A Random Page from 'The God Delusion'

The God Delusion

by Richard Dawkins

Excerpt from Chapter 3:
Arguments for God's Existence

Page 81

...The Argument from Beauty

Another character in the same novel, Point Counter Point, proved the existence of God by playing Beethoven’s string quartet No. 15 in A minor (‘heiliger Dankgesang’) on a gramophone. Unconvincing as that sounds, it does represent a popular strand of argument. I have given up counting the number of times I receive the more or less truculent challenge: “How do you account for Shakespeare, then?” (Substitute Schubert, Michelangelo etc to taste). The argument will be so familiar, I needn’t document it further. But the logic behind it is never spelled out and, the more you think about it, the more vacuous you realise it to be. Obviously Beethoven’s late quartets are sublime. So are Shakespeare’s sonnets. They are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn’t. They do not prove the existence of God, they prove the existence of Beethoven and of Shakespeare. A great conductor is credited with saying: “If you have Mozart to listen to, why would you need God?”

I once was the guest of the week, on a British radio show called Desert Island Discs. You have to choose the six records you would take with you if marooned on a desert island. Among my choices was ‘Mache dich mein Herze rein’ from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The interviewer was unable to understand how I could choose religious music without being religious. You might as well say, how can you enjoy Wuthering Heights, when you know perfectly well that Cathy and Heathcliff never really existed?

But there is an additional point that I might have made, and which needs to be made whenever religion is given credit for, say, the Sistine Chapel or Raphael’s Annunciation. Even great artists have to earn a living, and they will take commissions where they are to be had. I do ...

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