One of my atheist friends (yes, I really do have them) promised to read The God Conclusion and said he would publish a review when he finished. Amazon (as typically the case) refused to allow him to post the review, so my friend Tony sent his review to me and I’m posting it on my website.
Tony is an honest broker, and fair. I like what he wrote, even when he disagrees with me, and we’re going to talk about it in further detail on my next podcast. Here is his review of my book:
The Introduction offers important context and sketches some of the arguments to follow. Chapters 1-10 of the book constitute a nearly point-by-point response to “The God Delusion” by biologist Richard Dawkins, with chapters 11-15 forming a positive argument in favour of the author’s own position, “The God Conclusion”.
In his Introduction, Leonard recounts personal experiences that have led him to believe in the Christian God. This sets up the tone of the entire work – this is a book that mixes philosophy, science, and theology with personal thought. To my mind, that is what makes it worthwhile. He also sets up some of the themes he will return to later in the text, including that not believing in God is an act of free will rather than unbiased evaluation. He gives Dawkins credit where credit is due for intelligence and erudition, which is a notable thing contrasted to the generally toxic tone dominating the “God debate”. He closes the introduction by pointing out that truth MATTERS. In our current age of “post-fact” discourse, this is also a worthy reminder.
Leonard offers responses to each chapter of Dawkins, which is no trivial task. In general, he gives as good as he gets. He correctly calls Dawkins out for some cheap shots at religion. While I disagree with much of the detail he presents, he consistently cites his sources, and generally works to maintain a civil, intellectual tone to his rhetoric.
At times he seems not to address the full force of the opposing argument, for example the so-called “Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit”. This idea is a rebuttal of an older argument against evolution, Fred Hoyle’s “junkyard tornado”. Hoyle wrote that the emergence of the life we observe, via abiogenesis of a simple form from inanimate matter, then evolution to near-incomprehensible complexity, was as unlikely as a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and accidentally assembling a Boeing 747 aircraft. Hoyle was arguing in favour of life being designed by an intelligence. Dawkins’ “Ultimate 747” rebuttal is that (as Hoyle implies) life’s complexity demands an explanation because complexity is unlikely, and any entity capable of designing a complex product must itself be more complex than what it designs. Thus, an intelligent designer capable of designing life would have to be even more complex and unlikely, and demand an explanation even more strongly. The complexity of the 747 needs an explanation of origins, but the designer of life is the “ultimate 747” in demanding an explanation of origins.
Leonard dismisses this argument already in his Introduction with a nonchalant “so what?”; and in Chapter 3 calls it “gibberish” and “word salad”. This is unfortunate, as this is a central piece of reasoning of the book he intends to refute.
There are some relatively minor points where Leonard may lose a few readers. For example, he consistently refers to the evolutionary idea of common descent as all living things being related through “sexual reproduction”. This is inaccurate – many living things either must or can reproduce without sex; however, this is easily corrected by simply substituting “reproduction” when “sex” is too specific.
In Chapters 11 – 15, having diligently dealt with all of Dawkins’ book, Leonard turns to his own reasoning in favour of the existence of God. This review has no scope to evaluate all his individual points – I shall leave that to those who read the book.
Chapter 11 marshals evidence against an unintelligent process in the Big Bang, in cosmic tuning, and in the content of DNA. The arguments presented here are arguments for intelligent design. The only implied attributes of the designer are intelligence and creative power at the time of creation. The connection to the other attributes of God: benevolence, omniscience, eternality or omnipotence. These may seem like obvious extensions of creation to theists, but are certainly not logical entailments of it.
Chapter 12 goes through evidence for supernatural phenomena, including reincarnation, near-death experiences with reported supernatural content and miracles. Accepting the supernatural is a prerequisite for belief in most monotheisms, which makes this information relevant; yet, this also lacks a straight line to God. A naturally unexplainable aspect of our universe is conceivable without a super-intelligence having the attributes of God.
Chapter 13 builds positive evidence for intelligent design, both at the level of species (including oddities like the anglerfish and the platypus), as well as on the scale of whole ecosystems (describing the effects of the local extinction and later reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone Park). The final line is telling:
The question becomes, can intelligence be created by random chance?
It is unfortunate phrasing, but common in the creationist/intelligent design movement. The very core of Darwinian evolution is that selection is not random chance, but consistent with stable circumstances. The real question is whether mutation (random) in combination with selection (non-random) can create intelligence.
Chapter 14 turns to the moral argument, essentially that without God, there could be no morality. Leonard argues that without an ultimate source of moral rules, there is no justification for condemning even the worst behaviour as evil (his example is a cannibalistic serial killer):
It might be unfair to me and evil to you, but it wasn’t to Jeffrey Dahmer, and that’s what matters.
I dispute the phrase, “that’s what matters”. Morality is both a question of “should I do this” AND a question of “should I let YOU do this”. To the second question, Jefrrey Dahmer’s feelings are irrelevant. We all have a moral instinct of some things being OK and others not (even Dahmer, as shown by a quote included in the book). This instinct may be because of God’s influence – however, it would have been a good addition here to address the proposed plausible evolutionary mechanisms for recognisably moral behaviour in animal groups.
In Chapter 15, Leonard wraps things up, and leads into his conclusion. He refers to points raised in chapters 11 and 13 for intelligent design, and chapter 12 for the existence of the supernatural. Unfortunately, he doesn’t refer to chapter 14, so morality is not well connected here. His reasoning comes to a central point:
There really is only one good reason to become an atheist: you simply don’t want to believe in God. We all have free will. You can simply choose to reject logic and common sense and become an atheist.
If I granted the truth of every bit of chapters 11-14, I could still conceivably believe in the supernatural and be a deist holding to an intelligent designer who was also the source of our universal moral instincts. The eternal, personal, miracle-causing, omniscient and omnipotent God is not a conclusion from those chapters. Leonard disagrees:
…But God exists. That is the only reasonable conclusion based on the vast body of evidence we have at our disposal. You don’t have to like it, but you should accept it.
Very well, let’s go one step further, and grant that the book presents evidence for God as advocated by Leonard, and it cannot be reasonably refuted. We then need to decide what to make of the following, from his Introduction:
…I believe I can answer Dawkins’ question about why God took pains to hide irrefutable evidence of His existence, and my answer is free will.
We cannot have it both ways – either the evidence is available and not reasonably refutable, and atheism is a personal, irrational and arbitrary choice (with consequences); or the irrefutable evidence has been hidden so that believers are making a leap of faith.
This is an important book. There are many texts on both sides of the “God Divide” that adopt (or aspire to) a tone of Truth with a capital T, while hiding the author’s personal reflections, and they are less persuasive as a result. Leonard does not commit that mistake. He is personable and persuasive throughout, and the text reads like a good conversation with an intelligent friend who had really done their homework, over relaxing drinks.
Whether the reader is a believer or not, Leonard’s parting quote is one that I value highly. I can think of few better expressions of benevolence toward your interlocutor, agreeable or not:
May the LORD bless you and keep you. May the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the LORD lift his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Quite obviously, my friend Tony read my book and more importantly, he understood it, even though he continues to resist reaching the same conclusions I have. Perhaps he will never see things exactly the same as I do…and that’s okay, because I can easily understand how this can happen.
Free will. It can be either a beautiful or a terrible thing. Or perhaps even both.
I have zero complaints about anything my friend Tony wrote about my book. I’m eagerly looking forward to our podcast conversation later today where we explore our differences in opinion in further detail.
This is a conversation worth having, and worth sharing.
Speak Your Mind