Arrogance Redux

Before I get into my latest rant, I'd like to apologize for the lack of new posts in the last month. I've been rather busy, but going forward I will do my best to update on a weekly basis. So look for my newest blog on Monday or Tuesday of every week. With that out of the way, there's something I'd like to talk about.

Last year Richard Dawkins released a book called The God Delusion, and just recently Christopher Hitchens published his latest book, God Is Not Great. While both of these books have received praise from many critics and have enjoyed time on many bestseller lists, there has been one recurring theme I've noticed throughout a lot of reviews that I've read. Even in reviews that are positive, most reviewers cite the arrogance of both authors as being a detraction from the overall work. I have to admit this is something that tends to stick in my craw.

I've touched on this is a previous post, but I feel the need to revisit the topic. Is being knowledgeable in a topic, and displaying that knowledge arrogance? If it is, then I guess you could say they are arrogant. You could also level that charge at myself and I guess you would be right. I, however, tend to look at it another way. I don't see how having a basic understanding of the facts pertaining to any subject, and being able to communicate that understanding, as being anything near arrogance. Both of these men approach the subject of god from a scientific perspective, and if you do so, there is no evidence to support the existence of any deity, there just isn't, it doesn't exist, it's that simple.

If you approach any question from a scientific perspective you are limited to what can be proven. Much like mathematics, the numbers have to add up. Two plus two equals four, and no matter how much better it would make you feel if they added up to five, they don't, the answer will always be four.
And that's where both Dawkins and Hitchens begin their books. Scientifically speaking, of all the knowledge science has revealed, none of it supports the idea of god. While the two books take different approaches to the topic, Dawkins book is rooted in the science, while Hitchens delves more into the history of various religions, both maintain science as the bedrock of their analysis.

I realise that I may be repeating myself, but again I have to ask the question, why is it that only when the question of god is brought up that relying on scientific evidence is perceived as arrogance? Going back to my earlier example, we don't label mathematicians as arrogant for solving mathematical equations, not do we call doctors arrogant for treating an illness with the correct course of therapy. Stating the facts of the matter in this case is, in my opinion, anything but arrogant, instead I consider it pragmatic, rational and completely reasonable.

Although maybe I've answered my own question. At one time, god was believed responsible for almost everything. Any scientific advancement that challenged his perceived power was met with extreme animosity. Galileo and Copernicus spring readily to mind. I'm sure that in their day they were both considered arrogant for trying to demean the greatness of god. But with time humanity has come to accept the theories that both these men, and others, have put forward and embrace them as scientific fact.

I think that we are witnessing the last gasp of irrational religious thought. Science has stripped god of all the power he was once believed to posses, and now the only question left is his mere existence. Religions' back is up against the metaphorical wall, and all it has left is ad homonym attacks on its detractors. But apart from a few secular people, (I'll get to them later),
it seems to me only these irrational people are attempting to label these two men as arrogant in stating that the evidence is not only overwhelming for the case against god, but that there isn't one shred of evidence to support his existence.

It's not arrogant to say the emperor has no clothes... it's just common sense.