Richard Dawkins discusses the concept of “Love your neighbor” in The God Delusion to debunk the religion’s claim that its primary message is love and compassion. How independent do we think this analysis is? Let’s look at this analysis in the most objective way possible.
Dawkins begins with the statement that ‘neighbor’ in Biblical terms only refers to Jews, and that ‘Thou shalt not kill’ really means ‘Thou shalt not kill Jews’. The merit of the idea of ”Love your neighbor” in itself is, of course, ignored. Dawkins is too concerned about the prosecution of his agenda. Regarding the truth of the matter, he draws most of his “evidence” quoted from an article by John Hartnung. Dawkins does not provide substantial evidence, but simply claims that Hartnung’s research shows that this is the case. As an example of this “evidence,” Hartnung refers to a study of the attitudes of Jewish children by an Israeli psychologist George Tamarin. This contrasts the attitude of the group toward the death of Jews and non-Jews in the Old Testament. Not surprisingly, the children were far more prepared to tolerate the slaughter of non-Jews than of Jews. Dawkins himself concludes that these children have been indoctrinated in a racist attitude because of their religion.
This all sounds very revealing, but it doesn’t show much more than that things were very different in Old Testament times. Like it or not, God chose the Jewish nation to receive the word that he was the only God. The events of the Old Testament must be evaluated in the context of that truth. We cannot draw conclusions based on current interpretations of events that occurred thousands of years ago, particularly when those interpretations are made by children. Furthermore, Dawkins’ point that the opposite results obtained by the control group, (where the mention of Judea was replaced by a fictional Chinese kingdom), showed that religion had affected the morality of the children, is exactly as one would expect. . The religious perspective is that morality is derived from God. So the children undoubtedly believed that ‘God had his reasons’. For my part, I also struggle with some of the Old Testament events, but that does not undermine my faith. I realize that we cannot compare current attitudes with those of earlier times, when ideas, canons, and creeds were propagated and enforced exclusively through violence. I am confident that if you take the historical context out of the Hartnung study, the results would be very different.
Regarding the New Testament, Hartnung draws the same conclusions, stating that Jesus was a devotee of the same group mind and that it was Paul who invented the idea of taking the gospel to the Jews. This seems to me to be little more than wishful thinking on Dawkins ‘part, and it is interesting to note that he does not expand on this idea except to make Hartnung’s unsubstantiated quote that’ Jesus would have turned over in his grave had he known that Paul was taking his plan to the pigs. I’m not going to comment on this except to say that, in my opinion, the language Hartnung uses tells us more about him than his comment tells us about Jesus.
The question of to whom Jesus addressed his message is addressed directly by Geza Vermes in The Authentic Gospel of Jesus. Consider the question: Did Jesus intend to address only the Jews, or did he expect the gospel to benefit the entire non-Jewish world? (Geza Vermes, by the way, is a former Christian priest and former Catholic). He concluded that there were clear statements that Jesus only intended to address the Jews, but equally clear statements that conveyed the opposite point of view. Therefore, after “having considered all the evidence,” he identified the following dilemma:
“Either Jesus took a strictly pro-Jewish stance and the later introduction into the Gospels of pro-Gentile leanings must reflect the viewpoint of the early church, which was by then almost exclusively non-Jewish. Or it was Jesus who took the universalist position. and this was replaced at a later stage by Jewish exclusivism. “
So, according to Geza, in one way or another, the gospels have been subject to further revision. Either the almost exclusively non-Jewish makeup of the early church introduced pro-Gentile leanings, or Jesus adopted a universalist stance that was later replaced by Jewish exclusivism. Vermes himself takes the first view, that verses reflecting a pro-gentile view were introduced to appeal to the early non-Jewish church. Vermes has no proof (he himself says that, “having considered all the evidence,” there is a direct choice), he simply chooses one over the other on the basis of his own personal inclination.
Vermes is a scholar known for his books on Jesus, but this does not mean that his interpretation is not debatable. There are two reasons why we could find fault. First, if the early church was as totally non-Jewish as he claims, then surely the revisions to the text would have been more significant with many of the references to Jewish exclusivity removed entirely. Second, it ignores the possibility that the gospels are in fact accurate and simply reflect different considerations at different times. Considered from this perspective, we can see that although most of Jesus’ ministry was undoubtedly directed for the most part to the Jews, this does not necessarily mean that his intention was not to bring salvation to all. In undertaking his task, he would have been aware that his message would have had to favor the Jews or they would not have followed him. Once Jesus reached critical mass in his ministry, the purpose of his message could begin to expand. This extension was then given to Paul and the other evangelists who took it to the rest of the world. This interpretation is the most consistent with the evidence.
Having addressed the “Jewish” problem, Dawkins broadens his ideas about the group’s enmity. Although Dawkins acknowledges that violence is perpetrated in the name of countless other ideologies, he argues that religion is particularly pernicious as it is passed down from generation to generation. Without the labels of enmity inside / outside the group, he argues that the division would not exist and, therefore, the reason for the violence would disappear.
Dawkins is correct when he identifies group loyalty as a powerful force. However, there is nothing to suggest that the religious division is more or less pernicious than any other division. The man has what Dawkins himself calls “powerful tendencies toward intra-group loyalties and out-of-group hostilities.” The truth is that the nature of man is to band together and fight other groups, whatever the labels. Much of the struggles and sufferings that are done in the name of religion have nothing to do with God, just as many struggles and sufferings done in the name of freedom and equality have nothing to do with these ideals. This is explored in more detail in the section on Hitler and Stalin.
Dawkins concludes the section by saying:
Even if religion did not cause any other harm in itself, its rampant and carefully nurtured division, its deliberate and cultivated indulgence with humanity’s natural tendency to favor inner groups and avoid outer groups, would be enough to turn it into a significant force for evil in the world. “
This point is totally fallacious. It is similar to a child saying, he made me do it, in the sense that he transfers responsibility to someone or something else. Ultimately, man commits evil and is responsible for it. Nowhere is this clearer than in Dawkins’ winning philosophy. God does not exist, religion is a creation of Man, so where is the guilt? It’s just too convenient to blame labels. Who has created these ‘labels’, ‘forces of evil in the world’, these ‘religions’? Dawkins gets mad at his own firecracker, because there is only one answer. Man. Therefore, if only Man exists and he has created such forces, if we got rid of religion, you would have to assume that Man would reinvent it again, or at least a variety of the same (a ‘religion’ not believe in God, maybe – let’s call it atheism). Unless, of course, you believe in the generally progressive change of the moral zeitgeist, we have now evolved to a higher state of morality. Even a brief glimpse of 20th century history discredits such a claim.
