Richard Dawkins absurd desecration of the word Love - An Opinion
Many of you have probably heard of Richard Dawkins who is a renowned atheist and have spent many years criticizing the biblical scriptures or any form of religious thinking. I say to you, is it not enough that you do not believe in God but have the humility and respect to allow others to believe in what they want. Unfortunately for Richard Dawkins, this is not sufficient, he has a certain urge and mission to rid the world of the demonic teachings of religion and try to prove how foolish and ignorant everyone really is backed by his unproven evolutionary theory.
Richard Dawkins and Michio Kaku - head to head on purpose and love
I am saddened at the disparaging remarks some folks make of the catastrophic events happening around the world and to blame an entire religion or race behind it for the cause. It’s like saying that a tiger attacked and killed a passer-by in a safari park, therefore the entire tiger species need to be eliminated. It is a sad state of affairs that many people choose to ‘idealize’ the thoughts of others whom they perceive as very knowledgeable without any recourse to books or actual facts. Richard Dawkins is fully aware of this and hence he can galavant around the world and say pretty much anything he wants. For those astute amongst us, we like to objectify our views with not only scientific evidence but the world at large. It is extremely narrow minded for scientists to go around the world and claim that their theories are true such as Dawkins on the evolutionary theory. Note that this subject is always attached to the word ‘theory’ which implies theoretical in opinion and open to speculation since no substantial factual evidence to date has been brought to bear. However, Dawkins on one hand is convinced of this theory and uses it at every turn and corner to explain his position on the ‘delusion of God’. This to me, seems very unprofessional and somewhat hypocritical when he uses it to argue his position of God.
To give you an example, the word ‘love’ has many meanings to different people. You can love your spouse, mother or child. You can love your work, the things you eat and so on. To me, the word ‘love’ can never be truly determined as to it’s origin and actual meaning. Dare I say, the word ‘love’ can have a spiritual significance or maybe classified as ‘heavenly’ in it’s definition since there are no explicable definitions. Naturally, you can hear Dawkins coming down like a thunderous elephant to dismiss all notions of these awry thoughts and explain it away as he usually does with his ugly evolutionary head. You can see him do this umpteen times in this interesting debate ‘on the purpose of the universe’ that I found on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmkrI-K7yBo
In order for Dawkins remarks to make sense, he accepts the awe and emotional appeal of the word love but completely desecrates it by attempting to put an unproven theory behind it to somehow give it some credence and form. ‘Do we really need substance and form for the origins of the word love and where it came from’. Can we not believe in the fantastic world that we have created in our heads and go on believing it until we die. After all, it is the intelligible being of who we are in space and what we conjure up in our minds that allows us to aspire to greater things. Why should we believe in a hypothetical theory to define who we are when another better theory may be out there. We just don’t know and we will never know unless Dawkins gets off his high-horse and like a true scientist understand that this is just a theory and another one can come along to displace it. He should make this clear to himself and his narrow-minded band of followers.
Going back to his argument about ‘love’, you will see he starts off very well and then clearly desecrates this word from it’s potentially beautiful meanings all the way to a petri-dish in a laboratory. His argument, ‘it can all be explained by the evolutionary theory and it will be somehow be proven by science..’. Is that all you got!
I particularly do not like the way Dawkins uses the word ‘science’ as it belong to a category or domain of thinkers that attributes them to his likening of the evolutionary theory. He makes this link because he knows very well that he is going appeal to the non-scientists who are always questioning the ethics and fallibility of religion. But to unbiased scientists like myself, we know better, and we usually allow him to let off steam and follow his heart’s and desires. But when he makes errors of judgement and a view of science as though he speaks for other scientists, then we have to object.
What Dawkins is implying is that, don’t appreciate or associate this word with anything fantastic because this would mean that you are falling into the realms of the unknown and is considered retarded and completely unscientific. Humbug, I say. It is the nature of human-kind to think outside the realm of what is already known that allows us to aspire to greater things. In some cases religion has been a major catalyst for some people and led to many great scientific inventions. You only have to check history such as the ‘golden age of Andalusian science’ to see it as historic facts widely accepted by everyone today. Try explaining that to Dawkins. No doubt, he would counter it with some kind of evolutionary mumbo jumbo and dismiss any notions of religion being anything to do with this.
I do not believe in evolutionary theory as an exacting science, not because I believe in religion, because it is simply a theory and there are gaping holes in it’s extricable evidence towards it. If it was proven with no question, then the ‘theory’ would have been dropped from the word long time ago. Just like other theories, it stays in the confines of science as theory and prone to speculation and never to be preached as doctrines of actual science as Richard Dawkins does.
Basically what Dawkins is saying is that the feeling and emotions that swell up with evocation of love should be checked against a scientific understanding and not somehow related to a ‘higher power’. I challenge anyone who has the capacity to do that, maybe a lab rat but no human can describe the essence of true love without having an elated feeling of some kind and linked to a ‘higher passage of thoughts or powers’. For some amongst us, they may make an outcry and say ‘So what!’. I do feel like this but I don’t jump and ascribe it to religion or a higher being or a spiritual ensemble of feelings. To those folks, I say ‘fine’, then go ahead and ascribe it to a certain and yet unproven evolutionary pattern of scientific evidence that pertains to this feeling. Until you have some hard scientific evidence to back it up, we will continue to believe as we like, thank you very much.
Honestly, the conversation on the merits of love between two factions of evolutionary theorists and religion should never ever take place. The matter should be dropped and it is up to the individual to ascribe what he or she feels with the connotation of the word ‘love’ be it some higher power or some neuron cells that fire in a certain way in the brain. It is also one of the reasons why I believe that atheism and religion should not meet at all to discuss their two sides. It is wasted time and effort and creates hostilities and errors of judgement amongst the naive non-scientific audience.
Michio Kaku, another highly renowned scientist who is well known for ‘string theory’ was also part of the debaters in this video. He takes a moderate viewpoint which is the correct position to take in my opinion. He ended up saying that neither party is right or wrong and I will go far as to say it is simply absurd and a desecration of everyone’s beliefs to argue on unfounded scientific principles.
Tags: Debate, Explanation, love, Michio Kaku, Richard Dawkins
[...] The topic of evolution and belief in God is highly controversial and emotional and can rear its ugly heads from the two camps of believers and non-believers. It is still open to debate who is right and wrong because the simple truth is that nobody is right. Although, Richard Dawkins a proponent of evolution believes evolution to be an absolute truth and dispels anything that cannot be explained by scientific theory. In my opinion, if you do not leave ‘room’ for the unexplained and become awed by our physical observations, we come to a standstill and dispel any notions outside of ‘science’, like Dawkins like to think so. He admittedly believes in nothing that he cannot see or be explained by science? See our take on his definition of love. [...]