Review: The Dawkins Letters

reviewed by T. C. Pinckney                                                                             Vol. XXI, No. 4, April 2008

The Dawkins Letters, Challenging Atheist Myths is a response to Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion. Dawkins is a well-known British scientist and professor at Oxford as well as a vitriolic atheist. The author of The Dawkins Letters is David Robertson, a columnist, author, and pastor of St. Peter’s Free Church of Scotland in Dundee.

Letters consists of an “Introductory Letter to the Reader”, ten other “letters” or chapters (each of which is structured as a separate letter to Dawkins and deals with points in one or two chapters of The God Delusion), and concludes with a “Final Letter to the Reader – Why Believe?”.

The book is an easy read: only 143 small pages and written for the layman. While carefully remaining polite, Robertson pulls no punches. He lays it right on the line. Here is a sample from letter 6: “Instead of proving that there is no God, you have demonstrated that there almost certainly is. It might be a good idea to find out who he is, stop burying your head in the sand, and stop shaking your fist at a God you say cannot exist because in order to exist he would have to be more complex than you. He is.” Throughout the book Robertson discusses many of Dawkins’ arguments and points out fundamental flaws in each.

The last “letter”, is addressed not to Dawkins, but to the reader. I’ll quote just one selection. In my judgment this is a crucially important challenge for every Christian.

“... I have no doubt that if atheist philosophy gets an ever-increasing grip on Europe or the USA then we are really heading for another Dark Age.

“For those American readers who think this may be true of Europe but can hardly apply to the USA let me remind you that the Church is only ever one generation away from extinction in any one area. I am not convinced that the USA Church is as strong as people suppose. Certainly it looks as though the numbers are there but I suspect that much of it is very fragile and just as the European Church was largely unable to stand up to the assaults on the Bible that took place at the end of the 19^th century, so the American Church, unless it wakes up and really does get back to the Bible, will soon find itself collapsing like a house of cards in-face of the onslaught of New Age spirituality, the cults, materialism, and the newly confident militant atheism of Dawkins et al.”

In short, I highly recommend The Dawkins Letters.

[David Robertson, The Dawkins Letters, Christian Focus Publications, Ltd., 2007. ISBN 1-84550-261-2, 143 pp.]