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Alister McGrath. Dawkin's God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life. Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. vi + 202 pp. $54.95 (cloth) $18.95, ISBN: 140512539X (cloth) 1405125381 (paper).
Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, is one of my favorite Christian authors. Therefore when I heard that his new book analyzes the ideas of Richard Dawkins, one of my favorite science writers, I simply could not resist reading it. McGrath is eminently qualified to write such a book, since he holds two Ph.D.s from Oxford. University, one in molecular biophysics and another in theology. Even though his bailiwick is historical theology, McGrath still maintains a deep interest in the interface between science and Christianity and has published a three-volume series on "scientific theology" (see CSK 33:2 and 33:3). The result is McGrath's latest book, Dawkins' God, which is a sound but sympathetic, winsome but not whiny, readable and reliable critique of the religious thought of Richard Dawkins.
McGrath begins with a brief biography of the life of Richard Dawkins and a summary of his work. Dawkins did his doctoral work in the laboratory of the storied ethologist Niko Tinbergen, whose pioneering work won him the Nobel Prize in 1973 and formed the basis for the biological analysis of animal behavior. In thinking about the evolution of behavior, Dawkins came to the conclusion that the best way to consider evolution was to "see the entire process from the perspective of the gene" (19). McGrath is careful to explain that Dawkins's use of the term "gene" is that of George C. Williams - any portion of a linkage group or chromosome that can serve as a unit of natural selection, and not the modern molecular definition of a gene as a segment of DNA from which a messenger RNA is transcribed. This idea formed the nucleus for Dawkins' first book The Selfish Gene, and this basic concept is expanded and applied to a variety of biological systems in many of Dawkins' other books and essays. McGrath accurately and fairly explains Dawkins' scientific views, which are strictly Neo-Darwinian and highly reductionistic, inserting just enough scientific explanation along the way to help the reader without becoming pedantic.
Throughout the introduction it is clear that McGrath respects and...