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Scientist vs theologian
Dawkins, the editor of the popular publication The God Delusion,
squares up to the Church.
This was a match played in the media in February 2007.
Who do you think won?
My own view is that the churchman, playing a defensive game, failed to meet the offensive attack of the scientist. God knows who will win the Infinite Series, but the Church will have to bring in heavier players for the next match.
awkins wrote to The Times
Alister McGrath has now published two books with my name in the title. If I seem "grumpy", could it be because a professor of theology is building a career riding on my back?
McGrath imagines I would disagree with my hero Sir Peter Medawar on The Limits of Science. On the contrary. I never tire of emphasising how much we don't know. The God Delusion ends in just such a theme.
Where do the laws of physics come from? How did the universe begin? Scientists are working on these deep problems, honestly and patiently. Eventually they may be solved. Or they may be insoluble. We don't know.
But whereas I and other scientists are humble enough to say we don't know, what of theologians like McGrath? He knows. He's signed up to the Nicene Creed. The universe was created by a very particular supernatural intelligence who is actually three in one. Not four, not two, but three. Christian doctrine is remarkably specific: not only with cut-and-dried answers to the deep problems of the universe and life, but about the divinity of Jesus, about sin and redemption, heaven and hell, prayer and absolute morality. And yet McGrath has the almighty gall to accuse me of a "glossy", "quick fix", naive faith that science has all the answers.
Other theologies contradict the Christian creed while matching it for brash overconfidence based on zero evidence. McGrath presumably rejects the polytheism of the Hindus, Olympians and Vikings. He does not subscribe to voodoo, or to any of thousands of mutually contradictory tribal beliefs. Is McGrath an "ideological fanatic" because he doesn't believe in Thor's hammer? Of course not. Why, then, does he suggest I am exactly that because I see no reason to believe in the particular God whose existence he, lacking both evidence and humility, positively asserts?
Richard Dawkins, FRS, Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford
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To The Times
Richard Dawkins accuses his Oxford colleague Professor Alister McGrath of arrogance and of "building a career" upon his back. Professor Dawkins should perhaps allow for the possibility that those of us who disagree with him do so because we actually disagree with him, rather than because we want to build careers on his back.
McGrath built his career as a scientist and theologian long before he ever wrote about Dawkins. He is qualified to comment on the relationship between religion and science because, not only is he a theology professor, he also has a PhD in biology. Dawkins, on the other hand, while being a brilliant scientist, has no understanding of theology and covers for this by declaring that theology is not even an academic discipline.
It is clear that Dawkins is using his post as Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science not to promote science, but rather his own atheistic materialist philosophy. Using the language he does in his letter does not advance his cause, and indeed makes him sound like a self-important and petulant fundamentalist whose only resort to those who disagree with him is mockery and accusation.
The Rev David A. Robertson, Dundee
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