You may not have caught up with all the evangelical Christian and/or creationist reviews of Richard Dawkins’ excellent book The God Delusion (Bantam, 2006). Strangely enough, all of these reviewers were less than impressed with what Dawkins had to say, and expressed themselves accordingly.

Let’s start with conservative Presbyterian Barney Zwartz, the Melbourne Age’s religious affairs editor - The God Delusion:

As a former philosophy tutor, I would have hated to have Richard Dawkins in my class. Most tutors have met his sort: the loud, opinionated, supercilious student who shouts down other views without actually listening, who stands in awe of his own cleverness when everyone else can see that it is simply an immature over-confidence.

Nice of you to nail your colours to the mast, Barney, this being your opening paragraph and all. What’s your problem with Dawkins?

… [W]hen it comes to religion he is simply a bigot. He is on a relentless crusade against religion in any form, but cannot see that his own scientistic materialism is as much a dogmatic form of fundamentalist faith as those he despises.

Yes, most of the hostile reviewers say something like this. Perhaps they didn’t read as far as p.283 where Dawkins makes a statement echoing similar affirmations made by Carl Sagan, James Randi and other sceptics and humanists down the ages:

We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it.

Dawkins goes on to affirm that ‘No real fundamentalist would ever say anything like that’. As someone who has studied this area closely for a long time now, I’d have to agree with him. I can never remember a conservative evangelical or fundamentalist writer saying, ‘Well, I could be completely wrong about my basic beliefs, of course, and if stronger evidence were to emerge, I’d happily change my mind.’ No conservative evangelical could afford to say this, as the mental reservation it implies would throw his or her salvation into doubt.

Zwartz concedes that Dawkins can be ‘lively, entertaining and witty’, but claims that he often argues in a ’slipshod or superficial’ way; that some of his philosophical arguments are ’spectacularly inept’ (Zwartz doesn’t say how), and:

… [t]hat same capacity for facile undergraduate muddle-headedness emerges when he considers the Gospels … Dawkins is so dismissive and often so skewed or superficial that he doesn’t make much contact with Christians like me.

Argument by insult is also the stock-in-trade of Philip Bell, spokesman for Creation Ministries International - UK:

[T]his book is certainly not a disinterested search for truth and is devoid of any careful weighing of evidence, for and against [Dawkins'] thesis. Rather, it is this author’s most polemical work to date, that of a man driven by an unholy zeal to depose the God he claims to disbelieve in but transparently hates.

Dawkins is ‘offensive and blasphemous’, spewing forth ‘unsubstantiated claims and specious arguments’ which are full of ‘fatal flaws’. Bell deplores Dawkins’ ‘ranting ways’ and exclaims that ‘the man’s arrogance is palpable’. Dawkins is ‘utterly dogmatic’, sophomoric and crassly hypocritical. Many of the book’s assertions are ‘without a shred of supporting evidence and amount to so much bluff and bluster’. Dawkins also draws on the work of ‘embittered apostate charlatans’, whose ideas can apparently be ignored on that account alone - this is a gorgeous example of the type of ad hominem argument perfected by Bell’s Australian colleague, Jonathan Sarfati.

Further, Dawkins suffers from ‘theological illiteracy’ (this charge seems positively grotesque, coming as it does from the pen of a Young Earth Creationist); and the pages of The God Delusion smack of ‘calculated deceit’. Indeed, ‘Dawkins truly lives up to the name “A Devil’s Chaplain”‘.

Later in his tirade, Bell actually concedes that ‘… Dawkins does understand Christianity - much better than many ordinary Christians do’, but that ‘he wilfully rejects it’. He has ‘a bleak, atheistic take on life’ (in fact, Dawkins’ ‘take’ on life is cheerful and optimistic) and the only redeeming feature of his book is that it shows up non-creationist Christians for the pathetic compromisers they are.

Finally, we have a two-part review of Dawkins that Bill Muehlenberg posted on his CultureWatch site -
A Review Of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Part 1
A Review Of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, Part 2
When I say ‘review’, it’s really a blood-curdling howl of impotent rage, quite bizarre even by Muehlenbergian standards. What do you make of something like this?

Indeed, there are atheists and there are atheists. The garden variety don’t like religion, don’t like God and don’t like people who do. Then there is the especially hard-core variety. These are atheists who are on a mission, an evangelistic crusade to save the world from religion … Such atheists have every bit as much zeal and fanaticism in their secular jihad as a religious person ever will. Richard Dawkins is a classic example of the atheist stormtrooper.

Dawkins ’spew(s) forth anti-religious bigotry and animosity’. For him, ‘religion is the source of all evil’. He displays ‘overwhelming arrogance, pomposity and self-assuredness’ and is just plain nasty, full of bile, venom, bitterness and rancour.

Theologically, Dawkins is ’sophomoric’ and ‘his criticisms would not pass a Theology 101 exam’, while his ’superficial assault on the gospels [is] wrong on almost every count’; ‘[y]et Dawkins persists in his kindergarten criticism’, using ‘juvenile arguments and sloppy scholarship’. (Note the persistent efforts to infantilise Dawkins, an approach common to many religious enthusiasts when stalking their prey.) Worse still, Dawkins ‘maligns creationists’. In fact, ‘[h]e makes so many major blunders … that one doesn’t know where to begin.’

His arguments are simply shallow and unconvincing. They are also poorly argued … [They] tell us more about his own twisted temperament and his anti-Christian bigotry.

Part 2 of Muehlenberg’s review is simply an extension of Part 1, with a few Olympian pronouncements thrown in for good measure. One I especially liked was:

… [T]he scientific enterprise is [similar to religion in that it is] also characterised by faith commitment. There are all kinds of unproven assumptions and presuppositions which may or may not be testable.

How enlightening! Anyway, Dawkins’ ‘hatred of religion’:

… is so strong that he is quite happy to generalise, stereotype and paint everyone with his broad brush … [We should question the] many spurious and fanciful assumptions and claims made by Dawkins.

Muehlenberg’s conclusion is a pip:

… Suffice it to say, [this book] has left an unpleasant taste in this reader’s mouth … The author’s over-reliance on ad hominem [arguments], name-calling, red herrings, straw men, and selective use of evidence makes this book unconvincing at best and repellent at worst … [The book] is just too doctrinaire, arrogant, intolerant, bigoted, narrow-minded and full of pomposity and venom.

Three reviews; three very scared guys.

Filed in: Atheism, Fundamentalism