Dawkins and his disciples

 

Read interesting interview with Alistair McGraph re Richard Dawkins, details below:

 

Full article at: http://ncregister.com/site/article/3287/

It's interesting, isn't it, how it's often said that Dawkins' position has become a religion in itself. One often hears his arguments used by others in public debates as though he were a kind of guru for new fundamentalists.

Ha! Absolutely, and I have put it to him that actually he has as much faith as I do, but it's a very different kind of faith.

I've spoken in many lectures about Richard Dawkins and critiqued him. And very often atheists will stand up and say: "How dare you criticize Richard Dawkins! It's almost as if there's a new dogma of the infallibility of Richard Dawkins in certain circles and I find that bizarre.

 

That's interesting because, as you probably know, Dawkins wrote a letter to the London Times in February this year criticizing you for calling him dogmatic. Defending himself, he wrote that he never tires of saying how much he does not know, but "whereas I and other scientists are humble enough to say we don't know, what of theologians like McGrath? He knows, he has signed up to the Nicene Creed." What is your response to this?

 

Firstly, I fully accept that Dawkins is humble in the area of science as I would be and other scientists would be, because you have to be. That's what scientific method is about.

 

The curious thing is that when Dawkins switches to talking about religion, about which, I might add, he seems to know remarkably little, he switches mode completely and becomes dogmatic. My concern is that the dogmatic side is seeing his response to religion.

 

The second point I'd want to make is that certainly I believe in the Nicene Creed, but I don't believe it because someone has rammed it down my throat. I believe it because I've looked at it very closely and I believe it to be right. I am very happy to be challenged about that because I believe in being open and accountable.

But Dawkins seems to think that believing in God or believing in the Nicene Creed automatically means you're a very dogmatic individual. I think one has to say that the process of questing for truth might actually arrive somewhere, and for me that's a position where I've actually arrived.

I hold it, I hope, with conviction, but I hope also with humility and I am very happy to defend it in public and would, of course, if shown to be wrong, to have to rethink everything.

Do you think, in a mysterious way, Richard Dawkins is actually serving the faith in that he's putting scientific reason into faith that some would argue is lacking in, say, extremist religious fundamentalism? Would you say he's inadvertently putting some balance into religion, getting people to question it more which some would say is actually a good thing?

There are two things I would want to say in response to that. One is that there is no doubt Richard Dawkins' book and several others published around the same time have generated enormous public interest in discussing religion. That shows us that religion really does matter enormously. There's no one who could say with integrity that religion isn't talked about anymore. That's simply not so.

But secondly, Dawkins speaks to us as a man of faith, a man of conviction who's very happy to critique other people's convictions and show us what his are. So he really raises this question not of belief and unbelief but really of what convictions are right. And in this post modern age I think Dawkins is making a very important point: that all beliefs are not equally good, that we must have evidential basis, we must have rational defense. That, it seems to me, is an enormously important point to make, particularly in the Catholic tradition where you have Chesterton and, going back to Thomas Aquinas, a very strong tradition of a rational defense of faith.

I think we see today the importance of that and I very much hope we'll see a rebirth of interest in that because it seems to me so important.

In 2004, you wrote a book called The Twilight of Atheism, in which you believed that atheism was in decline. But some would say that actually the opposite is happening, that it's growing in view of the popularity of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others. Or is this just a blip?

That's an interesting point. The argument in that book, really, is that atheism is suffering cultural erosion. I wasn't really predicting its demise; I was saying that I don't see anything very new or exciting.

Interestingly, the question is whether Dawkins and others disprove that, or whether actually it is the last hurrah so to speak. Again, the point I would like to make is to ask who is reading Dawkins? And the people I've talked to mostly seem to think that Dawkins' book is being read by atheists who are very anxious about the resurgence of interest in religion worldwide, especially in North America, and they're really angry about this and want something to be done about it.

So curiously I think The God Delusion is written to reassure the faith of atheists who are puzzled by the persistence and, in many places, the resurgence of religion.

Lastly, to lay people who might come across a Dawkins disciple, how should they best mount an argument in answer to his broadsides against religion?

There are two things I'd want to say. One is that they have nothing to fear from these people. The arguments are not good; they are not going to lose their faith as a result.

But secondly, the best way of responding to Richard Dawkins is not by rebutting his arguments but simply by saying: "I wonder if you'd mind if I might be able to tell you what Christianity is really all about, instead of buying into all these absurd misrepresentations that you find in Richard Dawkins."

Nobody can object to Christianity being critiqued, but I do object it being misrepresented.