Two Differing Professors
The ABC TV Program “Compass” over two weeks screened “The Delusion of God” featuring Professor Richard Dawkins. He accused the three main religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – of beliefs that defy science, and of stunting the mind’s capacity for understanding. He embarked on a personal, controversial and, at times, humorous journey to prove that religion is the root of all evil.
In the second episode Professor Dawkins argued that religion can lead to a warped and inflexible morality, and the indoctrination of children. How is it, he asks, that despite science having exposed old religious myths, militant faith is back on the march? Dawkins believes that imposing religion on children who are too inexperienced to judge it for themselves is a mechanism for perpetuating beliefs that lead to murderous intolerance.
THE TWO PROFESSORS
Professor Dawkins is Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He believes that an understanding of evolution will lead to atheism. His aim is to convert his hearers to atheism. He is the author of “The Selfish Gene” 1976 and “The God Delusion” 2006. The television series is a popular presentation of this book.
Richard Dawkins was born in 1941. He was educated at Oxford University and has taught zoology at the universities of California and Oxford. His books about evolution and science include The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable, and most recently, Unweaving the Rainbow.
Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme into the lexicon. Dawkins is an outspoken atheist, secular humanist, and skeptic. Dawkins describes his childhood as “a normal Anglican upbringing” in Malawi, but reveals that he began doubting the existence of God when he was about nine years old. When he better understood evolution, at the age of sixteen, his religious position again changed because he felt that evolution could account for the complexity of life in purely material terms, and thus that a designer was not necessary.
He married in 1967 but divorced in 1984. He remarried in 1984, had a daughter, and subsequently divorced again. He married for a third time in 1992. He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, and gained a BA degree in zoology in 1962, followed by MA and DPhil degrees in 1966, and a DSc in 1989. He is a fellow of New College, Oxford since 1970. He has delivered a number of inaugural and other notable lectures.
Dawkins also been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, and serves as advisor for several other organizations. He has also been called the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell.
Professor Alister McGrath, also of Oxford University, is one who has confronted Professor Dawkin’s views in a profound and articulate manner. He was an atheist and evolutionist and a highly qualified scientist in molecular biophysics. He became a Christian, studied theology and is now the Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University. He is the author of “Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life” (2004) and recently, “The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine” (2007).
Alister McGrath was born in Belfast, IN 1953. He studied at the Methodist College, Belfast, majoring in pure and applied mathematics, physics and chemistry. He was elected to an open major scholarship at Wadham College, Oxford University, to study chemistry from October 1971. He gained first class honours in chemistry in June 1975, and began research in molecular biophysics in the Oxford University Department of Biochemistry. He was elected to a Research Studentship at Linacre College, Oxford, 1975-6, and to a Domus Senior Scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, for 1976-8. During these three years, he carried out scientific research, leading to the publication of a number of peer-reviewed research articles, alongside studying for the Oxford University Final Honour School of Theology. In December 1977, he was awarded an Oxford D.Phil. for his research in the natural sciences, and he gained first class honours in Theology in June 1978.
The interaction of Christian theology and the natural sciences has subsequently been a major theme of his research work, and is best seen in the three volumes of his Scientific Theology (2001-3). McGrath then left Oxford to work at Cambridge University, having been awarded the Naden Studentship in Divinity at St John’s College, Cambridge (1978-80). He also studied at the same time for ordination in the Church of England at Westcott House, Cambridge. He was ordained priest in 1981. In 1983, he was appointed lecturer in Christian doctrine and ethics at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and a member of the Oxford University Faculty of Theology. He gave the Bampton Lectures at Oxford University in 1990, exploring the factors that lead to the origins of doctrinal statements in Christianity.
McGrath was elected University Research Lecturer in Theology at Oxford University in 1993. In 1995, he was elected Principal of Wycliffe Hall, and in 1999 was awarded a personal chair in theology at Oxford University, with the title of “Professor of Historical Theology”. He earned an Oxford Doctorate of Divinity in 2001 for his research on historical and systematic theology. He became the first Director of the newly established Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. He gave the prestigious 2009 Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2005.
As a former atheist, McGrath is respectful yet critical of the movement. In recent years, he has been especially interested in the emergence of “scientific atheism”, and has researched the distinctive approach to atheist apologetics found in the writings of the Oxford zoologist and scientific populariser Richard Dawkins. He regularly engages in debate and dialogue with leading atheists. At present, he is researching the iconic role played by Charles Darwin in atheist apologetics, and the appeal to the controversial concept of the “meme” in recent atheist accounts of the origins of belief in God.
THE PROFESSORS DEBATE
Earlier this month at Cambridge University, Great Britain, I addressed an International Conference with Professor McGrath who lectured on Dawkin’s views on “The Delusion of God.” His lectures are largely contained in his latest book, “The Dawkins Delusion.”
I now address Richard Dawkins presentation, although in broad scope only. For a detailed analysis with which I totally agree, see Alister McGrath’s “The Dawkins Delusion”.
“The God Delusion” by Dawkins has been greeted enthusiastically by atheists, but has been a disappointment to many others. It contains little scientific analysis, gross distortions of views of other scientific specialities, is hopelessly out of touch with Biblical scholarship and even with Biblical content, and portrays the author as an anti-religious propagandist who seeks to manipulate the argument. He is not fair in his treatment of other views and is incredibly dogmatic. In fact, many passages have a bullying tone.
My old professor of Logic, (Dr A. Boyce Gibson) would take his students through all of the 400 pages line by line, indicating the poor logic and manipulation of the debating points so that students would determine not to make the same mistakes. Evidence to support these claims is dealt with cogently and in detail, by McGrath. In fact in either reading his book or talking with him about each of the points, reveals McGrath as a gentleman of the old school in comparison with a school bully.
Perhaps we may see a turn around in Dawkins life as we recently saw in the life of the long time atheist author Professor Anthony Flew, who announced he believed in God in his eighties, much to the despair of his followers.
I find it difficult to treat seriously a scholar who tries to disprove the existence of God based on his ability to argue against the “proofs” of God’s existence advanced by William Paley and Thomas Aquinas, both of whom have been dead for centuries and whose arguments are basic texts for undergraduate students in logic and medieval philosophy. He does not confront any contemporary theologians or philosophers of religion nor engage in debate in any of the arguments presented by contemporary thinkers.
Dawkins constantly implies that science explains everything about this world, its purpose and creation in spite of the fact that science has limitations and that other scientists in his field acknowledge this. They claim it is beyond the scope of science to ever answer the fundamental questions of purpose and ultimate ends.
“The Christian Post” (May 28th) reports that militant, atheist writers are making an all-out assault on religious faith, reaching the top of the best-seller list, a sign of widespread resentment over the influence of religion in the world among nonbelievers. It states that Christopher Hitchens’ book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” has sold briskly ever since it was published last year. His debates with clergy are drawing crowds at every stop. It reports that Sam Harris was a little-known graduate student until he wrote the phenomenally successful “The End of Faith” and its follow-up, “Letter to a Christian Nation.”
The atheist attack has come nearer home this month with the publication of Melbourne philosopher Tamas Pataki’s Against Religion (Scribe; 136 pages). He claims that religion is “phantasies masquerading as knowledge.” He wonders how anyone can believe in a transcendent, omnipotent, personal and solicitous God. His answer? Religious belief is the result of mental illness!
Pataki, Richard Dawkins’ in “The God Delusion” and Daniel Dennett in “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” see themselves in a battle for reason in a world crippled by superstition. A number of people see this wave of aggressive atheism as a sign of secular panic. Faith is not dead.
Signs of believers’ political and cultural might abound. Religious challenges to teaching evolution are still having an impact. The dramatic growth in home schooling and private Christian schools is raising questions about the future of public education. In Australia one third of all students are now in private, mainly Christian schools. In the tertiary institutions, secular atheists are outgunned on every hand by growing Christian student organizations. Consequently, atheists are on the attack supported by a secular humanistic media. But the point is that belief in God is on the rise. In the 1960’s liberal theologians were proclaiming that God is dead. Today they are all dead and belief in God is more alive than ever, especially in the developing world.
Do not believe the evangelist of atheism. His polemic, like that of all fundamentalists, is biased and blinkered. The delusion is with Dawkins.
REV THE HON.DR GORDON MOYES, A.C., M.L.C..
