Rod Liddle's "The Trouble With Atheism"
Comment by Craig Alexander Bell on a Channel 4 TV programme
Former Today editor Rod Liddle launched an attack against atheism in the programme for Channel 4 entitled The Trouble with Atheism shown on 18 December. In the programme Mr Liddle sets out to prove that far from being the antithesis of religious fundamentalism, atheism actually shares many characteristics with the religions it rejects.
Liddle attacks Darwin, (The Origin of Species, published in 1859) negating how it been a source for our understanding of life on earth. But this seminal work is portrayed as being carried around by card carrying atheists like a pseudo bible. Mr Liddle seems to have misunderstood the issues entirely, assuming the entire basis for disbelieving in a god hinges upon Darwin's theory being entirely correct: his meeting with the man showing the fossil of a sudden mutation is a case in point. He totally fails to ask any relevant questions, such as "if Darwin is wrong what is your theory?" or "could this not be a redefining of Darwin's theories?" No, he just nodded in approval. But what if the theory, in its entirety, doesn't hold? What if sudden change can occur within species within a single generation? Like most scientific theories, Darwinism will be amended, perhaps beyond recognition or discarded even if Darwin somehow turned out to be wrong. It would make little difference to atheistic arguments because they're not built upon evolution in the way Mr Liddle thinks. We may need to find another explanation for the life's complexity, but it would have to explain the vast amount of evidence showing evolutionary lineages, and there's no reason to immediately turn to a deity. He then quickly links Darwin through eugenics to Stalin and Hitler and hey presto atheism is evil because they committed mass genocide. Well Hitler was a vegetarian and both had a liking for ludicrous moustaches so the logic goes we should only trust clean-shaven dictators.
Unfortunately the programme was a hotch potch of ill conceived and weak arguments. It contained no real informed debate. Liddle's logical fallacies are poor. He tries to suggest that atheists are as intolerant as religious fundamentalists. Liddle is described as "middle-of-the-road Christian" on the Channel 4's website. Dressed in black he looks like an ageing rock star and the programme had the balance of Jeremy Clarkson doing "The Trouble with riding your bike to work." Technically the programme was extremely poor. What was the point in him pacing the New York street like an expectant father and muttering to himself like a drunk outside a railway station? Was it to show his inner conflict? He then does a quick sound bite of a man with a placard proclaiming god does not exist, presumably as more proof of the fanatical atheists at work. At times the programme was comical. My favourite moment being his "interview" with a bemused American scientist. Liddle triumphantly proclaims "yes you know what happened after the big bang but not before"! The filming of the Fermilab building, described as "A temple to science" is weak. Are we to think that this is where atheist gather, to not believe?
Liddle's argument makes huge leaps of presumption. He seems to say that because atheism takes a scientific approach to understanding creation, to reach any conclusions there must first be a dispassionate examination of the evidence, which he implies means a lack of humanity. What he's really saying is that humanity requires a belief in God because without morality we can turn into self-serving monsters.
He presents the straw argument that atheists can not know god does not exist and to be certain they take the same leap of faith as believers. I don't believe in dragons but I can present evidence to demonstrate why they don't exists but can I produce 100% proof? Well actually no, this argument is unbelievably weak. Rod Liddle seems to make the common mistake that any level of uncertainty means that no conclusion can be reached, which is silly. It's unreasonable to say "we don't know" and leave it at that. When there's no evidence for something, it's reasonable to operate under the assumption it doesn't exist.
Rod Liddle says without religion we would have a moral void. Maybe a better debate would have followed these lines and discussed such questions as "Do humans need religion and the various gods?" but no debate was forth coming. Do atheists get a right to reply on Channel 4?
