Mile
Zero

In response to my previous post on evolution, I've gotten involved in a couple of discussions on the subject. I've pitched Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker as a introductory text, seeing as how he's an excellent writer and covers the arguments for natural selection very well. In the process, the theory was advanced that Dawkins might be hurting his reputation by his hostility to religion.

I call double standard.

In The Blind Watchmaker, which I have right in front of me, I can't find a single place in which Dawkins actually takes on religion. He does attack specific, flawed religious arguments against evolution, in particular the Argument from Personal Incredulity ("Because I can't think of a possible way for evolution to achieve a given goal, there is no possible way.") and the Irreducible Complexity argument (also known as Intelligent Design). Within this book, however, he doesn't take the next step and imply that the failure of these arguments means that a god does not exist. He simply argues that they have not made successful case against evolution as a scientific theory.

That doesn't mean he hasn't made a strong atheistic case in other places. Take, for example, the following excerpts from an interview with Salon:

The whole interview is worth reading, because while Dawkins can be a jerk he's clearly a sharp guy and good at explaining his atheism. But these relevant portions make his view clear: sure, you can believe that the universe and life within it was divinely created. You can believe it was built by cosmic hamsters, too, if you feel like it. But as Dawkins sees things, since there's no direct evidence at all for either of those scenarios, while there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for alternatives that can explain each step of the creation and evolution processes, we can statistically treat both God and cosmic hamsters as null.

This is controversial even with scientists, because it's a very strong hypothesis. The weak form (not weak as in persuasive power, but as in reach) merely states that a god's existence is an unfalsifiable claim, and so science doesn't have anything to do with it. That's likewise perfectly reasonable. They're simply different views of the same problem--Dawkins says the glass is almost certainly empty, while religiously-inclined scientists state that the glass might be full or empty and science can't tell either way, thank you very much.

I'm not trying to take sides on which side is correct. I'm trying to use it to illustrate a bigger point. We're pretty certain that the tooth fairy doesn't exist, and we're positive that there are no cosmic hamsters. Dawkins simply applies the same inductive reasoning to the divine--and frankly, if the dominant cultural position wasn't Christian, no-one would blink at his assertions. What we're seeing here is what I like to call Christian privilege.

If you've read feminists, either published or around the web, or if you hang out with any of the well-educated feminists, you have probably heard of male privilege. It's the concept that being a man in Western society comes with certain invisible advantages, making life easier. For example, men do not usually face the suspicion that they slept their way into a position. Men are often given priority in conversation, because there's an unspoken cultural imperative for women to be silent and defer to male opinion. Likewise, there's a white privilege. Appropriately-named guest writer Angry White Kid at That Colored Fella's Weblog has a few examples.

Privilege can be held by any dominant culture, and it suppresses co-cultures by way of setting the norm. If you'll allow me to sink back into my native Marxism, it's a tool of hegemony. Privileged people aren't aware of their privilege, because they've lived with it all their lives, and it's built into the society. It's "soft" discrimination. However, if you ask someone from a co-culture about the idea, they'll know what you're talking about right away. It can be a real shock as a member of a privileged class to run up against this form of covert discrimination, and very difficult to learn to remedy it.

There is, once you start looking for it, a clear Christian privilege at work in Western society. Our politicians go out of their way to express how religious they are when they're campaigning (and no doubt many of them are sincere). No-one questions a self-professed Christian, but atheists face curiosity and often outright hostility for their views (or, to be technical, absence thereof). Implicitly, we distrust people who can't profess to a "spirituality," and we may assume that there's something missing from their lives. Religion, and more specifically Christianity, is the norm, and we distrust people who deviate from that norm. They do not have the privilege of immediate trustworthiness.

None of this will make fundamentalists re-examine their views. They are too deep into their persecution complex. But for rational, liberal Christians who consider themselves open-minded, it can be helpful to consider the many ways your life is easier because of your religion. When most reasoning people, religious or not, consider science and faith to be separate, it would be a shame to miss a good science book like Dawkins just because his views on faith disagree with yours.