Reviews, Interviews, News, Commentaries, Excerpts, My Top 5 Books, Wilson's Bookmarks, Book AwardsDeconstructing Dawkins
As Oxford professor and arch-evangelist of atheism Richard Dawkins continues his crusade against religion, we finally have the first book-length critique of The God Delusion: Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (InterVarsity Press).
One could hardly think of a more contrasting figure to Dawkins or a better apologist for theism than Alister McGrath. This atheist-turned-Christian, also of Oxford, is a professor of historical theology. But as a student of molecular biophysics, he possesses the dual credibility in science and religion that Dawkins lacks. Further, McGrath authored Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life in 2004, and is thus thoroughly familiar with Dawkins's other writings. This is especially helpful for calling Dawkins to consistency.
For example, Dawkins's central argument is that God's existence cannot explain the world because he must be at least as complex, and therefore as improbable, as the world itself; and such an improbable entity would also require explanation. Recalling Dawkins's earlier work Climbing Mount Improbable, McGrath notes Dawkins's admission that humanity's existence itself is overwhelmingly improbable. But of course we exist. "We may be highly improbable—yet we are here," writes McGrath. "The issue, then, is not whether God is probable but whether he is actual."
Although McGrath's response is provocative, it is precisely at such points in The Dawkins Delusion? that one wishes McGrath had plumbed the depth of Dawkins's philosophical naïveté. In asserting that God is improbable, the zoologist is out of his habitat. Probability theorists have developed complex equations to tackle ...
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Doug Indeap
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
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
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!