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Summary: The God Delusion
Comment: 'The God Delusion' - perhaps the clue is in the title. Opening this book and finding the author happily concluding that religious belief is reasonable would come as something of a surprise. 'You are all quite right to believe as you do' would be a dull book.
We should as adults be able to differentiate between the question of ultimate causes (which is marvellously contradictory) and the origins, influences, aims and claims of Abrahamic prophets and sects now and throughout a couple of thousand years of recent history.
Any number of books on geology, physics, dinosaurs, the universe, or the history of peoples, science and the planet can be had for beans in an open society and it is not unreasonable for people expressing strict views based in their religion to be familiar with and open to the achievements of better minds than our own (unless free will is itself an illusion based on dogma, that is).
We should regardless be able to distinguish between the fate of millions of our fellow beings and the pomp, comfort and status enjoyed by corporate religious leaders within their various establishments. It is not always helpful though to approach these questions from a position of high intellect and knowledge.
No amount of sophisticated argument and learning is relevant when the appeal of still largely coercive or child indoctrinating sectarian and divisive religion is simplicity allied with whereabouts of birth and to whom we are born (we exist in a hard to fathom circumstance, what does this mean, need it have any meaning, surely it must have, anyway let's hope so, there is a personal and decent God looking over my shoulder who is going to make all this grief up to me when I die and reach paradise, but you lot are apparently all doomed).
'The God Delusion' unfortunately often prefers the esoteric and the involved without (of course) resolving imponderables or being ordered so that the reader can find bite sized and digestible facts and arguments presented not as absolutes but as reasonable grounds for scepticism applicable to the major world faiths. Very few of us after all were taught the entirety of the relevant religious texts or invited to pull the same apart - as adults we should object to being treated like children.
Still, a book is a book, the world progresses when questions are put and answered, to oppose Dawkins without refuting him is an unwitting confirmation of his central theses, and you still know what you're getting when you buy a book by a famous atheist entitled 'The God Delusion'.
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Summary: Post-speciesist Piffle
Comment: "I do not, by nature, thrive on confrontation." Well, that's Dawkins' contention as he opens chapter 8 at least. Later on in the same section of the book, the author claims that the phrase "American Taliban" was begging to be coined. Begged by whom? The frothing at the mouth reactionaries who toss schoolyard insults at those they do not agree with?
Peter Singer, high priest of the deeply lunatic fringe of the animal liberation movement who argues amongst other perverse ideas that zoophilia is not unethical if there is no harm or cruelty to the animal, is claimed by Dawkins to be "...the most eloquent advocate of the view that we should move to a post-speciesist condition in which humane treatment is meted out to all species that have the brain power to appreciate it." It would be interesting to engage this ethic with the good professor using a hypothetical plague epidemic carried by rats.
Pondering the issue of abortion, the author compares the suffering of a cow in a slaughterhouse to a developing human fetus that has been terminated. Apparently the value human life is comparative to cattle. When they took Bessie to market they may very well have killed the next Marie Curie?
I share Richard Dawkins' atheism as devotedly as he no doubt does, but I cannot countenance his moral equivalency. I am far more afraid of Islamofascism (which to his credit he attacks but does not venture to call by that title) than American Christians who wish to take Harry Potter out of the library.
My values are humanist, but I am an unabashed 'speciesist.' The philosophical world, the sciences, and the 'Zeitgeist' that indicates we are capable of becoming more compassionate, kind and humane, come from the human condition not from the activities of say a herd of reindeer.
Not Dawkins' best work by a long shot, this book is a haphazard invective of muddy moral musings and unbalanced argument against religious faith.
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Summary: Aggressively atheist and more than a little smug.
Comment: I am an Agnostic who leans towards atheism, and was recommended this book by a friend over a year ago, so I made sure it was on my Christmas list (oh, the irony).
I only read about two chapters but found the hectoring tone very off-putting, and there was a degree of smug hubris not present in the books of other science writers. Much of what I read was anecdotal and delighted in sharing oh-so-clever and bullish ripostes to religious people who took issue with his strong stance. This didn't convince me of anything other than that Dawkins is an insufferable git.
A passage that made me abandon the book completely was an infantile and sarcastic commentary on Freeman Dyson's acceptance speech for the Templteton prize, in which he refers to the possibility of a higher conciousness. I had heard of Dyson long before Dawkins and he is credited as being one of the 20th century's finest minds, so to hear Dawkins sneer at the great man was a little galling.
This book is delibrately confrontational and downright rude to a lot of people, implying that they are ignorant buffoons. I have no love for the church and place my trust in science, but have known deeply caring Christians who live by the teachings of Jesus to better themselves, and are still open-minded and speak intelligently on a wide number of subjects, although the screaming-mad hate-mongers of all religions do get a well-deserved pasting, so it's not all bad.
That would be fine, but Dawkins himself seems to have spawned an unforgiving and cold look at faith, which could be labelled as fundamentalist Atheism.
This book makes for quite unpleasant reading, although I now know from seeing him on TV and the internet that he can be more tactfull in conveying his views when he wants to.
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Summary: Get a life
Comment: What kind of a retard would write a book like this?
Get a life Dawkins.
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Summary: A deflating fait accompli
Comment: On Richard Dawkins's spectrum of belief, I'm a 6...that is, strongly suspecting that a supernatural God who designed and still presides over the world doesn't exist. I find much of interest and practical use in some 'religious' teaching and literature however. The God Delusion is a fait accompli - it has no reasonable counter argument. Every theist should read it and be made to either refute it or give up their Religion, or at the very least concede that their Religion should not receive special treatment or recognition in a secular world.
It is delivered in a sometimes facetious, sarcastic and sneering tone - no doubt the result of years of wearily having to rebut and pick apart specious arguments from religious zealots - at whom I suspect this book is chiefly targeted. But it is a tone which does not enhance his argument for me. Dawkins' attempts at irony don't come across so much as Mark Steel/Blackadder as more like an older brother taking some pleasure in revealing to us that there's no Santa Clause.
It's impossible to deny or avoid the proposition that the scientific, measurable, predictable, reproducable proof suggests there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of a supernatural God. God is an idea, and the world's various organised Religions are simply membership clubs - in some of which 'God' exists as a kind of prozac and in others He rules by something akin to Stockholm Syndrome. If the members of these clubs each kept to themselves then it would be OK but what irks Dawkins is the fawning special treatment lavished upon organised Religion; the kid gloves with which polite society dictates, uniquely, we must treat the subject of Religion which has no more concrete claim to protected status than do fairies or the man in the moon.
He views humankind too reductively at times - we are 'just' one unique species of mammal who got lucky amongst an abundance of fauna on a planet which got lucky amongst the abundance of the universe. We know now that the universe doesn't revolve around the earth and that the earth doesn't revolve around humankind, but that doesn't mean we are just making up the numbers.
I got the feeling that in some things he was even handed but in others took scientific deconstruction to silly conclusions. If you're opposed to abortion of foetuses (as opposed to the moment of birth which Dawkins is suggesting as a rubicon) for example then, if you're being consistent, shouldn't you go the whole hog and be opposed to the foregoing of any opportunity for sex since procreation is the ultimate purpose of that activity? And if you're pro-destruction of foetuses for IVF (the ultimate goal of which is also procreation) then aren't you a hypocrite if you're anti destruction of foetuses for birth control or personal convenience? No.
If you interpret some parts of the bible as allegory, some as historical record and still others as the results of political agendas at the time of editing then again aren't you being disingenuous - cherry picking those parts on the basis of how they fit with your own world view? Not necessarily...you could be simply differentiating between the bits which are allegory, historical record or political expediency. His use of the term 'lebensraum' in reference to the Ancient Israelites empire building is silly, and his eulogy of Douglas Adams is directed personally to the deceased author, which is inconsistent with the whole basis of the book.
Though it is just a bit too clear-cut, black and white, 'with me or against me' at times, it's mostly even handed and, from what I can see, bulletproof.
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