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 The God Delusion :: 0618680004
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| Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Rottweiler" for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky). Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes. He critiques God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. In so doing, he makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just irrational, but potentially deadly. Dawkins has fashioned an impassioned, rigorous rebuttal to religion, to be embraced by anyone who sputters at the inconsistencies and cruelties that riddle the Bible, bristles at the inanity of "intelligent design," or agonizes over fundamentalism in the Middle East—or Middle America. Editorial Descriptions are usually submitted by the manufacturers, publishers and authors. Contact us if you are one of them, and wish to change the above description. |
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Author: Guest
Just read this book and decide. Richard Dawkins sheds some light on some very complex ideas. Reading "The God Delusion" is more enlightening and lucid than reading the prose in the Holy Bible especially the King James Version with its difficult to understand 1611 English. The updated translations (NIV, NRSV, ESV, etc.) of the Bible are easier to read but still have bizzare stories and lots of verses that contradict one another. Christian friends of mine have explained these logical contradictions in the Bible. Unfortunately, their explanations of the contradictions are vastly more confusing than the logical contradictions themselves (at least to me, anyway).
I am happy that the media in my country (USA) is promoting (or at least mentioning) books such as "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris, and "Breaking the Spell" by Daniel Dennett. We need an open and honest national (or world) discussion about religion and atheism.
By the way, a good Christian friend of mine from China read "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris(less than 100 pages). He is still a Christian and can't give up God; however, he is more understanding and tolerant of atheism. This Christian even complimented Harris on how clearly he conveys his points in his writing.
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Author: Guest
Critics of Richard Dawkins' new book The God Delusion ultimately characterize his work as both angry and vitriolic, or more tamely, polemic. These are unhelpful descriptions as each fails to ask the question whether Dawkins has something to be angry, vitriolic or polemic about. Too many cultural commentators want to engender what they claim to be a thought process, but is in all actuality a feeling, that we should find a middle road between the mandates of science and the insights of spirituality. The bargain such people strike to make has value, but only where we can manage to clearly differentiate between those areas of life which science can and has spoken to, and those where it has not.
A number of reviewers from prestigious newspapers, periodicals and journals have already commented on what they see as the merits and missteps of Dawkins' book; however, many of them have not wrestled with several of the critical insights in his work. To resort to the ambiguous but doubtlessly effective (at least as measured by persuading people not to be bothered with Dawkins) charge that his analysis is angry, is to be unwilling to meet Dawkins on the grounds of his arguments. It should be said that, in the interests of fairness, Dawkins is surprisingly willing not to resort to similar vagaries. While a portion of his book does deal with fundamentalism and its various confused pulpiteers such as Dobson, Falwell and their ilk, this is only a small section of his book. That he is willing to bear the responsibility for pointing out what these people actually believe, their hopes for reshaping American culture, and how their beliefs impact hard science should not mean that we relegate Dawkins to the same heap of exasperation we do fundamentalists.
Perhaps it is the biologist within Dawkins that leads him to believe a parallel exists between biological cancer and similarly suspicious malignant ideological growths. While many of us wish to overlook fundamentalists with the hope they will simply go away, Dawkins fears this might not only be naïve, but irresponsible. History is full of moments when society has regressed, labeling dissent the path to eternal damnation instead of earthly wisdom. While it might be that the inherent practical nature of the American people will be offended by the objectives of religious fundamentalism, rebel and find our historical balance, we easily forget that this balance is many times found only because of the clarion call from those who see the creeping influence and suspicious agendas of fundamentalists and require that we respond. A certain shame should be accorded to those who view with equal exasperation the fundamentalist and those who believe they can not be dismissed, but must be responded to.
As a scientist, Dawkins is privy to a particular question which contemporary culture largely believes remains unanswered, but science does not. This question is the hot-button issue of evolution. For many, belief in evolution is somehow inter-related with issues like abortion and homosexuality. No doubt, within the realm of ideological inquiry, we may successfully frame almost any issue in majestic terms that invoke non-quantitative words which have, at their core, the ability to project and then protect the idea that certain questions are unanswerable through rigorous scientific inquiry.
At its base, the question of evolution echoing in the head of the average person probably has less to do with science and more to do with the implications from scientific inquiry and theory in general. People's intuition subconsciously registers the threat that evolution presents; namely, that naturalism may be a task master no less demanding than certain religious systems. The idea that we may have only one opportunity to experience life adds a certain intensity within it which many currently avoid by pushing their hopes, aspirations and expectations (of themselves and others) into an afterlife. Additionally, among profound thoughts, few exceed the evolutionary realization that life on this planet is precious, inter-related, and that the environment must be viewed as a holistic organism within which we individually and collectively play an important role.
What scares Dawkins is probably the realization that for many people, the insights of evolutionary theory are believed to be inseparable from a descent into animalistic hedonism. Never mind that ideas like morality have equivalents in the animal kingdom, as do love, nurturing and protecting life. If one of the fundamental truths of the natural universe is Darwinism, we should share a certain amount of alarm with Dawkins that the implications to evolutionary science are being so poorly received. Man owes no duty to myth or to tradition, and finds progress only in those moments in time when verifiable truth is allowed to dictate how we engage reality. In this sense, Dawkins bears the vanguard of members of the natural sciences like Galileo who believed that any supposedly spiritual truth which could not bear the light of modernity was not worth protecting in the first place.
For those who wish to somehow tiptoe around the theory of evolution, Dawkins is perceived as hostile. To those who believe something important might actually be at stake by understanding where life comes from and how it develops, Dawkins is fighting for a solitary focus on what we know, not what we wish to believe is true. This latter point has not only important philosophical, scientific and theological outcomes, it has immense practical value by freeing the abused spouse or child to realize that what they wish to be true - that the abuser loves them, but is unaware of how to show it - is simply a prison from which they can only escape by separating what they wish was true from what can be verified as loving.
To his credit, Dawkins takes his scientific and philosophical critics seriously and responds assertively. Those who see his book as bracing are not being fair - if scientific inquiry is to mean anything it must not blanch at challenges which attempt and endlessly find some open hole through which they can see the shortcomings to a particular theory. Dawkins is never better than when defending the difference between science and theology, where one sees ignorance as limits to inquiry and knowledge versus the other as the gap only a creator god can fill. In a successful effort to be intellectually serious, Dawkins carefully uses examples of fundamentalists within hard science. This is probably because they are a rare species (perhaps his critics wish his biologist's sense of the need to protect endangered life was more acutely directed towards them), but more likely because he knows well they can create straw men which he does not appreciate being used on him. Dawkins' treatment of the classical arguments for intelligent design, Anselm and Aquinas' postulates for the proof of God are treated similarly respectfully, which is not to say they fare well in his hands.
It would surprise me if this book did more than add fuel to the fire; however, if we wish to employ a literary euphemism such as this, it would be appropriate to state that sometimes fire is nature's way of regulating itself (as the blow-down effect in the northern woods suggests). If so, the fire Dawkins is building may be an important part of our growth in consciousness. People who look to Dawkins with a critical eye towards what he suggests about internal spirituality should be careful as this was not the primary, or even secondary, thrust of his analysis. The purpose of this book was to deal with a particular set of concerns which Dawkins believes represents a bulwark to the progress of humanity. In a hat-tip to this inevitable criticism, towards the end of his book Dawkins does present a middle way which suggests a vehicle for transitioning between where most humanity is and the implications of evolutionary biology. While well-intentioned and certainly not without its merits, I much prefer writers who consider evolution's insights fixed and have moved on to wrestle with how we reshape religion into conscious personal enlightenment.
To be a spry debater is not to be mean. Many who mistake Dawkins' assertive and direct style for vitriol do so less because they believe his attitude prevents civil discourse, and more in the hopes that society can advance without calling ineptness for its inadequacies, and confusing current limits of human knowledge with the inevitability of supernatural explanations. At his base, Dawkins does not feel compelled to believe without proof, an attitude which some believe has value only within the sciences. Among the many insights to this book, perhaps the one which will stick with most is the simple realization that we have no need of beliefs which can not be tested or of ideas which give solace but wither under scrutiny. What we may hope for should not be what we believe, lest we give in to any number of delusions, only one of which is, as Dawkins describes, The God Delusion.
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Author: Guest
This is a mildly entertaining and informative read. The book has been extremely controversial, mainly due to the title and the semi-divine status bestowed upon Richard Dawkins by the atheistic community. What is most interesting about the contents of this book (amply described in other reviews), is that Dawkins himself has almost nothing original to add to the science-religion debate. What are found in this book are re-hashed arguments that anyone with an interest in theology or philosophy will know well enough. How is it that someone like Dawkins comes to be known as one of the greatest thinkers of our time? I'm afraid that after reading The God Delusion I have no answer to this question.
Dawkins makes a fundamental error in his entire analysis of religion and its implication in the problems experienced in the world. Since evil and the spiritual longing and expression exist side-by-side within most humans and societies, Dawkins assumes that one causes the other. A little knowledge of probability theory and statistics would be of immense benefit to Dawkins.
However, I think religious people of all persuasions should read this book. If this is the best shot that can be taken at religion, then believers of all faiths have nothing to fear. And the informed religious reader will get a chance to compare the thinking of the great spiritual leaders who have imbued people's lives with love, meaning and structure with one of the cold, withered and egotistical minds of one of our would-be secular gods.
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Author: Guest
A superb book. The cretins below who attack Dawkins for being fundementally intolerent of religion miss the point. As was writen wonderfully elsewhere:
I think it would take just a single change to world culture: the end of knee-jerk deference to religion. That would mean:
No more looking the other way when myth is presented as equal or superior to fact
No more looking the other way when parents and communities brainwash their young with reality-distorting dogma
No more tongue-biting when religion leads to holy wars, terrorism, serial child abuse, and bigotry
No more governmental assistance in marketing religion, be it "In God We Trust" on the currency, oaths sworn on bibles, letting theocrats alter the Pledge of Allegiance, or tax breaks for churches and temples.
That is what we, Atheists, ask. If the above were implemented - if religion were scrutinized as it should be, if it were forced to survive on its own merits - it would crumble up and die and for good reason. Because it is a fraud, and a poison, and not sustainable on its own merits.
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Author: Guest
Richard Dawkins refuses to don kid gloves in his discussion of gods and religions in "The God Delusion" and for that he has been castigated by some critics. Yet, Dawkins' polemic is a much-needed addition to the honest discussion of the negative aspects of religious belief. At a time when such beliefs are used as the pretext for the commission of terrible atrocities and the attempted deconstruction of the rational edifice of science and technology that holds so much promise for humankind, such discussion is critical to the future of human societies.
Dawkins is a brilliant writer and, with the death of Carl Sagan 10 years ago, has moved to the forefront of advocates for science and reason. He is, perhaps, the world's best-known atheist. In "The God Delusion," Dawkins offers a devastating critique of the pretensions of religion. Those who see any honest discussion of religion as an attack on faith only reveal the weakness of their own position. We desparately need an honest conversation about religions and their role in human cultures. We can't have one as long as the religious insist on donning a mantle of self-righteous indignation whenever the subject is broached.
This book is not about a war between science and religion. It is about a war between reason and superstition. Dawkins makes a clear case for reason and offers no apology for attacking some of humankind's most cherished superstitions.
And after all, why should he?
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