For the avoidance of doubt:- Dawkins in his own words from Wiki:
Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". He was confirmed, and embraced Christianity until his mid-teens, at which point he concluded that the theory of evolution was a better explanation for life's complexity, and ceased believing in a god.
Dawkins states: "the main residual reason why I was religious was from being so impressed with the complexity of life and feeling that it had to have a designer, and I think it was when I realised that Darwinism was a far superior explanation that pulled the rug out from under the argument of design. And that left me with nothing."
There, but for the grace of God, go I IMO is the appropriate phrase.
So - Dawkins is a believer; he believes that Darwinism is a far superior explanation ..... Can someone please explain to me how Darwinian Natural Selection (demonstrated and accepted) ........ thinks ..... no, I'm not even going there; enough creation/evolution threads elsewhere.
All I can say is that up to mid/late teens I had exactly the same experience as RD (except I was in CofS). What put me off church was the fact that in my perception, the women went along to show off their hats and the men to show off their cars; during my first 17 years I never saw any manifestation of what I would call "real Christianity".
I was too young, self - assured and arrogant to have noticed that, without a single evangelistic word being spoken, my own mother was showing it every single day by her patience, life and example. And her support and encouragement to each of us to find our places in life.
I had to do the research to deliver the 'eulogy' at her funeral last year and this brought home just exactly how totally 'Christian' her life had been, despite being totally disabled and rendered speechless by a series of CVAs over several years. Her smile was highly esteemed throughout the Nursing Home.
My big question as a teenager was: what is life?
I still don't know the answer, but I did get an answer to the question of what the absence of life is; my star pupil in my gap-year overseas volunteer year was murdered during an after-school football match. Stabbed to death in an instant with a flick-knife through his heart.
In the country where I was, it was customary to use a glass-topped coffin, at least for significant people. The whole school attended the funeral service and we all had to file past the coffin; there was no escape.
As I passed it I tried to relate the prematurely lifeless upturned chocolate-coloured young face with the joy and enthusiasm of Douglas Hall as I had taught O-Level Physics and Maths classes (I have his photo still).
And a voice said to me very personally - was it from outside or within?:
There you are Mr Clever Scientist: you wanted to know what life is; now you know what a body without life is like. Are you satisfied now?
I'm not upset, but you can perhaps tell that I'm just a little bit cross with all this arguing, necessary though it may be.
I may not be much good at contending for the faith (my reticent Mum IMO was much better at that); but I have, I hope, given a partial and helpful account of the hope which is in me, whether this comes from an experience of God, or just as a random event occurring in a random collection of atomic particles at a random point in space-time.