How Richard Dawkins Influenced His Followers to Become Christians



In Psalm 76:10 the Bible says of God: “Surely the wrath of men will praise you…”

One commentary paraphrases this verse as, “The railings against God and His people are turned into praise to God when God providentially brings the wicked down.”

This has happened over and over again in the history of atheism. People who hate God and deny His existence at the same time—a bit of a contradiction—are used by God to bring people to Himself. A new book is out on this very thing.

Richard Dawkins is surely the most famous atheist in the world. His books, The Selfish Gene (1976), The Blind Watchmaker (1986), and The God Delusion (2006), are full-throated attacks on people who believe God exists. Therefore, I read with surprise the title of a new book. Coming to Faith Through Dawkins, edited by Denis Alexander and Alister McGrath. What on earth? How could Richard Dawkins bring people to faith in Jesus Christ? The book is about twelve followers of Dawkins who came to faith because they examined Dawkins closely and decided his arguments had failed.

I recently did a video on Dawkins’ strange statement that he is a cultural Christian. There is clearly a contradiction in this and these 12 apostates from atheism noticed this contradiction. “The twelve contributors are highly educated intellectuals who at one time believed that religion was incompatible with an intellectual mind…”

In every case the twelve encountered thoughtful Christians, and they often encountered groups of Christians who were the opposite of how Dawkins describes them.

Let’s look at a few of the contributors.

Sarah was an atheist historian, with a Ph.D. from Cambridge. She found Dawkins and his atheism bereft of the necessary motivation to help the marginalized, the downtrodden and the weak. It reminds me of Dawkins’ advice to a woman who was pregnant with a Down’s Syndrome baby: “Abort it and try for a healthy child.” Sarah found this mindset appalling and rejected it. She says, “I spent a lot of time in reflection. I came to the conclusion that atheism could not provide adequate answers to the big questions…I decided that the Bible’s explanations of who God is, who we are, and what life is about were true. I wanted to follow the God who made me, loves me, and died for me.” 

Louise found Dawkins’ atheism akin to a cult.  There is an idealized and heroic personality aura around each of the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism (Christopher Hitchens, Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett). Their writings and public appearances are treated like one would a cult leader. Their ideas are holy writ, completely beyond the possibility of any serious critical engagement. I had the New Atheists in mind in my video, The Ten Characteristics of a Cult. “What bothered me most about The God Delusion, and what contributed most to my eventual turn to Christianity, was that it made enormous claims upon which it then failed to deliver.” Louise points to statistics and probability claims which ultimately were more convincing in favor of a designer, a mind, behind creation.

Aniko was raised in an agnostic family: She joined online discussion groups around atheism and read the works of the Four Horsemen. But as Kristin Johnson says in her review, “the more she interacted, the more she saw hypocrisy, illogical arguments, claims that were simply wrong, and data that was cherry-picked or inaccurate.” She eventually encountered a Christian church where she could ask questions and her faith began to grow.

In another chapter Peter elaborates on the New Atheists’ inability to handle the most serious debate points from the Christian side. He gives an account of Dawkins’ being dismantled in a debate with William Lane Craig, the great Christian philosopher. Craig himself later recalled being startled by the limits of Dawkins’ knowledge. The self-assured but demonstrably vacuous egotism of the New Atheists was on full display, and it was an educational moment for Peter.

Ashley provides a moving account of her initial infatuation with Hitchens’ ideas and subsequent realization of his incapacity to answer the most serious of life’s questions. She recalls Hitchens, toward the conclusion of his best known book, God is Not Great, declaring that if God concealed Truth in one hand, and the “steady and diligent drive to the Truth” without any promise of attaining it in the other, he would choose the latter. The assertion that human life must be founded only on the impossibility of certainty and the valorization of eternal doubt rightly appeared an intolerable endpoint for Lande. If we were, as she puts it, “doomed to perpetually strive toward truth without any hope of ever obtaining it, this would be an unlivable condition. We are not made for such a world. Mere animals can live in it, but our spirits rebel against it.”

One reviewer observed that the book could have been snarky or belittling toward Dawkins and the atheists whose views these authors rejected but instead was reflective and came across as respectful and authentic.

In his review Alexander Riley observes: “Richard Dawkins and his New Atheist colleagues offer glib, intellectually careless, and ungenerous criticisms of Christianity that are superficially convincing for those educated in the general secularism of today’s Western culture. However, a close and critical consideration of New Atheist criticisms can lead one to deeper, truer insights into the spiritual element of human nature.”

And that’s exactly what happened to the contributors to this book.

I remember C.S. Lewis saying that one of God’s main tactics in dealing with atheists was to bring them to Himself. We have a kind, merciful, forgiving and patient heavenly father. I give Him the glory for saving me, lots of atheists, and anyone else who will turn to him.

More: The Ten Characteristics of a Cult; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL9RA2QgSf8

The World’s Most Famous Atheist Says He is a Christian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL9RA2QgSf8

Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: https://reformedjournal.com/coming-to-faith-through-dawkins-twelve-essays-on-the-pathway-from-new-atheism-to-christianity/

Doubting Dawkins: https://chroniclesmagazine.org/reviews/doubting-dawkins/

Kristine Johnson’s lengthy review in Medium:

https://medium.com/@pkajjohnson/book-review-coming-to-faith-through-dawkins-12-essays-on-the-pathway-from-new-atheism-to-5a99f722e687

What Charles Darwin got wrong: https://thespectator.com/topic/what-charles-darwin-got-wrong/?utm_source=Spectator%20World%20Signup&utm_campaign=21f9f23444-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_05_07_07_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-21f9f23444-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D