Richard Dawkins’ Most Important Concession?

Before I go on with discussing evolution and the inspiration of the Scriptures, I have to pass on this quote from Richard Dawkins, the famed atheist and author of the God delusion:

I think that when you consider the beauty of the world and how it came to be, you are naturally overwhelmed with a feeling of awe, a feeling of admiration, and you almost feel a desire to worship something. I feel this. I recognize that other scientists, such as Carl Sagan, feel this. Einstein felt it. We all of us share a kind of religious reverence for the beauties of the universe, for the complexity of life, for the, uh, the sheer magnitude of the cosmos, the sheer magnitude of geological time. And it’s tempting to translate that feeling of awe and worship into a desire to worship some particular thing, a person, an agent; you want to attribute it to a maker, to a creator. What science has now achieved is an emancipation from that impulse.

That was from a debate with John Lennox, who did a superb job dealing with Dawkins, who has spent most of his adult life arguing with Christians.

The point is, that what God said is true. Nature declares the glory of God. Even when you believe in evolution, are an atheist, and are very angry with Christians and religion, nature still compels you to bow and worship the Creator.

Dawkins thinks you ought to overcome that impulse.

The Creator thinks that impulse leaves you without excuse.

Now who knows better, the Creator or his creation?

Hmm …

About Paul Pavao

I am married, the father of six, and currently the grandfather of five. I teach, and I am always trying to learn to disciple others better than I have before. I believe God has gifted me to restore proper theological foundations to the Christian faith. In order to ensure that I do not become a heretic, I read the early church fathers from the second and third centuries. They were around when all the churches founded by the apostles were in unity. My philosophy for Bible reading is to understand each verse for exactly what it says in its local context. Only after accepting the verse for what it says do I compare it with other verses to develop my theology. If other verses seem to contradict a verse I just read, I will wait to say anything about those verses until I have an explanation that allows me to accept all the verses for what they say. This takes time, sometimes years, but eventually I have always been able to find something that does not require explaining verses away. The early church fathers have helped a lot with this. I argue and discuss these foundational doctrines with others to make sure my teaching really lines up with Scripture. I am encouraged by the fact that the several missionaries and pastors that I know well and admire as holy men love the things I teach. I hope you will be encouraged too. I am indeed tearing up old foundations created by tradition in order to re-establish the foundations found in Scripture and lived on by the churches during their 300 years of unity.

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2 Responses to Richard Dawkins’ Most Important Concession?

John Michael says:

06/20/2011 at 9:35 pm

Why would you want go out of your way to convince yourself and others that there is no God, except so that you can free yourself to pursue your own lusts?

I don’t get it.

John Michael says:

06/20/2011 at 9:31 pm

C.S. Lewis made the point that if you say you were created by random gases, that you have just given sane people a perfect reason to disregard the argument you are making as the result of those same random gases.