Salley Vickers’ Review: A Review

Reading this so-called book review in The Times, I felt sufficiently incensed to pen this response:

Vickers’ article is mind-boggling in its sheer dearth of critical thought. The irony of denouncing Dawkins’ straight-forwardly titled work as “self-aggrandising polemic”, while singing the praises of a self-proclaimed “angelic response” is lost, as Vickers wades into the fray by first admonishing Dawkins on being so simple as to think of angels as “winged beings in ethereal nightgowns”; isn’t it obvious that they are instead “archetypal images that dramatise the invisible realities”?

Dawkins is merely audacious enough to suggest that we should base “belief” on strong foundations: evidence. This is obviously too unpoetic for Vickers, who “used to ask students, is Hamlet real?” Sadly, reading her review, the empirically-minded will draw the conclusion that she has never read any of her arch-nemesis’s work. Likewise, she doesn’t really examine Cornwell’s ideas, doing them justice; instead, her piece delights in pouring scorn on Dawkins’ arguments from an uninformed perspective.

Dawkins states that the phenomenon of “faith” in all its forms, precisely because it pays no attention to the evidence, is a form of fanaticism. The benign faith-head legitimises the fanatic’s belief system, for haven’t they already condoned belief in anything, irrespective of the evidence? Isn’t it hypocritical for the Catholic, whose Pope is inexplicably infallible, to take the Mullah to task for his promise of sixty virgins in paradise? In short, faith is a slippery slope that can lead to all kinds of behaviour, whether that be running a soup kitchen or bombing the World Trade Centre. Crucially, we don’t need faith for the former.

Vickers asks several questions rhetorically, including: “Is psychiatry a bad thing because schizophrenics were once made to take bromide?” The answer: of course not. Advances using the evidence-based scientific method have corrected what would now be seen as quackery. What is unclear, however, is the basis for changes in religious belief over time. Vickers agrees with Cornwell that the Bible is “a miscellany of stories, letters, polemic, histories, fables and certainly some great moral teachings, as well as some outmoded and unacceptable social prejudices.” But how exactly does one sort the wheat from the chaff, discerning “great moral teachings” from “unacceptable social prejudices”? Dawkins offers us a changing moral Zeitgeist, carried by an advancing liberal consensus, as an explanation; Vickers reassures us: “is perfectly respectable to ‘pick and choose’ when reading the Bible”, perhaps because this is the only way to retain respectability?

The review also agrees with Cornwell over Dawkins’ apparent “breezy disregard for… serious theology”. True, he doesn’t indulge in a theological cat-walk of Emperor’s New Clothes, but as he once quipped in self-defence, “Did you read the Pastafarian Bible before dismissing the Flying Spaghetti Monster?” Furthermore, who determines what “serious” theology is in the first place? The view of the majority, as opposed to the fanatics Dawkins supposedly relies upon as his ready-made Straw Men? Interesting, Vickers labels most American Christians “nutcases” for taking Genesis literally, and why? Because in the UK it is no longer “respectable” to do so?

The review also becomes bogged down in irrelevance: “Where would Dawkins be without Jesus’s extraordinary impact on the Western world?” Vickers ponders. Yet quite how Christianity’s cultural impact, which Dawkins freely acknowledges, even advocating Biblical literacy, makes God’s existence more likely – the central thrust of Dawkins’ argument – is hard to fathom. I was reminded of Charles Babbage’s immortal line: “I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”

Finally – and perhaps most troublingly – Vickers implausibly tries to taint Dawkins with a whiff of racism, in a thinly-veiled attempt to circumscribe his freedom of speech with respect to religion. Having argued that religious ideas are both false and inherently dangerous, Dawkins not unreasonably labels faith a virus of the mind, and posits that Memetic theory can be used to explain the spread and evolution of such ideas. No attempt is made to refute this logic: The God Delusion is decried for “violently biased language”, with Dawkins warned to watch his in future. Vickers then proceeds to explain, “Dawkins might try substituting ‘Jews’ or ‘blacks’ for ‘religiously inclined’ and he would see why.” For a start, the universality of Meme theory is inherently unracist. But more importantly, surely just because an idea is perceived as unpalatable, this does not detract one jot from its veracity?

In her last paragraph, Vickers laments that Cornwell’s book will fail to persuade the “antiGod squad”. Ironically, she then tries to tar them with the fundamentalist brush by stating: “They ‘know’ they are right – that least scientific of attitudes since it precludes changes of heart or openness of mind.” What could be further from the truth! Again, evidence is the watchword. Dawkins would abandon his “belief” in Darwinism without looking back if presented with incontrovertible evidence that proved it wrong. In his work, he proudly cites the example of an Oxford professor being corrected regarding a theory to which he had devoted his career. The man was thankful, and Dawkins recalled “we clapped our hands raw”. Why? Because these people cared about the truth. For me, it is ironic that Vickers equates atheism with certainty, since I associate it with doubt; doubt that forces us to reject childish certainties, transforming a closed mind, full of sentimental bunkum, into a free-thinking, open one.

Vickers’ piece is not a review of Cornwell’s book, but rather a desperate attack on Dawkins’ atheism, with Darwin’s Angel providing most of the ammunition. But like many others, her brain addled by “faith”, Vickers fails to hit her target.