James McDonald on Richard Dawkins

I have been reading the book God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, the noted British atheist. I have found it thoroughly disagreeable but at the same time refreshing. Dawkins insists that ‘religion’ should not be in an untouchable category where it cannot be analyzed for veracity or criticized for silly inconsistencies. I could not agree more. A man’s faith is not so personal that it needn’t stand up to the rigors of intellectual analysis. I have often said that the walls of Christianity are not so thin that an honest skeptic seeking truth will somehow poke through and reveal the whole thing to be a fraud. The truths of Christianity have satisfied some of the greatest minds in human history.

When it comes to the God who created an orderly universe and set it up to operate according to principles that scientists can analyze and verify, there should be no reticence to submit theology to the same rigorous analysis.

Where Dawkins is so very wrong is in his total disdain for theology itself. Because he believes that there is no God he also believes that theology is a ‘non-discipline.’ The result is that his analysis of prayer, miracles, and impact of faith upon life is deeply flawed. He knows nothing about prayer, for example, but reports a study as credible that contradicts almost every biblical teaching on the subject of prayer. He judges prayer as a waste of time, though the prayers he analyzed may have been offered by sinful people, without faith or fervency in regard to people and situations they knew nothing about personally etc. Theologically speaking, the study itself was extremely amateurish. ( I don’t see God especially excited about jumping through the hoops of people trying to prove Him wrong, I doubt He was even rocked by their unbelief). It’s like complaining that the car won’t run when you asked a toddler to start it and gave him no keys to a locked car. Yeah, that’s probably not gonna work, but that doesn’t mean that all cars are a waste of time.


Another example of this theological naivety would be Dawkins complete misunderstanding of the role of faith. He feels ‘we’ hide behind faith whenever the facts don’t line up with our theology. Theologians and students of Scripture however understand that God Himself is the one who has decreed that He be known by faith rather than by sight, (of course God could make Dawkins into a believer in about 60 seconds). We understand that God has chosen the volitional worship of a few who see the whispers of His presence and embrace Him by faith, rather than the forced robotic worship of the masses who are driven to their knees in an instance of His fully manifested presence. If Dawkins had studied a little more theology he could interact with an argument like that rather than refuting things he simply does not understand.

Any careful study of the existence of God must begin with a respect for the history of theology. Dawkins clearly has no regard for theology and as a result fails at many points even in his analysis. Would we ask a cab driver to start from scratch in his study of biology? Would we expect a nuclear physicist to go back to the drawing board in his study of weather patterns? Of course the answer is no; any credible student begins by reviewing the existing literature on the subject. Dawkins clearly has not done that and considers such research a waste of time.

Dawkins assault on faith would be more compelling if he really understood the best reasons for faith. Christianity need not hide behind an anti-intellectual facade, and Dawkins should not be allowed to either as he so publicly ridicules the existence of the God who made him.