Richard Dawkins is proof that even the most ridiculous statements can sound educated if said in a certain British accent. Well, Twitter isn’t going to do Dawkins any favours there.
His most recent absurd claim: Patriotism might be more evil than faith.
“Contemplation of WW 1 & 2 persuades me that patriotism (“My country right or wrong”) might be even more evil than supernatural faith. Italians in 1943 deserve credit for finally turning on their preposterous Duce. But for Germans, the lure of patriotic loyalty was too strong.”
Contemplation of WW 1 & 2 persuades me that patriotism (“My country right or wrong”) might be even more evil than supernatural faith. Italians in 1943 deserve credit for finally turning on their preposterous Duce. But for Germans, the lure of patriotic loyalty was too strong.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) January 24, 2019
Apart from the fact that, as Ben Shapiro noted, “both Christianity and patriotism were key components in destroying Nazism and international communism,” Dawkins, once again, makes an absurd appeal to his baseless idea of evil.
In the article titled, The proof of Christianity is the absurdity of every alternative, we pointed out that many atheists presuppose absolute morality. But that’s a problem. If the atheist believes we are the unintentional chemical by-product of time and chance working on matter, then what one chemical does to another is morally irrelevant. In this instance, patriotism is morally irrelevant to the atheist.
At this point, Dawkins might appeal to the “greater good of society,” but in doing so he’s still begging the question. What one chemical does to a larger collection of chemicals is also morally irrelevant. According to the atheistic worldview, human action and behaviour is reduced to one chemical reacting to another chemical, and that is all.
Douglas Wilson once stated, if there were no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. But think for a moment what that would actually mean if it were true. Think about what that means for Dawkins’ claim that patriotism and faith are “evil.”
“If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr Pepper. You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically.
“This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true, but rather because of a series of chemical reactions. Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn created by too much pizza the night before. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water.
“This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else.”
Once again, Dawkins is just another atheist borrowing from the Christian worldview in order to undermine the Christian worldview. For his point to stand, one must first presuppose Christianity to be true, and if true, then his initial statement is fundamentally false.
