This book is important for a number of reasons. First is the far-reaching influence in recent years of the writings, lectures and media appearances of Professor Richard Dawkins, presenting not only biological science but also a militant atheism precariously carried on its back. Second, there are the appropriate qualifications of Professor Alister McGrath, the author, a former atheist turned Christian, who has first degrees and doctorates in both science and theology, and who (like Dawkins) writes clearly for a general readership. Third, McGrath's book has pioneered responses to Dawkins by reasoned published argument; it is seminal, well-informed and stimulating, and has already been followed in a short time by many other attempts to show that the contemporary emperor of atheism has no clothes. Fourth, the questions which Dawkins and McGrath address have become more clearly focused during the bicentenary year of the birth of Charles Darwin, along with the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

Alister McGrath's method is to make a respectful examination of the rationale (and lack of it) of Richard Dawkins' attempt to derive atheism from biological science. He shows that Dawkins' writings on religion are fundamentally flawed, not only from the standpoint of faith, but also on the intellectual level due to his evident neglect of theological and philosophical traditions. Dawkins, the author among many other works of The Blind Watchmaker, shows himself to be blind to much in the history of ideas and experience. ‘Dawkins' account of religion tends to amount to little more than freak-pointing’, writes McGrath, ‘with the extreme portrayed as the typical. Religious people were dismissed as anti-scientific, intellectually irresponsible, or existentially immature – on a good day’ (pp. 8–9).

McGrath's book commences with ‘Encountering Dawkins: A Personal Account’ (p. 1) an excellent and illuminating introduction, tracing his own journey from atheism (‘actually a belief system’, p. 5) to theism, and from science to theology; and how this journey relates to his interest in the work of Dawkins. ‘This book’, he writes, ‘is a critical engagement with Dawkins' worldview, which sets out to ask whether his famously aggressive atheism is actually warranted on the basis of the arguments he presents’ (pp. 11–12).

We are now led on to consider Dawkins' best known phrase (the title of his first major book), The Selfish Gene. To help us on our way we are helpfully given something of a curriculum vitae of Richard Dawkins, including his doctoral work on ethology in Niko Tinbergen's research group in the Zoology Department of Oxford University. McGrath is skilful and instructive in the way that he earths his discussion (here and elsewhere) in biography. To help the reader to appreciate the selfish gene concept we are given an elementary account of the history of genetics from Mendel propagating peas to Watson and Crick discovering the structure of the genetic material, DNA. In my view this fails to convey the subtleties of the genetic process, for example the way that variation is produced in a population not just by mutation per se, but by recombination and interactions within the gene complex. Also the multiple effects (pleiotropy) of some genes might have been considered. Such matters seem to me to complicate the deriving of any clear idea of the selfish gene. Nevertheless the punchline from Dawkins is that we must ‘deeply imbibe the fundamental truth that an organism is a tool of DNA rather than the other way round’ (p. 38). This reductionist conclusion has no place for purpose; on this view living organisms (including ourselves) are merely the product of natural selection operating within populations that are seen to show variation because their only continuing components, the genes, themselves are many and various. And for Dawkins this explanation is sufficient and complete: selfish genes rule the world.

Dawkins' second-best known title is probably The Blind Watchmaker, an allusion to William Paley's Natural Theology of 1802, a book popular in its day and read by Darwin who apparently lived in the same rooms in Christ College, Cambridge, that Paley had occupied some years earlier. Paley presented an argument from design: just as the intricacy and purpose of a watch point to a maker and designer, so the living world is evidence of a creator. Dawkins is dismissive of the analogy; but McGrath counters by arguing that Paley's analogy does not represent the mainstream of Christian apologetics, illustrating his contention with examples from Augustine and Newman. ‘Dawkins makes a superb case for abandoning Paley’, he writes, ‘Sadly, he seems to think this also entails abandoning God’ (p. 71).

An interesting discussion now follows on ‘Proof and Faith’ in which McGrath states that, ‘To put it bluntly, Dawkins' engagement with theology is superficial and inaccurate . . . His tendency to misrepresent the views of his opponents . . . simply reinforces the perception that he inhabits a hermetically sealed conceptual world, impervious to a genuine engagement with religion’ (pp. 83–4). This, writes McGrath, is illustrated by Dawkins' approach to the idea of faith. He quotes Dawkins as writing that faith ‘means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence’, and later that faith qualified ‘as a kind mental illness’, ‘is the great cop-out’ and ‘is the principal vice of any religion’ (p. 84). But, writes McGrath, no major Christian writer adopts ‘blind trust’ as a definition of faith. This leads to the question, ‘Is Atheism Itself a Faith?’ (p. 91) and to a discussion of how science actually proceeds with the possibility of radical theory change: ‘Scientific theorizing is . . . provisional’ (p. 104).

Professor McGrath now changes tack to discuss ‘Cultural Darwinism? The Curious “Science” of Memetics’ (p. 119). At first sight this sits uneasily with the foregoing discussion. Nevertheless it is important, relevant and revealing. Dawkins himself has struggled with the concept of ‘memes’, units of cultural inheritance analogous with genes. The meme is defined as ‘the fundamental unit of information or instruction which gives rise to cultural artifacts and ideas’ (p. 123). Thus Dawkins postulates a ‘god-meme’ that replicates in the human mind and leads people to believe in God. A similar notion is that God is a ‘virus’. McGrath turns this against Dawkins in terms of lack of evidence (which in other contexts Dawkins greatly deplores) and by asking whether if there is a god-meme there might not be a meme for atheism.

Dawkins' God ends with a valuable and more general chapter on science and religion, emphasising the limitations of the human mind. ‘A perfectly good definition of Christian theology’, writes McGrath, ‘is taking rational trouble over a mystery’; and he adds that ‘there is an immense potential for intellectual synergy and the discovery of fresh perspectives on reality’ (p. 158).

Let me end (as McGrath begins) on a personal note. I myself studied for my first degree and doctorate in the same Oxford Zoology Department as did Richard Dawkins, and was taught by many (probably most) of the same people. We both studied under Professor Sir Alister Hardy, a believer in God who encouraged my early interest in the relationship between science and religion. Subsequently I was ordained in the Scottish Episcopal Church and I still teach in both areas of thought and practice. To me (with a very similar university background) atheism is a non-starter. Professor McGrath in this wide-ranging and excellent book misses a trick when he spells out Professor Dawkins' name in full: ‘Clinton Richard Dawkins' (p. 17). The initials are the same as those of Charles Robert Darwin. But Darwin, whose portrait dominated the library of the old Oxford Zoology Department, was circumspect, sagacious, an eclectic reader, and a respecter of his wife's deeply held Christian beliefs; and he is quoted by McGrath as commenting that ‘I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying God’ (p. 76). Why should anyone else?