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Coming to Faith Through Dawkins

12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity

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Coming to Faith Through Dawkins

By: Denis Alexander - editor, Alister McGrath - editor
Narrated by: Siiri Scott, Daniel Thomas May
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About this listen

Richard Dawkins = Christian evangelist?

Editors Denis Alexander and Alister McGrath gather other intelligent minds from around the world to share their startling commonality: Richard Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists were instrumental in their conversions to Christianity. Despite a wide range of backgrounds and cultures, all are united in the fact that they were first enthusiasts for the claims and writings of the New Atheists. But each became disillusioned by the arguments and conclusions of Dawkins, causing them to look deeper and with more objectivity at religious faith. The fallacies of Christianity Dawkins warns of simply don't exist.

Spending time in this fascinating and powerful book is like being invited to the most interesting dinner party you've ever attended. Listen as twelve men and women from five different countries across a variety of professions—philosophers, artists, historians, engineers, scientists, and more—explain their journeys from atheism to faith. In the end, you may come away having reached the same conclusion: authentic Christian faith is in fact more intellectually convincing and rational than New Atheism.

©2023 Denis Alexander and Alister McGrath (P)2024 Tantor Christianity Religious Studies
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As a liberal Christian I am saddened by the science versus religion phony wars and the feeling that at the margins of debate we see greater and greater spite, mockery, scorn and sneering. When these margins become central I think we just all get worse, following nasty minded clickbait like "Christian demolished by Hitch!" or "Pastor crushes unbeliever". Just so silly and sad. Atheist, Humanist or Christian, the point of civilisation, technology, science and philosophy is that we get better, talk better, act better, treat each other better. If you say you have found the answer and the impact on your character is to make you sneer, deride, mock, insult and attack others I put it to you that you have not yet found the answer, whatever that is. These varied essays shine a light on how the scornful and derisive methods and rhetoric of the "Four Horsemen" (irrespective of whether they are right about the existence of God, which neither they nor their opponents can conclusively demonstrate) brought their message into disrepute and made many willing atheists and converts question the standpoint, ultimately and ironically leading them to faith. It convincingy demonstrates that truly exceptional scientists and first class journalists are not necessarily even competent philosophers, logicians or theologians and that evolutionary science, whilst fascinating, gripping and manifestly true account of the development of life on earth, is not a Theory of Everything. rather a theory of many things. It is neither atheism or science which is the problem. Both are rational and free to any human beings. It's the toneand MO of the pole mic and subsequent debate which has transformed many lives here in the opposite direction pouring petrol instead of water on a dwindling flame of faith.

The narration is good, with some weird anomalies. The male narrator does a couple of excellent South African Afrikaans accents, but these then seem to slip into his American accents, and a UK resident has an oddly American twang. One Auusie essayist is rendered American and the use of Americanisms for dates, even in UK voices ( two thousand four for 2004) all the way through is off-putting.

However, I loved this collection of brave, honest, flawed, doubting and varied witnesses to their messy faith journeys all have which have in common an encounter with Dawkins & Friends, and gratitude for being set on the road to faith by the profits of atheism.

Fascinating and endlessly compelling.

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Ive not a lot to say about the content, it was as described and certainly stories resonated with me more thatn others as you might expect. I did struggle with the voices used, especially the quite obviously fake South African accents put on my a speaker that was the same voice for a previous story but without the accent. For me this detracted from the message of the story being told. it was ok but also very repetitive, with basically the same story for most speakers.

Interesting but also annoying

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