Unbelievable! ...The extent man not founded upon Christ will go and follow in their quest and pursuit of self and attempts to explain away reality and sin. Here's Oprah's spiritual sage... Response: 1. He resurrects errors of the past which deny reality by seeking to replace it with forms. 2. By reducing the past to forms (or photo albums) he not only denies the reality of the past but the extent of it's connectedness and relationship to the present. This error he also translates in regard to the future. 3. He establishes a false premise that one can separate the reality of the present ("now") from reality itself, which he vests in onesself (though he inconsistently goes on to suggest that life is found in abandoning oneself) 4. He has no grounds or basis for assuming reality is found in self (and apart from everything else, or only what one want's to allow) 5. By denying the truth of God, he falsely asserts that the future is no longer problematic...
I read both "The Dawkins Delusion" and "Dawkins' God" by McGrath.
ReplyDeleteMcGrath strikes me as a pseudo-theistic evolutionist, and surprisingly unassertive when it comes to theology. It may be the typical understatement approach from English gentlemen, but I do not think that McGrath goes far enough in either of his works to really tear up Dawkins.
For me, he skirts around the edges of really dismantling Dawkins. In that respect, I think it shows that McGrath is qualified as a scientist and theologian, but not strong in Christian philosophy. He attempts to meet Dawkins in the middle, and then move towards Christianity from there. This quote, from The Dawkins Delusion, demonstrates that:"We are both Oxford academics who love the natural sciences. Both of us believe passionately in evidence-based thinking..."
In general I think presuppositionalists will be disappointed with McGrath. If you want to read a scientific refutation of Dawkins science, then read "Dawkins God". "The Dawkins Delusion" left me a little disappointed, maybe because I read much more convincing and destructive criticisms of the work elsewhere.
I have also been somewhat disappointed in McGrath - he is very weak on the sovereignty of God and the weakness of this position is evident in the earlier post on this site of the dialog between him and Dawkins.
ReplyDeleteJD, yes, you have hit the nail on the head. McGrath is curiously weak on the power of God. I would actually like to read one of his theological publications and see more. I think he is contemporary Anglican, which would explain his more "open theist" approach.
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