Richard Dawkins, Atheism, and Christianity

November 28th, 2006 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0) |

Richard Dawkins is omnipresent.

His new book, The God Delusion, is currently #6 on the Amazon.com bestselling book list, and lately his name has been popping up everywhere in my life. I first saw his name on kottke.org a while back, and about a week ago I read an article that mentions him at TSK (which I posted as a digression). I have subsequently seen several stories about him on Digg, most notably one entitled Atheist Richard Dawkins Destroys Students from Jerry Falwell’s University (500+ comments!), which links to a video of a rather lenghty Q&A session with Dr. Dawkins. I probably wouldn’t have thought too much of it, but then during our student-led worship on Sunday night the speaker referenced a recent issue of Time magazine that features him in the cover story, God vs. Science. And just to top things off, I passed a professor today who was holding a book of his under her arm.¹

Here’s how I feel about the whole situation.²

I don’t doubt Dr. Dawkins’ legitimacy or ability as a scientist. He is quite accomplished in his area(s) of study and this must be respected. I think however, that it might also be his Achilles’ heel because I believe that Richard Dawkins represents the dying gasp of modernity. Science ruled in modernity, and it promised to “unlock the secrets of the universe in order to master nature for human benefit and create a better world.”³ In the aforementioned Time editorial he says, “The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.” I agree that it is an important question, but here we see a hyper-modern Dawkins appealing to the authority of science to answer it, as if only science provides truth.

If anything, science has only proven that science itself cannot provide the answers. Developments in quantum physics and other disciplines have pointed to an ever-increasing (and perhaps fluctuating) complexity of the universe. I simply don’t find it necessary to look to science for answers that science isn’t apt to provide.

To some extent, I think the Christian/atheist debate is irrelevant. In his book How (Not) to Speak of God, Peter Rollins describes how Christianity was seduced by modernity into an apologetic discourse that sought to “prove” Christianity with objective analysis and empirical claims. “In this way,” he says,

the acceptance or rejection of the system is based not upon a love for the system or a feeling of overwhelming seduction by it, but rather upon the accumulation of evidence that stands secure, regardless of the motive and desires of the individual.⁴

In contrast, “instead of closing thought down - by telling people what they ought to think - this discourse opens up thought… The discourse of Paul acts as an aroma“⁵ (see 1 Cor. 2:1-5). Jesus did not offer a scientific explanation to convince people to follow him, instead he spoke in such a way that made people desire to follow him.

One of the things that saddens me most about this whole thing is the portrayal of Christians. Unfortunately, in the American secular media the steryotypical Christian is a Republican fundamentalist who believes the world is 6,000 years old. Take the movie Borat for example. I think it would be fair to say that far more areligious people attended this film than Christians, and the portrayal of Christians in the movie is absolutely abhorrent. As a Christian I would in no way want to be associated with that particular brand of “Christianity”, yet at the same time I am lumped in with them because I use the title of Christian.

My point here is that I think atheists sympathetic to Dawkins in this debate are fighting a losing battle because their crusade is against a charicaturized-psycho-Christian who may actually exist but is inflated and demonized by the media (have you seen Jesus Camp?). And often times it is these Christians who see it as their duty to convert the atheists, which only fuels the fire.

This is the first post ever for which I’ve hand-written notes beforehand, and this is where my notes end. However, I’m not sure I have exhausted my thoughts. Part 2 might be on its way in the near future.

Please feel free to leave comments.

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1. I could actually only see “ichard wkins” because her arm was covering half of the book, but who else would it be, right? ↩
2. To be fair, I haven’t read his book, and I am not very familiar with any of his arguments or agendas. At this point I just want to provide an overarching reaction to and analysis of what I think is happening. ↩
3. Grenz, Stanley J. A Primer on Postmodernism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. 81. ↩
4. Rollins, Peter. How (Not) to Speak of God. Brewster, MA: Paraclete P. 35. ↩
5. Ibid., 36, emphasis mine. ↩