Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

Last week, I had the privilege of going to see Professor Richard Dawkins discuss his latest book The Greatest Show On Earth at the Melbourne Town Hall.

The event is part of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, which is officially not for a few more months. Dawkins’ visit was primarily for an atheist convention that is taking place in Melbourne and I believe it’s taking place right now.

Dawkins appeared on the panel for the ABC programme Q & A which aired after his Melbourne Town Hall stint. Expectedly, he managed to make Steve Fielding, Family First Senator, look ridiculously inarticulate. Admittedly, it isn’t hard.

I was made to attend both a Catholic primary and secondary school, and at secondary school, we were taught that the Old Testament wasn’t meant to be taken literally, but to be considered metaphoric – the world wasn’t made in seven days (surprise, surprise) but rather, did ascribe to the Big Bang Theory (I assumed we were to believe that God was responsible for this) and Darwinian evolution.

I’m curious – what is the Christian faith teaching now? I don’t believe that science and religious faith have to be mutually exclusive. Am I being an idealist in feeling this way? Am I just ridiculously lucky to have gone to a secondary school that was fairly progressive and accepted that its students’ faith was apt to change as they got older? Do views on science and evolutionary biology differ from one Christian denomination to the next?

I confess I have little tolerance for fundamental religious types, but probably because of such persons I’ve met, they are not exactly the most open-minded, and can be downright offensive. Among such insults I’ve copped from such persons – promiscuity leads to mental illness, and also I am a child of Satan. One of my close friends still bears psychological damage from being forced to grow up in his father’s faith.

Another excellent point that Dawkins raised is that it is ideology that is responsible for some of the greatest world conflicts – yes, some religious, some not so (Marxist ideology as interpreted by Mao, or Stalin that which I would like to point out, is vastly different from what Marx envisioned).

My apologies if these thoughts seem to lack cohesion, they’re really just random musings on the nature of religion, and from having Dawkins in this part of the world. I guess if anyone were to draw any one conclusion from this it would be that despite being an atheist myself, I do not think that scientific knowledge and one’s personal religious beliefs have to mutually exclusive. Perhaps that is part of the conundrum – science is knowledge or truth, and religion is ideology and ideology is never neutral. At my most cynical, I would argue that is it rarely, in this day and age, altruistic.