The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine [Paperback]

 

 

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So, having really enjoyed the celebrated work to which this book is a counter, I thought I'd give Dawkins's nemesis's book a try. After all, it's easy to choose to listen to someone who's arguing from your side; the challenge is to hear the counter arguments respectfully.

I'll give the professor his due; he has a measured approach that makes him far more charming a narrator than is Dawkins. The latter tends to go for the jugular, and I can envision him red-faced, pounding his keyboard at times.

Professor McGrath wisely lets Dawkins hang himself at times; when Dawkins is silly enough to use absolutes ("all religion is evil"), attention is drawn to it.

Nonetheless, writing a rebuttal to this book should also prove easy. After all, whilst it's true that Dawkins deliberately extracted bad bits of the Bible, it's still the case that they are in it, irrespective of whether there heppen to be good bits too.

Likewise, one of the most striking pages of Dawkins's work describes the god that is mentioned in the Old Testament using very negative adjectives based on accounts contained therein. McGrath's answer to that is "I don't believe in a god like that." That may be the case, but it doesn't change the fact that the stories that Dawkins read to come up with such a description are there, and so the professor's rebuttal is not effective.

I don't know. It's hard not to automatically side with the person who espouses one's own opinion, of course, in which case I'd be with Dawkins. But when all is said and done, this is not a cut-and-dried debate, and there is much that is worthwhile in the riposte. I would say, though, that Dawkins didn't totally undermine the case for a god; he undermined the case for organised religion. In a similar vein, professor McGrath's book is more a defence for the religious that Dawkins attacked with such zeal, rather than a matter of making "God" much more a viable concept for me.

This is only a short book. I'm not sure that I'd recommend it, just because there's nothing to it. Anyone that reads Dawkins's work can see that he's aggressive. Reasonable people are well aware that there are fanatical atheists that are just as zealous as their believing equivalents; we don't need to buy a book to realise this.

I'm glad that I bought this book just because I like to practice what I preach, about listening to both sides of the argument. It didn't dissuade me from my own stance at all, but I'm sure for those who share the author's opinions and beliefs, it will come as a welcome defence to Dawkins's affront.

This response to Richard Dawkins' "The God delusion" is by Alister McGrath and Joanna McGrath. For simplicity I will refer to just the first of the authors, using the initials AM.

The title of the book is unfortunate - why make a personal attack on Dawkins in this way? And the sub-title, "Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine" is also unfortunate. In "The God delusion" Dawkins presents his position as an atheist in an evidence-based way - to imply that his position is fundamentalist is absurd. The phrase "atheist fundamentalism" is needlessly repeated again and again throughout the book.

There is a strange section in the Introduction:

"Dawkins preaches to his god-hating choirs, who are clearly expected to relish his rhetorical salvoes, and raise their hands high in adulation. Those who think biological evolution can be reconciled with religion are dishonest! Amen! They belong to the `Neville Chamberlain school' of evolutionists! They are appeasers! Amen! Real scientists reject belief in God! Hallelujah! The God that Jews believed in back in Old Testament times is a psychotic child abuser! Amen! You tell them, brother!" (page x)

Why did AM write this? One possibility is that he may dislike the histrionics of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians and in these words he combines his dislike of them with his dislike of Dawkins and atheism into a single attack on both. But this is just speculation. Also, how does disbelief in God equate to god-hating?

Again from the Introduction:

"The book [The God delusion] is often little more than an aggregation of convenient factoids, suitably overstated to achieve maximum impact, and loosely arranged to suggest that they constitute an argument. To rebut this highly selective appeal to evidence would be unspeakably tedious, and would simply lead to a hopelessly dull book that seemed tetchy and reactive. Every one of Dawkins' misrepresentations and overstatements can be challenged and corrected. Yet a book that merely offered such a litany of corrections would be catatonically boring." (page xi)

Why would such a book be unspeakably tedious / hopelessly dull / catatonically boring? The God delusion, which I think is a very well structured, well argued book, currently scores around 70% on Amazon UK - a book that responded fully to each of the main points Dawkins makes could well achieve a similar score as well as usefully progressing the debate. I think this would have been a better response than the patchy response AM actually gives and which currently scores around 40%.

AM continues:

"Assuming that Dawkins has equal confidence in all parts of his book, I shall simply challenge him at representative points, and let readers draw their own conclusions about the overall reliability of his evidence and judgement." (page xii)

This sounds like: "I can't actually respond to many of Dawkins' points so I'll just respond where I can and hope that's enough."

From chapter 1, "Deluded about God?":

"After [a] lecture, I was confronted by a very angry young man. The lecture had not been particularly remarkable. I had simply demonstrated, by rigorous use of scientific, historical and philosophical arguments, that Dawkins' intellectual case against God didn't stand up to critical examination. But this man was angry - in fact, I would say he was furious. Why? Because, he told me, wagging his finger agitatedly at me, I had `destroyed his faith'. His atheism rested on the authority of Richard Dawkins, and I had totally undermined his faith. He would have to go away and rethink everything. How dare I do such a thing!" (page 1)

Here we have AM's account of how he effortlessly defeated Dawkins and "destroyed the faith" of an atheist. But I think we are entitled to wonder whether this encounter unfolded quite as he describes. Would an atheist really talk in terms of his faith having been destroyed? AM tends to assign to Dawkins and atheists words and terms usually associated with religion, and it looks like that is what's happening here. But one notable thing does stand out: AM's atheist friend was at least prepared to rethink things in response to his having encountered new evidence. This is very different from the typical response of Christians in an equivalent situation. When a Christian is presented with compelling evidence against what he believes he will often take a position of "I really don't care what you tell me. I've been a Christian for x years and I'll be a Christian on the day I die. Nothing you or anyone else can say will ever change what I believe".

Another curious sentence:

"We all need to examine our beliefs - especially if we are naive enough to think that we don't have any in the first place" (page 2)

Surely all people are aware that they hold beliefs?

Chapter 2 is titled "Has science disproved God?" which has something of a straw man quality to it. In The God delusion Dawkins has already said:

"That you cannot prove God's non-existence is accepted....What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn't) but whether his existence is probable"

In the third chapter, "What are the origins of religion?", there is an interesting discussion on conservative thinking:

"The way that human beings perceive the world is indeed coloured by our agendas and expectations. `Cognitive bias' is a fundamental characteristic of human psychology. Yet in general this unconscious bias is manifested not so much in our believing what we would like to be true, as in maintaining the status quo of our beliefs. The driving force is not wishful thinking, but conservative thinking - that is, thinking that conserves an existing world view....

We thus have a built-in resistance to change our position - a resistance which is underpinned by `cognitive biases' which predispose us to fail to notice or to discount data that are inconsistent with our view. On the whole we do this because it is efficient - it is effortful and upsetting to have to change one's mind....

Do cognitive biases play a part in religious belief? The evidence is that they are as important here as in any other area of life." (page 34)

I agree with this description - it helps us understand why Christians (as noted above) and religious people in general tend to make their beliefs immune to any evidence that is contrary to those beliefs. As the theologian Don Cupitt noted 30 years ago:

"The victory of faith is not its confirmation by the facts but its triumph over them."

The final chapter, "Is religion evil?", contains several valid points including these two:

"Dawkins insists that there is `not the smallest evidence' that atheism systematically influences people to do bad things....The facts are otherwise. In their efforts to enforce their atheist ideology, the Soviet authorities systematically destroyed and eliminated the vast majority of churches and priests during the period 1918-41....This violence and repression was undertaken in pursuit of an atheist agenda - the elimination of religion." (page 48)

"As Robert Pape showed in his definitive account of the motivations of such attacks [suicide bombings], based on surveys of every suicide bombing since 1980, religious belief of any kind is neither necessary nor sufficient to create suicide bombers....Pape's evidence is that the fundamental motivation is political: the desire to force the withdrawal of foreign forces occupying land believed to belong to an oppressed people, who have seriously limited military resources at their disposal." (page 50)

In conclusion: the book starts badly but does eventually improve. Overall however it doesn't achieve its goal of being a successful response to The God delusion.

To Alistar McGrath's credit he got me thinking a bit about some counter-arguments to Richard Dawkin's book 'The God Delusion'. He is a very good intellectual writer and puts forth a few good ideas such as - some beliefs may not be proven but justifiable (especially considering that half the world believe in some God), the relevance of a world view, and how evolution is not regarded as being incompatible with religious beliefs. He also tries to provide a balance to some of Dawkins very strong views about the role in which religion plays in our every day lives and how it impacts society. Unfortunately, he never follows through and hence leaves the reader wanting. He does make it clear up front that he did not want to write a detailed book that counters against every anti-religion point that Dawkins makes in TGD but that is precisely what I was hoping he would do (perhaps not with a 400 page book, but with something a bit more than a short high level essay). Like it or hate it, 'The God Delusion' puts forth some very powerful arguments against religion and the perceived irrational thinking that accompanies it. Dawkins does not don kid gloves and attacks religion very aggressively in his book - which was his intention. He was not looking to publish a politically correct book. Hence a strong rebuttal would have been appropriate and potentially very interesting - especially from somebody of McGrath's intellectual caliber. I am an atheist but continue on my quest for answers and I have a good appreciation for rational counter-argument. This was McGrath's opportunity to put forth some solid rebuttals but it doesn't happen. He stops well short of a full rebuttal to almost all of the issues raised by Dawkins so he lost his opportunity to persuade otherwise - which I assume was the reason for publishing the Dawkins Delusion in the first place. In short - had potential but fails to deliver.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother.
I read this book after reading "The God Delusion" and was very disappointed. Richard Dawkins provides great, well supported arguments, unlike this book. Read more

Published 3 months ago by A. Wedlake

1.0 out of 5 stars Absolute rubbish!
How can Dawkins be deluded when all he speaks is fact? The author of this book believes that there's a man in the sky who's concerned about the trivialities of the human species... Read more

Published 3 months ago by toomuchvimto

2.0 out of 5 stars A few good points
Alister McGrath could have used his studies in molecular biology to achieve some material advance for animal health, instead he preaches superstition & fear. Read more

Published 3 months ago by A.

3.0 out of 5 stars McGrath v Dawkins

Written as a response to "The God Delusion", this slim volume should, perhaps, have been postponed until it had been edited with more rigour. Read more

Published 6 months ago by RR Waller

2.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps Cathartic For The McGraths, But Disappointing For Me
First of all, i'm an atheist, so whilst reading this book I was constantly aware that I might fall into the cognitive bias trap - I hope I didn't and hope the below doesn't give... Read more

Published 6 months ago by Chris_Carlisle

5.0 out of 5 stars McGrath versus Dawkins
A comprehensive treatise by a former atheist (now a Christian theologian) in less than 70 pages. An easy, convincing and enlightening book that should be read by all who have... Read more

Published 10 months ago by JCR77

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
About time too. I'll be brief - consider the following:- quoted on the front cover - philosopher Michael Ruse "The God delusion makes me embarassed to be an atheist and the... Read more

Published 13 months ago by Mr. Neil Horner

1.0 out of 5 stars What Paradigm...?
In the same way that someone who doesn't understand his/hers basic multiplication tables won't be able to approach algebra, people who mistakenly suppose we exist in a material... Read more

Published 13 months ago by Mr. M. Kostyrka

1.0 out of 5 stars A book for the "petrified" human being...
A book that offers no evidence to persuade sides. Just little scrutinies in which any believers or non-believer could pick up in the God Delusion. Read more

Published 13 months ago by michael wilson

4.0 out of 5 stars To the point
This book doesn't waste any energy and gets straight to the point. Not what can be said of Dawkins. Too much filler and nonsense.

Published 17 months ago by The Scientist

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