Dear Sir,
At the end of September I attended a Faraday Institute lecture given by Alister McGrath, entitled ‘Darwin, Dawkins and the Divine: Why is Biology at the Heart of the New Atheism?’ This lecture (open to the public) aroused great expectations in myself and no doubt other attending Christians. It would be fair to say that the title and sub-title suggested at the very least some sort of spirited defence of religion and, by extension, Christianity. Alister McGrath, a highly respected scientist turned Christian, has written over the years a plethora of helpful and timely Christian books defending and intelligently examining the faith in the light of various issues, particularly those belligerently raised by the neo-Darwinist, Richard Dawkins.
However, there was (in my opinion) a clear failure to address the lecture mandate in terms of its tri-partite main title. That is, Darwin and Dawkins were constantly referred to, but the ‘Divine’ was never seriously addressed. McGrath began by making the obvious point that the assumption of a warfare between science and religion is unhelpful. The relationship between science and religion is far more complicated.
