The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.54 You Save: $9.41 (59%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.54 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The God Delusion
Book Review: For Reason and Science
Summary: 4 Stars
"Could we, by training and practice, emancipate ourselves from Middle World, tear off our black burka, and achieve some sort of intuitive - as well as just mathematical - understanding of the very small, the very large, and the very fast? I genuinely don't know the answer, but I am thrilled to be alive at a time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are not limits."
Richard Dawkins is a British scientist, world widely known for being an atheist and fighting for atheists' rights. He is also an acclaimed biologist and evolutionist (although I think both are utterly connected), emeritus professor at University of Oxford's New College, where he was Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 to 2008. Most of his published books are in defense of science, reason and humanism and, therefore, he is also the founder of The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.
I always thought of Richard Dawkins as a militant atheist (and I still do, in fact), though I agree that his arguments in favor of reason and science are legitimate and certainly well-thought and developed (I still think you don't really have to think much to trust science, anyway). In this book, he criticizes and supports the inexistence of God, described in most Holy Books of modern religions. But the main purpose of his work is to put down supernatural faith in every sense. He divided his book in ten chapters - probably to make an analogy to the biblical Ten Commandments - and, in each of them, he treats an issue of the existence, inexistence and need of God and religion (and he does it pretty well).
If you are a believer, this book won't change your mind. In fact, this book probably won't even touch your faith - or shouldn't, anyway -, whatever is your creed. This book will, of course, show an atheist (and a very well-knowledge one) view on life, the universe and everything else. Pretty interesting, uh?
I admit I am no atheist myself, though I tend to act like one sometimes. I am mostly agnostic, or whatever you call someone who doesn't give a damn about if there's a God or not (or at least I try not to give a damn about) and I find it much better to have this behavior. One of the reasons I consider Dawkins a militant atheist is that he is always trying to preach atheism the same way priests and pastors preach gospel - in fact, some people told me this book would change my mind on Dawkins militancy, but it didn't. I find it much easier to live a life not caring if other people think they have an imaginary friend (or if there's actually one) or if they don't and think that's just paranoia. And he kind of criticizes agnostics for not giving a damn, I agree with him in a few topics, such as how religion has destroyed - and still is - mankind and hidden its potential for scientific development - you know, I'm very fond of science myself.
Dawkins uses biblical controversies provocatively to make you think - or even better, reason - about if there's an all-powerful God which is both evil and good and shows that the same argument used for the existence of a supernatural being may be very well confused with psychiatrically studied patterns of mind. He even sometimes laughs - and it is pretty laughable, if you want my opinion on this matter - at some creeds still held by people who think religion holds all truth there is, such as Adam & Eva, Earth's 12.000 years, the world-wide flood and some other things many people take as absolute and irrefutable truth.
Dawkins uses some really good and solid arguments pro-science and against religion - and I do agree with most, if not all, of them -, though he's a very lousy reality checker. I mean, he is good at describing and perhaps philosophizing a world with no religion at all. Reality isn't free of religion. In fact, society still holds a very and powerful tie with supernatural beings and powers. It is an unarguably fact. Dawkins seems to avoid this and offers no solution; he's just criticizing religion, powering up science and imagining what the world would be if people abandoned their beliefs. The fact is: it is not going to happen soon. We have to deal with religion and unfortunately this is the way it's going to work for the next *many* years. I'm not saying we, nonbelievers, should just sit down and watch the world burn with unreasoned faith, but we should at least respect if we want to be respected. Most of world still believes and we are a minority. If we wish to be respected, we must respect. It's pretty much what democracy holds itself.
Anyway, this book is a great read. I recommend it for religious or non-religious people who wish to have a quite unique view on Dawkins' view of believing. Just don't go out and tell him or every atheist to burn in hell because you don't agree with their views. Perhaps this book will even help you to understand what atheism is.
80/100
Book Review: Poorly reasoned
Summary: 2 Stars
I give this book two stars for polemical flourish and clear writing style. Dawkins turns a nice phrase and his verbal barbs are sharp. But his reasoning is at times sloppy, which shouldn't be the case in a book that aims to persuade. Indeed, at the outset Dawkins writes that he hopes readers will be atheists by the time they put his book down. Now Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, and when he talks about the mechanics of evolutionary biology he makes sense (although, as will be mentioned below, his philosophical premises for interpreting the scientific findings is fatally flawed). It's when Dawkins strays from his area of expertise and wanders into the neighborhood of theology and religion that he loses credibility. Dawkins, either through ignorance or pusillanimity, refuses to engage religious intellectual heavyweights in The God Delusion. Instead he "engages" religious straw men (or "straw persons" as Dawkins would prefer, as he explains in a rambling digression into the "consciousness raising" qualities of gender-neutral language).
Dawkins argues that religion is irrational and intellectually stifling. And of course there are plenty of references to and quotes from Pat Robertson, fundamentalists, new earth creationists, and their ilk in support of Dawkins's conclusion that religion is an "infection" of the minds of the masses, from whose ranks "brights" like the elitist Dawkins have managed to wrest themselves. If your only exposure to the religious is an encounter with Dawkins's religion-infected simpletons and sociopaths, then you might conclude that religion is indeed a blight and agree with him that it's "child abuse" to indoctrinate children with it. Suffice it to say, Dawkins handily makes these folks and their arguments look absurd; but that's like playing poker with children. But to suggest that the presence of putzes in the pews invalidates religion - specifically Christianity - is a fallacy. And to suggest that Dawkins's straw men (e.g., Paley, Anselm, etc.) represent all that Christianity has to offer in defense of God's existence is just plain disingenuous.
I wish Dawkins had seriously taken on Christian luminaries like St Thomas Aquinas, who, using Aristotelian metaphysics (with its appreciation of final causes), proved that God necessarily exists and that belief in Him is thus imminently rational. Dawkins, alas, gives exceedingly short shrift to Aquinas in The God Delusion. In his new book The Last Superstition: A Rebuttal of the New Atheism, philosopher Edward Feser doesn't. He explains how Aristotelian metaphysical arguments - as developed by Scholastics like Aquinas - prove God's existence in a way that requires none of the irrational faith that Dawkins ascribes to his derisively coined "faith heads." Feser goes on to eviscerate Dawkins's arguments with the precision of a surgeon and show that Dawkins doesn't even understand Aquinas's - much less defeat them. Now Feser's book (and Aquinas's Summa, for that matter) is not easy reading like Dawkins's breezy, blog-like The God Delusion. It's hard. But it's worth the effort. After reading The God Delusion and The Last Superstition in succession, Feser impressed me as the headmaster who grabs Dawkins by the scruff of his neck and beats him like a recalcitrant, particularly obtuse schoolboy.
If you haven't made up your mind on the critical issue of whether God exists, for God's sake, don't stop at Dawkins. Give a fair hearing to the best Christianity has to offer: Aquinas, whose arguments are made fairly accessible by, e.g., Feser. Then try C.S. Lewis's Miracles, followed by William Lane Craig's brilliant apologetic for the resurrection, The Son Rises. Round those out with Chesterton's The Everlasting Man and you have a case for God - and Christianity - that Dawkins and the other New Atheists can't tackle. And if you want to see where Dawkins's materialist philosophy leads, check out Lewis's The Abolition of Man. Finally, in response to Dawkins's assertion that religion has a generally pernicious influence on the world, I recommend Thomas Woods's How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.
*As an aside, I would have thought that a scientist's book would be a bit more dispassionate but Dawkins's isn't; it's pure polemics. This is obvious from the prose itself but when one listens to the unabridged audio version of this book, as I did, it becomes abundantly clear. Dawkins's wife, Lalla, is his hatchet man (or woman, as the case may be). She reads the quotes from religious folks, and her inflection and tone are insufferable. Picture her in the recording studio with some lackey holding up cue cards that say "sanctimonious as*," "credulous dullard," and "browbeating ideologue" to remind her which religious character to slip into for a particular quote and you get the idea. Everyone else, of course, is quoted respectfully. In this respect, the audio version is so ham-handed it's laughable.
Book Review: Parrot food for the unthinking masses
Summary: 1 Stars
Can you say dawk-dawk-dawKINS? That's the noise his disciples make as they uncritically parrot their hero. But, for those willing to exercise their brains, think independently and do just a little homework, it quickly becomes obvious that Dawkins' conversational skills are limited to slinging mud and constructing "straw man" arguments out of his opponents' positions in order to make them easier to refute. That's what losers of a debate do when they've been backed into a corner, and Dawkins plays the part perfectly. You've got to be pretty deep into Dawkins worship to miss that point but, fortunately, there are a few atheists out there who are intellectually honest enough to give this book only "average" reviews, admitting that it is far from being the best in its class. Not even close.
Dawkins is certainly no newcomer to the debate. In "The God Delusion," he presents himself as an "expert" not just on his own atheistic / evolutionist worldview, but on religion in general and Christianity in particular. However, Dawkins repeatedly gets his facts wrong when discussing the positions of those with whom he disagrees. How could this be? There are only two possibilities:
1) Dawkins misrepresents his opponents' position out of ignorance. Thus, he is a poor researcher, and not worthy of being taken seriously.
OR
2) Dawkins misrepresents his opponents' position intentionally. Thus, he is a liar, and not worthy of being taken seriously.
I don't believe Dawkins reached his level of prominence by being a poor researcher. Therefore, the only choice remaining is that his misrepresentation is intentional. To intentionally misrepresent things requires that one first know the truth, yet choose to ignore it in order to advance one's own agenda. That's called lying.
Why anyone would willingly follow a man who has been exposed as a deceiver is a mystery, but these reviews clearly show that there are a lot of people who will accept whatever they are told without checking the facts for themsleves.
But not everyone is as hypocritical as Dawkins: Witness this quote by the famous Harvard evolutionist Richard Lewontin, who openly admits what really drives the atheist / evolutionist worlview (capitalization and translations added for emphasis):
"We take the side of science IN SPITE OF the patent ABSURDITY of some of its constructs, IN SPITE OF its FAILURE to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, IN SPITE OF the tolerance of the scientific community for UNSUBSTANTIATED just-so stories, because WE HAVE A PRIOR COMMITMENT TO MATERIALISM [translation: not based on evidence, but on faith!] ... We are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, NO MATTER HOW COUNTER-INTUITIVE [translation: even if it's totally illogical!], no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an ABSOLUTE, for we CANNOT allow a Divine Foot in the door."
In other words, folks, leading atheist evolutionists - the ones you adore - don't CARE what the evidence shows ... they aren't interested in the facts, and they're hoping you won't ask any questions or hold them accountable for what they say. Indeed, their only desire is to cling to the belief that evolution is true and that there is no God, because the alternative ... no matter how strong the evidence ... is simply unacceptable! Let's hear it for Harvard! Quality stuff!
But at least Lewontin was honest enough to admit he was promoting something he knew has no basis in true science. I wish we could say as much for Dawkins. This book is nothing but a diatribe against that which Dawkins himself obviously knows to be true, but arrogantly refuses to admit. His straw man arguments had already been more than adequately refuted long before this book was written, and he knows it.
Not surprisingly, there is nothing original in these pages. But denying reality is Dawkins' means of making a living, so he releases this pile of regurgitated falsehoods. There is no truth here, only agenda. The only delusion evident in these pages is the idea that Dawkins and his book of foolish tirades are somehow scientific. Funny, but that seems to be the underlying theme of all his writing.
In the end, Dawkins is to science what Paris Hilton is to acting. Ultimately, he's only famous for being famous, and his book is merely his latest vehicle for what amounts to nothing more than incoherent and inaccurate ranting and raging against his opponents.
Dawkins remains in the public eye because it is not truth, but attention, that he seeks. And if he can sell a few million books to the ignorant masses, such as the ones who glorify him in their reviews ... well guess who's laughing all the way to the bank? It isn't his disciples!
Book Review: A Book for Every Thinking Person's "Must Read" List
Summary: 5 Stars
One will readily expect the perceptions and reviews of Richard Dawkins' THE GOD DELUSION to fall along what might euphemistically be called "party lines." Blue Staters, rationalists, and the college educated (especially in mathematics, engineering, the sciences, and technology) will find it thought-provoking and intellectually stimulating even if they disagree with the author's views. Red Staters, religious fundamentalists, and readers (if any) with less than a college education will be repulsed, likely to pit it against the Bible and regard Mr. Dawkins' as already marked for hellfire and eternal damnation. In the broad sweep that is religion, few minds will be changed, but was that really the author's objective? I think not.
Mr. Dawkins offers clues to his game plan fairly early on, arguing that atheists have no reason to be apologetic. He argues vigorously against the, "I'm an atheist, but..." position offered by many, treating it as an unnecessary concession to the forces of blind, irrational faith who would never reciprocate. Mr. Dawkins sets out as well to convince agnostics (among whom I've long considered myself) that their position is an unfounded hedge, hoping to convince them that outright atheism is the only logical conclusion to be drawn from so many arguments. His arguments are direct and persuasive, and I for one will confess to being swayed far closer to his position than previously.
THE GOD DELUSION is thorough in its approach and exceedingly well structured. Presenting his case like a lawyer in an extended closing argument, Dawkins moves from chapter to chapter setting up his opponents' many historical arguments for the existence of God and religion and then demolishing each of them by force of reason and scientific argument. He does this in a direct and highly readable, almost colloquial style, while injecting a sense of wry humor throughout that serves admirably to lighten the discussion. Dawkins demonstrates a remarkable scientific, philosophical, and even pop cultural range, with multiple references to the incomparable, much missed Douglas Adams. To my great surprise, he draws as well on theories from Lee Smolin (multiple universes emerging from black holes in a Darwinian, evolutionary style) and Julian Jaynes (theories of the origins of human consciousness in the bicameral mind), both of whose books I read some years ago and had thought long since forgotten by most. Equally enlightening for me were Dawkins extensive quotes from America's Founding Fathers, making it eminently clear (despite so many right wing conservative statements to the contrary) that the United States was not formed as a Christian state, nor that of any other religion. To the contrary, the Founding Fathers appear, by their own words, largely to have been atheists, or at least atheistic leaning agnostics.
Review readers should note that Dawkins does not simply confine himself to the question of existence of a higher being. He addresses issues of altruistic behavior and morality from an evolutionary perspective, debates the relative merits of religion over the course of human history, and presents (in Chapter 9) a devastating argument against the worldwide forced inculcation of children into religious belief by their parents. Quoting Victor Hugo at the opening of that chapter, "There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the clergyman." From my own life experience, seldom have truer words been spoken.
With well over a thousand reviews posted on Amazon alone, I see no reason to summarize the book's content or arguments. In fact, the only way to do real justice to the author's positions is to read it in its entirety - no summary can adequately convey Dawkins' step-by-step demolition of those who argue on behalf of God, faith, or religion. For those who have doubts in these areas and those who are left queasy over the clear and present danger religious fundamentalism poses to democratic American institutions and its role in international terrorism and the threat of broad scale war, THE GOD DELUSION is an excellent palliative. Large swaths of post-millennial America are moving increasingly toward theocracy, a trend viewed with alarm by most of the rest of the educated, Western world. One need only look at the disturbing comments from Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin (expecting to see the Messiah return in her lifetime and incorporating the end of days into her admittedly limited foreign policy views) to see just how close to reality this is becoming.
For those who consider themselves even minimally open-minded on the subject of religion and the existence of an all-powerful being ("whatever you conceive him to be, hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin" in the immortal words of the National Lampoon), THE GOD DELUSION is a book well worth reading and contemplating.
Book Review: By a practising Muslim...
Summary: 4 Stars
An excellent book, very well-written and thoughtfully argued. Stimulating and challenging - at times scathing - but something which definitely propels one to delve deeper into the reasons for belief - or indeed lack of them.
Dawkins' central thesis seems to be that the evolutionary process of natural selection, as propounded by Darwin and bolstered by the amalgamation of much subsequent indicatory evidence, provides a viable and real alternative to the "God Hypothesis" - indeed it blows it out of the water. But, why then - if blatantly false - is religion so ubiquitous? Evoking theories of evolutionary psychology and the human need for consolation and meaning (as well as the scientific ignorance of our ancestors), Dawkins explains the popularity of religion in purely secular terms.
But what, then, about morality? How can we derive our principles of right and wrong if not from an absolute source of incontrovertible authority (God / revelation)? Again Dawkins responds by explaining how the roots of morality have Darwinian origins and includes a chapter on how the moral lessons of traditional religion (quoting biblical scripture, although I suspect his treatment of the Quran or other sacred texts would be equally unsympathetic) are not that endearing anyway. Why be so hostile though - isn't religion a good thing, a quaint yet harmless cultural phenomenon? Well no, look at the fundamentalists, terrorists, homophobes and other fanatics being spawned by the religious project in increasingly large numbers. Dawkins is unequivocal: religion is dangerous and we need to protect ourselves from it.
So what's the solution, what do we do? Simple, answers Richard with customary gusto: take a strong dose of courage followed by an even stronger one of rationalism, then cast off these restrictive fetters we've inherited from childhood. Grow up, for God's sake (no pun intended), and breathe the fresh, fragrant air of twenty first century scientific freedom! Our experiments have revealed, after all, that there are no fairies at the bottom of the garden.
This, in a nutshell, is a synopsis of the book and something, I must say, I found to be an exhilarating read. I approached the book with an open mind, determined not to allow the predilections of my preconceptions taint my appreciation of his arguments, and was sufficiently enthused to write directly to the author (I await his response). It's always refreshing to have your beliefs challenged, and Dawkins is an expert at doing that. He also has a brilliant knack of reducing complex scientific content down to digestible chunks (peppered with generous offerings of very entertaining humour), and this adds considerably to the readability value of the text. It's not for nothing that Dawkins was the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, demonstrating his ability to explain - in simple terms - science to the layperson. Also worth pointing out is one of the key benefits of the book in the way in which it collates into a single place so many of the classic as well as modern arguments for belief versus disbelief, making it into a cutting-edge handbook for reference.
So what of the key questions the text raises? How can people of faith come to terms with the structured and forceful arguments outlined above? Can we marry faith with modern twenty first century scientific rationalism or are the two fundamentally incompatible, consigned to follow paths of mutually irreconcilable divergence?
I, for one, remain content with my faith as a Muslim after reading Dawkins' book. Although appreciating the validity of many of his arguments, and recognising the negative impact that extreme religion can have, I'm not convinced entirely by the argument for blind and random evolution. Too many holes exist for my liking, and a "leap of faith" is required similar to what the religious person must commit to. I also found his section on the "anthropic principle" to be singularly unconvincing. Cosmology and the origin of life is something science is still stabbing in the dark at (although Dawkins says he has "faith" the answer will be found as the discoveries of science continue). I choose to have faith that the answer has been given to us, whilst fully respecting those who choose to disagree. Ultimately, it's the personal prerogative of each individual to forge an understanding of existence unique to them, whether buttressed by an accepted world-view or not. Dawkins challenges and stimulates us into believing that there is nothing outside of ourselves - we are the sum and substance of billions of years of chance occurrences and all supra-natural entities our ancestors believed in are nothing but the fictions of human imagination. What we choose to believe, though, is our individual and independent choice.