World Famous Comics: The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths
The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths
By: David Robertson Publisher: Chrstian Focus Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Chrstian Focus Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 144 Publication Date: June 01, 2007
Product Description: David Robertson wanted there to be an intelligent Christian response to The God Delusion so he wrote an open letter to Richard Dawkins, posted on his church website. This, somehow, found its way onto Dawkins own website where it generated the largest response, before or since. The ferocity and shallowness of thinking, of some of the responses spurred David to write further letters, which form the basis of this book. They explain a credible basis for faith that counteracts the atheist myths that so much popular discussion is based upon. Christians and nonChristians, need to know where Dawkins is weak and also how to explain things better! The Dawkins Letters does this, drawing upon Davids experience as debater, letter writer, pastor and author. To engage with the culture you need openness and honesty, so there are points of agreement with Dawkins but that genuine spirit of inquiry also needs to point our where some of his thinking does not hold together.
Helpful in thinking through the issues Richard Dawkins published a book entitled The God Delusion which articulated his brand of atheism. In light of the buzz surrounding the book, a pastor in Scotland wanted to equip his church to think about the book and the faith of Christianity. So he wrote an open letter to Dawkins and posted it on the church's website. Soon after this, the letter was published on Dawkins' own website, where it generated a substantial response from the congregation of atheists.
There remained a tone of anger bathed in shallowness resulting in inconsistencies and unfair characterizations of Christianity. So Pastor David Robertson wrote more letters to Dawkins. These letters form the basis for The Dawkins Letters.
Robertson interacts with each of the chapters in Dawkins' book. He aims to do so with clarity, kindness, and biblical fidelity. I believe he has done so.
In each of the chapters Robertson inserts the word "myth" before the various chapter titles that Dawkins employed. He then sets out to refute Dawkins biblically. Robertson tries to fly under the radar, claiming that he is no scientist or scholar, just a pastor, however, at the same time he is no dummy. He interacts with Dawkins, shows inconsistencies, and most importantly, provides an answer. His tone is humble and in some cases very evangelistic. In my view Robertson did his job and as a result this little book (140 pages) will help you wade through the issues and interact biblically.
Worth Reading David Robertson is a Scottish Presbyterian who ministers in Dundee. Having read Dawkins 'God Delusion' he decided to respond with a series of letters addressing the major themes of the book. These include letters addressing: the notion that atheists are the truly enlightened, intelligent ones; the impossibility of true beauty without God; the myth of atheist tolerance and rationality; the myth of a cruel Old Testament God; the false dichotomy Dawkins creates between science and religion; the "who made God?" argument; the nonsense that all religion is inherently evil; the myth of morality within an atheistic worldview; the myth of an immoral bible, and; the charge of child abuse.
Where to start? The first half of the book is definitely less persuasive than the latter. One might conjecture that Robertson's understandable irritation with Dawkins slides off into sarcasm and thus dents the force of his presentation. Seriously critiquing Dawkins view of "multiverses" could have been achieved without mockery. Even if, especially at this point, one does think that Dawkins might deserve a dose of his own medicine. Further, the brevity he must deal with each topic to fit his chosen format (short letters), inevitably leads to some shortcuts in his arguments. For example, Robertson doesn't really address some of the real moral problems from reading the Old Testament. This is an area he really should have spent considerably more time on, as it's something one hears more and more often. His letter on this, frankly, comes across as assertion rather than explanation for how Christians view this problematic material. It lacks substance and wanders off into preaching/proclamation rather than tackling the difficulties. This was the most disappointing chapter in the book.
Nonetheless, things pick up considerably in the second half of the book. The tone changes, becoming less polemical, and far more compellingly argued. Indeed, the strongest letters cover the basis for morality without God and whether religion is really the source of all evil. Here Robertson takes Dawkins to task for his continual oversimplification, ad hominem polemics, failure to express what Christians actually believe rather than his straw-man caricatures, and his genuine failure to engage informed and erudite Christian tradition. To say one does not need to know about spaghetti monsters is surely effective and clever rhetoric, but is simply a strategy of evasion, an utter cop out to avoid being challenged by the best of Christian thought. The latter half of the book also pushes Dawkins to consider the outcome of his polemics and where it might lead, especially in view of the irresponsible charge of child abuse.
Overall, Robertson's book is well worth reading, if only for the latter half of the book, which is passionately expressed, critically on target, and better representative of the concerns about the underlying philosophy Dawkins holds. Moral relativity and the drive of the selfish gene unchecked by the good, loving, and holy God revealed in the face of Jesus, are more likely to lead to 'might is right' and 'the ends justify the means' than 'care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in your midst' and 'love your neighbour'.
Perhaps some day, when the heat has gone out of the current polemics, Robertson will write a much more lengthy and detailed response. If he does, I'd be glad to read it.
The source for this book is available for all to see What a cynical attempt to cash in on the atheist movement by publishing a series of disingenuous rants that were posted on some christian bozo's web site.
This guy's postings are available online for free (so no need to spend the money to buy his stupid book.).
They consist of incoherent ramblings that never actually address the thesis of Richard Dawkins's book: That the idea that there is some supernatural jewish grandfather living in the sky is a load of bunk. (Actually Dawkins addresses all kinds of mythological grandfathers, not just jewish ones as in judeo-christo-islamism.
Dawkins can sleep soundly in his bed. While David Robertson does score a few hits on Dawkins by raising some valid criticisms of "The God Delusion" these are heavily out numbered by the misses. Roberston's arguments often do not address the point he feels he is attacking and others are just not convincing. When Robertson attacks Dawkins description of the Old testiment God as cruel and vicious which Dawkins bases on such things as the biblical flood etc Robertson quoates a bit of the old testement which basically says God is a realy nice chap. Since both are using the old testiment as their source the obvious conclusion is that God is a realy nice chap who destroyed all human and animal life on Earth apart from one family and their pets. When Robertson gets on to the subject of morality he uses the type of argument all too frequently trotted out in Christian literature, the argument from consequences. He argues that without God there can be no absolute morality and any form of relative morality will allow anyone to justify any action however bad and thus lead to the type of terrible attrocites that litter the history of the 20th centuary. Since this is unattractive consequence of relative morality there must be an absolute morality therefore God must exist. This type of argument boils down to if A is true then B will happen, I don't want B to happen so A must be false. Someone could argue that if they were poor they could not buy the things they want, could not go on nice holidays and could not eat at the restaurants they like, this would be unpleasent for them therefore they must be rich but I suspect their bank manager would not be impressed.
A Competent Response David Robertson, a Free Church of Scotland pastor who lives in Dundee, wanted there to be an intelligent Christian response to Richard Dawkins' bestselling The God Delusion. To that end he wrote an open letter to Richard Dawkins and subsequently posted it on his church's web site. The letter somehow found its way to Dawkins who posted it on his own website where it generated a response that was massive in scope and in passion. According to the back of The Dawkins Letters, "The ferocity, and shallowness of thinking, of some of the responses spurred David to write further letters, which form the basis of this book. They explain a credible basis for faith that counteracts the `atheist myths' that so much popular discussion is based upon."
The Dawkins Letters, then, is a series of letters from Robertson to Dawkins--a series of ten letters that call Dawkins to account for the errors and inaccuracies within his book. It also responds to his arguments--both his novel new ones and the tired rehashed ones common to a whole generation of atheists. Generally speaking, Robertson does a superior job of doing this. He says in his Introduction that he will no doubt be criticized by some for being too harsh and by others for being too gentle; some will say that this is an in appropriate forum for attempts at humor and others will simply miss the humor altogether. But, says Robertson, "It will be helpful to remember that these are personal letters, not an academic discourse, not an exercise in English grammar." In order to make this a personal rebuttal and in order to reach a wide audience, he has decided not to make this an academic treatise, though I'm sure he would have been capable of doing so.
The book does a particularly good job of point out the unending contradictions between what Dawkins wants to believe and what he must actually believe on the basis of his atheistic beliefs. After all, most atheists stop far short of following their beliefs to fair conclusions. Robertson calls them on this time and time again.
I had very few notable concerns with the book. Robertson perhaps cedes a little too much to theistic evolution, intelligent design, or old earth creationism. He does not state his position on the age of the earth and the way life came about, but neither does he deny the validity of any of the possibilities. I was a little disappointed in this. But beyond that I found little that I objected to. I thought he did as good a job of anyone of interacting with atheistic arguments and of challenging atheists to understand the contradictions inherent in their worldview. Anyone who has read The God Delusion would do well to follow it with this intelligent, measured, respectful response.
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