The God Delusion

The God Delusion is a book by the atheist Richard Dawkins, in which he argues that belief in God is irrational.

Richard Dawkins is somewhat saner than the writers on this bigoted utterly moronic website.

This book is a voice of rationality. If any of the Conservatives actually read and understood it the world would be a rather better place. Indeed, if they read the Koran, rather than trying to burn it, and talk about Muslim and Atheist intolerance the same would happen. In fact, if they read the Bible, the world might greatly improved. I ask them now, have they actually read the Old Testament? Can they really agree with Joshua "killing all within Jericho, young and old, man and woman, ox and sheep and ass by the sword"?

Incidently, Satan kills far less people than God does in the Bible.

Critics have called the book "surprisingly intolerant".

• Richard Dawkins (2006) makes great play in his recent book The God Delusion of what he calls the appalling propensity of religious people to base their ideas on dogma rather than on the evidence. Well, many do, but this reads strange in a book bursting at the seams with its own dogmas, its uncritical acceptance of metaphysical theories such as Identity Theory, its refusal to take note of the relevant evidence from parapsychology, and its special pleading with regard to the views of Darwin and Wallace on genocide (see Smythies, 2007, for details). For example, Dawkins states that he knows that this life is the only life we have. How could he possibly know that? [1]

Dawkins also intends to teach that atheists can live happy, intelligent, lives—perhaps even happier lives than religious people. This is true. He asserts that atheists do not do evil things in the name of atheism, while religious people have been known to commit atrocities in the name of their religion. This is also true. The only reason for the Crusades was religious intolerance. On the other hand, Stalin's main motivations were personal power and making Russia powerful. Atheism played only a small role.

Criticism

The God Delusion has been subject to a great deal of criticisms from the religious and the non-religious alike. Most of it was merely automatic backlash from people who hadn't even read it.

Some people wish to complain about the poor quality of Dawkins' book. These people should probally first note the hundereds of innacuracies in the Bible, such as Luke quoting far less generations in between Joesph and David than Mark.

Andrew Brown: Prospect Magazine

“

"It has been obvious for years that Richard Dawkins had a fat book on religion in him, but who would have thought him capable of writing one this bad? Incurious, dogmatic, rambling and self-contradictory, it has none of the style or verve of his earlier works."

”

Andrew Brown of Prospect Magazine was unimpressed by Dawkins' book. Brown calls atheism "unnatural" and points out that many atheists were violent in their belief (or lack thereof), citing Stalin killing members of the clergy.

Brown also attacks Dawkins' argument that suicide bombers are caused by religious schools. While Dawkins states that if these children were not taught what he calls "faith without question", suicide bombings would not be an issue. Brown, however, says that religion is not a necessity in suicide bombings. He points out that it is a tactic used by Marxists in Sri Lanka. This is true, but if you look at the world today by far the most amount of terrorists are motivated by religion. In conclusion, most of the writers on Conservapedia know very little about anything. They fabricate most of their facts, and have severe tunnel vision.

Marilynne Robinson: Harper's Magazine

"There is a pervasive exclusion of historical memory in Dawkins's view of science. Consider this sentence from his preface, which occurs in the context of his vision of a religion-free world: 'Imagine . . . no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers.'"

Robinson's major complaints about The God Delusion lie in how sheerly false the book is in many aspects. Although Dawkins claims that "the majority of us believe in free speech", she points out that most countries do not, pointing out that China (population 1.3 billion) does not. In her review, Robinson basically says that Dawkins purposefully ignored important parts of history in his attempt to convince his readers. "It's a shame," she says, "to see him reduced to one long argument from professorial incredulity."

Terry Eagleton: London Review of Books

"Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins [...] are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding."

Alister McGrath: The Dawkins Delusion?

The Dawkins Delusion? is a response to Dawkins' The God Delusion by Alister McGrath.

Quotes from The God Delusion

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

-Chapter 2

"I am one of an increasing number of biologists who see religion as a by-product of something else."

-Chapter 5

"By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence... Books about evolution are believed because they present overwhelming quantities of mutually buttressed evidence."

-Chapter 8

"... [Moral absolutism] rules the minds of a great number of people in the world today, most dangerously so in the Muslim world and in the incipient American theocracy... Such absolutism nearly always results from strong religious faith, and it constitutes a major reason for suggesting that religion can be a force for evil in the world."

-Chapter 8

See also

• Atheism
• Atheism and the suppression of science

External Links

• RichardDawkins.net