In a November 2006 interview with Time Magazine, Dawkins gets it so miserably wrong;

TIME [Magazine]: Professor Dawkins, if one truly understands science, is God then a delusion, as your book title suggests?

DAWKINS: The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1553986-2,00.html

In depth discussions of epistemology aside, I believe Dawkins is making a category error which results in a conclusion that does not logically follow from the premise. You see science, which is limited to observations of interactions within the “natural” world, is being used to come to the conclusion that a “supernatural” creator does not exist. Or put another way, if it turns out that science doesn’t have the tools to “test” for the existence of supernatural things, then it stands to reason that it cannot be used to come to the conclusion that a supernatural creator does not exist. I think that’s fairly straight-forward.

Thinking that science (defined as it is within a materialistic framework) can be used to make such conclusions on questions like this, is like concluding that chickens have no weight because the thermometer we used to investigate this question failed to provide any answers. Science can only deal with physical things governed by physical laws. So by very definition then, science cannot directly address the question of whether non-physical things, like God, exist or not. Such a question is outside its capabilities.

But there is another point to be made here concerning the use of reason and logic. Reason and logic, it turns out, are tools that science depends upon, yet they are not physical things that science can test. To illustrate, what scientific experiment could you do to verify reason? Can you put it in a test tube and watch what happens when it’s heated? Can you measure its diameter or weight, or check it’s reaction to various external stimuli? No of course not. Instead science must assume the presence of immaterial things such as reason and logic to be able to make a scientific case for anything! They must therefore rely on the presence of the immaterial to make sense of the material. But that’s not all folks! Not only must atheists like Dawkins assume that reason and logic exist to be able to do the science that he thinks disproves the existence of God, but he must also assume that his own mind (another non-physical entity) can make accurate assessments pertaining to these non-physical things, which if anything, implies the existence of God, rather than evidence against. No amount of high-tech lab equipment can take a sample of reason or a few milligrams of logic, put it under the microscope and test its properties. These are things that only a mind can grasp and put to use, because minds, like thoughts, reason and logic, are not physical things. In other words they’re real, but not physical.

So if reason and logic and the mind are immaterial things that we know exist, even though we know science cannot possibly test them, then is it at all correct for Dawkins to claim that the answer to the question, “Does God Exist?” is a scientific one to which the “answer is no”? Absolutely not! This is a category error. It’s like trying to weigh a chicken with a thermometer. Science can teach us some pretty awesome things about the universe that God created (and to a certain point, about God Himself), but science alone can never disprove God. It’s not a scientific question.

In conjunction with the Global Atheist Conference which concluded yesterday, Australia’s national broadcasting station, the ABC, invited Professor Richard Dawkins onto to it’s program of panelists, Q and A. The topic to be discussed was, none too coincidentally, “God, Science and Sanity”. And given the makeup of the panel on last Monday night (8 March 2010), it comes as no surprise that Prof. Dawkins stole the show.

For those of you unaware – of which I assume this is the vast majority of you – the Q and A program pits pollies, professionals and “pundits” up against each other while passing the questioning over to the audience, whether to a member in the studio or to someone watching at home who participates via the program’s website. The idea is quite simple: grab a hodge-podge of celebrities, specialists and politicians, throw them in the same room, given them a topic and then let the public “have at it”.

And “have at it” was the operative word last Monday; but not against Prof. Dawkins – that was one parrot that wasn’t going to get knocked off his perch. But the other panelists, namely those who identify as theists, sure did get a hammering.

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On September 12, 2009, The Wall Street Journal published two responses to the question “Where does evolution leave God?”.^[1] On September 21, The Australian republished this discussion framing it as a debate on their front page. As it turns out this was a misnomer. Rather than a debate, it was nothing more than two independent responses by Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong, both of whom already believe that evolution is virtually ipso facto.

In fact neither Dawkins or Armstrong appear to have been given the opportunity to respond to their opponents’ opening remarks - not that it would have been necessary though, as Armstrong spends half her time agreeing with Dawkins anyway.

The article begins, “We commissioned Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins to respond independently to the question “Where does evolution leave God?” Neither knew what the other would say. Here are the results.”

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Jonathan Sarfati’s response to Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth is quite adequately titled The Greatest Hoax on Earth.

Note, this is not a book review as I haven’t even yet had the privilege of holding it my hands, let alone read any of it. But having read many of the articles and books that Dr. Sarfati produces, knowing also that he has a high authority for scripture, and having seen/heard him debate and speak in person on several occasions, I can hardly think of a person I’d rather read in response to Dawkins.

From CMI’s store-page advertisement:

Richard Dawkins, the undisputed high priest of evolution/atheism, says his book The Greatest Show on Earth: the evidence for evolution is the first time he has presented all the evidence for evolution/long ages. It is promoted as an unanswerable demolition of creation. Scientist, logician, chessmaster and author of the world’s biggest-selling creationist book, CMI’s Dr Jonathan Sarfati, relentlessly demolishes Dawkin’s claims point-by-point, showing biblical creation makes more sense of the evidence.

The introductory chapter of the book is available to read for free online.

The book is only AU$20 for single orders. But if you can spare it I’d recommend you fork out the extra 20 bucks and get two additional recent DVD presentations by Dr. Sarfati as well: Evolution and the Holocaust and Leaving Your Brains at the Church Door