The recently retired Oxford Professor and a biologist-atheist Richard Dawkins, in his book God Delusion, writes that the biblical God is “a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully”. The book has sold over 2 million copies since it was published in 2006. Such words coming from an Oxford professor are unsettling; and even more unsettling are the number of people who bought such a book. This indeed showed that Dawkins has a huge following! When Prof. Alister McGrath, who is a biochemist-Christian theologian asked why there was such an anger, Dawkins replied that religion stopped people from raising intellectual questions and also that religion can and has been used as a lethal weapon, eg. 9/11.
Dawkins was illogical in explaining away religion in general for what Muslims did on 9/11 or for that matter members of a particular religion do. Dawkins should have posed that critique only to Muslims or to members of that particular religion that were espousing unjust and inhuman violence. However, for the other point that he raised, let us examine if it is in the nature of religion to stop people from raising questions critically.
“Different levels of explanation”
Take a question: Why is the water in the kettle boiling? One answer which is used at home is to say it is boiling because Thole wants to make tea. Another answer which is used in physics textbooks is to say that it is boiling because the vapour pressure of the liquid is equal to the pressure exerted on the liquid by the surrounding atmospheric pressure. Though the two answers are different they are not contradictory. The answers are valid depending on the level it was asked. Take another case: A Christian will say God healed her of cancer. And this is as valid as saying that through surgery the cancerous growth was removed. Different answers, but at different level. Religious answers do not attempt to subvert and undermine scientific explanation. If a Christian wishes to counter an explanation given by science, she does that by going into scientific methodology. Otherwise, Christians take the explanation given by science and go on to add another level of explanation to the event which is theological/religious. The relationship between science and religion is more of mutual enrichment than that of warfare.
Given this nature of religious enterprise in adding another 'higher' dimension to the level of explanation offered, science and religion are not enemies but mutual friends; making the explanation of reality richer. Scientists, philosophers and theologians in the 18th - 19th centuries have made the mistake of importing “God” to explain an event when science failed to explain it. Twenty years later when science made the breakthrough, they removed “God” from the picture. This kind of approach of using “God” to fill the knowledge gap led to what is called 'god of the gap'. But this kind of “God” is not the God the Bible talks about. And Dawkins rightly said that such a “God” stopped people from raising critical questions. However, the God of the Bible is one who works through scientific laws, not one who works in shifts between him and scientific laws.
Christians have all the more meaningful reason to study science, for exploring the world is about knowing and enjoying God's creativity. New scientific discovery that leads to enhancing human flourishing is about undoing the effect of sin that Christ himself has been spearheading when he came to this earth on that first Christmas Day. It is for such reason that Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, England, where many of the pioneering breakthough in nuclear physics have been made, has inscribed on its entrance Ps 111.2 – “Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who take pleasure in them”. History witnessed that Christian religion in particular did not stop people from raising questions and deeper investigation of reality; it rather spurs them on.
Science Alone?
It is science that gave rise to the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A deadly bomb like Napalm used in theVietnam War by the US was invented by a brilliant scientific mind. It was a scientist like Joseph Mengele who performed horrifying medical experiments using his scientific skill on innocent people in the Concentration Camp. Science and scientists devoid of moral conscience can commit heinous crime on humanity. But this moral conscience has to come from a source outside of science. The crime mentioned however, does not mean that we negate all the good fruit of scientific enterprise.
Limit of Science
Scientific enterprise is a modest discipline. It does not try to answer questions about morality, nature of state, end purpose of human individual/society, beauty, art and so on. Yet these enterprises are extremely important for meaningful human existence. Therefore, it is rather naïve or arrogant when someone puts it up as science vs religion or that in this modern scientific age we don't do religion etc. For the world to be enthralling and livable we need religion, science and many more.
Conclusion
Is the God of the Bible really who he is as described by Richard Dawkins? Selective reading of the events of the Old Testament or the Bible is an incomplete way to understand the Bible. To get the fuller picture of what Christians understand of their God, look at Jesus Christ who is the image of the invisible God ( Col 1.15). This crucified and risen Jesus Christ, in whose being is rooted justice and love, embodied the totality of God. And it is at this man, Dawkins and his fans need a closer look to know the God of the Bible.
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