The Dawkins Delusion

by HICKLING, P.L. | Category: N/a | Jan 2008

The man and his book

Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His degrees are in biology, and in particular, he is associated with the advocacy of a gene-centred view of evolution, which is said to progress by Darwinian natural selection of genes, which have characteristics most advantageous for their own survival. Apart from his academic treatises, he has published a number of books in strident advocacy of atheism, the latest of which, The God Delusion(1), has achieved best-seller status.

The Scientific Method

We need to state this to understand its limitations. The scientist makes observations or develops a line of reasoning, and on the basis of this he puts forward a theory. That theory is then tested by further experiment and if the two agree the theory is for the time being accepted. Note that the scientist cannot say that it is certainly true: new facts or understanding might invalidate it. As a simple example, a schoolchild may know Newton's laws of motion, and they permit us to calculate motion on earth perfectly adequately. But when Einstein put forward his Theories of Relativity, the shortcomings of Newton's laws became evident, although they are satisfactory for most purposes.

The Scientific Method and God

Dawkins is quite sure that 'God's existence or non-existence is a scientific fact about the universe, discoverable in principle if not in practice.'(2) The trouble in debating the truth of this statement is firstly that there needs to be agreement about data to be relied upon, and secondly there is still then no way in which one could draw up an experiment to test the hypothesis. This is because God is not a process that will always yield the same result; He is a person (in the Christian view) who makes choices. He specifically warns that He is not to be tested.(3) Therefore the only kind of evidence that we can use is reliable records of events that have happened, but Dawkins denies that we have any such records by saying: 'Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the real world'!(4) He continues by mocking the Christian beliefs that 'In the time of the ancestors, a man was born to a human mother with no biological father being involved' and 'The fatherless man himself came alive after being dead and buried three days'.(5) But the fact that an event is unlikely does not make it impossible. The probability that a wheel will fall off an aeroplane and land in my back garden is very low, but this does not mean that you should doubt my report that it happened, if you trust me.

The foundational fact

The resurrection of Christ is such a fact; it is fundamental to the Christian faith. The apostle Paul himself admitted, �... if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain and If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied�.(6) But he goes on to say Christ has been raised from the dead, and this provides the factual foundation on which the edifice of the Christian faith is built. This is necessarily a matter of record, not of physically provable facts, but it is consistent with them. Dawkins' delusion consists in the assumption that natural selection is sufficient to explain the whole of biology and human behaviour. And he does so by believing ideas that involve much greater improbability than Christian beliefs. Moreover, natural selection as a theory only attempts to explain what has happened since life became a reality, not to explain how life itself began and, if we ignore that aspect, and think we are tackling the real issue, we delude ourselves.

References:

(1) Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, 2006, Paperback Edition 2007 (2) Op. cit. p. 73 (3) Deut. 6:16 (4) Op. cit. p.118 (5) Op. cit. p.207 (6) 1 Cor. 15:14,19 ESV

HICKLING, P.L. | Jan 2008
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