Does Dawkins Exist?

I simply have to read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. To be clear, I believe in the risen Christ, and count myself one of His followers, but I love debate. I believe that lively discussion is a good thing. I believe in the process of thinking things through. Okay?

Apart from the issue of the existence or the non-existence of GOD, make note of this: It is possible to believe in God for the wrong reasons. It is also possible to present good reasons to doubt the existence of God. Someone could argue that romantic love is a curse on society, and the argument might be well formulated, but I would not rethink my love for my wife. Argument and debate are tools nothing more.

Argument does not establish or prove facts, but it supports the conclusions we draw from them. Sometimes, argument is needed to support conclusions we draw in the absence of facts. Argument is a game and a tool, but it is not the only game in town – it is useful in its place. That is my bias, and I state it once.

I believe that it is possible to examine the traces left by previous life, and it is reasonable to try to make guesses about it, and to form theories based on that evidence. I believe in the scientific method, and I believe that God gave us brains intending that we use them. God created us in His image, and I believe that this means that we resemble him in our creative and reasoning impulses.

Let’s be clear: proving that Richard Dawkins reasons incorrectly would not prove that God exists. Speaking for myself, proving that life evolved would not disprove the existence of God either. I do not believe that the Bible is an explanation of how God created life, but I do believe that the Bible explains why He created life.

Many Christians are unable to perceive the interpretations that have been made of Bible text – they confuse their interpretations for the text itself. I am always suspicious whenever someone says that the Bible is very clear on some issue or other. The person who starts this way is really saying: “I have interpreted the following text for you, and I am warning you now to accept my interpretation without thinking. In fact, I will be offended if you think about what I say beyond merely accepting my position.” In short, I do not think it is a virtue to arrive at a correct conclusion by incorrect means. God made us capable of thought, and I believe he intends us to think.

Here is a sample of what Dawkins has to say in Volume 18, Number 3 of the periodical, Free Inquiry : “There is no reason for believing that any sort of gods exist and quite good reason for believing that they do not exist and never have. It has all been a gigantic waste of time and a waste of life. It would be a joke of cosmic proportions if it weren’t so tragic. ”

Wow! My belief in God, and the life I live because I believe in God is a gigantic waste, and a tragic joke!? There is a lot of emotion in those, and many of the other words Richard Dawkins uses. There is anger, frustration, and contempt. I have seen him being interviewed, and he has my attention. He seems to be working very hard to hide or mask his emotions while appearing reasonable. I am itching to read his book.

I am amused by his premise that people believe in God because they want to account for how the Earth came to be. I am curious about how life came into existence, but I do not see why the question should drive me. Why would that question become the focus of my attention and effort? Speaking for myself, I want to know why I am here, and I am only interested in the how of it insofar as it has bearing on the why. In fact, I am not even interested in the why of it, but I want to know that I am using my life well. I believe that what I do with my life matters, and I believe that God is the reason I am here, and that God knows how I should be using my time.

Richard Dawkins seems to believe that how we use our time is important, too. He argues that to believe in God is to waste your life in a laughable but tragic way. I would be most interested in knowing what he thinks we should be doing instead of believing in God. By arguing against the existence of God, he avoids a more interesting question. I am neither offended by his stand nor shaken by his arguments. I am glad to see him engaging the question head on – so few people do that.

My wife will consider me a heretic when I buy the book. It would be easier for her if I developed a porn or drug habit – then she could talk about it with her friends and get sympathy. As things stand, she will confuse my willingness to engage in thought for a questioning of the faith – she mistakes being willing to consider a position with taking the position. Considering means trying something on, seeing if it fits, and she will not put on another persons ideas. She finds me difficult. My willingness to entertain radical concepts, and to give them due consideration, alarms her, especially when she believes that no consideration is due.

I believe that Christianity is suffering today because it is not being well supported from within not because it is being attacked from without. In countries where Christians are being killed for their belief, it is meaningful and brave to cling to the faith. Simply to persist and to pass on the faith is to win. In North America, we live in a marketplace of ideas. Pigheadedness does not win any prizes. In fact, it losses the game.

We Christians are called to be in the world, but not of the world. That is fine, but Jesus was revolutionary for the people he included, for the people he was willing to engage and interact with. Who is going to bring the faith to the thinking person who tries to be decent and does not feel convicted of his or her own sin? There are plenty of people who are content enough with their lives, who do not have broken marriages, who do not have drug habits or who have not been to jail. To tell content people that they will never truly be happy until they accept Christ as their personal savior is unlikely to have any impact.

To reject science seems silly to the rest of the world; and, insofar as Christians embrace and use scientific advancements for their own ends, they seem sillier still. Christians think the battle is between science and belief, but, for the most part, they have no problems with science. They are happy to benefit from science. They have a problem with the conclusions some scientists draw about God based on the evidence. Is the process flawed? Is that why the improper conclusions are drawn? Or, is the process being misapplied? The proper forum for that discussion is science itself.

However, what is interesting about Dawkins, is that he has stepped behind a pulpit – he is preaching disbelief. That is why I want to read his book. In his latest book, Dawkins is not speaking as a scientist. I expect the book to be very revealing, especially since he seems to me to be very angry and frustrated.

Forgive my title, “Does Dawkins Exist?” – it has no relationship to this entry. I was having fun. Still, to justify the title, I will say this: It is possible to engage in a debate about my own existence, or Richard Dawkins, and to doubt it for the sake of discussion. That is reasonable. But, It is not reasonable or healthy for me to seriously doubt my own existence?

That is how I feel about God. Just as there is a place for people who do not believe in their own existence, there is a place for people who do not believe in God. I know where the line is. Do you? Christ was not upset by doubting Thomas. Was he? Asking questions is not the same as taking a stand.

Microsofts’ Problem

I can’t pretend to be a marketing genius. Take what I say with a grain of salt, but I think I understand part of Microsoft’s problem – or, one of Microsoft’s problems.

When I started using Microsoft products in the 1980s, they were cheap. Books were readily available through the Microsoft Press, and I could download white papers using a BBS. Microsoft did not market directly to my employer, but I represented Microsoft by advocating the use of Microsoft products. I wrote little applications using Quick Basic, or Quick C.

My company moved to Windows to be able to use the Windows version of PageMaker, a desktop publishing application. Then, I started to use Microsoft Access, and I started to write Microsoft Excel macros to automate tasks. Then, I started to use Visual Basic to write small applications to clean data, and perform other tasks. I bought the tools at an affordable price, and demonstrated how they could be used to my bosses.

The main thing to understand is that my employers looked to me to prove that these products had value. They took my advice, and we both benefited. Microsoft was my friend – the company helped me look good. Microsoft offered training. There were magazines. I was happy, and I did a lot to help my employers select Microsoft as a provider of software.

Today, Microsoft finds itself fighting to maintain its hold on the browser market, and on the operating system market. For the most part, it seems to be using mass marketing techniques combined with heroic interventions by Steve Balmer, who becomes personally involved when big deals go bad. This is not how Microsoft first came to prominence, and I do not think it is going to work.

Today, many young technologists are advocating open source technologies: Open Office, Lamp and Linux. Today, up-and-coming developers are making their bones by implementing effective solutions to real problems using cheap and available tools. Open source advocates are excited, curious and open, it seems to me. They chose technology on it merits, and they are always comparing, always learning.

Microsoft’s advocates seem to know next to nothing about competing technologies. They lack curiosity. Microsoft is learning a lot about competing products, and many people from the open source world are accepting jobs at Microsoft, but there is herd of Microsoft zombies who do not realize that technology is passing them by. Microsoft is the conservative solution, and it is acquiring a reputation for being boring.

Microsoft may not have lost in the enterprise, and sales are still strong. But, unless Microsoft can win developers like me back, the writing is on the wall. Developers like me are pragmatists, and we genuinely love to write code. We will always be interested in the new thing, and we will always want to share what we have learned. That is how Microsoft grew. Microsoft has a problem: they have lost touch with developers. I certainly mean younger developers, but I include old farts like me.

I feel that I can impress clients more with Open Source solutions than I can with Microsoft solutions. My clients often say no to projects because of licensing costs. So, open source just makes sense: it has become a selling point. I am not a fool: my bread and butter jobs are paid for by working in the Microsoft world, but that could change. It could change soon.

I have children to feed. I am likely to continue to work in the Microsoft world for a foreseeable period of time, but my loyalty to Microsoft has long since been eroded. When we reach the tipping point, I will be there, ready to jump ship. I do not think I am alone.

System Architecture Is Good!

On my last project, I was working on an application that had no architecture at all. To accomplish any thing at all, I was often required to play with SQL statements, connection strings, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and VB.NET. The business rules were implemented in each and every form of the application, and it was impossible to know what the impact of changing a single rule would be. It was hard to make progress in such a tangled mess of code.

I made the case for designing and applying a consistent architecture, but my client was more concerned about new features that somehow always had to be available right now, or with making consmetic fixes. We did a good job patching up the leaky ship that was their application – in fact, we undermined the case we were trying to make for stopping all new development in order to redesign and rebuild the old application. The current application seemed good enough for all intents and purposes.

I have been working on a new project for a few weeks, and I have been able to accomplish more for my client in a short time than I would have been able to in a couple of months for the last client. Although we are working with a database, I was not required to learn about its structure. I simply use the business objects that talk to the database. I can concentrate on the straight forward tasks at hand. Many of the objects I use provide functionality I do not even need to think about or know about to be productive.

What is more, the architecture is guided by a set of values and assumptions that are easy enough to deduce. I am having a good time.