Richard Dawkins has long been recognised as Britain’s grumpiest atheist, our very own Darwinian Victor Meldrew, screeching ‘I don’t believe it’ at anyone who will listen. Readers of his recent God Delusion will have enjoyed him harrumphing his way through modern religion, vanquishing the faithful by the power of ridicule and rhetoric alone.

Some may have been a little perplexed by a number of his ‘arguments’. For example, neither the Jews nor Jesus, we are told, cared anything for non-Jews (Dawkins’ Bible apparently lacks Exodus 12.48, Leviticus 19.33f, Deuteronomy 10.14-22, Zechariah 7.10, Malachi 3.5, Luke 10, John 4 &c).

Others may have been a bit disappointed by the way he implies that Catholic parents are worse than paedophiles, or that all believers (including, it would seem, Jews) are infected by a virus – not the happiest of images, given that Jews were once described as a viral infection themselves.

It would be a mistake, however, to take Dawkins as seriously as he takes himself. Hence the conceit of John Cornwell’s short, light and imaginative book Darwin’s Angel, in which the author takes on the persona of an angel ‘special to natural historians and biologists’ and, in 21 brief chapters, flits through the holes in Dawkins’ argument.

According Dawkins a respect that he denies others, the angel gently points out the poverty and bias of his sources; his double standards (damning theologians for picking and choosing texts and then… picking and choosing texts); his wilful blindness (dismissing theology as an intellectual discipline before criticising religious people for not attempting to answer serious questions); his dubious assumptions (the universe is complex, therefore God must be more complex still); his logical non sequiturs; his historical illiteracy; and his charming optimism (a world ruled by science and atheism will be utopian, don’t you know?).

More important, while dancing through this intellectual wasteland, our angel remains composed, wry, teasing, treating Dawkins’ anger and invective with wit and delicacy, never descending to the depths that his charge does. In so doing, he reminds us that the best way to respond to Victor Meldrews is not to match outrage with outrage but, rather, to bless their curses, gently poke fun at their self-righteous fury and smile at their apoplexy.

Responding in such a way is unlikely to win them over, or even cool them down. But it may, at least, help to turn demonisation back into debate.

Nick Spencer

Nick Spencer is director of studies for the public theology thinktank Theos.

additional resources

Darwin’s Angel: An Angelic Riposte to The God Delusion is published by Profile.

John Cornwell debated with Richard Dawkins on the Today programme on the 6th September. Listen (again) on bbc.co.uk/radio4.

Alister McGrath has written much about atheism, and about Professor Dawkins’ brand of it. For the relevant page of his website, click here.

Two other websites worth visiting are those of the Faraday Institute and Christians in Science.