The God Delusion | 
| Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Black Swan
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  765 reviews
Sales Rank: 198
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed with additions
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.3
ISBN: 055277331X
EAN: 9780552773317
ASIN: 055277331X
Publication Date: May 21, 2007
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| Customer Reviews: Read 760 more reviews...
 A deflating fait accompli December 3, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
 Not just a book for atheism December 1, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I think it's not worth repeating how great this book is because of its contents about atheism and religion.
What I wanted to add to these reviews is that after reading this book you will surely view the world differently, and this book will have an impact not just on your view of the church and religion but also on your every day life.
And if you do like this book, watch The Zeitgeist documentaries, you will find them very interesting too (at least "Zeitgeist: The Movie" if you are only interested in faith, religion etc. and not in social manipulation in a broader sense). zeitgeistmovie.com is the url
 Satans Pawn November 30, 2008
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
Doesn't matter if you believe in Satan's existence or not, D's methods are as old as sin - Discredit and displace God. D says as much on pg 12, he wants himself via his books to have the same power he claims religion had in past centuries - "transcendent wonder". Satan has always been after Gods glory.
I'm definitely not in `the choir" but I read the book. Not only did I read it, I think it's safe to say I read most of it twice with all the interruptions I had and the notes I took. Out of 374 pages in this book I took 236 notes (found a typo on p 264) on things I found fault with. Christians who don't know their stuff will read this book and believe its lies and deceit, there's much to choose from. It would do everyone well to read alot of the `other view'. Let's imagine that there is only one `other view' since D very obviously is only out to discredit Yahweh though he hides, not very well, behind the banner of all religions must go.
*D starts off with the victim's cry. His wife's story (and others) about how she was forced into her parents beliefs because she didn't know she could speak out against them. (he'll gather a following from the liberal left on this point alone)
*Later, D likens the atheists cause to the homosexuals and says that atheists need to follow suit (which they have been doing already in the powerful and well funded ACLU);
*He attempts to make a case of how politically powerful evangelicals are in the USA (yeah right, that's why Darwinism is still the only theory taught in public schools, abortion is flourishing, etc., etc.);
*He claims scientists, mostly atheist, are forced to keep it a secret or fake some sort of religious belief or lose funding, jobs, respect (see rae.org > interview with Dr. Larry Bergman who lists by name and location 3000 Ph.D. level scientists who are "Darwin doubters" and who says many more won't get put on his list for fear it could jeopardize their career)
*He misquotes certain Founding Fathers of the USA and claims it was not started as a Christian nation. ( D was so ignorant to even go there, see Original Intent by David Barton.)
*He says religion is not a proper field where one can claim expertise then totally mistranslates everything he says about the Bible and tries to make it sound official by throwing in things like `most theologians agree'...
Of course D goes into natural selection (ns) and is an obvious lover of Darwin but there are plenty of `other view' books already written counteracting that. I hope anyone reading D's book would read them, you know, just to raise consciousness. A good site is answersingenesis.com
In the God of the gaps section, he accuses the "fundies" of filling God in the gaps of everything they can't explain. (I found ns had similar tendencies, if certain things can't be explained then it's creative ns, stabilizing selection, resistance to extinction, mosaic evolution, invisible peripheral isolates, unconscious evolution, memetic natural selection of some kind, misfiring, Darwinian mistake or by-product, or fossils aren't needed anyway.)
Having said in another reply on this site something to the effect of "I don't need evidence anyway" I was thrilled to find out that D doesn't either, which means he and his followers can understand what faith is. NS is not true and evolution is not proven (even if it were I still wouldn't like D's style), no matter how many times certain reviewers say so and the only `evidence' D has regarding the origin of life is:
"stroke of luck" (p140);
"lucky chance" (p139);
And on p 137 + 144 +366 (I love this part) " The origin of life was the chemical event, or series of events...the major ingredient was heredity, either DNA or RNA. Once the vital ingredient - some kind of genetic molecule - is in place, true Darwinian ns can follow..." , "Why did it have to be the kind of universe which seems almost as if...it must have known we were coming." , "Think about it. On one planet, and possibly only one planet in the entire universe, molecules that would normally make nothing more complicated than a chunk of rock, gather themselves together into chunks of rock-sized matter of such staggering complexity that they are capable of running, jumping, swimming, flying, seeing, hearing, etc."
D had to put that in here for laughs, he couldn't possibly be so obviously deceitful as to think anyone would believe this leap of faith is any different than `if God says so then it is so'. God formed us, He breathed life into us, He prepared the earth for us, He has a plan for us. Call it God or call it ns, it's faith in luck or faith in God, but D definitely has faith.
As if that's not enough he says a personal God probably doesn't exist and couldn't possible hear all prayers, be involved in all lives, etc., yet D attributes abilities like these to ns. On p 163 " Darwin explained ns as daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest..."; p 221 "ns programmed into our brains altruistic urges, sexual urges..."; p 217 "ns...predisposes individuals...to give...to solicit...remember obligations, bear grudges."
I could go on and on, this book is full of opinions, stereotypes, deceit. Was it worth the time? I've wasted time in worse ways. If nothing else it's put me on even firmer ground. What appeared as an intellectual group to me has turned out to be a delusion.
Lower Sixth Form Arguments: a Concise Critique. November 20, 2008
3 out of 12 found this review helpful
Christianity (viz. the Vatican) is not against science, Gallileo's trial was political and not science based (heliocentricity theory being nothing new at the time) and Monsignor Georges Lemaître, a Belgian RC priest, proposed the Big Bang theory.
 Just who is deluded? November 5, 2008
7 out of 22 found this review helpful
From the messianic promises of the opening pages to the utopian scientism of the closing pages, this is a fatuously pretentious and philosophically incoherent book which would never have been published if it had been written by anyone less eminent. Dawkins's treatment of morality is particularly amateurish, and sometimes downright laughable. He really should stick to science, since he clearly doesn't understand anything else, and stop bothering the world with his neurotically obsessive atheizing. Read this book, by all means, but read some of the responses too -- my own book would be a good place to start.
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