In the Telegraph, Richard Dawkins tells us that it is 20 years today since his book "The God Delusion" was published.
The tenor of Dawkins' position then is the same as now, in this article. Those who believe that the ultimate explanation for reality is a personal, intelligent, living Creator, to whom we are morally responsible, are not so much wrong at an intellectual level (though he thinks it is), as in need of a pyschological diagnosis. We must try to understanding exactly how they got into their position. It's not that their arguments need refuting, because it's so irrational: we rather need to explain just what's wrong with them.
Anyone reading this article to find out what Dawkins has learned about his opponents' arguments, and how to sharpen his own in response to those responses, will find that the answer is: essentially nothing. This is quite consistent with how Dawkins has always argued: his opponents are so obviously wrong, that it's absurd even to discuss with them. To lower oneself to the level where one reads things about what Christians actually believe and teach, would be like accepting the mythology of leprechauns. So why do people still believe in God, even now? His first answer:
Partly because it serves as a comfort blanket for those whose idea of logic takes the form, “life would be intolerable without X, therefore X must exist”.
i.e. A psychological diagnosis. C S Lewis called this fallacious way of doing things "Bulverism". (What is it based on?) His second?
Then there’s the Great Stalin Syllogism: “Stalin was an atheist. Stalin was a horrible man. Therefore God exists.”
And swiftly onto the third:
Of more interest is the so-called argument from design. The biological version nowadays appeals only to those whose mental “nowadays” predates 1859.
For Dawkins, no true Scotsman biologist does anything other than follow Darwin's philosophical reasonings from observation of natural selection to the conclusion that "there is no designer behind this system"; this fact cannot be modified by the observation that many biologists can and do precisely that, because their doing so ipso facto proves that they were not true biologists.
So, as in 2006, so in 2026: Richard Dawkins presents himself as the paradigm of the scientific method and Enlightenment reason. Given the opportunity to put his best case in a national newspaper, this is what he comes up with. Here is how he attacks the argument from design:
If God designed cheetahs to be beautifully effective killers of gazelles, and if God designed gazelles to be beautifully effective escapers from cheetahs, whose side is God on? Is he a sadist who enjoys the spectator sport?
What are the premises of this argument? What logic is being used to move from them to the conclusion? It is some sort of moral reasoning about what a benevolent God could, or could not, happen in the animal kingdom, something which Dawkins finds to be contradicted by the co-existence of two animals in which there is a balanced contest between the predator (trying to kill the prey) and the prey (trying to escape). But Dawkins anticipates that some will not find his argument completely convincing:
I think it is sentences like the latter that earned my book’s reputation as “strident” and “shrill”. It even suffered, according to one critic (who presumably hadn’t actually read it) from a kind of Tourette’s syndrome. But it only sounds strident to ears trained to wrap religion in a uniquely privileged cocoon of immunity to criticism.
From there, Dawkins goes on to quote Douglas Adams, as confirmation that religious ideas are uniquely privileged in being protected from scrutiny and criticism. The "God Delusion", then, was seen by Dawkins as a brave and novel thrust of scrutiny in an area where before, little debate had occurred. Philosophical and religious debate about reality barely existed up until 2002: claims about God got a free pass until the "New Atheist" authors came on the scene.
I take no pleasure in the fact that Dawkins has apparently made as little effort to locate, understand or respond to any criticism of his position in the intervening twenty years as he did in trying to understand the actual reasons why people believe in a loving and personal God up until 2002. As a Christian, I welcome serious scrutiny and interaction of my beliefs, because I believe that they can stand up to that scrutiny. Indeed, I think that Christianity explains reality better than competing explanations. I think that atheism has far larger problems in explaining the universe as we experience it than Christianity does. I am glad when someone takes Christian belief seriously enough to try to understand and interact with it.
Here is a specimen how much effort Dawkins and whoever he shared his pre-publication article with for feedback with have taken to understand Christian belief:
“But Dawkins,” the critics cry. “If you’d only read your theology you’d know that God is not complex at all. It’s just Theology 101. God is profoundly simple.”
Ah yes, so simple that he’s capable of listening to a billion prayers simultaneously. So simple he has the bandwidth to judge each and every sin on its merits. So simple that “the very hairs of your head are numbered” and not a single sparrow falls to the ground without his knowledge. All this on top of knowing exactly how to fine-tune the laws and constants of physics to ensure our eventual existence. Ah me, theology. Is it actually a subject at all?
To avoid writing this, Dawkins only needed to ask Google or ChatGPT, "what does 'simple' mean in relation to Christian teaching about God's being"? He would then have learned that by the term, Christians (since the early centuries) did not mean what Dawkins assumes it to mean, that God is of limited capacities or potential, as opposed to being "complex", which would mean having advanced capacities (whether to hear many simultaneous prayers, or know how many hairs we have). Dawkins has invented this definition for himself, out of nothing. What it actually means is that, in distinction to created beings, God is not composed, not made up of, a composition of parts. He is not the result of putting together sub-components. That is what it means in theology to say that "God is simple". It means that he is of a different order of being to us. It is saying that it is a fundamental mistake to reason about God in terms of analogies in which God is essentially a bigger, more powerful version of us. His existence outside of and beyond time and matter, and his ability to create time and matter, is not predicated on him just possessing more power and intelligence than us; rather, in his being, he is all power and intelligence, being unlimited by the constraints of having to self-co-ordinate different faculties. i.e. It is saying something very relevant at the point in which Dawkins brings it into his argument - the point at which he posits the kind of God he rejects as if he were some sort of celestial very-strong-man, an object within the space-time continuum. It is precisely because God is (in the sense meant by the word in Christian teaching) simple that being able to hear and know all things at all times.
I do not recall ever hearing a Christian give an argument that resembled what Dawkins tries to refute:
I don’t understand the origin of the laws of physics, therefore God did it
In reality, many physicists who do understand the current state of their field do believe that the system they study does testify of an immense intelligence at many and various levels. Dawkins says that "Twenty years on, I stand by what I wrote in The God Delusion". But the question remains now as then. Who did he write it for? If you already hold Christianity in such contempt that you don't think it necessary to not completely misrepresent it when talking about it, then this is merely the atheist form of "preaching to the choir". It will not be persuasive to anyone except those who think it beneath their contempt to consider an alternative. I am sorry for Richard Dawkins, that he has so little understanding even now, of the thing that he calls "tosh". But in the wider picture, I am glad that he is a spokesman for atheism. When he presents himself as an expert, and yet makes mistakes that would be impossible if you made even a beginner's efforts, he is helping to show us that atheism is, as the Bible says, irrational.
Dawkins' article has several moral and aesthetic judgments. What standard are they based upon? In a universe that simply follows physical laws, what meaning do the deeds of the gazelle, Stalin or Hitler have? If Dawkins prefers Anglican Christianity to radical Islam, then is this based upon anything outside of Dawkins himself? If he believes it would be "better" to have X rather than Y, then how does that in any way rise to the level of a moral imperative? Moral imperatives cannot be within the capacity of either individual men or whole societies of men acting together to change: they are above us and binding on us, not subject to our creation, adjustment or abolition based upon our own preferences or individual or societal judgments. That is to say: Dawkins might respond to the question by saying "I prefer Anglican Christianity because it's less dangerous to the health and welfare of non-believers than radical Islam is". But the question remains: why is that the standard? If it's Dawkin's standard, or a whole continent's standard, then that does not mean it has any moral force. Or in other words, an "is" cannot be turned into an "ought". Radical Islam also has its moral and aesthetic judgments. You cannot refute it with the self-referential reasoning that "I know it's wrong because it's dangerous and I know it's dangerous because it's wrong". If radical Islam is actually right, then it is not dangerous, but good. That's what its adherents actually believe. Dawkins doesn't - but as I say, what is the imperative behind his preferences?
Dawkins would likely respond "it must correspond with scientific reality". But science does not tell you if it is better that the gazelle escapes, or that he does not. There are no tests or measurements that you can take to resolve that question. It is outside of science's competence. It cannot tell you if Stalin's a-theology was morally good, or morally bad. If Dawkins makes that judgment either way, then he is relying upon things in the philosophical domain rather than the scientific. To admit this, though, would undermine Dawkins' whole approach. He would then have to study some philosophy and theology, in order to be able to interact with it, rather than just dismissing it out of hand.
As I say, Dawkins no more (judged by this article) understands the limits of his competence any more than he did 20 years ago. May God have mercy upon him, and teach him some humility. May he stop being one of the blind who leads the blind into an aesthetic, moral, cultural and indeed ultimate ditch.
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