As bestseller lists of late show, atheism is stirring up a keen interest among readers nationwide. Books like Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) and Christopher Hitchens's God Is Not Great (2007) carry atheistic platforms to new levels of evangelical fervor, attacking religious faith of all kinds while arguing that science is the only acceptable—in fact, the only honest—framework for humans to rely upon.

In a recent BYU Studies article, “Selling the Soul of Science for a Pot of Message,” BYU English professor Steven C. Walker expertly takes on the arguments presented by defenders of scientific atheism as he reviews British evolutionary psychologist Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion (2007), a book Walker calls the “standard-bearer for current atheism” and “a rip-snorting read.”

While Walker appreciates Dawkins for being “a vivid, and at his best, a witty writer,” he ultimately finds the author's condescending and narrow perspective disappointing. “I had hoped for more of what seemed to be the inherent strengths of the scientific viewpoint: more objectivity, more balanced fair-mindedness, and above all more openness to possibilities,” Walker writes. “These scientists are superlatively good at their way of seeing; problem is, that way is better at deciding what cannot be than at discovering what is, and that is lethal when one tries to think theologically.” Walker adds, “Looking at the universe from this atheist view feels like cramping everything through a telescope or microscope—wonderfully focused on what can be seen, but drastically restricted by the frame.”

Walker believes Dawkins is not small-minded but afraid of imagination. “This distrust limits his perspective, almost as if he is color-blind to theology,” Walker writes. “He focuses so intently on the black and white of material reality he cannot perceive the slightest tint of theological color.” To some degree, Walker recognizes the motive behind atheists' distrust of what they cannot see: they are wary of “the subjectivity of human thought” and our human capacity to deceive ourselves.

Walker empathizes, “The underlying problem for [Dawkins] as for me is that our perceptions are not reliable; we can trust only half of what we see, nothing of what we hear, so even less of what we think.” However, the problem is compounded when people like Dawkins do not fully acknowledge uncertainty in scientific evidences as well as in other realms of experience. “Seeing scientifically for Dawkins is not just another way of seeing, not even the best way of seeing: it is the only way of seeing,” Walker writes. “Dependent though it ultimately is on unreliable bodily sensation and less reliable mental construction, the scientific quality of that observation makes it for him sacrosanct.”

So sure is Dawkins of his scientific schema that he seems to believe “the context of science inoculates his thought against fallacy,” Walker claims. Dawkins unfairly subjects “nonscientific kinds of thinking . . . to the strictest standards of logic” while accepting scientific thought without reservation, even when such thinking is illogical. Walker wryly notes, “Thinking certified as science sounds suspiciously in Dawkinsian epistemology like a kind of scientific faith.”

One unfounded argument atheists insist upon is that their own lack of experience with God proves that God is not there. Walker wishes a scientist like Dawkins could agree “that negative evidence can be less persuasive than positive evidence.” In other words, “The experience of a person who claims to have experience with another Person does more to establish the existence of that Person than the lack of experience of another person does to deny it.” Yet for scientific atheists, “any reliable experience must be repeatable—that is to say, their experiment, their reiteration of the experience, must produce for them the same results it produced for you, or your experience is illegitimate,” Walker writes.

He finds it “convenient” that such scientists have established their “external observations [as] inherently valid and my internal observations automatically invalid.” Dawkins cannot validate anything he cannot see, calling the many witnesses of believers the result of mere hallucination. Walker cleverly argues, “A bigger practical problem” than seeing things that aren't there “is not seeing things that are there. Far fewer car accidents are caused by hallucination than by failure to observe.”

When it comes to theology, Dawkins and friends have failed to observe. Walker compares them to “entomologists who have not bothered to observe an insect” and adds, “The fact that Dawkins has thought as thoroughly as he has within the constraints of his scientific creed is not map enough for the theological territory he wanders into. It is not nearly enough that he has considered carefully the nonpossibilities of God.” As Walker sees it, Dawkins's main weakness in arguing against faith “comes down again and again to oversimplification.” For example, Dawkins draws a comparison between the Four Gospels and The Da Vinci Code as ancient and modern fiction. Walker argues,

Similarly, Walker contests Dawkins's assertion that “the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction” by retorting, “The only arguable conclusion that any reader who has read any fiction at all can reach is that Dawkins has not.” Dawkins's shallow assessment of theology comes as the result of his assumption that “because he has not thought about it, it has not been thought about. His position is even shakier than that: he does not think it is possible to think about faith, at least not in the only way that counts—scientifically.”

Dawkins seems to consider himself “smarter than nonbelievers,” Walker claims, evidenced by “the self-righteousness that smirks from Dawkins's prose.” Yet scientific atheists' viewpoints are actually “more liable to limited thinking than religious perspectives,” Walker explains. While many who believe in the Bible's account of the creation can simultaneously accept the possibility of evolution, Dawkins believes in the false dilemma that only one or the other can be true.

Atheists' “refusal to admit into their world anything other than what can be measured by their calipers looks a lot like fear of uncertainty,” Walker writes, “like orderly minds ruling out of consideration whatever they cannot order.” Because Creationists do not always discount evidence of evolution, but atheists always discount evidence of God,

Another evidence of small-mindedness among atheists comes in Dawkins's inability to accept that anyone truly believes in life after death. “Dawkins directly informs us he cannot believe we believe,” Walker states. “We believers, on the other hand, readily conceive that he does not believe.” Walker draws the conclusion, “Perhaps one expansive effect of faithful thinking is to enable a person to credence the internal experience of others.” Walker seems baffled that scientists like Dawkins “privilege their way of thinking to the point they cannot give credence to other thought.”

Dawkins is so disgusted by the idea of faith that he sees only the negative effects of religious narrow-mindedness in the world—crusades, fundamentalism, genocides. Walker agrees that religious beliefs carried to twisted extremes “plague mankind,” but he argues, “I just do not see how scientific narrow-mindedness can be its cure. Dawkins focuses so restrictively on the religious dark side that he fails to recognize that faith provides many with light to guide manifestly positive lives.” Walker believes Dawkins's determination to sway people from faith is rooted in an even deeper annoyance: “Dawkins's assumption there is no God does not disturb me,” Walker writes. “Why does my conviction there is a God . . . so incense Dawkins? Could it be frustration at missing things others see?”

Walker skillfully sums up Dawkins's worldview in one word: “reductive.” Elaborating on this idea he explains:

Walker concludes his review by praising Richard Dawkins for having written “a feisty defense of essentially indefensible ground.” While the writing is “lively and compelling,” however, the ideas presented offer a stunted perspective on life, one that “wider viewers of all kinds” will find “simplistic—not just color-blind, incapable of perceiving depth and texture, but myopically missing altogether what matters most,” Walker writes. In their fear of being deceived, Dawkins and other scientific atheists have adopted the most deceiving perspective of all: “Determined not to find God, Richard Dawkins and his coterie of atheists have seen from their carefully controlled scientific viewpoint precisely what they expected to see, precisely what they want to see.”

Kimberly Reid is an editor with BYU Studies. To Steve Walker's full review, go to BYU Studies Review.

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