of a morality. It is still primarily focused on the Selfish Gene. It is all about me, me and mine. As a Christian I believe that the Bible teaches that human beings are fundamentally selfish and self-centred – however the Bible is not content to leave us there. There is something better. Christ came to challenge and to deliver us from the self-centredness which you glorify as the basis of morality.

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