I have no problem with where Dawkins arrived but with how he got there

H. Allen Orr replies: Daniel Dennett's main complaint about my review is that I held Dawkins's book to too high a standard. The God Delusion was, he says, a popular work and, as such, one can't expect it to grapple seriously with religious thought. There are two things wrong with this objection.

The first is that the mere fact that a book is intended for a broad audience doesn't mean its author can ignore the best thinking on a subject. Indeed it's precisely the task of the popularizer to take this best thinking and present it in a form that can be understood by intelligent laymen. This task is certainly feasible. Ironically, the clearest evidence comes from Dawkins himself. In his popular works on evolution, and especially in The Selfish Gene, Dawkins wrestled with the best evolutionary thinkers —Darwin, Hamilton, and Trivers—and presented their ideas in a way that could be appreciated by a broad audience. This is what made The Selfish Gene brilliant; the absence of any analogous treatment of religion in Dawkins's new book is what makes it considerably less than brilliant...

Dennett has apparently forgotten that the heart of Dawkins's book was his philosophical argument for the near impossibility of God. Dawkins presented his so-called Ultimate Boeing 747 argument in a chapter entitled "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God," branded his argument "unanswerable," and boasted that it had stumped all theologians who had met it... Dawkins explicitly stated that he was targeting all forms of the God Hypothesis, including deism, and insisted that all were victims of his arguments.

As for C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, I cited it to show that Lewis had already dispensed with one of Dawkins's claims. Dennett now tells us that Lewis was no recondite thinker but a fairly unsophisticated pop theologian. I agree. Indeed that was exactly my point. I called Lewis's book "the most widely read work of popular theology ever" and noted that there was no evidence that Dawkins was familiar even with such popular material, much less with serious theology.

Finally, Dennett fundamentally misunderstands my review. He seems to think that I'm disturbed by Dawkins's atheism and pointedly asks which religious thinkers I prefer instead. But as I made clear, I have no problem with where Dawkins arrived but with how he got there. It's one thing to think carefully about religion and conclude it's dubious. It's another to string together anecdotes and exercises in bad philosophy and conclude that one has resolved subtle problems. I wasn't disappointed in The God Delusion because I was shocked by Dawkins's atheism. I was disappointed because it wasn't very good.

Letter exchange between Daniel Dennett and H. Allen Orr regards Richard Dawkins The God Delusion (NYRB) by Rich on Mon 12 Feb 2007 08:16 PM PST Permanent Link 'THE GOD DELUSION' By Daniel C. Dennett, Reply by H. Allen Orr In response to A Mission to Convert (January 11, 2007)