Recently, Dawkins published The God Delusion (reviewed in the TLS, January 19). As McGrath says, this book marks a significant departure. Dawkins is no longer an atheist whose main aim is to make evolutionary biology accessible to the general public: he is now a preacher whose mission is to convert religious readers to atheism. The book has a strident and aggressive tone, and a cavalier attitude to evidence that tells against its thesis that religion is the root of all evil. This has provoked McGrath to write a short volume exposing its flaws. The Dawkins Delusion? is credited to both Alister McGrath and his wife Joanna Collicutt McGrath, who is a lecturer in psychology of religion at Heythrop College, London. But the extent of her contribution is not made clear, and the book is written in the first person singular “for historical and stylistic reasons”. This makes it difficult to interpret the autobiographical statements. In this review I shall follow the authors’ convention and refer to “McGrath” in the masculine singular.
McGrath says that he is completely baffled by the hostility that Dawkins now displays to religion. But surely two recent phenomena explain the heightened shrillness of Dawkins’s atheism. The first is the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the United States, which endangers the teaching of evolutionary science in schools. The second is the rise of Islamic fundamentalism which has spawned extremist groups of people willing to murder thousands of innocent people even at the cost of their own lives. Of course McGrath is no less horrified than Dawkins by these two developments. But he regards them as largely irrelevant to the evaluation of religion. There can be atheist fundamentalists as well as religious ones, and Dawkins, he claims, shows every sign of being one. Moreover, atheism as well as religion has given rise to massacres, and true religion, as exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth, is hostile to violence.
These points are fairly taken, but I do not think McGrath does justice to the way in which religion, if it does not originate evil, gives it greater power.
Is faith irrevocable? I think this is misstated. Do you mean is your salvation through faith irrevocable? The important thing about faith is the object in which you place your faith. If your faith is in a stone idol, you can have all the faith in the world and it will not do you any good. If your faith is in Christ, you can be assured of your salvation. Is this revocable? Ask Christ if he wants to let you go.
This is a very interesting review by a major figure in the academic world. Most seems fair, but Anthony Kenny does misunderstand Alister McGrath in the following quotation:
[blockquote] “Contrary to what Dawkins assumes”, McGrath tells us, “orthodox Christianity understands Jesus to have been fully human and not omniscient.” No doubt some present day Christians in good standing deny that Jesus was omniscient, but throughout most Christian centuries it has been taught that Jesus was not only fully human but also fully divine, with all the attributes of divinity. Here it is Dawkins, not McGrath, who is the closer to orthodox Christianity. [/blockquote]
McGrath does not deny that Christ was fully divine (as well as fully human) as is clear from his other writings – and hopefully is also clear in this book – but he is making a distinction, which Kenny should have seen, between attributes of divinity and divinity.
Christ in Jerusalem told his disciples that not even the Son knew the time of the ‘last day or hour’ (Mark 13:32). At that time being in one place, Jerusalem, meant that Christ was not omnipresent – still divine but not omnipresent.
Living amongst friends who could not cope with it, the heavenly glory of the Son of God was veiled, with partial unveiling in the Transfiguration – still divine, but with glory veiled.
Being a first century Jew, Christ did not know about computers and helicopters and so he was not omniscient – still divine but not omniscient.
Thus the emptying that is described in Philippians chapter 2 did not involve the emptying of his divinity, but of aspects or attributes of that divinity that would enable a fully authentic human life. On his return ‘home’, – and perhaps the Ascension may be seen partly as the return of the missionary Son – Christ was given again all the eternal attributes of divinity.
Science is not worldview free, nor is it value neutral. If the supernatural exists, by definition science does not deal with it. Rather it ignores it. There is no reason, except special pleading, that should privilege a scientific worldview over all others and insist that it and only it be taught in our public institutions.
I love the contradictions that those like Dawkins make: “My way is better than yours because you make value judgements and my way is free of value judgements. So, my way is better than yours.”
“There are no absolutes!”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely!”
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
[blockquote] I do not think McGrath does justice to the way in which religion, if it does not originate evil, gives it greater power. [/blockquote]
Stalin killed more people in a good week then the Inquisition killed in 300 years. Heck, Stalin killed twice as many people in Europe as the Black Death! And what exactly was the religious motivation behind the Red Terror? Well there wasn’t one unless we use a broader definition of religion – one that encompasses world view and not just Theism. But that ruins the thesis of religion giving greater power to evil.
The most dangerous thing in the world is the man unconstrained by God – the man who imagines himself free of moral accountability. There is nothing such a man will not do, if only he is given the power to do it. And who exactly was it that Stalin feared could hold him accountable?
carl
Re: #2
On the contrary, I think Kenny understands McGrath perfectly. He sees that McGrath is propounding a kenotic Christology; i.e. Christ was fully divine but limited some of the attributes of his divinity. Kenny points out, correctly, that the kenotic theory — even a limited kenotic theory — has never had a place in classical Christology.
The texts you’ve assembled constitute evidence needed to make the kenotic case, but even if you succeed in making your case, it nevertheless remains true that historically the kenotic theory has been rejected by orthodox Christianity.
I’ve been a bit disappointed in McGrath. He seems ideally suited to be the anti-Dawkins, yet both he and Dawkins suffer from the same tendency to overplay a good hand. “The Twilight of Atheism†for instance, failed to make the case that atheism per se was responsible the evils for Nazism, Communism, etc., even though, as a theist, I’m already inclined to agree with McGrath’s thesis. I think McGrath’s error is to treat all atheistic beliefs as a single all ecncompassing ideology, when in fact there are multiple atheistic ideologies, each rooted in differing and sometimes incompatible presuppositions. That’s exactly where Dawkins goes wrong, too. He views all religious faiths as one single phenomenon.
Overall, Kenny if fair to Dawkins and MrGrath, but I disagree with him here:
These points are fairly taken, but I do not think McGrath does justice to the way in which religion, if it does not originate evil, gives it greater power. Those who believe that they have a direct revelation from God regard their sacred texts as trumping whatever science may discover. Those who believe that they are acting out God’s will are not going to be deterred by any secular moralizing about just and unjust wars.,
Religion can indeed boost our capacity for evil, but it’s abundantly clear that any sort of self-justifying, obscurantist belief system can be used at the service of evil. Furthermore, it’s clear that even belief systems, like Science, developed explicitly to ensure tentative epistemological and ethical claims, can be turned, by an evil will, to evil uses. The problem is that humans simply have a will to evil. Ideology is a tool of this evil will, not a source of it.