As 4:30 AM rolls around, and I'm still sitting there, on my bed, unable to fall asleep, I begin to do what any good self-loathing insomniac will do…I find a distraction to bury myself in…a way to run from the natural comfort and restoration that sleep affords…this time in the form of a pixilated documentary film I find on the internet challenging the belief of God. "The God Delusion" is a documentary by the world-renowned scientist/atheist Richard Dawkins. As the film reaches its half way point I come to a great epiphany, albeit perhaps not the one Richard was trying to inspire in his audience… I realize, I don't like Richard Dawkins, and from a journalistic point of view I really don't like the way his film presents something so complex in such a completely biased (and therefore unscientific) manner.
The God Delusion is an apt title for the documentary, but I think it's equally about the lengths Richard Dawkins will go to convince people that he is in fact the one true God. The irony of the film is in Dawkins' stubborn and self-congratulatory tone of establishing that the universal truth of humanity is science and that religion has only contributed wars, death, hatred, and ignorance to society. He's one step from Michael Moore.
What Dawkins establishes is that there is no concrete or "real" proof that God exists, and that all religions are born of fictional folk lore passed down from generation to generation, changing a little each time. He mainly criticizes the system of belief over proof that religion endorses (the fundamentalist idea that, "if it's in the Bible it's the truth"). The problem with the documentary is that Richard Dawkins tells his story like an alien landing into a foreign world, while all the world sitting coldly outside it.
In one scene when Dawkins visits an Evangelical Church in the Midwest where the crowd is singing and dancing in praise, a shot of Dawkins reveals the scientist looking more like a kid who didn't get hugged enough by his mom than a leading, unbiased scientist. He was missing the point of the allure of the church…the community and the love and smiles that people have within it. That's the important thing that has kept it together.
I was immediatly interested in the contrast of how the Church tells its stories in the Bible and such, and how "scientists" like Dawkins tell theirs. Is it better to tell a story from your heart to describe the unknown (as in Bible verses), or find truth by clinically disproving others from a distance (like Dawkins)?
Do I think that there is a God? Its hard to say really, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but do I think Richard Dawkins misses the point of what it is to be alive and a human? Yes. As people we are not always prone to rationality, and no matter how much science advances I believe there will always be things that can't be explained logically.
One of the most well renowned scientists (and atheists) ever, Einstein once said, "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." With this quote, Einstein acknowledges that science has a long way to go...just dont tell that to Dawkins.