Deconstructing Dawkins | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Free Newsletters:

RSS Feeds |

Audio |

Twitter

Home > 2007 > November

Christianity Today, November, 2007 |

Deconstructing Dawkins

Alister McGrath's challenge of famous atheist is bracing—but does not go far enough.

Logan Paul Gage | posted 11/16/2007 04:26PM

3 of 3

McGrath is, if anything, too generous with Dawkins. The Dawkins Delusion? is written with a scholarly care and graciousness that Dawkins lacks. Dawkins's arrogance and contempt lead him to be sloppy with his opponents' arguments. McGrath, despite his flaws, takes Dawkins seriously.

Logan Paul Gage, policy analyst, Discovery Institute.

Related Elsewhere:

The Dawkins Delusion? is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

Previous articles about atheism and Dawkins' work include:

Puncturing Atheism | Fourfold God Squad brilliantly takes on Dawkins, Hitchens, & Co. (October 31, 2007)

The New Intolerance | Fear mongering among elite atheists is not a pretty sight. A Christianity Today editorial (January 25, 2007)

The Dawkins Confusion | Naturalism ad absurdum. (March/April 2007)

The Know-Nothing Party | How should Christians respond to ill-informed attacks? (February 5, 2007)

Clockwork Origins, parts 1, 2, and 3 | Richard Dawkins is absolutely confident that science will finally accomplish what philosophy has been unable to do in more than 2,000 years—make theism intellectually indefensible. (Jan/Feb 1996)

Alister McGrath participated in a Christianity Today discussion about the state of the evangelical mind.

first page |

3 of 3

share this page

November 2007, Vol. 51, No. 11

E-mail this page

Write CT

Print this article

Post a comment

Reader Reviews are below

Subscribe to Christianity Today and get 3 free trial issues. No credit card required.

Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only.

If you decide you want to keep Christianity Today coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive nine more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The three trial issues are yours to keep, regardless.

Click here for international orders

2-for-1 Gifts!

[Reader Reviews]

Average User Rating:

Displaying 1 - 3 of 18 comments.

See all comments

Doug Indeap

Posted: November 23, 2007 1:39 AM

I haven't yet read McGrath's book, but if his critique of Dawkins' probability argument is as described above, he has plainly missed the mark. Dawkins did not posit the improbability of god as a reason to doubt his existence. Rather Dawkins pointed out the illogic of theists' argument that the improbability of something as complex as the universe spontaneously coming into existence is so great that it must instead have been created by a god. Dawkins simply observed that as improbable as that may be, the improbability that a being even more complex than the universe spontaneously came into existence must be greater. That the universe exists, thus, reveals that its improbable existence actually came to be, but says nothing of the even more improbable existence of a god.

Joseph Cejka

Posted: November 21, 2007 1:29 PM


Ah, golly, this is an awful review. Th author peppers the review with his own biases and misses the weakness of Dawkins and the strengths of McGrath. It would be better for CT to have had a theologian or philosopher review McGrath's book. Instead, the reader was granted an ill-informed polemic in this review.

Jack Knife

Posted: November 21, 2007 12:24 PM

Oh Lord! Enlighten the unbelievers with a sign of your presence! Test the faith of your servants Richard & Lindsay Roberts, Benny Hinn, Kenneth & Gloria Copeland, Joyce Meyers, Paula White, and Creflo Dollar as you did with your servant Job! Allow Satan to take away their riches, houses, cars, and planes, and smite them with dreadful boils. When they, as Job, refuse to curse your name, the unbeliever’s eyes may then be opened!

The allotted time for commenting has ended.