Dawkins the Apologist

Two recent episodes of Premier Unbelievable? bring together atheist Alex O’Connor and Christian philosopher and apologist Alister McGrath to discuss the latter’s recent book: “Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity.” In it, a variety of Christians share how the famous atheist inspired them towards belief in God rather than away from it 

The New Atheist apologetic

Richard Dawkins initially made a name for himself outside scientific circles as the lead pony of the four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse but sadly for him, rode his horse so hard it went lame. His harsh rhetoric, while initially prompting a surge of interest in atheism, ended up alienating his peers, and his amateurish forays into theology and philosophy were quickly exposed by the leaders in those academic disciplines. It appears that instead of getting religious people to adopt his worldview, he only succeeded in coaxing atheists out of the closet.

Surprisingly, however, he is now being recognized for his contribution to the field of Christian apologetics through an unorthodox yet impressive demonstration of reverse psychology. His ability to turn up the rhetorical volume of atheism to a Spinal Tappian 11 inadvertently improved the cultural acoustics to such a degree that instead of drowning out God, he improved our ability to hear that“still small voice.” McGrath commented on this phenomenon in the opening chapter of the book he co-edited:

“As the sociologist Tina Beattie remarked shortly after the publication of Dawkins’s The God Delusion, it seemed that Dawkins had reawakened public interest in God ‘more effectively than any preacher could have done.’”

Dawkins flipped the time-honoured mantra of Christian apologetics found in 1 Peter 3:15-16 on its head and surprisingly “added to (our) number daily those who were being saved.”

The verse according to Dawkins might have said: 

Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the blind pitiless indifference that is in you; yet do it unkindly and disrespectfully, having an attitude of superiority, so that, when you are criticised, those who revile your bad behaviour may find eternal life in Christ.” (1 Richard 3:15-16) 

Old time religion

Interestingly, New Atheism became a church of materialists who acted more like fundamentalists than free thinkers. Promoting itself as the voice of reason, it turned into a bully pulpit and its bold new vision for the future began to look more and more like the worst stereotypes of ‘that good old-time religion’. Alister McGrath summarised this idea in the book’s introduction by quoting atheist biologist P.Z. Myers:

“For P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, it was a serious error of judgment to allow Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to assume a leadership role within the movement. How, he asked, did that happen? Within a year, a ‘cult of personality’ had emerged in which Dawkins and Hitchens were ‘turned into oracles whose dicta should not be questioned, and dissent would lead to being ostracised.’ Had atheism, many wondered, morphed into a new religious movement, with its infallible prophets and authoritative texts—above all Dawkins and his God Delusion?”

Over time people began to realize that the New Atheism had become a cult of personality and rather than drink the Kool Aid they developed a thirst for Living Water.

Read more:

It is time to move on from Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins and Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The clash of our times

Why is there something rather than nothing?

How do we know God is real?

Waking the sleeping giant

We cannot be angry with Richard Dawkins and his posse, because it was through their eloquent prose that many questions Christians had swept under the rug were given a fresh airing. While it often felt like they were rubbing our noses in it, they certainly heightened our sense of smell. Would Christianity rise to the challenge? As evidenced by the stories in this book, the answer was a resounding “yes.” The New Atheists, thinking they had put Christians in an intellectual sleeper hold, only succeeded in waking the sleeping giant.

Self-Inflicted Injury

My own personal experience with the New Atheists was one of intrigue. I read their books hoping for reasonable arguments but repeatedly felt like they were poking me in the eye. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt but found I couldn’t because they persisted in accusing me of being superstitious, ignorant and even “wicked, but I’d rather not consider that.”

One of the most common themes in “Coming to Faith Through Dawkins” was the disappointment the essayists experienced when they encountered the angry and dismissive tone the New Atheists used to describe people of faith. Biochemist Dr Sy Garte described it this way:

“What disturbed me was not so much Dawkins’s strident defence of atheism, which I had only recently left behind me, but the descent in the tone and content from the brilliance of his previous works to a style that came off the pages as snarling vitriol. It was hard to believe that the same person who had written The Ancestor’s Tale also wrote The God Delusion.”

Ironically, the zeal of the New Atheists, rather than draw the essayists away from Christianity, pushed them into the world of Christian apologetics. Gunning for God, they ended up shooting themselves in the foot. Attempting to damage God’s reputation, they suffered self-inflicted wounds.

Getting Hitched

While the title of the book focuses on Richard Dawkins, the essayists also describe the influence of other New Atheists, particularly the late Christopher Hitchens. I think it’s reasonable to conclude that Hitchens was a more effective populariser of atheism than Dawkins because as a social commentator he didn’t need to do a deep dive into the scientific depths but could stir up the water in the cultural tide pools. Ashley Lande, in her essay, relates how she was smitten by Hitchens’ charm and eagerly awaited her copy of his book “God is not Great,” but then recounted her disappointment after only reading the first sixty pages:

“Hitchens excited me. He was whip-smart, smarmy, cocksure, full of rhetorical bluster, and able to conjure up stultifying retorts on the spot. He eviscerated his opponents with ease and smirking impunity. So, what if he was a little brutal sometimes? You had to be when dealing with these backward, religious rubes. Truth be told, I delighted in his brutality. He seemed to spare no one with spiritual delusions of any kind, and rightfully so, I believed…I was practically salivating to read the thing by the time I got home. And so, I did, sixty or so pages of it, my heart slowly sinking to my gut as I realized that Hitchens’s style seemed nastier than I remembered.”

Hitchens, in his book, basically catalogued the atrocities of religion and concluded that God is not great. He made his case by quantifying the number of those left dead in the wake of religious atrocities but failed to include the casualties of atheistic regimes. He tried to use death tolls to make his case against God, but as we all know body counts don’t determine truth. After reading his book, my only takeaway was that humans are inherently sinful and incapable of saving themselves. Hitchens, rather than making a case for atheism, convinced me that the world desperately needed for a saviour.

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Dimming the Brights

Dawkins never allows himself to be vulnerable which is odd since the scientific method requires that all theories be subject to falsifiability. Somehow this precept didn’t make it into the New Atheist creed. Vince Vitale, the host of the first Unbelievable episode, expanded on this lack of epistemic humility among the New Atheists by contrasting them with the vulnerability O’Connor displayed in his atheist argumentation. O’Connor graciously accepted the kudos but noted that humility shouldn’t make him stand out in the academic crowd, but should be the norm for any intellectual pondering life’s profoundest questions.

Peter Byrom’s essay described how Dawkins’ resolute dogmatism contrasted with the far more appealing epistemic humility of Christian intellectuals such as William Lane Craig:

“What impressed me most was that, by laying out his arguments in this way, Craig was making them transparent and vulnerable. This approach does away with rhetoric and emotional manipulation.”

The problem with the New Atheists was that instead of humbly dimming their “brights” they disguised themselves as angels of enlightenment and tried to blind us with science. Rhetorical bluster may sell books to the Christian and Atheist faithful, but it is epistemic humility that makes the message palatable to those outside their respective camps.

Testing the spirits

Several of the essayists recoiled at the reductionist view of life offered by the New Atheists. They felt that dismissing any notion of immaterial or supernatural agency ignored the spiritual elephant in the room. They considered it myopic of the atheists to spend all their time studying the anatomy of the trunk and tail when the rest of humanity was more interested in taking the pachyderm for a ride.

If life is just matter in motion and an immaterial realm doesn’t exist, then scientific truth is unverifiable. I say this because scientists formulate immaterial theories in their minds, evaluate them with immaterial numbers, and then plug them into immaterial mathematical formulas to see if they achieve statistical significance, the gold standard of scientific merit. Ironically, the atheist scientist must take a page from scripture and test the spirits before they can declare anything with scientific certainty, yet despite their reliance on an immaterial realm to evaluate their data they continue to deny the deus ex machina biologica.

Walking the theological talk

Interestingly, one of the most common concerns about the New Atheism was its inability to adequately explain morality. The moral argument is considered by many to be the sharpest arrow in the apologist’s quiver, and while I tend to agree, it does provide a challenge for the Christian as well. O’ Conner made the point that even if a Christian proves the existence of God by checking all the philosophical boxes their task is incomplete until they show how that God is the same God found in scripture, which means he must meet the same moral requirements we used with our atheist friends to prove his existence. It is here that Dawkins challenges us, and while we may find his characterisation in The God Delusion of the God of the Old Testament lacking in Biblical nuance, it is still one that possesses atheists and haunts Christians:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”  

A God of logic and reason is great but once you claim that he is the same One described in your infallible, inspired holy book, it is incumbent upon you to show how that philosophical God walks your theological talk. As McGrath pointed out, this harmonisation can be achieved through proper exegesis but requires that Christians up their intellectual game.

Making it personal

O’Connor wisely stated that all the intellectual arguments, while interesting, don’t solve the problem of divine hiddenness. Intellectual arguments may tip fence sitters over, but it doesn’t mean that they will enter through the Jesus’ gate. One needs to experience God in a way that constructs a life changing narrative. It won’t come through the conversion stories of others but only through an intimate encounter with the Author himself. In fact, O’Connor stated that it would be just that sort of experience that would cause him to change his mind:

“I’m firmly convinced that the principal mechanism for bringing someone to faith in God is some kind of experience, that doesn’t necessarily mean a religious experience where you have a Pauline conversion or anything of the sort, but some kind narrative…and it does make me wonder why that’s not a narrative that every character in this earthly performance gets to experience. That is the problem of divine hiddenness…The more personally experiential the story gets, the more I can really understand why somebody might have come to believe in God.” 

Ashley Lande, the final essayist in the book, made a very powerful case for a personal God by comparing him to the vague ineffectual spiritual forces she experienced under the influence of psychedelics:

“I was helpless, and in my worldview there was no one to help—no conquering power beyond the amorphous, impersonal prana, the universal life force that was ultimately neither good nor bad but coolly amoral and beyond duality. In my early days of psychedelic wonder, I’d viewed this distinction as sophisticated and evolved, but now it seemed terrifyingly deficient and even evil. As much as I strained to move “beyond duality” myself, the reality of evil persistently reasserted itself, and with no personal deity, I had no recourse.”

It was not just a God with personal attributes she discovered but a God who emptied himself on her behalf:

“I trusted Jesus, in a way I had never trusted acid or yoga or meditation, because he was a person, and furthermore a person who had died for me, a person for whom and through whom and in whom everything was created.”

As evidenced by the essays in this book, ultimate meaning and purpose cannot be discovered with science, psilocybin or a pithy syllogism but can only be found in a Person, and it is here that Dawkins ultimately let people down, because the closest thing he could offer to a personal God was a blind watchmaker who didn’t even know he was in the clock business. While the sun may be setting on the New Atheism, we can be grateful that it opened the door for kinder, gentler, more academically rigorous atheists such as O’Connor who while contradicting many of our intellectual claims, reminds us that our Christian faith is ultimately found in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Herd immunity

In a recent Easter interview, Richard Dawkins declared himself a cultural Christian. He, however, quickly clarified his statement by reminding us that he still doesn’t believe in God. He likes the cultural guardrails, the cathedrals and even some of the hymns but seems oblivious to the fact that cultural Christianity is only possible if there are Christians. He should know from his biological training that in order to provide herd immunity from a particular disease such as the measles, you need to have a substantial portion of the population vaccinated, and that those who choose not to be immunised remain healthy only because they live off the good graces of those who have been. Similarly, Richard lives in a Europe that was already inoculated with Christianity allowing him to have the benefits of cultural Christianity without having to take the Jesus jab. He needs to realise that he can only enjoy his Christian parasitism if there is a Christianity to feast on, and if he succeeds in convincing people to not believe in Jesus then he puts the Christian culture he so admires at risk of dying from an overwhelming secular epidemic. 

Erik Strandness is a physician and Christian apologist who practiced neonatal medicine for more than 20 years and has written three apologetic books. Information about his books can be found at godsscreenplay.com