It’s most controversial part is its argument that in the absence of exceedingly powerful cultural programming to respect human life, human life will be less respected. Such programming is not to be found within Darwinism. On the contrary, the “survival of the fittest” motif taken as an ethical imperative have lead to eugenics movements and attempts to exterminate races deemed inferior.

It’s most startling bit is near the end during an interview with Richard Dawkins. Dr. Dawkins seems to agree with Francis Crick that a naturalistic version of intelligent design is a reasonable solution to the origin-of-life problem.

Why I liked the movie:

It exposed me to a new idea, which is pretty rare for a movie. The idea is that for any set of physical laws there exists a most probable scheme by which life could have evolved. Highly evolved versions of that most probable scheme could have designed new schemes for life (which are presumably better than the original scheme in some way) and could have seeded other planets with these.

What I did not like about the movie:

It didn’t explicitly state that the controversy is not about evolution but about naturalism. Intelligent Design proponents are anti-naturalists in that they believe that certain aspects of reality are fundamentally unintelligible to the human mind. That is the source of the intolerance from the scientific establishment. Anti-naturalism conflicts with a tacit metaphysical assumption behind science — that we can in principle understand the whole of reality.

Lawrence B. Crowell

“Discussing the theological difficulties that polytheism allegedly creates, Dawkins continues:

“How did the Greeks, the Romans and the Vikings cope with such polytheological conundrums? Was Venus just another name for Aphrodite, or were they two distinct goddesses of love? Was Thor with his hammer a manifestation of Wotan, or a separate god? Who cares? Life is too short to bother with the distinction between one figment of the imagination and many. Having gestured towards polytheism to cover myself against a charge of neglect, I shall say no more about it. For brevity I shall refer to all deities, whether poly- or monotheistic, as simply `God’” (Dawkins 2006: 35-6).

The first issue to point out is that Greek and Roman followers of the “pagan” traditions were not in the least bothered by such “theological conundrums.” This was the case, because to them the stories about Aphrodite, Venus, Zeus and Jupiter were just that: traditional stories, instead of theological doctrines (Balagangadhara 1994; Feeney 1998). To the Greeks and Romans, the stories were not subjects to truth claims; that is, the predicates “true” and “false” were simply not applicable to the many stories about the deities. Hence, many such apparently “contradictory” stories could co-exist without conflict.

It was only when the church fathers tried to show that the Greeks and Romans had “false religion” that suddenly these stories became bearers of truth value and that the so-called “contradictions” appeared. Like the Christian ancestors who shaped their thought, the Enlightenment philosophers failed to grasp that the Roman and Greek stories were not meant to be doctrines or descriptions of the world. Hence, they ridiculed these stories as “mythologies,” fictionalized and embellished accounts of human history (Hazard 1935). The difficulties that Dawkins notices are those created by Christians and Enlightenment philosophers, who tried to make sense of the traditional stories of Greece and Rome as
mythological doctrines.”

In a memorable passage, Dawkins discusses the problem of Trinitarianism in Christianity and extends it to other forms of “polytheism,” such as the cult of the Virgin Mary and the saints in Roman-Catholicism. “What impresses me about Catholic mythology,” he shares with the reader, “is partly its tasteless kitsch but mostly the airy nonchalance with which these people make up the details as they go along. It is just shamelessly invented” (Dawkins 2006: 35).

As a reader, try to bracket away all presuppositions about religion and reread the sentences. If you succeed in doing so, the impact of Dawkins’ claim dissolves. So what, if certain details of Roman-Catholicism are human inventions? What is the problem in aspects of religion being “shamelessly invented”?

From a non-Christian, neutral point of view, it is unclear why Dawkins bothers to mention this. However, anyone with a basic understanding of the history of
Christianity will note where his claim comes from: Dawkins himself reproduces a piece of theology in this sentence (apparently without knowing it). From its earliest beginnings, Christianity claimed that it was the original and pure revelation of God, first given to Adam. This original revelation had been corrupted by sinful idolaters, seduced by the Devil into the worship of the false god and his minions. This corruption, according to Christian theology, took the
form of human additions to the pure divine revelation: rites and myths, fabricated by priests and prelates.

During the Protestant Reformation, Luther, Calvin and their followers began to accuse the Roman-Catholic Church of the same sin of idolatry. They cried that the pope and his priests had invented a plethora of dogmas and rituals and imposed these on the believer as though they were part of God’s revelation and necessary to salvation. In this sense, the worst accusation one could make against Roman- Catholicism was that it consisted of “shameless human inventions.”

The Enlightenment philosophies extended such charges of idolatry to all of Christianity and to all “religions” of humanity. All of these, including the notion of God itself, were human fabrications, the atheists among them claimed. Ironically, Enlightenment atheism thus presupposed and built on the claims of Christian theology. Without the background belief that there is something intrinsically wrong in religion being a human invention—very much a Christian belief—the impact of such charges simply disappears into thin air.

At this first level, Dawkins reproduces Christian theology, even though he masks it as an atheistic insight that is supposed to liberate humanity from religion.