A Review of Richard Dawkinss View on Religion

The view that religion is a menace, cause of conflict and even of irrational human behaviour in the world has been recently advocated by Richard Dawkins (1993, pp.13-27). As a scientist, Dawkins believes that science can provide an answer to all humanity questions of the origin and meaning of life, not religion. He considers religion as a virus, which like any parasite, survives through sucking sustenance from healthy life-forms.

He usually compares what he terms as 'memes' with 'genes'; genes pass on biological, or genetic material to its offspring while 'memes' are cultural ideas and achievements that are often passed on by non- biological mechanisms, like education. Just as only whatever aids the survival of species will be biologically perpetuated, so only healthy memes ultimately thrive. I will seek to show that Dawkins position that considers religious faith the spread of a virus is vague. According to him unhealthy memes, such as a virus will die. Religion is a virus, in fact, a 'type of mental illness' according to Dawkins because it is irrational.

Viruses require a potential host to have familiar features; in the same spirit, religious faith mimics the manner in which viruses infect hosts, using them to replace the spread further, it does so by implanting irrational fear in the minds of children through their parents; therefore, for Dawkins religion is an irrational meme.

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It cannot explain the origin or meaning of life but can incite people to war or be committing atrocities in its name. It has the ability to justify anything such as that ‘a human being should die on a cross at a stake, nailed on a sword of a crusader, shot on a Beirut street, or killed in a bar in Belfast' (Dawkins 2006, p, 198). 'Religious faith,' according to Dawkins, 'deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology (331).' In considering religion a psychological malady, Dawkins stands on a distinct shoulder of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), for whom religion was a type of neurosis. Like every other neurosis, religion originates in sexual frustration and rivalry and keeps adherents in a parameter state of childishness.

We do not need religion Dawkins says, in order to be good since our genes contain altruistic tendencies (261). Dawkins feels that there is no true mortality in 'sucking up to God' (226). Dawkins persists on religion as being a virus and antithesis or rational as well as 'true' scientific discussion as he states that 'one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches people that it is a virtue to be satisfied without understanding' (152). Dawkins argument may seem persuasive in the context of having to adjudicate in debates over relative merits of evolution and creationism. For Dawkins 'religion' is synonymous with a nonexistent creator, and in case that was the extent of what religion is then it would make no sense to construe choices as having religious characteristics.

Religion is irrational, Dawkins says, because it applauds 'unquestioning belief,' blind faith and degrading deference to authority. Well, some religious views do, just as some moral views. But if the heart of religion is a belief that there is a transcend reality of supreme value, that hardly seems unquestioning, degrading or blind. Almost every classical philosopher defends such belief. It has been defended after an intense critical examination, as a rational and plausible basic world-view.

To take an example from a key proponent of strategies based on judgments about true and false beliefs, Dawkins expresses the outrage of religious education, the irrational fears it implants in the minds of children, deforming them, often for life. Using evolutionary psychology, Dawkins argues that religion abuses a trait of the infantile mind that has great evolutionary importance: children's credulity. This credulity is important so children will follow adults precepts that will save their lives. But religious education causes this trait through in calculating fears of eternal damnation, hell or eternal torture for 'sins' like questioning God's existence or questioning the validity of the Bible. Dawkins condemns the society for having allowed parents to indoctrinate their children with their religious view.

Dawkins insists that this virus is often transferred from parents to children so that one of acquires the infection when one is a child: Children need to believe and trust and are very ready to do it. Dawkins uses the definition of ‘meme' as it appears in the dictionary: self- replicating elements of culture that is passed on through imitation." He applies this concept transferring of religion to children, analyzing why their minds are so ready to receive "viruses of the mind" such as religion.

There are seven symptoms of 'illnesses' transferred through religion. The first three have common features: Faith is a compelling conviction entirely alien t evidence of reason; lack of evidence is a virtue; the mystery is a good thing. Dawkins makes an assumption that a reasonable religious commitment cannot, by any chance, exist and he offers a caricature to make his point. His symptoms, however, are even less edifying, The religious person, labeled the “sufferer” may have intolerant behaviors for example towards 'vectors' or rival faiths, sometimes even putting them to death.

In a chapter named “Childhood Abuse and Escape from Religion,” Dawkins tells a heart-wrecking story from nineteenth-century Italy, where the babysitter had secretly baptized a young Jewish boy. When this was uncovered, the Inquisition require that he be eliminated from his parents, and raised in a Catholic home, which is what happened. As Dawkins writes about this, every sensible reader follows right with him. This seemed like an appealing thing to do and is surpassed by Dawkins telling his story unwittingly as an introduction to his proposal to do the same kind of thing. He professes astonishment that these nineteenth- century Catholics felt like fulfilling a purpose of ensuring protection to this young child from being brought up by a Jew.

Dawkins further proceeds serenely passing on to his subsequent argument that the moderns have a responsibility of protecting young children everywhere from being raised by religious people who consider it their duty to raise their child in their own faith. However, the main issue that Dawkins sees here apparently seems to be that not enough children were eliminated from their homes. In that case, if Dawkins had not been in the grip of smugitudinous secularism, he would have seen the glaring contradiction in this case.

Dawkins' account of the manner in which religious beliefs persist in human societies is vague. One is a readiness to replicate information correctly, and the other is an aptness to follow instructions contained in the same information. Biological cells, as well as computers, are both virus friendly environments because by their very nature they are able to embody these two characteristics. But so do human brains of the young, which for them to acquire language in a fast way and huge information of the social as well as the natural world that surrounds them, they need to be able to open, receptive gullible, trusting and plastic.

According to Dawkins (1993, pp13-27), “like an immune-deficient patient, children are usually open to psychological infections that parents and adults provide to them without making efforts." Dawkins uses this example to express his point of religious faith and the spread of a virus.

In conclusion, I agree that there is a need for discovery of why people have a habit of claiming certainty where none exists and to hanker after magic instead of content with more prosaic facts. These are psychological questions, but I also doubt if it helps to say that 'religion' causes people to do so. All we can say is that some religions, such as some moral and political systems show such human habits to be at work. Good religion, being eminently reasonable will try to curb them.

For Dawkins, science is no such virus as religious beliefs and there is absolutely nothing to recommend about religion. It does not make people more moral nor does it create more openness for the suffering of other individuals. However, Dawkins presents us with a choice: either we take the road of modern science or the Enlightenment or we become more mired forever in irrationality, inhumanity, and impediments for the free and rational inquiry into the world and the flourishing of human nature.

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