Not enough people are heeding Richard Dawkins! Despite trying his utmost to spread the gospel of evolutionism-dressed-as-science, there are not enough takers. For the life of him Dawkins can’t understand why Christianity in particular continues to attract intelligent persons to it. For years he has been crusading for his “truth.” Now he has written (another) book, The God Delusion, which as he says will persuade reasonable readers to become atheists like himself.
Humility has never been one of Dawkins notable traits, and throughout the book Christians are patronized as if their chance-given minds are not being used in the way nature “intended.” His hope is that the Christian who picks up the book will become an atheist when he or she puts it down. Well, sorry and all that, but i’ve been an atheist and I think their arguments are wholly unconvincing. Cornelius Van Til put it so well; an atheist is like a man of water trying to climb out of the water with a ladder of water. Try as they may, they cannot come to terms with the fact that if you reject God you have to redefine everything you assert in terms of the accidental, the relative and the changing.
I agree, though, with Dawkins that the real issue is between the natural and the supernatural. And this is where he ought to get serious. For example, instead of talking down his nose at those who believe in the Creator and misrepresenting Biblical Christianity to try to prove that it’s vestigial and even harmful, he might try actually thinking through the careful and reasoned responses to his not-so-new objections. But Dawkins is a past master at evading the real issues. I recall once hearing a taped debate with creationists involving Dawkins in which he didn’t even try to discuss the scientific evidence that was being presented (by Prof. Edgar Andrews and A.N. Wilder-Smith), but preferred to pull out and read from ‘The Handy-Dandy Evolution Refuter.’ In similar fashion he preferred ridicule to scientific argument in his review of Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box.
When it comes down to it Dawkins, like many atheists (Gould, Dennett, Adkins, Smith, Harris, etc.) has a pathological hatred of God, which extends to those people “stupid” or “dishonest” enough to believe in Him. Science is Dawkins’ god. That is, science in the old positivist mold. He thinks any true scientist will be a naturalist and hence an atheist. Well, Newton was a scientist. Boyle and Ray and Pascal were scientists. Kepler was a pretty good scientist, as were Maxwell and Faraday and Lord Kelvin, alongside whom Richard Dawkins is something of a minnow in the Scientific Hall of Fame.
Dawkins is a very clever man and an excellent writer, but he would do well to ponder the words of a kindred spirit, Friedrich Nietzsche, who said, “We are not rid of God so long as we have grammar.” I applaud Dawkins’ grammar.
