On Reading "The God Delusion" by Dawkins - Chapter 1

I am reading Richard Dawkin's book, "The God Delusion" and posting my thoughts as part of an ongoing conversation;

The first chapter of Dawkin's book opens with Richard musing about why one young boy chose a path to the priesthood and he chose a path to atheism.   That reminds me that there is an excellent book (and DVD series) on exactly the same choice(s) made by C.S. Lewis and his intellectual counterpart Sigmund Freud (see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/).   Let me sum up that entire series in one sentence, the essence of which you will see coming up over and over in Richard's book:

Faith is a choice (to look to God and not to ourselves), not the end result of an intellectual equation.

Richard quotes Carl Sagan as saying, “How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought!  The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grader, more subtle, more elegant.’?  Instead they say, ‘No, no, no!  My god is a little god and I want him to stay that way.”

I am astonished that atheists would believe people of faith want to believe in a little god and so do not properly consider the wonders of our universe.  The Scripture opens with God SPEAKING the whole of the universe into existence.  What manner of "little god" is so grand as to be able to speak everything into existence?   I must categorically reject the implication Richard then pulls the rest of this chapter from.  From experience I can say that my God is so great, so grand, so large as to be beyond everything we can see or experience.  He is not little, and all the wonder Carl Sagan ever experienced is at the mere physical world that Carl Sagan could experience.  God Most High, the Christian God, is God of heaven (the unseen) as well as the earth (the seen)!  To this point, Christianity and the 'religion' I hold to are the pursuit of what is beyond our normal limitations.  As Paul writes, "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." Little god?  Nothing is further from the truth!

Dawkins moves into a long and drawn out discussion of Einstein's atheism.  I find that unnecessary.  I (and all who know God through Christ) do not care if the smartest man in the world doesn't believe in God.  I am not following (nor do I want any to follow) the smartest man in the world, I am following (as I would want others to follow) the creator of all man(kind) – the same One who created the smartest man in the world to start with!  

Richard goes from there to a spirited challenge against what he obviously perceives as the unchallengeable culture of faith around him.  I find it interesting that he is so defensive.  Does he really think that the Scriptures and God are too holy for our culture to mock?   Our present culture mocks Christianity virtually non-stop, especially evangelical Protestantism.  Watch any episode of Family Guy (or anything on the cartoon network for that matter), read any edition of a regional or national newspaper. Try getting voted into power in Canada with a solid stand on the Scripture!  Try applying for a job in a provincial medical research institution with a pro-Christian, pro-creation viewpoint!   On the other hand, evolution and atheism is the defacto default mindset on every science program I've ever seen.  I rather think the 'unchallengeable' culture which he so despises is his own.  Humanism, atheism, Darwinism.  These are the new cultural ‘unchallengeables’.   I say that as a sad admission, not as a point of pride.  Evangelicals make up only 7.7% of the Canadian population (see <http://www.joshuaproject.net/countries.php?rog3=CA>), and only 26.4% of the American population (same source).  

Dawkins makes it appear that Christians want to insult Muslims, homosexuals and evolutionists.  That is not the case.  Yet the message of Christ is first and foremost a seeking for the betterment of those not yet in the faith, and that seeking is well encapsulated by Jesus' very first public words to his society, "Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."   To those willing to choose God, the idea of repentance is acceptable, but to those unwilling to leave their sin, the very call to repentance is an insult.  This is exactly why the people of His day crucified Jesus.   As Paul wrote, "For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life."

His final illustration about the Danish cartoons and the reaction of the Muslim world to them is a damning indictment of radical intolerance.  But is not a slight against the God of the Scriptures.  Nevertheless, it is most telling that he (Dawkins) states he has a respect for religion, then launches into a vitriolic rant against God Most High at the start of chapter 2.  I will write my thoughts on that tomorrow....