THE DAWKINS LETTERS
Challenging atheist myths
By David Robertson. Christian Focus. 124 pages. £4.99
ISBN 978-1-84550-261-2
This little paperback is a personal response to Richard Dawkins’s atheistic and polemical bestseller The God Delusion (Bantam Press, 2006) which I’ll refer to as TGD for short. Realising that ‘many people will not have the time, inclination or money to read about every single subject that Dawkins addresses’, Robertson’s aim is ‘to present one person’s response ... from a wide perspective ... to challenge some of the basic myths that Dawkins uses’.
The book takes the form of a series of open letters, each responding to one of the main lines in TGD. It is not essential to have read TGD first, as Robertson summarises its arguments — though his precis is hardly impartial! He addresses head-on what he regards as fundamentally flawed thinking, the assumption of ‘atheist myths’, in TGD. These myths are widely believed and assumed, but without proper thought or evidence. For example, Letter 2 talks about ‘The Myth of Godless Beauty’, Letter 6 about ‘The Myth of the Created God and the Uncreated Universe’ and Letter 10 about ‘The Myth of Religious Child Abuse’. The style is informal, personal and direct. Though sometimes bluntly scathing, Robertson is just as often open-handed and generous in his appeals. Indeed, he concedes and shares some of Dawkins’s aversions to so-called religion. But he vigorously opposes the more extravagant and ludicrous claims in TGD. He does not shrink from pointing out, in no uncertain terms, that the kind of atheistic totalitarianism Dawkins advocates is obnoxious. Positively, Robertson explains at point after point not only the intellectual satisfaction but also the extraordinary liberation of belief in a sovereign God. The final letter is addressed to the reader and answers the question ‘Why Believe?’. The book is deliberately compact, so inevitably the treatment of some issues is sketchy, but the final letter does include wide-ranging suggestions for further reading, listening and viewing.
