As aggressive new atheism fades from memory, twelve essays in Coming to Faith Through Dawkins (Kregel Publications 2023) describe his role in prompting the writers to assess the claims for faith more seriously.

The editors, Faraday Institute director Denis Alexander and Oxford historian Alister McGrath, chose a range of contributors, including pediatrician Johan Erasmus, science magazine editor Anikó Albert, artist Ashley Lande, and biochemist Sy Garte.

So did Christians invent Dawkins?

Endorsing the book, Oxford theoretical physicist Ard Louis comments,

If Richard Dawkins didn’t exist, then Christians should have invented him. As this fascinating compilation of personal stories shows, Dawkins’ strong opposition to Christianity can spur people on to critically examine their deepest beliefs and even to radically change them. Although the writers come to completely different conclusions on the Christian faith from Dawkins, they all agree with him that what you believe really matters, and that robust no-holds barred intellectual inquiry is the best way to make progress in our thinking. We should be thankful to Richard Dawkins for inspiring this set of interesting thinkers. — Editorial reviews

Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse chimes in as well, to make clear that he isn’t even sorry: “This is a truly fascinating book. Many people, including non-believers like me, have found Dawkins’ strident atheism upsetting to the point of offensive. I would never have thought that, as Coming to Faith through Dawkins shows in wonderful detail, that for some Dawkins’ rantings were the spur to Christian faith. One can be forgiven for feeling a strong element of Schadenfreude.”

The Four Horsemen of the New Atheist Apocalypse rode off into the sunset…

Reviewing the book at Salvo 70, Fall 2024, Joshua Pauling comments,

If in the early 2000s someone had said that New Atheism would be digging its own grave by the 2020s, I’m not sure anyone would have believed it. New Atheism was an edgier and bolder form of unbelief promoted by such energetic and quick-witted figures as Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins (dubbed the Four Horsemen of the movement), who published bestselling critiques of religion and packed out auditoriums with people eager to hear their takedowns of Christianity. But now, in 2024, Hitchens and Dennett are deceased; Sam Harris seems more interested in meditation and “spirituality without religion”; and Richard Dawkins says he is a “cultural Christian.”

“New Atheists for Christ”

Pauling asks, understandably, “What in the world has happened?”

He notes that several themes are woven through the essays: Leading atheist philosophers have found Dawkins’s arguments superficial, many find his “warfare” thesis against religion shallow and his certitude unjustified. Most significantly, he himself has begun to seem like a sort of out-of-date bore.

A few years back, Scott Alexander noted that new atheists were failing to engage in the meaningful discussions that change minds:

Post-2006 atheists were brasher and more political. They were less interested in arguing with religious people about the minutiae of carbon-dating; they were more interested in posting about how stupid carbon-dating denalists were, on their own social media feeds, read entirely by other atheists. The concept of the Internet as magical place where you could change other people’s minds had given way to the Internet as magical place where you could complain to like-minded friends about how ignorant other people were…

Scott Alexander, “New atheism: the godlessness that failed ” SlateStarCodex, December 12, 2019

Something else is also happening now though…

Back to Dawkins as a “cultural Christian” for a moment. Dawkins, like most people in the global culture — a very large part of which is culturally Christian — believes that 2 + 2 = 4. He is not a fan of the war on math or the war on biology. But those wars are exactly what much of the “post-Christian” secular culture now wants. Even the National Academies of Science are trying to placate their demands by blending Indigenous lore with science.

The NAS don’t want to blend in Christianity that way, of course. True, it is a religion. But that isn’t why they don’t want it. They don’t want it because, like Judaism, it is too grounded in philosophical traditions to be of any use in a Woke environment. When science slowly morphs into whatever people need to believe in order to feel better about themselves, no philosophically based tradition can be seen as a friend. That’s why Dawkins, who is starting to get Canceled for not being Woke enough, sees himself as a cultural Christian. Well, he does live in interesting times and he helped create the interest.

You may also wish to read:

Olympics: The Woke have a message for science: Scram Science no longer has a seat at the High Table. I hope readers will think through the implications of that and what it portends for all of us. Science — when it gets in the way of Woke culture — is beginning to get the same treatment as religion: ignored, mocked, rewritten, and eventually attacked.

and

After Dawkins is Canceled, what comes next? Not better science! As the National Academies of Science try to blend traditional lore into science findings, the concept of truth that atheists and theists clash over is irrelevant. For many today, truth is whatever benefits Woke causes. Claims for truth that offer them no political benefit are seen as a threat, meriting a hostile response.