Atheism

 

Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life (Blackwell, 2004).

The first book-length engagement with the ideas of Richard Dawkins, involving a detailed examination of the intellectual legitimacy of his derivation of atheism from the natural sciences. For commendations, click here. Detailed contents presented below.

Click here for an audio recording, transcript, and powerpoint presentation of McGrath’s landmark 2004 lecture at Cambridge University, entitled "Has science eliminated God? Richard Dawkins and the Meaning of Life".

  

 

Dawkin's God: Contents

Encountering Dawkins: A Personal Account

1      The Selfish Gene: A Darwinian View of the World
                Introducing Dawkins
                The new approach: Charles Darwin
                The mechanics of inheritance: Mendel and genetics
                The discovery of the gene              
                The role of DNA in genetics
                Dawkins’ approach: the selfish gene
                River out of Eden: Exploring a Darwinian world
               
2      The Blind Watchmaker: Evolution and the Elimination of God?
                Natural science leads to neither atheism nor Christianity
                God as an explanatory hypothesis
                The case of William Paley
                The religious views of Charles Darwin
                The Christian reaction to Darwin

3      Proof and Faith: The Place of Evidence in Science and Religion
                Faith as blind trust?
                Is atheism itself a faith?
                Christian faith as irrational?
                The problem of radical theory change in science
                The rhetorical amplification of the case for atheism

 

4      Cultural Darwinism? The Curious “Science” of Memetics
                The origins of the meme
                Is cultural development Darwinian?
                Do memes actually exist?
                The flawed analogy between meme and gene
                The redundancy of the meme
                God as a virus?  

5      Science and Religion: Dialogue or Intellectual Appeasement?
                The “warfare” of science and religion
                The poky little medieval universe of religion
                The concept of awe
                The mind of God
                Mystery, insanity and nonsense
                Conclusion

Acknowledgements
Notes
Works consulted

 

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