“The strenuous efforts of Richard Dawkins, …author of The God Delusion, and crusader for atheism, may be backfiring,” Publishers Weekly declares, pointing to the dozen believers whose stories this Featured Book tells: it “actually prompted them to explore, and ultimately accept religion’s claims to truth, love, and the promise of salvation.” As co-editor Alister McGrath told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last September, “Dawkins promised them a world of secure certainties, and a rational approach to life, yet on closer examination he offered them only another set of beliefs.”
Professor of science and religion at Oxford until his recent retirement, McGrath reports how each of the essays in the book tells a story of “false expectations, disillusionment, reappraisal, and resolution.” Another recent retiree, Denis Alexander, emeritus fellow at St. Edmond’s College, Cambridge, joined him in compiling the book. In reviewing it, a UK professor of neuropsychology affirms that they’ve “hit upon a readable way of documenting the decline of the New Atheistic movement….”
“Spending time in this…book,” its publisher reckons, “is like being invited to the most interesting dinner party you’ve ever attended. Listen as 12 men and women from five different countries…explain their journeys from atheism to faith.”
Coming to Faith Through Dawkins
Denis Alexander & Alister McGrath, editors
Kregel Publications, 2023