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 PrintableVersion Dawkins' GodGenes, memes and the meaning of lifeRobust, so far as it goesDAWKINS' GOD My first encounter with Richard Dawkins took place around 20 years ago while reading |The Blind Watchmake|r. I was impressed with his skill as a writer. But I found his basic argument, that the origin of living things could better be explained by evolution than through design by a Divine Watchmaker, unconvincing. I felt he had oversimplified the evolution of the eye and wrote to him about it. The supposed evolution of the eye from a simple light-sensitive cell to a complex eye like ours requires more than one system to evolve simultaneously. As the eye itself evolves, along with it, and at the same time, a nerve system (optic nerve) to carry the information to the brain must evolve and a complex part of the brain to process and use the information must also evolve. At least three ‘systems’ must co-evolve. I suggested that this, at least, reduces the probability of the evolution of the eye. I expected a reasoned response but instead received a con-descending letter discouraging me from further communication. Dawkins’s dismissive attitude towards those who disagree with him is characteristic of his approach and is one of the many problems McGrath highlights in Dawkins’ God. McGrath begins by describing evolutionary theory, but spends most of the book critiquing Dawkins’s views on science, theology and those who disagree with him. So who is Richard Dawkins? He is the ‘Professor of the Public Understanding of Science’ at Oxford University and one of the foremost advocates of evolutionary theory today. He is a militant proponent of atheism who believes that Darwin made belief in God unnecessary: now we can explain the world without invoking a God. No thinking person can believe in God after Darwin. Valuable critiquesSome of the valuable critiques McGrath makes of Dawkins, not exhaustive or in order, are as follows. 1 Dawkins holds a simplistic and outdated view of the relationship between science and Christianity: that they are necessarily at war with each other. McGrath helpfully shows that this misguided notion owes itself to the Victorian clash between the clergy (whose influence was waning) and a new class in society, the professional scientist (whose influence was growing). There is no intrinsic reason why Christianity and science should be at loggerheads. 2 Dawkins’s understanding of Christian theology is shown to be na•ve and superficial. For example, Dawkins thinks that Christian faith is ‘blind trust’ without any kind of reasoning — and he completely misquotes Augustine to support this false view. ‘When he comes to deal with anything to do with God, we seem to enter …. the world of a schoolboy debating society….’ (p.9). To put it bluntly, when Dawkins writes about God he doesn’t know what he is on about. 3 Dawkins fails to understand that scientific theories change with time. He advocates Darwinism as if it will endure forever. But McGrath questions this: ‘Will the Darwinian theory of evolution itself one day have to be radically modified, or even abandoned, suffering the same fate as so many other scientific theories of the past?’ (p.106), and reminds scientists that ‘History simply makes fools of those who argue that every aspect of the current theoretical situation is true for all time’ (p.105). 4 Dawkins’s theory about how ideas are transmitted from one generation to the next, his theory of ‘memes’ is found to be without proof. Taking his analogy from the way genes replicate themselves, Dawkins promoted the theory that this may be how ideas are carried from one generation to the next. So, for example, belief in God is to be accounted for by a ‘God-meme’ which gets passed from one mind to another. There is no evidence for the theory, but worse for Dawkins, if it was true then it could equally explain Dawkins’ atheism — an ‘atheism-meme’ is responsible for unbelief! It is more likely that the meme-theory, along with his notion of ‘viruses of the mind’ (God being a particularly virulent one) was introduced to support his hatred of all religious ideas. 5 Dawkins resorts to unpleasant rhetoric when he is running out of logical steam. One secular journalist noted this and wrote of the book The Devil’s Chaplain, ‘twin obsessions form virtually every piece — Darwinian evolution (hurrah!) and religion (boo!)’(p.109). It is a classic mark of poor reasoning when one resorts to unpleasant rhetoric. Believers are made out by Dawkins to be mad, bad or both. 6 Finally, McGrath disputes Dawkins’s argument that a divine view of the universe reduces its splendour. Quite the opposite is true. A belief that God created the universe, writes McGrath, ‘adds a richness which I find quite absent from Dawkins’s account of things’ (p.149). McGrath acknowledges that his book only scratches the surface, but we should be grateful to him for this robust yet gracious expose of Dawkins. But this book doesn’t go far enough. It fails to deal with the real cause of Dawkins’s attack on God as Creator. This arises from the sinful suppression of truth characteristic of all fallen men and women described in Romans chapter one. The book also fails to give any critique of evolutionary theory which McGrath seems to accept as a presently-adequate explanation of origins. There are many of us who believe that evolutionary theory is ripe for overthrow and that the biblical, creation account of the universe offers a far more satisfying explanation of God’s wonderful universe. But that’s a project for another day. Dr. Roy Summers© Evangelicals Now - June 2005 |
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