There's an article by Roger Scruton in The Spectator arguing that Richard Dawkins is wrong about God. Or perhaps I should say asserting that Dawkins is wrong about God, though the piece formally looks as if it's meant to be an argument. Scruton does ask a good question (about the benefits conferred by religion) and he makes some interesting points, whether good ones or not. But in terms of the main schlabonze, there's nothing really to discuss. You take it or you leave it. Before I get to that... Scruton says:
Religions survive and flourish because they are a call to membership - they provide customs, beliefs and rituals that unite the generations in a shared way of life, and implant the seeds of mutual respect.True as this may be about (some) religion, it isn't exclusive to it and so we need something rather more specific. The main schlabonze is, then, this:
[T]he truth of a religion lies less in what is revealed in its doctrines than in what is concealed in its mysteries. Religions do not reveal their meaning directly because they cannot do so; their meaning has to be earned by worship and prayer, and by a life of quiet obedience. Nevertheless truths that are hidden are still truths; and maybe we can be guided by them only if they are hidden, just as we are guided by the sun only if we do not look at it.Well, that's fine if you're already in there, but otherwise it isn't anything. It's more or less just this: those of us who know already, we know, and the rest of you don't, and there's nothing to be said to change your mind by way of persuasive reasoning. Religion, on that account of it, claims an exclusive cognitive privilege allowed in no other sphere. That is simply how things are; one must have faith. Scruton again:
All faith depends on revelation, and the proof of the revelation is in the peace that it brings... [T]he leap of faith itself - this placing of your life at God's service - is a leap over reason's edge. This does not make it irrational, any more than falling in love is irrational. On the contrary, it is the heart's submission to an ideal...From the context of his other remarks 'a leap over reason's edge' sounds right. However, 'not... irrational' is less convincing. True, falling in love isn't irrational, though it can sometimes go along with certain kinds of self-deception, failure to notice the obvious, and so forth. Still, it doesn't have to. But falling in love doesn't in itself embody any major, extra, cognitive claims about the nature of the universe (loosely speaking). The leap of faith here does involve them. Roger Scruton speaks on behalf of that leap of faith but he doesn't argue for it. And if I were to speak in this way on behalf of some other kind of belief, why should I not be allowed it?