Product Description

A preeminent scientist -- and the world's most prominent atheist -- asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.

With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines 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. The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1513 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-18
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The antireligion wars started by Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris will heat up even more with this salvo from celebrated Oxford biologist Dawkins. For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. But Dawkins, who gave us the selfish gene, anticipates this criticism. He says it's the scientist and humanist in him that makes him hostile to religions—fundamentalist Christianity and Islam come in for the most opprobrium—that close people's minds to scientific truth, oppress women and abuse children psychologically with the notion of eternal damnation. While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: the biblical Yahweh is "psychotic," Aquinas's proofs of God's existence are "fatuous" and religion generally is "nonsense." The most effective chapters are those in which Dawkins calms down, for instance, drawing on evolution to disprove the ideas behind intelligent design. In other chapters, he attempts to construct a scientific scaffolding for atheism, such as using evolution again to rebut the notion that without God there can be no morality. He insists that religion is a divisive and oppressive force, but he is less convincing in arguing that the world would be better and more peaceful without it. (Oct. 18)
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From Scientific American
Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, tells of his exasperation with colleagues who try to play both sides of the street: looking to science for justification of their religious convictions while evading the most difficult implications—the existence of a prime mover sophisticated enough to create and run the universe, "to say nothing of mind reading millions of humans simultaneously." Such an entity, he argues, would have to be extremely complex, raising the question of how it came into existence, how it communicates —through spiritons!—and where it resides. Dawkins is frequently dismissed as a bully, but he is only putting theological doctrines to the same kind of scrutiny that any scientific theory must withstand. No one who has witnessed the merciless dissection of a new paper in physics would describe the atmosphere as overly polite.

George Johnson is author of Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order and six other books. He resides on the Web at talaya.net

From Bookmarks Magazine
Richard Dawkins's latest book raises the question of style over substance. As in his well-known books The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and River Out of Eden, the renowned evolutionary biologist has done his homework, and argues with precision and a fair glaze of wit. But Dawkins can't restrain his vitriol for those that have put their faith in religion, to the point that he comes off as rabid as those believers whose eyes he yearns to open. This fatal flaw knocks his book down a rung or two for critics, many of whom seem inclined to believe in Dawkins, if only he weren't so preachy.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

I Was Hoping for More
I was stuck at the airport for five hours with nothing to do, so I bought this book. The main selling point for me was that Stephen Pinker, one of my favorite authors, endorsed it in comments on the inside cover. I was hoping it would help me understand or refute my beliefs--which is essentially that God doesn't intervene in the universe or reward or punish us with heaven or eternal damnation, and is therefore irrelevant--but unfortunately it didn't help. I figured he'd give me his best shot in Chapter 4--Why There Almost Certainly is No God, but it was not convincing so I stopped reading. Maybe I missed something, but it seems that his primary argument about the nonexistence of God is that if there was, who made God? A fair enough question, but an equally fair question is if there is no God, how is that there is a universe? I was hoping for a scientific discussion of how the universe could have been created without the interference of a god, but none was presented. That got me wondering why his views are so strong, to the point of zealous non-believer. Maybe he has some ax to grind. Overall, I was disappointed that the book did nothing to help me understand or better define my beliefs.

Who is Deluding Who?
Book Review

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is a learned and eloquent writer. He knows his subject area fairly well, but he is naive or lacks sophistication when it comes to religion or theology. Like a number of atheists who have preceded him, he makes several valid points about historical Christianity and other forms of religion. However, much of Dawkins' presentation in The God Delusion is unprofessional, dogmatic, logically fallacious and unscholarly. With the limited time that I have, I would like to discuss a few problem areas of his book.

First, Dawkins hastily and uncritically asserts that the Gospel writer Luke errs when he writes that a census happened in the days of Governor Quirinius. While it admittedly is not that easy to unravel the historical difficulties that revolve around the account in Luke 2:1-3, a reasonable person would admit that we do not have enough information to make an educated decision regarding Luke's much debated speech act. As Daniel Wallace suggests, the account resists simplistic interpretive reductions. But one does not have to conclude that Luke made a historical mistake. Especially is this the case in view of the many other historical details that Luke reports accurately (Luke 3:1; Acts 11:27-30; 16:11-15; 17:6; 18:12-16; 28:7).

Dawkins is also good at attacking straw men such as certain aspects of intelligent design theory. For instance, on page 132, he puts words into the mouth of an "imaginary" intelligent design theorist. Dawkins makes this "imaginary" intelligent design theorist say that serious inquiry regarding how nerve impulses work or how memories are made in the brain ought to be avoided. Rather, all such phenomena must simply be attributed to God. But is this the position of intelligent design theory? No it is not. This form of intelligent design theory only exists in the imagination of Dawkins. But this straw man argument illustrates the modus operandi of our author.

To quote William Dembski:

"For the scientific community intelligent design represents creationism's latest grasp at scientific legitimacy. Accordingly, intelligent design is viewed as yet another ill-conceived attempt by creationists to straightjacket [sic] science within a religious ideology. But in fact intelligent design can be formulated as a scientific theory having empirical consequences and devoid of religious commitments. Intelligent design can be unpacked as a theory of information. Within such a theory, information becomes a reliable indicator of design as well as a proper object for scientific investigation."

On page 133 of his work, Dawkins quotes Judge Jones, who presents Behe in a negative light as does Eric Rothschild (chief counsel) who also uses arguments made of straw or caricatures to supposedly defeat "Professor Behe and the entire intelligent design movement" since they allegedly "are doing nothing" to advance scientific or medical knowledge. However, Behe has offered a response which one can find at the website Uncommon Descent. In part, Behe's response states:

"The Court's reasoning in section E-4 is premised on: a cramped view of science; the conflation of intelligent design with creationism; the incapacity to distinguish the implications of a theory from the theory itself; a failure to differentiate evolution from Darwinism; and strawman arguments against ID. The Court has accepted the most tendentious and shopworn excuses for Darwinism with great charity and impatiently dismissed arguments for design.

All of that is regrettable, but in the end does not impact the realities of biology, which are not amenable to adjudication. On December 21, 2005, as before, the cell is run by amazingly complex, functional machinery that in any other context would immediately be recognized as designed. On December 21, 2005, as before, there are no non-design explanations for the molecular machinery of life, only wishful speculations and Just-So stories."

Many other examples could be given of the propaganda found in Dawkins' book. Those with open minds may be able to see who is deluding who.

Laugh Out Loud Funny!
I found this the most enjoyable of the "Torah of Atheism":
The God Delusion
God is Not Great
The End of Faith
The Atheist Bible &
Letter to a Christian Nation.

The best part about reading this book (and the others) is that you realize that thare are a great many that share your thought on topics that you never really discussed in public. These books help you understand that it is ok to reject the nonsense that was drilled into us as unsuspecting children. As you read these books and start discussing them with friends you'll find that most (not all) agree with what Dawkins and the others have to say, yet they still are reluctant to switch teams. Be sensitive, though, to your friends that are among the faithful, some may be offended if you suggest that their beliefs are built on myths and lies.

As a gift idea, you may want to send some of your independent minded friends "The Atheists Bible" as a Christmas present.