Some Simple Thoughts on a Complex Book

Over the past few days, I've been reading a book that has given me some interesting insights about my life and my relationship with God.  I find myself connecting with God in a variety of ways lately, such as through my relationships with other people, through reading, and through nature; but then today, I found myself connecting with God through a book that is all about proving that God does not exist.  This book is The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, which I've been reading along with a book by Brian McLaren called A Generous Orthodoxy (an awesome combo to read these two together and very interesting).  In The God Delusion, Dawkins refutes the existence of God on the basis of Darwinian evolution and natural selection and says that he is attempting to raise people's consciousness and that if one believes in the existence of God then they have not had their conscience raised.  He criticizes creationists and advocates of intelligent design for utilizing a 'God of the gaps' approach, which says that if science can't explain it then it must be the work of an intelligent creator, i.e. God.  He also criticizes creationists refusal to think about alternatives to the origin of life, and for utilizing irreducible complexity as an argument against evolution and as proof for the existence of God.  I am not a creationist in the sense that I believe in a literal six day creation of the earth nor am I a believer in a young earth, so Dawkins scientific approach to evolution and the origin of life interests me greatly.  While reading this book, I have been engaging deeply in thinking about my faith, and there are times where Dawkins is very convincing about the improbability of the existence of God.  However, when I really start to wrestle with what he says and with all of the experiences of my life, I find myself connecting with God.  My life does not make sense without God and I feel like through Dawkins' book, God is raising my consciousness.  Dawkins would definitely criticize me for implying that if science can't explain something, then God must exist, but maybe science is God's way of creating.  Maybe God creates through evolution and natural selection.  Dawkins would say that God is a messed up creator then because he creates things that don't work right, but maybe God's way is to let things work themselves out in this messy kind of biological process.

I think that Dawkins has a lot of good points in this book and challenges believers on a lot of levels; but as I think about what he says, I feel the small amount of faith that I do have strengthened.  It seems to me that to believe what Dawkins believes takes faith just the same as it takes faith to believe in the existence of God.  

Ryan