Dawkins Sees God (Almost)

Thanks to Amanda at Imago Dei for pointing out a debate from Time magazine between Christian scientist Francis Collins and atheist wunderkind and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Here is the part that amazed me, toward the end of the debate Dawkins admits:

My mind is not closed, as you have occasionally suggested, Francis. My mind is open to the most wonderful range of future possibilities, which I cannot event dream about, nor can you, nor can anybody else. What I am skeptical about is the idea that whatever wonderful revelation does come in the science of the future, it will turn out to be one of the particular historical religions that people happen to have dreamed up. When we started out and we were talking about the origins of the universe and the physical constans, I provide what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to me to be a worthy idea. Refutable--but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don't see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur. They strike me as parochial. If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

Dawkins almost seems to come around by the end. In fact he points to the God of the Bible (Amanda pointed to 1 Cor 13:9-10, and Ohil 4:7 among others). Did you notice his one snafu? Oh, yeah, I did put it in bold.

If God is so big and incomprehensible than it would be impossible for us to know Him. That's a reasonable statement and for Dawkins a very intellectually honest statement. But he makes a mistake.

He seems then to make a leap of faith that it would be impossible for God to know us. Romans 3:11 says that it is impossible for us to know God (Dawkins agrees). The fact that we know God is due to our being equipped with a brain, given a faith and a Word from Him that we can understand.

Dawkins says in one breath that God is beyond our understanding if he exists then in the next breath he insinuates that God either is too big to understand us or care about us. First, if God exists then He is the uncreated Creator of us all. Would He create us and then not be able to know us or be interested in knowing us? Would He have been here a cosmic blip on the radar screen ago to plant life here and then walk away like a deadbeat Dad? I don't think either would be a logical conclusion. In fact, I think it's logical that God would be incapable of not knowing us

Christianity is the only religion where God does all the work. Scripture says that, nature says that, and our eyes confirm that. Looking outside at the beauty of the natural world whose creation we had nothing to do with, I go from 109 to 110% certainty in my faith.