Dawkins’ God
Here’s a piece about the God Richard Dawkins believes in not believing in.
I don’t believe in Pat Robertson’s God either. But it’s odd, I think, that Dawkins is so insistent that everyone else must choose between believing or not believing in the same monstrous caricature. The fundamentalist account of God is monstrous, but it’s not the prevalent view by any means, and it’s certainly the least interesting kind of theology. Has Dawkins not read Gerard Manley Hopkins, Coleridge, Tennyson, Dante, Chaucer, Moltmann, Rahner, Schleiermacher, Brueggemann… ? I guess not. Perhaps it would be too much of a challenge to listen carefully to another kind of account. Much simpler to insist that the only options are Robertson’s God or atheism.
George Pitcher mocks gently, and concludes: “Dawkers is a great recruiting officer for faith. He repels tolerant atheists and inspires uncommitted inquirers to look further into what he so ludicrously and entertainingly misrepresents. I think he should be made an honorary bishop.”
9 Responses to “Dawkins’ God”
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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Getting Dawkins to read Coleridge! Now there’s a glorious and worthwhile project, all we need is a desert Island, The Collected Coleridge and an SAS snatch team. It must be done!
How do you respond to his remarks about the atonement (ignoring the tone in which they are delivered) – hasn’t he got a point there?
Hi, Tony. I’d say that like most of his analysis of Christianity, he picks on the least appealing extremes and either ignores, or doesn’t know about, the rest. The “scapegoat” idea is just one sliver of atonement theory, there is a vast amount more that makes far more sense. Moltmann is fascinating on the God-suffering-with-humanity view, and although it’s incomplete it was a necessary corrective at the time he wrote it. Andrew Walker wrote beautifully about a more orthodox view, in which the fight is not between Jesus and some piddling little human sins, but between God and the hold that evil has over the world (which, even if you’re not a Christian, surely is pretty apparent). He sums up very well how atonement is really NOT about Jesus being a scapegoat, and that God is really NOT some wrathful monster in the sky determined to extract a pound of flesh. And there’s much, much more – John MacIntyre once wrote that there were 27 (or was it 29?) different ways of describing atonement – I think, from memory, it was in his book The Shape Of Christology…
got to run – stuff to do – remind me to post more later if you want to hear it! Maybe other commenters can add too…
I must admit that the atonement, hell, and the so-called problem of evil are things that I struggle with a bit. Always keen to hear different perspectives on those.
I can’t admit to being an expert on Dawkins, with only limited experience of a having few read chapters of The God Delusion, caught some newspaper and magazine articles, and the odd TV show; nor am I much of a theologian, but I do have a few thoughts.
I’m increasingly concerned that all of us – from all sides of the debate – are being used, or are complicit in fuelling the publicity needed to keep selling Dawkins’ books, just by entering the cut and thrust of dialog. We’re in the matrix of his viral marketing!
I did start to read The God Delusion, but struggled to keep going beyond the first few chapters for two main reasons: the overcritical spiteful tone was childish and ultimately boring – and despite Dawkins’ credentials as an Oxford Don, I quite quickly started to wonder whether the writing was actually any good. It probably didn’t help that I was reading a book about Jesus at the time which was much more captivating!
Also, his knowledge and understanding of faith, religion and the connection of the two with humanity seems sketchy, and certainly not well enough researched or developed for him to be considered any kind of authoritative voice. He comes across as a “quack” theologian.
Clearly though, by nature of his background and academic position he’s a smart cookie, and a world class scientist. He scores high here, but for me he sometimes seems to be providing the answers to the wrong questions. For example, evolution is a big – HUGE – question. There’s no doubt about that. But actually, for the Jesus follower – and perhaps for other people of faith – I’m not sure that’s actually the game changer. Part of what faith is about is what we understand about those things we can experience but not empirically measure.
It’s interesting to me too that he doesn’t seem to recognise that doubt and dissent are as much part of the mindset of the theist as the Atheist. Doubt is something that we deal with every day.
Another issue is that much – most (?) – of the discourse he is involved with seems to be with sycophants or “patsies”. I’m not sure I’ve seen him lined up against any of the real major Christian voices who are helping form the bulk of the teaching about how we as Christians understand scripture and engage with the 21st Century.
Dawkins always seems to get stacked up against guys who are largely unrepresentative of the whole – the guys at the edge, the intransigents. I would be intrigued to see how the conversation would go if he was chatting with the people that I go to as significant points of reference in my own faith journey – say a Brian McLaren, NT Wright or Rob Bell conversation. It may well be a more generous, open and gracious debate than many of us would imagine.
My guess would be that many of those genuinely most influential folks are just getting on with the business of trying to follow the teachings of Jesus where they are, rather than getting too embroiled with largely pointless jousting with Dawkins et al. There’s probably too much more important and pressing stuff to be getting on with – and the notion that you can somehow argue someone into agreeing with your faith position of is largely considered the wrong way to go about things.
I can think of plenty of lovely celebrity Atheists I’d love to spend some time with – Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry and Billy Connolly spring to mind – but I’m afraid Richard Dawkins isn’t one of them.
I will try and read more of his stuff though….just to give him more of a chance!
J
It’s a common response from theists to observe that they too don’t believe in the god Dawkins doesn’t believe in (and a common reply to point out that there are many gods none of us believe in: Zues, the flying spaghetti monster, the one described from the majority of the world’s pulpits etc etc). What we seem to be lacking (or at least I am) is a positive description of the god that liberal academic theologians do believe in and then I can decide if i do indeed go that one god further and not believe in that one either?
Martin – you could try “Why there almost certainly is a God” by Keith Ward. It’s not perfect and perhaps not ultimately convincing, but it should give you a “description of the god that liberal academic theologians .. believe in”. Pretty much anything written by Ward is worth the money, in that regard.
tony – I was just sent a brand new book called Atonement, by T Torrance… will blog about it when I’ve had the chance to see what’s inside.
Martin, I agree that Keith Ward is excellent. Also you might like to check out Paul Tillich?