McGrath on Dawkins: “philosophically naïve and deficient”

4 February 2007

Richard Dawkins’ self-appointed nemesis, the equally vociferous Alistair McGrath, is to release another ad hominem titled book, The Dawkins Delusion? later this month.

On the Ekklesia (a religious think tank) web site there is, what basically boils down to, an advertisement for this book masquerading as a news article. This article also acts as a mouthpiece for McGrath to take a few scattered pot shots at Dawkins.

McGrath, who holds doctorates in both molecular biophysics and theology, was formerly an atheist himself, and has praised the scientific writing of Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, also at Oxford. But he argues that Dawkins’ increasingly shrill critique of religion is simplistic.

In an earlier book, ‘Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life’, which Professor Dawkins has declined to respond to, other than through a short rhetorical dismissal, Professor McGrath claimed his colleague’s anti-religious pronouncements were philosophically naïve and deficient.

“Formerly an atheist”? I would have thought that at birth, babies generally don’t have any understanding of christian (or any other) dogma, so are de facto atheists. Is this what they mean here?

Anyway… McGrath here complains that Dawkins’ criticisms of religion are simplistic and philosophically naïve and deficient. I would opine, though, that most of the people who are of a theistic bent that read The God Delusion are just as theologically inept, perhaps even more so if they haven’t actually taken the time to investigate their faith.

Unlike McGrath, most believers don’t have PhDs in theology, I would gambit that most of them haven’t even read their scripture the whole way through, and I would not be surprised to learn that most of them haven’t taken any time to think about their faith critically. To call Dawkins’ theological or philosophical credentials into question, as Eagleton did in his infamous Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching review in the London Review of Books, is to completely miss the entire point of the book.

In an issue of The War Cry, a balanced and well-adjusted organ if ever there was one, McGrath wrote:

Dawkins works on the assumption that his readers know very little about Christianity. He asserts that if you believe in evolution then you cannot believe in God, because evolution is by definition atheistic. But that is a very inaccurate interpretation.

Exactly how is this inaccurate? As mentioned above, most non-theological believers don’t know very much about christianity, it’s origins, the horrors discharged in its name (except the Inquisition, I’d expect most people to have heard about that little episode), the sheer incredulity and brutality that those parts of the bible not mentioned in the sunday schools or from the pulpit are full of, the philosophical arguments for and against a god, and so on.

Does McGrath really think that the grannies that gather together every Sunday at 11am for a singalong, a cup of tea and a natter with the parson are theologically literate? Does he presume to think that most people who, in the UK, call themselves CofE, yet don’t bother going to church apart from the usual BM&D reasons, actually give two figs about whether there is or isn’t a god? I say that you’re barking up the bloody wrong tree there, mate. He goes on:

Dawkins also interprets a Christian’s ‘faith’ as ‘blind trust’. To him ‘faith’ means running away from evidence. But that’s not a Christian definition of faith… People like simple answers to hard questions. That’s why Dawkins is so popular.

People like simple answers to hard questions? Of course they bloody do! What simpler answer is there to any question than “god did it, so leave it alone”?! That’s exactly who The God Delusion is aimed at!

He continues: “When I was an atheist, I sounded like Richard Dawkins. I focused only on the things that fitted my theory. One of the things that made me stop being an atheist was realising things are rather more complicated.”

I love it when people use their own well-rehearsed diatribes to prove their own point.

Really, McGrath dude, get a clue…

Possibly related posts:

The Guardian: Britain’s new cultural divide In today’s The Guardian, Stuart Jeffries has an article ‘reporting’ on the vicious and uncompromising battle between believers and non-believers....
The Independent: Ask Dawkins Today’s The Independent featured Dawkins in the You Ask The Questions segment. Some interesting questions (and equally interesting answers) there....
The Independent: Dawkins takes fight against religion into the classroom In today’s The Independent there is a feature about zoologist Richard Dawkins and his new foundation, the Richard Dawkins Foundation...
The Independent: Another christian who just doesn’t “get it” In today’s The Independent on Sunday, there’s an editorial by Giles Fraser, lecturer in Philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford, where...

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