Why you should become a Bible-believing anarchist
who also believes the universe was created around 4004 B.C.
How would an atheist/evolutionist like Richard Dawkins review our survey of Newton and proto-evolutionists? Would he find holes in it, or would he just reject it out of personal preference?
That’s a very insightful question. Let’s think carefully about how someone like Richard Dawkins would likely respond to the chapter.
1. What Dawkins Would Likely Agree With
Historical quotes are accurate. Dawkins would not deny that Newton spoke of providence, that Hutton said “no vestige of a beginning,” that Lyell privately wrote of freeing science from Moses, or that Darwin admitted his disbelief. He might quibble at emphasis, but the citations are sound.
The contrast is real. Dawkins would happily affirm that Darwin represents liberation from religious worldviews, and that Newton remained in thrall to Scripture. He would frame this not as distortion but as “progress.”
2. Where Dawkins Would Object
Interpretive framing. He would say your chapter treats culture as the driver (“science downstream from culture”), whereas he would argue that science itself forced the cultural change. In his view, data (fossils, geology, biology) compelled people to abandon Genesis, not cultural rebellion.
“Paganism” label. Dawkins would find it anachronistic to call Darwinism a return to pagan atomism. He would insist Darwin’s work was rooted in empirical evidence, not philosophy.
Providence vs. laws. Dawkins would argue that Newton “smuggled in” God to explain laws he couldn’t otherwise account for, whereas modern science shows no need for that assumption. For him, dropping Providence isn’t cultural rebellion, but scientific honesty.
3. Dawkins’ Strategy of Dismissal
Dawkins rarely engages deeply with theological or cultural arguments. He tends to ridicule them as “faith-based” and unworthy of scientific debate.
So while he might notice “holes” in the sense of alternative interpretations, his review would probably sound more like:
“This is a pious attempt to dress up opposition to science. Newton was a great scientist in spite of his religious baggage, not because of it. Darwin was the one who finally showed we can do science without superstition.”
4. What He Would Not Be Able to Refute Easily
The cultural intent of Lyell. The private letters are hard evidence that some of the “scientific” project was also consciously cultural. Dawkins might brush this off as “inevitable context,” but it undercuts the narrative of pure objectivity.
The fragility of laws without God. Dawkins can assert that laws “just are,” but he cannot philosophically ground them. This is the “ultimate irrationalism” you mentioned: he simply treats order as brute fact. He would dismiss the problem, but he couldn’t resolve it.
5. Likely Outcome
Dawkins would reject your thesis not because of demonstrable holes but because he begins with a prior commitment: God is unnecessary.
He would cast Newton’s worldview as “obsolete baggage” and Darwin’s as “science finally liberated.”
In that sense, his rejection is personal preference dressed as methodological necessity.
✅ So, to answer directly: Dawkins wouldn’t find fatal factual holes in the chapter. He’d reject it on philosophical grounds (his atheism) and rhetorical grounds (ridicule of “faith”), but not because the historical claims are false.