Responses to The God Delusion

A friend who teaches philosophy emailed me this week and asked whether I’d be interested in collaborating on a book-length, point-by-point response to The God Delusion. He thinks (as I do) that Dawkins’ case against theism is philosophically inept, but he wondered whether a response would be worthwhile because (i) The God Delusion is a New York Times bestseller and (ii) one of his colleagues had expressed concern over several reports of people “losing their faith” after reading the book.

In reply, I told him that while it would be a fun project, in terms of impact it probably wouldn’t add anything to the numerous critical reviews and other responses already available. In any case, these reports of people being ‘deconverted’ by The God Delusion arguably tell us more about those people than about the impact of this one book. Call me cynical, but my suspicion is that most of these were deconversions waiting to happen. Dawkins’ book was merely the final rhetorical shove over the precipice.

I suppose what surprises me most about these Dawkins-destroyed-my-faith stories is that in this day and age it takes practically no effort — at most, a few minutes with a good search engine — to turn up several scholarly responses to The God Delusion (reviews, articles, books, etc.) that should at least give a rational person significant pause before ordering his certificate of debaptism. However, I was also surprised to discover (after a few minutes with a good search engine) that no one has yet gathered links to these responses together in one place.

This post is designed to fill that gap. Consider it a one-stop shop for all your Dawkins-defusing needs. If you know of any (respectable) responses not listed below, please let me know and I’ll considering adding them.

Note: I haven’t read all of the items listed below and I don’t endorse everything written in those I have read. The list is provided only as a jumping-off point for those who want to critically consider the other side of the argument. It isn’t intended to be exhaustive; I’ve only included items that I have reason to believe are worth consulting.

Book-Length Responses to The God Delusion

Book-Length Responses to the “New Atheism”

Other Relevant Books

Critical Reviews

Journal Articles

Web Articles

Blog Posts

5 thoughts on “Responses to The God Delusion”

  1. Pingback: Resource list: Responses to The God Delusion : Church Leader Links

  2. Pingback: Is God a Delusion? A Philosopher's Response to the New Atheists Homebrewed | Homebrewed Christianity

  3. Under “Book-length responses to the ‘New Atheism'” I would add David B Hart’s Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies; while it doesn’t stay on topic the entire way, he does an excellent and entertaining job explaining the factual errors of the new atheists on topics of Christian history.

  4. Thanks, Molly. As it happens, I’ve just started reading DBH’s book, since I’ve been asked to review it. As you say, it’s both entertaining and informative; a welcome addition to the corpus!

  5. Pingback: Critical Reviews of Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” : Thinking Matters Talk

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