Plantinga (almost) on Dawkins

Perhaps while milling around the blogosphere (though it’s less of a sphere and more of jungle these days) you read Alvin Plantinga’s review of Richard’s Dawkins’ less-than-impressive-even-by-atheist-standards The God Delusion on one of any number of blogs. But try looking for it again and you find it is conspicuously absent (and if it’s not, it should be). Apparently, it was posted without Plantinga’s permission. Word is, he did not intend it for public eyes just yet, and has planned to publish it in a forthcoming edition of Books & Culture (why would one expect Plantinga to deign to publish himself on the internet anyway?). In the meantime, here’s a teaser that showcases Plantinga in all his rhetorical glory….

One needn’t look to this book for evenhanded and thoughtful commentary. In fact the proportion of insult, ridicule, mockery, spleen and vitriol is astounding (could it be that his mother, while carrying him, was frightened by an Anglican clergyman on the rampage?). If Dawkins ever gets tired of his day job, a promising future awaits him as a writer of political attack ads.

Now despite the fact that this book is mainly philosophy, Dawkins is not a philosopher (he’s a biologist). Even taking this into account, however, much of the philosophy he purveys is at best jejune. You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside) many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class.