An Excellent Conversation Between Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

This is a great interview of Alister McGrath by Richard Dawkins. Both of them do an excellent job of articulating their positions, and the civility, charity, and respect that the two show to each other is a model of how all conversations between atheists and Christians should proceed. This is a much more effective way to flesh out these important issues than in a debate where the emphasis is on "winning" and "losing." It is very instructive also to see the way that each of these men is influenced by the presuppositions he brings to the world. The result is that while each does his best to understand the other, they end up talking past each other at a number of points.

Dawkins, for example, can't get beyond the idea that God must be an extraordinarily complex being. He candidly admits that his training as a biologist has shaped his view. The incredible explanatory power of evolutionary biology has conditioned him to see complex entities emerging from more simple ones. The idea of a complex entity at the beginning of all things, rather than the end, strikes Dawkins as completely improbably. This is because it runs counter to the way he has been trained and the way he has come to view the world, so anything that seems to deviate from that seems to be almost nonsensical. McGrath does not seem to be bothered by this claim in nearly the way that Dawkins is. As a Christian, I admit that it is hard for me to feel the force that Dawkins would like from his point, because such a claim does not strike me as so deeply troubling. The same goes for McGrath, who can't get beyond the person of Jesus and what this means for the rest of the world, while Dawkins is not nearly so impressed with what for McGrath (and myself) is something that is absolutely crucial to his Christian belief and his belief in God at all.

What McGrath points to, and what I find myself in agreement with, is that the truth of Christianity is in its power to explain the universe and human existence, and that most of its doctrinal presuppositions cannot be proven. This is something that Dawkins finds to be almost absurd, because it has no direct bearing on whether any of the doctrines of Christianity are true. Just because Christianity gives what for me is a satisfying explanation of my existence, how on earth am I justified in inferring that God is three persons, that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, etc., etc., etc.? The answer is simply that I am not. Dawkins is entirely correct to press this point home. However, what I want to say, is that this is not just a "problem" for Christianity.

No explanatory system is self-justifying. This is one of the powerful implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem: an explanatory system must have unproven true assumptions. The empirical methodology of the scientific method cannot be justified empirically, even though it postulates empirical investigation as the proper avenue to knowledge. So why do so many people hold it to be true? Because it is so successful at doing what it predicts it will do. It is set up as a means of pursuing discoveries in the world, and it has been successful. Surely, this should lend support or justification to the scientific method. What McGrath is arguing towards, is that Christianity can/will be shown true by its ability or inability to explain the world and human existence in the way that it claims to do.

The problem with two people operating in different explanatory systems is that it is very difficult to completely understand the claims of the others. I'm sure that most Christians will believe that McGrath has been quite eloquent and convincing. Just as I'm sure that most atheists will believe that Dawkins has driven home intractable flaws in Christianity (you can get a bit of atheistic reaction to this conversation here). These conversations are important, and the issues raised by both men are worthy of much reflection.