Outgrowing Atheism

Below is a taste of Outgrowing Atheism: it’s time for Richard Dawkins to grow up by David Robertson.

Serious Scholar?

Here you need to grasp how Dawkins uses language. “Serious scholar” means ‘someone who agrees with me’. If they don’t they obviously can be neither serious nor a scholar. Which is why he can dismiss, if he even knows about, Professor Richard Bauckham of the University of St Andrews, whose serious scholarly work Jesus and the Eyewitness is an authoritative piece of academic research.

Likewise when Dawkins confidently asserts that no “educated theologian” believes that Adam and Eve, or Noah is history. But I’m educated (two degrees) and I’m a theologian, and I believe they are history. I may be wrong. But Dawkins’ simplistic Emperor’s clothes attitude – ‘any intelligent person will see that the Emperor is wearing the finest clothes’ – is easily exposed.

It is especially encouraging to read Robertson state, “...I have met more people who were converted to Christ through Dawkins, than have been converted to atheism.”