McGrath Alister | Collicutt McGrath Joanna : Dokinsova zabluda?

Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath: Dawkins' fallacy? Atheistic fundamentalism and the denial of divinity

It gives me great pleasure to write the foreword for the Serbian translation of Dawkins' Delusion, a work that appeared in the midst of the debate about the "new atheism" and the rationality of religious beliefs. This short book was the first major Christian response to the criticisms of religious beliefs and believers in Richard Dawkins' God Delusion (2006). My main argument is that Dawkins has misinterpreted a number of aspects of Christianity and based his attack on religion largely on an outdated and discredited "war" model of the relationship between science and religion.

This "war" model of the relationship between science and religion was dominant in Western culture during the last decade of the 20th century, despite an increasing number of scientific writings undermining it. Believing that there is a complete dichotomy between science and religion, Dawkins argues that a true scientist simply cannot be religious. If science and religion are at war, then a scientist with religious beliefs is either a traitor or a "duddy". Since the 1990s, however, the scholarly community has unraveled the historical basis of this myth and shown it to be a social construct that served certain cultural power centers, thus leaving the New Atheists on the wrong side of intellectual history. This fact is extremely important, given that many embraced Dawkins believing that his views represented the future, but now realize that these views may represent a retreat into the socially constructed "certainties" of the past.

Today, the "New Atheism" is a spent force, a movement that has disintegrated and lost much of its academic credibility and cultural influence. After the publication of The God Delusion, Dawkins' critics included many prominent atheist philosophers who were concerned about the damage his crude and superficial treatment of life's deepest questions was doing to atheism's intellectual reputation. The British philosopher John Gray, for example, ridiculed the banality, superficiality and shallowness of Dawkins and his associates who offered nothing more than "a tiresome repetition of the Victorian debates between science and religion". Philosophically, their views can be almost entirely reduced to overgrown positivism; culturally speaking, they ignored the fact that more aggressive forms of atheism can cause violence and crime. "Evangelical atheism is the belief that mass conversion to godlessness can transform the entire world." It's a fantasy. If the history of the past few centuries can serve as a guide, then we can conclude that a godless world would be as full of savage conflict as the world we know.

Most philosophers believe that Dawkins' arguments can only lead to agnosticism, not atheism, which leaves him in a difficult position from which he cannot prove his core beliefs, despite the demand that his religious opponents must first prove theirs. Although they were liked by many at first, the certainty of the new atheism was soon questioned. Gary Wolff, a journalist who coined the term "new atheism" in 2006 to describe the messianic atheism of Dawkins and his ilk, criticized their appeal to certainties that actually had no basis in evidence. "Despising the faith of others, the advocates of the new atheism never doubt their own convictions." They are fundamentalists."

This short book provides a receptive and interesting critique of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I hope that it will be interesting to Serbian readers and that it will convince them of the reasonableness of religious faith by confronting Dawkins' criticism of religion.

Author's Preface