마치 신이 없는 듯이: 도킨스 무신론 및 지적설계론에 관한 소고

Abstract

Richard Dawkins, beyond any doubt a fiercest advocate of a new brand of atheism, has declared war on religion, or rather on Christianity, in his determination to fight it until its demise is evident. This geneticist-turnedknow-it-all-opinionist fancies himself able to parade the most powerful array of arguments against religious faith, which he alleges as fomenting bigotry,misguiding children, and fueling hostilities among the human races. In reality,the bulk of his The God Delusion—or, for that matter, of any other anti-religious writings he puts to press—is replete with biased world view,extravagant self-assurance, cavalier attitudes, discursive anecdotage, distortions, false facts, thin mockery, and empty figurative language, all rolled into one— an "incurious, dogmatic, rambling, and self-contradictory" book, as a reviewer has put it in the Prospect magazine (November 2005). Why would one be so much of a religiophobe as to delve into such a mean-spirited, categorical denunciation of human spiritual traditions? First of all, he is too thoroughly imbued with the mindset of scientism to be in rapport with other modes of thinking. But he is also ill at ease with the growing number of population on the other side of the fence who claim that there must be some kind of "intelligent design" (ID) behind natural phenomena such as evolution and the very origin of the universe. Worse still, these contestants demand that science should therefore embrace supernatural explanations in terms of academic as well as public school curricula—'worse,' because this really means a deliberate attempt to undermine the foundations of modern science. Despite their persistent disavowal and dissimulation, what ID theorists propose amounts to creationism in disguise, nothing short of religious fundamentalism. The present essay centers around the status quo of Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Creationism pitted against each other with no sign of mutual understanding. The notion of "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA) is underscored as an important guideline for peaceable coexistence of science and religion. While it invited rebuttals from both Dawkins' atheistic and ID theorists' religious standpoints, and, surprisingly, from a more neutrally-minded personage, John Haught, as well, NOMA holds firm and true to the very natures of religion and science, and therefore is indeed a well-founded, healthful concept in its own right, apart from the conflict situations under discussion. We also dwell, albeit at limited length, on such concomitant issues as personified God and religious belief. The caption phrase "as if there were no god," which I borrow from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is intended here not merely as a critical remark on Dawkinsian cult of atheism but at the same time, with no less monitory force, as a vital working principle on the part of the scientists of religious persuasion.