The talent, erudition and style of G. K. Chesterton is such that to name him in the same sentence as Richard Dawkins does violence to his memory.
Yet, he so rightly elucidated the position of, the fallacious folly of, personages such as Richard Dawkins that it seemed worthwhile to point out the following. Richard Dawkins is most certainly not the only one to whom the following applies but he is rather exemplary.
In his book Heretics G. K. Chesterton writes—in addition to noting that “Atheism itself is too theological”—the following:
In the opening pages of that excellent book MANKIND IN THE MAKING, he [H. G. Wells] dismisses the ideals of art, religion, abstract morality, and the rest, and says that he is going to consider men in their chief function, the function of parenthood. He is going to discuss life as a “tissue of births.”
He is not going to ask what will produce satisfactory saints or satisfactory heroes, but what will produce satisfactory fathers and mothers. The whole is set forward so sensibly that it is a few moments at least before the reader realises that it is another example of unconscious shirking.
What is the good of begetting a man until we have settled what is the good of being a man? You are merely handing on to him a problem you dare not settle yourself.
It is as if a man were asked, “What is the use of a hammer?” and answered, “To make hammers”; and when asked, “And of those hammers, what is the use?” answered, “To make hammers again”. Just as such a man would be perpetually putting off the question of the ultimate use of carpentry, so Mr. Wells and all the rest of us are by these phrases successfully putting off the question of the ultimate value of the human life.
Believing that naturalistic/atheistic/materialistic leads to conclude that life is an accidental occurrence atheists know that they cannot declare any sort of objective or transcendent meaning to life. This is why one of atheism’s consoling delusions is the delusion of subjective meaning in an objectively meaningless existence.
When Richard Dawkins presented his “Royal Institution Christmas Lectures” aka “The Royal Institution Lectures for Children” (which I reviewed here) he told the little children the following:
We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA…It is every living object’s sole reason for living.1
That is right kids; your life’s purpose is copulation, have at it!
He has elaborated thusly:
that the purpose of all life is to pass on their DNA means that all living things are descended from a long line of successful ancestors…which can best be understood as fulfilling a purpose of propagating DNA…There is no purpose other than that.2
For a consideration of meaning and purpose see this link.
Therefore, Richard Dawkins has gone as logically far as he can considering his adherence to meta-Darwinism, meta-materialism, etc.
“What is the use of a human?” “To make humans” “And of those humans, what is the use?”
“To make humans again”
Indeed, Dawkins, et al, are attempting to perpetually put off the question of the ultimate use of humanity—not merely their purpose, their use, but also their meaning. The Dawkinsians, by these phrases, seek, yet fail, to successfully put off the question of the ultimate value of the human life.