DEALING WITH DAWKINS, by John Blanchard

A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance

by Steve West

 

Table of Contents

1 The man and the mission
2 Science: the answer to everything?
3 Morality: rights and wrongs
4 Religion: the root of all evil?
5 God: necessary or non-existent?
6 The Bible: the book that speaks for itself
7 Christianity: evidence and effects
8 Jesus: the man for all reasons
9 Faith: beyond the facts

 

Summary

 

Chapter 1: The Man and the Mission

Richard Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1941. He describes himself as having had a relatively benign Anglican upbringing, but permanently lost his religious faith when he discovered Darwinism as a teenager. The major part of his academic career was spent as a professor at Oxford University. His books The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and Climbing Mount Improbable established his reputation as a leading evolutionary biologist and public atheist. However, it was his book The God Delusion that brought him into the forefront of discussions about religion and atheism. In The God Delusion, Dawkins set out to tear down religion, and he explicitly wrote that he wanted to convert people to atheism by the time they had finished reading his words. Many have enthusiastically endorsed the book, but even many atheists have pointed out its profound flaws. There are already numerous responses available to Dawkins, but this one is designed to succinctly engage with his work in a way which is readily accessible. It is far too easy to engage in personal and rhetorical attacks, so this book will try hard to deal with Dawkins’ ideas about religion, Christianity, and science without succumbing to ad hominem strategies.

 

Chapter 2: Science: The Answer to Everything?

Blanchard acknowledges that Richard Dawkins is incredibly more qualified as a scientist than he is, yet Blanchard seeks to learn from other experts in the field of science who challenge Dawkins’ claims. Science is a process that is a quest for truth about the world, but it is always provisional and open to revision. Science is a methodology and discipline that has limits, so it cannot have all the answers. Dawkins claims that science can unravel the mysteries of existence, but other atheists acknowledge that science cannot provide an ultimate explanation for existence, the purpose of life, or morality. Evolutionary science cannot explain the origin of life itself—for there to be natural selection, there needs to be something that can be selected. DNA contains incredible amounts of information, and there is no scientific explanation for how matter can give rise to organized information.

Science cannot account for the existence of the universe itself; why the universe exists is beyond the realm of scientific inquiry. Dawkins says that science has all the answers, but he cannot account for moral responsibility or avoid genetic determinism. He maintains that we are robots programmed by our genes as vehicles for replication, but this undercuts the validity of many of his other claims. Engaging in exaggerated and inaccurate rhetoric, Dawkins writes off everyone who disagrees with his claims about science, asserting that there is no God, that science has all the answers, and that evolution is one of the surest facts in the universe. Science, however, cannot disprove the existence of God: this is a philosophical claim rather than a scientific one. . . .

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