Alister E. McGrath 
Dawkins’ God [EPUB ebook] 
From The Selfish Gene to The God Delusion

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Darwinism: The Rise of a Scientific Theory 7
Natural Selection: Charles Darwin 9
The Mechanics of Inheritance: Gregor Mendel 18
The Discovery of the Gene: Thomas Hunt Morgan 21
The Role of DNA in Genetics 24
What’s in a Name? ‘Darwinism’ or ‘Evolutionary Theory’? 26
2 The Selfish Gene: A Darwinian View of the World 32
Introducing Dawkins 33
Dawkins’ Approach: The Selfish Gene 38
The Place of Humanity in a Darwinian Universe 44
Are Genes Really Selfish? 47
What Remains of the ‘Selfish Gene’ Approach? 51
3 Blind Faith?: Evidence, Proof, and Rationality in Science and Religion 57
Faith as Blind Trust? 60
Is Atheism Itself a Faith? 68
Is Christian Faith Irrational? 71
The Problem of Radical Theory Change in Science 77
The Limits of Science 80
Mystery, Insanity, and Nonsense 82
4 The Blind Watchmaker: Evolution and the Elimination of God? 86
The Contours of a Darwinian Worldview 86
Is Darwinism a Complete Explanation? 91
God as an Explanatory Hypothesis? 93
The Elimination of Purpose: Dawkins on Teleology in Nature 96
The Divine Watchmaker: Paley’s Grand (but Correctable) Mistake 98
Dynamic Conceptions of Creation: Augustine of Hippo 107
Natural Selection and Religious Beliefs: Darwin’s Views 111
The Christian Reaction to Darwin 116
5 Cultural Darwinism?: The Invention of the Meme 120
Universal Darwinism: The Evolution of Culture 120
Introducing the Meme 122
Introducing the ‘God-Meme’ 125
Is Cultural Development Darwinian? 128
Do Memes Actually Exist? 131
The Flawed Analogy between Gene and Meme 133
The Redundancy of the Meme 136
God as a Virus of the Mind? 139
Moving On … 143
6 The God Delusion: Dawkins on Atheism, Science, and Religion 144
The Cultural Location of The God Delusion 145
The ‘Warfare’ of Science and Religion 149
Natural Science Leads to Neither Atheism Nor Christianity 155
Science, Faith, and Evidence 157
A Darwinian Explanation of Belief in God? 162
Awe, Wonder, and Religion 166
Conclusion 170
Select Bibliography 173
Index 184

ALISTER E. MCGRATH is Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. One of the world’s leading theologians, he has written numerous critically acclaimed books, including The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis (Wiley, 2013), Why God Won’t Go Away: Engaging the New Atheism (2011), and Darwinism and the Divine: Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology (Wiley, 2011). He is also the author of some of the most widely used theology textbooks, including the bestselling Christian Theology: An Introduction, now in its fifth edition (Wiley, 2010).