Richard Dawkins is releasing an atheist children’s book

by Paul Price

Richard Dawkins is making the news again: he has unveiled his plans to publish another book aimed at promoting atheism to children (he has done this before with The Magic of Reality). Descriptions of this book are bizarre, underscoring the puerile, petty and intentionally blasphemous nature of its contents; it is said to include gory depictions of biblical sacrifices and even of Jesus committing a murder!¹ To anyone remotely educated on the Bible, the question of why Dawkins would even think of depicting the sinless Savior of humanity committing murder (beyond the obvious aforementioned desire to commit blasphemy) is a real head-scratcher.

This new effort comes across as more than a little hypocritical coming from a man who has gone on record many times railing against the ‘indoctrination’ of children by their religious parents! Apparently anti-religious indoctrination is perfectly fine, showing the double standard for what it is. Dawkins claims his book is not about indoctrinating children, but rather it is about ‘freeing’ them from religion. What could the distinction possibly be, though? How is it ‘freeing’ a child to expose them to intentionally offensive, blasphemous imagery?

Dawkins’s book shows us that the battle for ideas is waged first and foremost with our children. Proverbs teaches us, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (22:6). It would seem that atheistic dysangelists (Greek for “bad messengers”) are keen to try on this bit of wisdom for themselves in pushing their atheism directly to children.

This book raises another rather odd question: why would an atheist bother wasting time writing a book for children about the fact that there is no god in the first place? If Dawkins really disbelieves in God, why bother spending large quantities of time attempting to proselytize people with his insight that God is not real? Would this not be comparable to someone writing a children’s book about how Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not real? If I recall correctly, Dawkins himself has compared belief in God to belief in Santa Claus², yet as of now there do not appear to be any plans in the works for Dawkins to take up the topic of Santa Claus in a children’s book. Why not? I suggest the real reason is that Dawkins is not angry at Santa Claus—he is angry at the one true God, and is venting that anger in every way he can think of.

Naturally, no book on selling atheism would be complete without a section on evolution, emphasizing once again the fact that evolution is the cornerstone of modern atheism—and showing us how vitally important creation apologetics really is in equipping the church to fight back against the secular propaganda. One of the primary roles that we fill here at CMI is producing resources which equip families to be ready for evolutionary onslaughts and strengthen the faith of Christians around the globe. We have many such resources available at the children’s section of our webstore.

To highlight just two examples: the Exploring series with Mr. Hibb (one book on geology, one on dinosaurs) is extremely helpful in introducing a creationary understanding of these topics to children ranging from around 10 to 15 years of age; for teens and families we also offer A Question of Origins by Shelby McFarlane.

Jesus said, “but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). Warnings like this should make us all shudder when we think of the eventual fate of people who intentionally try to separate children from their Father in heaven, but at the same time we should be motivated to redouble our efforts at protecting them as the fight for worldviews continues to intensify in our time.

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