Alister E. McGrath - Dawkins’ God: From The Selfish Gene to The God Delusion

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Second Edition

Alister E. McGrath

This edition first published 2015
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McGrath, Alister E., 1953
Dawkins God : From The Selfish Gene to The God Delusion / Alister E. McGrath. Second edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-96478-1 (pbk.)
1. Apologetics. 2. Dawkins, Richard, 1941 I. Title.
BT1103.M34 2015
261.55dc23
2014029784

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Top, lr : Biological cell dreaming2004 / iStock; Molecular structure BlackJack3D / iStock; Animated waves Toria / Shutterstock; Chemistry science formula and tablets. Medicine symbol isak55 / Shutterstock; Vertical photo of an old tree in a green forest andreiuc88 / Shutterstock

More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track.

R. A. Fisher, speaking at a symposium held in Canberra marking the centenary of the publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species. Natural Selection from the Genetical Standpoint. Australian Journal of Science 22 (1959): 1617.

I owe a particular debt to senior academic colleagues who have read this work in draft form, and were generous in their comments: Denis Alexander, R. J. Berry, Francis Collins, Simon Conway Morris, David C. Livingstone, Michael Ruse, Jeffrey Schloss, and especially Joanna Collicutt. I myself am responsible for any remaining errors of fact or interpretation. Oxford University kindly provided clarification on some important points of detail.

I first came across Richard Dawkins in 1977 when I read his Selfish Gene (1976). I was completing my doctoral research in Oxford Universitys department of biochemistry, under the genial supervision of Professor Sir George Radda, who went on to become Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council. I was trying to figure out how biological membranes work so successfully by developing new physical methods to study their behavior.

Although it would be some years before The Selfish Gene achieved the cult status it subsequently enjoyed, it was obviously a marvelous book. I admired Dawkins wonderful way with words, and his ability to explain crucial yet often difficult scientific ideas so clearly. It was popular scientific writing at its best. No surprise, then, that the New York Times commented that it was the sort of popular science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius.

By any standards, The Selfish Gene was a great read stimulating, controversial, and informative. Dawkins had that rare ability to make complex things understandable, without talking down to his audience. Yet Dawkins did more than just make evolutionary theory intelligible. He was willing to set out its implications for every aspect of life, in effect presenting Darwinism as a universal philosophy of life, rather than a mere scientific theory. It was heady stuff far better, in my view, than Jacques Monods earlier work