Letter to Richard Dawkins, c/o Charles Simonyi Chair Personal Assistant
Dear Dr. Richard Dawkins
I am a graduate student in Canada, and although I wasn’t able to read the entirety of your book, what I have read was very good. While I am inclined to disagree with your premise and conclusions, I quite enjoyed it.
However, my concern is that your work suffers from many generalizations, which detract from the experience of the book as a whole. For example, on pgs. 283-284, you relate the story of an unnamed “respected elder statesman” of the Zoology dept. at Oxford while you were an undergraduate, who, upon hearing an American cell biologist who presented evidence that the Golgi Apparatus was real (the statesman having believed and taught prior that the G.A. was an illusion), went up and shook the American’s hand “with passion,” and, thanking him, admitted that he had been wrong for 15 years.
To this, your comment was that “No fundamentalist would ever say that.” In defense of the accusations that you are a type of atheist fundamentalist, you are presenting a decidedly one-sided view and a half-definition of what a (theistic) fundamentalist is and does. From what I can conclude, for a theistic fundamentalist to prove you wrong, s/he would be required to deny the existence of God, not merely admit that they had been wrong on select points of theology or orthopraxy in the past (as the elder statesman in a sense did). In other words, admit that they were wrong about the God Conviction and that Richard Dawkins was correct regarding the God Delusion. It just doesn’t work, and this is what I see as the primary flaw in your recent publication.
For example, if I were to admit upon hearing testimonies to the errors of my formerly held opinions and views, especially with regard to Biblical interpretation and theology, I would readily admit that I have been wrong and thank those who instructed me in the correct paths. This is not merely theoretical, this is practical. I have been wrong before (desperately wrong) regarding election, predestination, eschatology and justification. I write to you today as a (theistic) fundamentalist, who has been ‘wrong’ before, will be ‘wrong’ again, and I readily admit to this fact.
Regardless of these errors, what I see now as the biggest mistake in life was my formerly held belief that I was in charge of my own destiny. I was raised in a secular home, fed the humanistic creation myth of evolution from a young age, and furiously argued with people I deemed “blind fools,” also known as Christians.
I do not want you to think that my change of heart had anything to do with ‘Intelligent Design’ propaganda or brainwashing, rather what turned the lights on, so to speak, for me was postmodern incredulity toward suppositional and non-experiential knowledge. What caused this “breakup” between my dogma and I was my increasing uneasiness with humanistic self-determination, and the arrogance it presumed when trying to teach me that a species who has existed for but a microcosm in the vast scale of things, could actually determine or at least attempt to plot the history of everything and present it all in a very logical, modern step-by-step format.
It’s not that I found theism to be more attractive; but on the contrary, the humanistic and evolutionary metanarratives are by far the most exciting and beautiful. It’s not that I never experienced a sense of awe or felt invigorated when reading works such as yours. It’s not that the theories don’t work or are flawed. It’s just that I wasn’t buying. To sum, I wasn’t convinced by theism, I was unconvinced of humanism.
I currently maintain an a priori commitment to theism, every bit as much as Richard Lewontin holds a prior commitment to materialism, as he wrote in the New York Review ten years ago. For what it’s worth, I would hope to persuade you to reevaluate your assertions regarding fundamentalists. Your book challenged me to think, and for that I thank you. I hope that this letter finds you well.
Grace and Peace,
Tyler Bennicke
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