Mehdi Hasan vs Richard Dawkins: the new clash of civilisations
Charles Darwin (Photo: Bonnetmaker)
The great “clash of civilisations”, according to Samuet P Huntington in his seminal article for Foreign Affairs in 1993, was between a belligerent Islam (whose characteristics are taken from Bernard Lewis’s 1990 analysis of “Muslim Rage”) and the civilised West, which must not continue to accomodate but needs to challenge the upstart Muslims.
Twenty years on, Huntington’s view seems woefully antiquated. Christians and Muslims (and all believers) stand cheek to jowl against the strident atheists who run the British Establishment (and are increasingly vocal in America too). Here is a clash of civilisation, 2012-style: Mehdi Hasan, a practising Muslim, took on evangelical atheist Richard Dawkins at the Oxford Union earlier this month, during an interview for Al Jazeera.
Those atheists [explains Hasan] who harangue us theists for our supposed lack of evidence should consider [that: first]… it may be a tired cliché but it is nonetheless correct: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I can’t prove God but you cant disprove him. The only non-faith-based position is that of the agnostic.
Second, there are plenty of things that cannot be scientifically tested or proven but that we believe to be true, reasonable, obvious even. Which of these four pretty uncontroversial statements is scientifically testable? 1) Your spouse loves you. 2) The Taj Mahal is beautiful. 3) There are conscious minds other than your own. 4) The Nazis were evil.
Hasan goes on to question Dawkins’s definition of science as offering only proveable theories:
science itself is permeated with unproven (and unprovable) theories. Take the so-called multiverse hypothesis. “It says there are billions and billions of universes, all of which have different settings of their fundamental constants,” Dawkins explained to a member of the audience in Oxford. “A tiny minority of those billions and billions of universes have their constants set in such a way as to give rise to a universe that lasts long enough to give rise to galaxies, stars, planets, chemistry and hence the process of evolution…”
Hmm. A nice idea, but where’s your evidence, Richard? How do we prove that these billions and billions of universes exist? ”The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language,” the cosmologist Paul Davies has admitted, “but in essence it requires the same leap of faith [as God].”
The culture war today is, pace Huntington, Lewis et al, waged on a new battlefront, with new allegiances.
We have an established church in the UK which still has the right to place Bishops in the House of Lords to meddle with the lawmaking process. The Prime Minister is a theist – in fact, the Cabinet is dominated by theists with Clegg being the only exception that I know of. The monarch who rules us all is the head of the established church. There’s a theists-only lecture slot on the radio every day, and the government has spent taxpayer’s money on sending a Bible to every school.
To say that strident atheists run the British Establishment seems a little bit at odds with the observable facts.
Ben
December 27, 2012 at 15:44
Those atheists [explains Hasan] who harangue us theists for our supposed lack of evidence should consider [that: first]… it may be a tired cliché but it is nonetheless correct: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I can’t prove God but you cant disprove him. The only non-faith-based position is that of the agnostic.
What utterly disingenuous claptrap that argument always has and always will be! Without evidence, what do we have? Seriously, what do we have? I’ll tell you what we have: Father Christmas is real; the tooth fairy is real; Jack Frost is real; so is the Grim Reaper; and so is the Man in the Moon. Because without evidence you can assert whatever stupid, irrational and entirely-convenient-to-you-being-able-to-control-the-minds-of-the-fools-who-believe-you nonsense you want and still laugh up your sleeve at their naivety as you tell them what to do and think.
Christopher Hitchens said, ‘That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.’ And so it can. However, I would add that an assertion which cannot be backed up by evidence is truly as worthless as an IOU written by a charlatan. From the outset it is intended to deceive and bamboozle. To give an advantage to one who cannot and should not be trusted. Such is religion.
AgentCormac
January 1, 2013 at 20:48