God and the New Atheism: Chapter 5

In chapter 5, "Why Do People Believe?," Haught examines Dawkin's argument about the origins of religious belief. Following the lead of E. O. Wilson of Harvard, Hawkins argues that evolutionary theory can explain the human phenomenon of religious faith.

Dawkins maintains that because belief in religions is so durable, it goes deeper than cultural influence and must involve an evolutionary biological explanation. He argues that our genes cause us to believe in gods but acknowledges that how religious faith is adaptive is not clear. Sometimes religion aids individuals, groups, and genetic survival, but sometimes is does not as for example celibacy and martyrdom. But as Haught points out

Dawkins suspects that kin selection and other factors associated with gene-survival theory are also too simple to account for faith. They do not explain adequately the arbitrariness and utter insanity of so many religious fantasies that people believe in without any evidence. So how is the evolutionist going to account for the persistence of gods in an age of science? Doesn't the evolutionary explanation of religion break down completely at this point? Apparently realizing that it does, although without admitting it, Dawkins hands over the task of fully naturalizing religion to other experts, one of whom is the anthropologist Pascal Boyer. The effect of passing the buck to Boyer is deeply ironic. After promising to provide a fully naturalistic account of religious faith, Dawkins ends up breaking almost completely away from Darwin. Together with Boyer he speculates that the brain does not have any specifically religious character after all. Wok the, what is religious faith" It is an accidental by-product of cerebral systems that evolved for other purposes. Religious faith is "a misfiring of something useful," a Darwinian mistake! Here then we leave Darwin almost completely behind. The only important evolutionary thing left to be said, as Dawkins theorizes, is that religion is like a virus--parasitic on cognitive systems that had earlier been selected because of a survival value that had nothing to do with their capacity to be carriers of truth (57).

The unlinking of religion from a Darwinian explanation, Haught writes, demonstrates just how difficult the modern atheists have of completely debunking religious faith.

Haught also observes the position of outrage that Dawkins and company take when discussing religion. Other scientists and scholars who have been influenced by evolutionary theory like, for example, Michael Ruse, and far more measured and not nearly so judgmental and embittered toward religious faith. This is certainly an indicator that something more is going on with these fundamental atheists than rationally assessing the phenomenon and understand it.