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55 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth Reading, 15 Mar 2008
David Robertson is a Scottish Presbyterian who ministers in Dundee. Having read Dawkins 'God Delusion' he decided to respond with a series of letters addressing the major themes of the book. These include letters addressing: the notion that atheists are the truly enlightened, intelligent ones; the impossibility of true beauty without God; the myth of atheist tolerance and rationality; the myth of a cruel Old Testament God; the false dichotomy Dawkins creates between science and religion; the "who made God?" argument; the nonsense that all religion is inherently evil; the myth of morality within an atheistic worldview; the myth of an immoral bible, and; the charge of child abuse.
Where to start? The first half of the book is definitely less persuasive than the latter. One might conjecture that Robertson's understandable irritation with Dawkins slides off into sarcasm and thus dents the force of his presentation. Seriously critiquing Dawkins view of "multiverses" could have been achieved without mockery. Even if, especially at this point, one does think that Dawkins might deserve a dose of his own medicine. Further, the brevity he must deal with each topic to fit his chosen format (short letters), inevitably leads to some shortcuts in his arguments. For example, Robertson doesn't really address some of the real moral problems from reading the Old Testament. This is an area he really should have spent considerably more time on, as it's something one hears more and more often. His letter on this, frankly, comes across as assertion rather than explanation for how Christians view this problematic material. It lacks substance and wanders off into preaching/proclamation rather than tackling the difficulties. This was the most disappointing chapter in the book.
Nonetheless, things pick up considerably in the second half of the book. The tone changes, becoming less polemical, and far more compellingly argued. Indeed, the strongest letters cover the basis for morality without God and whether religion is really the source of all evil. Here Robertson takes Dawkins to task for his continual oversimplification, ad hominem polemics, failure to express what Christians actually believe rather than his straw-man caricatures, and his genuine failure to engage informed and erudite Christian tradition. To say one does not need to know about spaghetti monsters is surely effective and clever rhetoric, but is simply a strategy of evasion, an utter cop out to avoid being challenged by the best of Christian thought. The latter half of the book also pushes Dawkins to consider the outcome of his polemics and where it might lead, especially in view of the irresponsible charge of child abuse.
Overall, Robertson's book is well worth reading, if only for the latter half of the book, which is passionately expressed, critically on target, and better representative of the concerns about the underlying philosophy Dawkins holds. Moral relativity and the drive of the selfish gene unchecked by the good, loving, and holy God revealed in the face of Jesus, are more likely to lead to 'might is right' and 'the ends justify the means' than 'care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in your midst' and 'love your neighbour'.
Perhaps some day, when the heat has gone out of the current polemics, Robertson will write a much more lengthy and detailed response. If he does, I'd be glad to read it.
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70 of 89 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Informed, intellignet and persuasive, 22 Jun 2007
Christians, particularly of the evangelical type to whom Robertson belongs, can be really bad at responding intelligently to arguments against their beliefs. They tend either to flail wildly, retreat into comfortable ghettos or fail to engage properly at all. So it is refreshing to get a book like Robertson's that refuses to resort to type but instead provides an intelligent, reasoned, compassionate and compelling argument that manages to deal properly with the real issues.
Robertson does a superb job of not only addressing the issues that Dawkins' book The God Delusion raises (challenging ad hominem arguments, pointing out logical inconsistencies), but also at taking on wider myths, as he calls them, employed in Atheist rhetoric. It does not come across as a tub-thumpers' wild ravings, but rather as a book that constructively deals with bigger arguments.
If you are a Christian then this is a great book to read to help you talk with atheist friends. Buy a few copies and give them away. Or if you have been challenged by reading The God Delusion then this book will cause you to think again about why you believe what you do believe.
The call often goes out for Christians to dare to read the books of prominent atheists, but having read this I would issue the opposite challenge: If you are an atheist, if you are serious about having your ideas tested and engaging in real debate, I dare you to read the Dawkins Letters.
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58 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The problem is..., 4 Mar 2008
What many people seem unwilling to say is that Dawkins isn't an atheist. Atheism is a vacuum: it takes no offense at Christianity because it simply doesn't believe. Another reviewer used Dawkins' stamp-collecting analogy, and it's a good one. This is a paraphrase but, essentially, someone who doesn't collect stamps isn't anti-stamps - he just doesn't collect them. Quite.
As a non-stamp collector, I have no feelings on stamp collecting one way or the other. If one worth a fortune popped through my letterbox tomorrow I'd take an interest, but failing that, I'm indifferent. In all likelihood, most non-stamp collectors are indifferent.
Now, were we to write huge tomes of Dostoyevsky proportion violently spewing hatred and rhetoric at stamps, the art of collecting them and those that do, we would have crossed a line into anti-stamp, and everything that comes with that. This is what Dawkins has done. He used to be interesting, legitimate and intellectual - profoundly so. TGD, however, is a work of irrational anti-God rhetoric. He's segued from atheist to Fundamentalist, Evangelical Anti-Theist, while ostensibly maintaining the former mantel. Disingenuous. Atheism and anti-theism are wildly different things... however, he knows he's preaching to the choir (please forgive) so he can call himself whatever he wishes and those who follow him will nod along regardless, either because they share his anti-theist views, or because of what he *used* to be. (The Blind Watchmaker, for example, is an insanely interesting and well-written book. Thought-provoking, intelligent and a joy to read.) The excellence of his previous offerings has allowed him to hold on to the label SuperRationalAtheist which, now, is very, very misleading and gives him a degree of credibility he no longer deserves.
Ultimately, Dawkins undermines the veracity of the atheist position.
So it really is left to people like David Robertson to "dispell the anti-theist myths" and propaganda put forward by Dawkins. He effortlessly matches Dawkins intellectually, and surpasses him in research. But where he has Dawkins absolute beat is in how gracious he is - something the reviewer before me pointed out, too. Dawkins sees fit to consistently insult Christians, our beliefs, and God. That he has so little respect for the beliefs of others - that he is so fundamentally intolerant - is a damning indictment on his world-view, and audaciously hypocritical. Robertson, though, responds with grace, integrity, humour and self-depreciation.
Where Dawkins seeks to get laughs from like-minded folk at the expense of another, Robertson makes gentle jokes at the expense of himself; where Dawkins decries all people of faith as foolish and deluded (at best), Robertson seeks to understand those who view the world differently from himself. All of that combined makes TDL so much more effective and readable than TGD and, truth be told, the myriad other rebuttals.
Robertson hasn't gotten terribly involved in pushing any agenda or polemic. He is open and honest from the start that he is a man of God, and that for him the Bible is inerrant, and *of course* he talks about God. In a debate about God, God will come up in conversation. However, the meat of TDL meets Dawkins on a level he'd be comfortable with, without preaching or evangelising, and he has done so in a way that invites us all to think for ourselves. Dawkins violently shoves his anti-God faith down peoples' throats; Robertson cites source after source, and asks us to research his faith for ourselves.
For someone who shares Dawkins' anti-theist views, this kind of open-mindedness is anathema, and worthy of scorn. But anyone who wants to see both sides of the story and walk their own path rather than blindly follow Dawkins', this book is wonderful. Equally, any Christian who wishes to become more involved in apologetics could do much, *much* worse than this quiet gem.
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