Dawkins at a loss to explain

Atheist Richard Dawkins' autobiography is out Part 1. See here. An extract from it contains observations on prep school and these interesting lines.

 

"I cannot even begin to imagine how human beings could be so cruel, but to a greater or lesser extent we were, if only through failing to stop it. How could we be so devoid of empathy? I didn’t lift a finger to stop the grotesque bullying. ... I don’t recall feeling even secret pity for the victim of the bullying at Chafyn Grove. How is that possible?

These contradictions trouble me to this day, together with a strong feeling of retrospective guilt. I am struggling to reconcile the child with the adult that he became; and the same struggle, I suspect, arises with most people. This is no place for a philosophical disquisition, so I will content myself with the observation that continuity of memory makes me feel as though my identity has remained continuous during my whole life, while I simultaneously feel incredulous that I am the same person as the young empathy-failure."

 

A right understanding of total depravity would no doubt help but Dawkins has rejected such thinking.

Read the Bible says Dawkins

Slightly surprising article here.

The Dawkins Proof

I got home this week to find that a copy a of a new book had been left with us. It is by my friend and former deacon Rick Barns. The cover itself will tell you what it is about. A large format paperback, it is 130 pages long. The 230 endnote references betray its painstaking approach.

In the foreword Rick writes

"I tried to be a consistent atheist and I believed the conclusions that atheism led to. But I found that what consistent atheism led to was something utterly unworkable. It was, paradoxically, my desire to be a thorough atheist that drove me towards God."

In the book he seeks to show that Dawkins himself inadvertently provides evidence for the existence of God. Even Dawkins lives as though there were a God.

There are nine chapters culminating with the Dawkins Proof of the title.

The book is available either a free download or in a good quality paperback format at about £4. More details can be found here.

Another three days

On Wednesday I was at Spring Court with the older folk in the morning. I also had a haircut on the Kilburn High Road. At night it was our usual midweek meeting for prayer and Bible study. In the afternoon headed into town to Tottenham Court Road, had a nose in the electrical shops and drunk a coffee then met up with another member of the Westminster Conference committee to look at The American Church. The buildings date from the fifties and obviously get a lot of use but will be adequate for our use next December. A very nice man with a penchant for irony helped us sort out what we were going to do. Various auditions appeared to be going on in the different rooms. One interesting room had some historical artifacts including a portrait of Whitefield that I'd never seem before. I'm not sure how old it is. The site is where Whitefield once had a church. Augustus Toplady is buried somewhere on the premises I understand.

I spoke this evening on Christ's intercession using something I found in Turretin. After the church meeting we had a short church members meeting where we heard a testimony in preparation for an intended baptism on Sunday. Eleri and Rhodri joined us for this. They had gone to the Hampstead School prizegiving. The speaker was a former pupil who is now a backing singer for Amy Winehouse (Eleri pointed him out to me when we saw a bit of Glastonbury while she was looking for footage of Cerys Matthews there - she now has a child in the same school as our youngest two). Rhodri's girlfriend got a biology prize. Guess what they gave here? Richard Dawkins' God delusion. It is a pretty humanist school I know but considering that is not a biology book and Sibyl is the one we are baptising it seemed a little odd.

Thursday went mostly on preparation for Sunday. Up in Golders Green Jews for Jesus were out in full force. It was nice to meet Stephen Pacht their UK director. I also got talking to a Jewish PR man called Nick who saw me reading the Calvinistic Methodist Fathers book and struck up a conversation with me. He took note of the book for further reference and recommended some Jewish reading for me.

On Friday we had a meet up over a Chinese meal (Green Cottage) to say farewell to a former member and assistant here who is off back to America on Monday after a six month stint in the UK. Mark Raines is about to become assistant to Mark Chanski in the Reformed Baptist in Holland, Michigan. Among his hearers will be Al Martin, now in retirement from Essex Fells. In the evening we had the clubs for children and young people. I was leading - on Jairus's daughter. We also got the baptistry prepared.

Saturday morning we had a bit of a clean up over at the church in preparation for the baptism. The rest of the day it was more preparation and more reading from Welsh Methodist history while listening to Thijs Van Leer.