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The Dawkins delusion?Scientist marooned in 19th centuryTHE DAWKINS DELUSION? It is always a delight to read anything by the McGraths. Here they use their wide knowledge and academic acumen to give a Christian response to Richard Dawkins’s atheist tract The God Delusion. We are reminded that, despite Dawkins’s vehemence, nearly half of scientists in the world do believe in God. Indeed, the director of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, published his Language of God a few months ago, arguing that the wonder and order of nature points to a creator. The McGraths expose the unscientific reasoning behind much of Dawkins’s book. When it comes to psychology and neuro-science, ‘he simply does not know the subject’, and relies on much out of date and discredited research. Indeed, The God Delusion seems to depend almost entirely on discredited 19th-century assumptions or his own ideas of ‘God as a virus of the mind’, again rejected by mainstream scientists. This is a good answer from within the mindset of the academy but whether it is a biblical answer is questionable, since the McGraths believe that scientific evidence can be interpreted legitimately in an atheistic way or in a Christian way (anything except intelligent design!) which does not appear to fit with Romans 1.20. John Benton© Evangelicals Now - April 2007 |