I recently read through Richard Dawkins latest and heavily publicized book, ‘The God Delusion’. I hoped that it might help keep me on my toes intellectually and pin point areas of my faith that are a bit dodgy on the apologetics front. However, there was in fact very little in it that I found challenging.

There have already been many scathing reviews of this book (some in fact, written by atheists). Here are links to a few:

Terry Eagleton - London Review of books
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/ eagl01.html
John Cornwell - The Sunday Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/ 0,,2102-2375182.html
Marilynne Robinson - Harpers Magazine
http://solutions.synearth.net/2006/10/ 20


Alister McGrath has even written a book length response called ‘The Dawkins Delusion?’ that is out in February

I don't intend to do an in depth or even complete review, but here are some things that I found particularly striking when reading the God Delusion, some general, others more specific:

Dawkins views are rather old fashioned.  In chapter 4, he even refers to some of his colleagues at Cambridge who condemned his views as ‘nineteenth-century’. With the 18th century enlightenment and  beginning of modernity, Science and technology seemed to be doing away with God, as mankind progressed into a bold an prosperous future. A few hundred years (and two world wars later) we are entering a more post-modern era. Whereas modernity places a great deal of importance on ideals such as rationality, objectivity, and progress, postmodernism questions whether these ideals can exist at all. Dawkins doesn’t seem to have any time for postmodernism, as his view that we only need to embrace a totally rationalistic, logical and atheistic view of life for the world to become a better place. As this has been around for at least a couple of hundred years (and has inspired many dodgy theories along the way such as eugenics) it would seem that his particular world view isn’t quite working – hence the post modern critique.

Dawkins often caricatures faith. His definition of faith is ‘Belief without evidence, even in the teeth of evidence’. However, I doubt that most sensible Christians would go by that definition and would in fact place high importance on things like reason. If I look back over the years I’ve been a Christian does it seem as if my belief has been despite obvious evidence that’s its all a load of nonsense? Not really.
  Dawkins follows the same trend he set in his Channel 4 program ‘the root of all evil’ by  pointing out all the extremist forms of religion he can in chapter 8. He brushes moderate (and for more common) faith aside as being ‘cherry picking’. Instead of being glad when Pope John Paul II endorsed Darwinism, Dawkins said that the Pope was a hypocrite and that he preffered ‘an honest fundamentalist’. This is a typical example of the fundamentalist (of which Dawkins is one of a kind) ‘all or nothing’ approach that puts ultra conservative religion as the only authentic version, and that anything more moderate is wishy washy and backsliding. In my experience, I have found more moderate Christianity to be actually more biblical and authentic than the more fundamentalist forms.
 
Dawkins has absolutely no time for Theology. He puts it on a par with ‘Fairyology’ (just one of the many bogus analogies he’s fond of using’). He also says ‘I have yet to see any good reason to see that theology is a subject at all’  (at which point I penciled something rather rude in the margin)His proud ignorance of theology clearly shows in his criticizing of the of the bible in chapter 7.  He slates the old testament in an incredibly superficial and even childish way, as if the OT was meant to be read like a magazine rather than a richly layered book about the relationship between God and his people with so many literary genres that not even a lifetimes study I expect could fully grasp. Of course Dawkins can’t appreciate that because he thinks theology is a load of rubbish. In that case, one might as well refuse to understand equations on the basis that maths is a load of rubbish. Ironically, this is a simmilar approach some of the American creationists have towards evolutionary biology (which Dawkins rightly detests, though it doesn’t stop him from taking the same approach to theology!)
   His most embarrassing display of ignorance in this chapter (and in the whole book I reckon) is his assertion that Jesus command of ‘Love thy neighbour’ only really meant ‘Love another Jew’ or ‘Love your friends’. Anyone who knows their gospels (as Dawkins clearly doesn’t) can see that this is utter cozwallop. He displays more ignorance when talking about Paul and atonement theology, giving a very populist and unfair swipe at them. He only ever refers to one contempory theologians work throughout the whole book (Richard Swinburne).I would like to see how Dawkins arguments would fair against such folks as Tom Wright, Rowan Williams, David Ford and Graham Tomlin. Not well, I would imagine.
   There was one very interesting part of this chapter, though: He hardly has a bad word to say about Jesus, and even praises some of his teaching. ‘It was not for nothing that I wrote an article called ‘Atheists for Jesus’, he says (Of course he would deny all of the divine element to Jesus). I think this is common among many non-believers – a bitter hatred of religion but a sincere respect for the character of Jesus. Something to be taken note of when it comes to evangelism, maybe.

I found chapter 3 (where he attempts to disprove various arguments of Gods existence) particularly weak. He spent pages and pages attacking ‘proofs’ which were never intended as such, but were showing that belief in gid was consistent with the world (such as those of Thomas Aquinas and Pascal’s Wager). He then fails to adequately address more relevant arguments. For example, when attacking the argument from ‘personal experience’ he only talks about ‘miracles’ and ‘supernatural experiences’ (as if this was what people base their entire faith upon). My argument from personal experience would be the undenying positive effect my faith has had upon my life over the years and truth I have found when putting it into practice (with or without supernatural ‘experiences’).  I expect that is the same for many believers. Anyway, since reading Tom Wright I have become wary of the very post-enlightenment separation of natural’ and ‘supernatural’ which is not, I believe, a biblical distinction.


I found chapter 4 ‘why there almost certainly is no god’ (the longest and most important chapter in the book) rather puzzling. Its mostly the old ‘Science, particularly evolution, disproves God’ rhetoric. Indeed, I think he made a fair job of clarifying what natural selection actually is (not ‘random chance’ as many have suggested )  However, It seemed to me (I’m no scientist) that he went on to stretch Darwinism beyond its legitimate boundaries, proposing that Darwinian ‘awareness’ can be transferred to cosmology etc.  For example, he advocates the ‘multiverse theory’ (that there are basically an infinite number of universes so the chances are that at least one is fined tuned and ours happens to be that one) which, as far as I know, there is no proof for. Indeed, he says that the theory is ‘hated by most physicists. I cant understand why. I think it is beautiful – perhaps because my consciousness has been raised by Darwin.’ He ends the chapter with an over glorified version of the ‘Who made God?’ argument against God (and since time didn’t exist before the Big bang, I fail to see how that argument works). I found it odd that he didn’t seriously address Theistic evolution and its various arguments. Anyway, I’d be interested to here opinions of this chapter from folks with a more scientific mind than I.

Dawkins seems to enjoy kissing his own backside a lot, and includes many quotes throughout the book of people praising him. For example, In chapter four he quotes Douglas Adams ‘I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins books, and suddenly(after a second reading of ‘The Selfish Gene’) it all fell into place…….the awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem silly beside it’  (emphasis added). I lost count of the number of times I penciled ‘Pretentious, moi?’ next to such quotes. One reviewer even commented that apart from God, Dawkins is the most frequently mentioned person throughout the book. Pretentious moi?

In his closing chapter, Dawkins basic assertion is that without belief in God etc, Science, the natural world and life in general seem all the more wonderful. Indeed , in another book, Dawkins says 'The universe presented by organised religions is a poky medieval universe' compared to the one presented by atheism. I personally find this bizarre. The very reason I find creation awesome is that it points towards God. If there is no God then it is lying! Isaiah 6 says "All the earth is filled with his glory!" A chaplain friend of mine once said that nobody is born an atheist – they need the likes of Dawkins to convince them that there is no God behind the world. This is purely my opinion, but if atheism is true, then life is pointless. There is no purpose in life other the than the one we make for ourselves which in its self is extremely short lived and in the ultimate scheme of things, pointless. Humanists often put the whole concept of human achievement at the center of life, so although individuals die, humanity will continue to grow and make new discoveries and conquer new worlds…until humanity itself finally snuffs it so in the end humanity itself is pointless.