What distinguishes Thomas Crean's A Catholic Replies to Professor Dawkins from other responses to Richard Dawkins’The God Delusion (2006), such as Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion (2007) and John Cornwell's Darwin's Angel (2007), is immediately apparent in the title. Thomas Crean is a Catholic, a Dominican friar, and a priest. The title also betrays the author's intention to write a book of classical apologetics in the mode of such eminent Catholics as John Henry Newman, Herbert Thurston, and Ronald Knox. One can expect, therefore, a book that is neither dense nor technical in argument or prose style, full of wit and humour, yet refreshingly fair, courteous, and even-handed. Crean has no wish to expose Dawkins as an unscientific biologist or as a fundamentalist atheist but to prove that Dawkins is wrong about Christianity. His book is primarily a defence of theism and only secondarily a defence of Catholicism. While he argues from a Catholic point of view using Catholic theologians throughout his book, it is only the penultimate chapter that Crean specifically devotes to defending Catholicism from Dawkins’ attacks.

Crean begins his apologia by going straight to the heart of the matter, examining Richard Dawkins’ argument against belief in God. Simply stated, Dawkins argues that God is too complex a being to have created the universe. A complex being must have evolved from some more simple being and that simple being cannot be God. Because something or someone preceded this complex being, then that complex being could not have created everything, i.e. the universe. Dawkins seems to be rather clever in coming up with this argument, for it essentially turns the argument from design on its head: if a complex universe can only be explained by appealing to an intelligent designer, Dawkins asks who created the intelligent designer? The flaw in Dawkins’ argument is that Christians do not believe God to be a complex being but an utterly simple one. Even the Neo-Platonic tradition held that the many evolved from the One. When the present reviewer raised this point in an audience with Professor Dawkins, his question was dismissed as quibbling over words. Clearly Dawkins has no taste for metaphysics. Yet if Dawkins was not speaking metaphysically about simple and complex beings, then what did he mean by it? Surely he did not mean it in a purely biological sense?

Crean's response to Dawkins is to show that God really is simple. He argues by analogy that even though the idea of a cathedral may be simple, the actual, physical cathedral is not. But God is not exactly commensurate with an idea; rather, it is the architect who is. Although mostly he keeps the argument on the level of common sense, Crean fumbles when considering the objection that ‘the architect himself is more complex than the cathedral, even if his idea is not’ (p. 16). He makes the mistake of bringing in angels to prove his point, which has the effect of steering the argument in a distinctly theological direction. His argument is that even if a human being is complex because of the interaction of mind and body, an angel is not, since it has no body; therefore a designer without a body need not be complex. While this argument works on analogy, it is not an exact comparison since angels too are complex and only God is utterly simple. Crean's response to Dawkins is incoherent for the same reasons that Dawkins’ argument is incoherent — both are guilty of mixing sciences. Whereas Dawkins turns metaphysics into biology, Crean turns philosophy of religion into theology. If this were the only such instance it might be overlooked, but Crean brings up angels again a few pages later (p. 20).

As a Dominican formed in the Thomist theological tradition, Crean is on considerably more comfortable ground in his second chapter, ‘Professor Dawkins and St Thomas Aquinas’, much of which is concerned with an examination of the first and fifth of St Thomas’ Five Ways. Dawkins is not here objecting to the existence of a first cause, but to the identity of that first cause with God. While Crean does answer the objection, he spends more time explaining the first cause than answering Dawkins. Concerning St Thomas’ fifth way, Crean show that Dawkins has misunderstood it as an argument from design, which he (Dawkins) assumes to have been proved false by Darwinian evolution. The fifth way, Crean argues, ‘doesn't depend on an order that might be claimed to have arisen from different beings struggling for survival. It depends on an order that is prior to any such interaction between beings; the ordering of any agent, animate or inanimate, to its own natural activity’ (p. 46).

Some of Dawkins’ objections to theism really are pathetic and Crean has no trouble disposing of them, such as when Dawkins attempts to show that God could not be both omnipotent and omniscient. This is too much like the philosophy of religion question ‘could God create such a large stone that he could not move it’. This is perhaps one of the instances when he takes Dawkins too seriously, but this does not prevent Crean from exercising his dry sense of humour. For example, after a puzzling quotation from Dawkins listing various divine and human attributes Crean asks, ‘Why is goodness not a human quality when the power to read other people's innermost thoughts apparently is? Surely this cannot be a reflection of Oxford academic life?’ (p. 41). Another example of his sense of humour, that could be rather offensive to some readers, though not, he assumes, to his Catholic readers, is his footnote to the statement, in the context of Dawkins’ discussion of the moral education of children, that ‘it is probably harder to convince children than adults of something patently false’ (p. 110). The footnote in question reads: ‘For example, that two people of the same sex can marry each other.’

Crean's third chapter, ‘Professor Dawkins and Miracles’, instead of discussing subjects more typical of the philosophy of religion, is almost wholly taken up with a discussion of the miracle of Fatima. While the miracle in question is very interesting, it is difficult to see how it is to the point, let alone that it proves the existence of God. How could the event be taken as evidence that God exists when Catholics are not even obliged to believe that it happened? In effect, Crean himself answers this objection when he strongly affirms the role of free will in belief, arguing that nothing can force one to believe. The fourth and longest chapter of Crean's book adequately defends the reliability of the manuscript tradition of the Gospels, argues for the apostolicity of the Gospels, the reliability of the Evangelists, the truth of the Resurrection, and the reliability, more specifically, of the Infancy Narratives. In this connection Crean very deftly explains John 7:41–42, which, contra Dawkins, is certainly not a denial of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem (pp. 78–79). Most importantly, Crean argues that Jesus really is who he says he is, namely God, which Dawkins denies; it is not only the Fourth Gospel that shows Jesus to be, or claiming to be God, but the Synoptics too (p. 91).

Crean shows himself at his logical best in chapters five and six on the origins of morality and religion. In one of his rare biological moments Dawkins illustrates altruistic behaviour in animals. Crean asks ‘what foundation do they lay for morality? Precisely none’ (p. 98). While this is true, such illustrations, nonetheless, show that morality is firmly embedded in the natural order, an interesting argument in this direction being Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness (Oxford, 2003). To give another example of Crean's logic, he writes, ‘Let me repeat at this point that even if Professor Dawkins’ attempts to show that religious belief could emerge as the misfiring of otherwise useful traits were successful, religious believers need not be bothered in the slightest. To show that a belief could emerge in some non-rational way is not to show that it must do so. It is not to show that it could not also emerge in perfectly rational ways’ (p. 113). Indeed, Dawkins would probably agree, though objecting that Christianity is not one such rational way.

One of the dangers into which apologetics is apt to fall, is that of misrepresenting one's own tradition, since in refuting the opposition one often takes a rather strict, narrow stance. Crean does this occasionally in his apologia, but nowhere more obviously than in stating that ‘without duty, there is no morality’ (p. 101), for such a statement flies in the face of virtue ethics, which is favoured by many Dominicans and, not least, by the eminent moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. Again, when he denies Dawkins’ account of the natural origins of religion, he ignores the fact that many Catholic theologians have written extensively on natural or cosmic religion and how it prepares the way for and is fulfilled in Christianity. This is especially evident in his penultimate chapter defending Catholicism, for he leaves no place at all for doubt in matters of faith.

A Catholic Replies to Professor Dawkins is an enjoyable and well-written book. While it is surely being read by many Catholics and others interested in the relationship between science and religion, it might even be read by Professor Dawkins who admits to reading the work of his opponents and even to watching the gross misrepresentations of his thought available on YouTube. The book would have benefited by having more extensive footnotes citing the sources of quotations and other information, and by having a bibliography suggesting further reading. The response of Thomas Crean and others will hopefully show the world, and Professor Dawkins, that sloppy scholarship does not prove anything, let alone that God is a delusion.