Last Friday, the Freethought Society hosted a debate between Tufts Professor Daniel Dennett and best-selling author Dinesh D'Souza on the resolution: "God is a man-made invention."
Dennett argued the affirmative position and D'Souza argued against the resolution. Though I do not agree with all of Dennett's views, this response is aimed primarily against D'Souza, because I fundamentally disagree with the dishonest presentation of his arguments.
Before I begin, I would like to clarify a few things. I am an atheist, but I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. I watched the debate from the perspective of an atheist, but I am not close-minded. Even if my views on God may differ from yours, I hope that you do not dismiss the following simply because of this.
During the debate, D'Souza cited numerous physicists and philosophers, often explaining their views in caricature-like terms. To "set up a straw man argument," as it is often called, is to misrepresent your opponent's position very weakly so as to easily refute his position. It is a very effective rhetorical trick, but it is quite dishonest, because it gives the impression that one or more of your opponent's views have been refuted.
Because D'Souza misrepresented scientific theories, Dennett's views and the views of other philosophers, one might conclude that D'Souza is either incapable of understanding such views or flagrantly dishonest.
Since D'Souza is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Dartmouth College and a truly excellent debater, it is safe to assume that D'Souza understood the views he misrepresented. I would like to address some of his arguments not addressed by Dennett or the audience to back up my claim of his flagrant dishonesty.
In his opening statement, D'Souza explained that St. Augustine believed God created time along with the creation of the universe. He introduced this to argue that modern science is essentially based around Christian metaphysics. Thus, if the complexities of the universe point to an intelligent designer, then that designer is probably the Christian God, because Christian scientists and theologians have led the way.
In contrast to Issac Newton, D'Souza announced that the Muslim philosopher Al-Ghazali denied the idea that nature is guided by laws. Rather, Al-Ghazali believed that God intervenes every instant to keep the entire universe going. D'Souza then proceeded to laugh at this notion, but deliberately left out a few important facts.
Al-Ghazali and Newton were not contemporaries. In fact, Al-Ghazali died nearly six hundred years before Newton published his "Principia Mathematica." In that volume, Newton describes his three fundamental laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation.
Furthermore, Al-Ghazali was a philosopher and theologian. To my knowledge, he was not a scientist in the same sense as Newton. It is unfair to compare Al-Ghazali's views to Newton's as if they were rival theories, and it is dishonest to do so without prefacing such a comparison with the aforementioned background information.
Nowadays, it would seem that modern scientific theory corroborates St. Augustine's belief that time did not exist prior to the creation of the universe. D'Souza's point is that "Augustine didn't write to force agreement with science; Augustine stated a theological proposition, and modern science has come 1500 years later to agree with him."
Sounds pretty impressive, right? Consider this: The word "atom" was borrowed from the philosophy of Leucippus and Democritus, two ancient Greek philosophers, who lived 800 years before St. Augustine and hypothesized that all matter is created of various kinds of indivisible particles with specific properties.
Remarkably, their hypothesis was similar to modern atomic theory in certain key aspects. Augustine, Leucippus and Democritus all made astonishing guesses, but it is important to keep in mind they were guesses. None were capable of testing their hypotheses as modern physicists can.
They could have just as easily been wrong. For instance, physicists used to believe that space was filled with a substance they called aether through which light propagated. Presumably, Leucippus and Democritus believed in - and were wrong about - the existence of Zeus. The fact that Augustine "got it right" in one case is hardly a good reason to think any of his other metaphysical beliefs were correct (e.g. the existence of God).
More to the point, it is absurd and absolutely dishonest to suggest that modern science is based on Christian metaphysics. I seem to remember learning in history class that Galileo was put on trial for heresy because he supported Copernicus' heliocentric theory that the sun is the center of the galaxy. Though he was not burned at the stake like Giordano Bruno for holding blasphemous ideas, Galileo was forced to live the rest of his life under house arrest.
Throughout the argument, D'Souza made several references to Darwin and insisted that evolution is entirely compatible with an argument from design. I would hope that a Roman Catholic making such an argument would know the actual position of the Catholic Church on evolution.
D'Souza is very intelligent and well read, so I will assume he knows that the Catholic Church denied the theory of evolution until roughly 60 years ago. After the 1950s, the Church changed its stance to a rather agnostic position for several decades before finally accepting it. It would seem that the Catholic Church has not exactly been so forward-thinking in accepting scientific theory.
Sure, the Church has been quick to accept any number of theories that reinforce Catholic dogma. But where there has been a discrepancy, the Catholic Church has often denied testable scientific theories until it was simply not possible to continue denying.
I do not have the room in such a short space to argue whether or not God is a man-made invention, but I would certainly argue that, in light of his academic dishonesty, Dinesh D'Souza is not the person to do so in a serious academic debate.
Raul Arroyo-Mendoza is a senior majoring in philosophy.
