Richard Dawkins is a heavily esteemed evolutionary biologist who shares some of the responsibility for my apostasy. His books on evolution and genetics are absolutely wonderful reads for the science hungry mind and his arguments against religion are quite powerful for those wiling to consider them honestly. I respect him greatly as a man of science and a spokesperson for reason. Recently, he tweeted something that really caught me off guard:

If Obama is religious at all (which I seriously doubt) he is only vaguely “spiritual”. Romney really IS Mormon in the full loony sense. link

I saw two things wrong with this, a surprising number considering it’s a short tweet. The first objection I had was with his assertions on Obama’s religious views. We have pretty hard evidence that Obama is a legitimate Christian believer. In fact, he’s said as much:

Obama stated: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.” link



He goes on to say even more in his autobiography, but I’m unable to cite that. This is more than just admitting he uses religion as a moral guide and ignores the claims that it makes about reality. He places merit in sin and in faith in Jesus Christ. He is not simply “spiritual” and actually subscribes to the core teaching of salvation and eternal life through Jesus Christ. I think Mr. Dawkins’ is falling victim to wishful thinking on this issue. Of course, Dawkins is allowed to give his opinion all he likes, but he carries considerable sway with a large group of people and it’s dangerous of him to spread wishful thinking that will likely be regurgitated later as plausible fact. Now, it’s possible that Mr. Obama has since changed his mind and denounced his faith, but we have no evidence for that. We do, however, have evidence to indicate he’s able to take some personal responsibility in his interpretation of Christian teachings. For example, his support of gay marriage was a brave and commendable act that went astray of the current Christian majority.

My second problem with the tweet is more philosophical and probably the more controversial one. Somehow, the idea that Romney’s Mormonism makes him “full loony” is unsettling to me. What does loony even mean? Clearly we can’t diagnose Romney as crazy based on his having a widely held belief (there are 14.5 million Mormons) Are Mormons more loony than Christians? Catholics? Buddhists? How much more loony? Looniness is a purely subjective measurement and extremely culturally biased. Mr. Dawkins and I are both citizens of western civilization and both of us were raised far and away from the Mormon church. It’s no wonder that he and I would find Mormon beliefs as more foreign and difficult to believe than those that we are used to hearing every day. That says nothing substantive about the “looniness” of their beliefs, only about our familiarity with them. It’s pretty clear to me that even incredibly intelligent individuals can hold irrational beliefs. I’d be hard pressed to call either Obama or Romney unintelligent. This kind of remark is simply a weakly supported lesser evil justification for supporting one individual over another regardless of their political positions.

Mr. Dawkins is somebody who speaks regularly against childhood religious indoctrination. I’m curious about what his thoughts are on Obama’s adulthood Christian conversion. It’s pretty well known that Obama’s family was not particularly religious and he found Christianity later:

I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t—frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.” link

Who’s loonier now? Does an educated man indoctrinated as a child hold more responsibility for their beliefs than an educated man who forms beliefs as one? How does that factor into our looniness measure? If you can’t tell, I think the whole exercise is pretty silly. I’m happy to say they’re both equally loony and I hope we can focus on actual issues, at least then we can hope to find legitimate reasons to favor one over the other.

Update: A followup.