"The God Delusion" - By : Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion is a book that sold more than 1.5 million copies, by far Richard Dawkins' best selling book. This is an author who is known to be the spear-head of atheism in the world, and who has assembled many arguments and did good research to come up with this book which is supposed to deliver the message. As he says, this book is supposed and designed to convince you that there - almost certainly - there is no god.

In this initial post, I will post a brief overview of the book, the ideas shared by the author and some general information and his line of thinking, but I will soon post a new entry that will include a more detailed discussion of thoughts and principles, where I will try to go more into a detailed analysis of the book, and from it (as it definitely includes) many of the discussions along the theism vs atheism front lines..

Here it might be interesting to look at another book on the topic, the review of which i posted earlier:
The language of god:



http://nth-word.blogspot.com/2009/07/language-of-god-scientist-presents.html

I don't usually include detailed descriptions of the authors of books and their deeds, but I think that here, additional to the regular reasons a description of the background has an interesting effect on the discussion of this book and the roots of many of arguments in the theism-atheism debate.

The Author

Richard Dawkins is a british ethologist (the scientific study of animal behavior), evolutionary biologist and a popular science author. He is an atheist and calls himself a secular humanist and a supporter of the brights movement.

[Dawkins is calling for an effort to re-brand atheists as "brights" in a manner similar to the re-branding of homosexuals as "gay":


Gay is succinct, uplifting, positive: an "up" word, where homosexual is a down word, and queer, faggot and pooftah are insults. Those of us who subscribe to no religion; those of us whose view of the universe is natural rather than supernatural; those of us who rejoice in the real and scorn the false comfort of the unreal, we need a word of our own, a word like "gay". ... Like gay, it should be a noun hijacked from an adjective, with its original meaning changed but not too much. Like gay, it should be catchy: a potentially prolific meme. Like gay, it should be positive, warm, cheerful, bright..


This goes in line with one of his statements in 'the god delusion' that "atheism almost always indicates a healthy mind" and his strong effort to correlate intelligence with atheism - we will come to that ]


Dawkins is an "active atheist" - a marketer (or sales man) of atheism, he helped sponsor ( or fully sponsored - im not sure ) the 'atheist bus campaign' in the UK to promote atheism (check this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjoXFq8833U ). His position in this debate is not just that of a scientist, but similar to that of a priest or sheikh or a rabbi .... he is a modern version of the 'priest of atheism' ... He has alot of energy, motivation and drive in promoting atheism.

The main theme of Prof. Dawkins is "there almost surely is NO god.. I can't say for sure, because I can't say that even about fairies and unicorns..". The main message is that science finally delivered conclusive evidence that there is no god, and this proof mostly depends on the theory of evolution - natural selection studies and writings by Darwin and others, even though he tries to invoke different discussion lines - the strongest ones came from the background of evolutionary biology.

The Book

Even though the book's greatest conclusion is the inexistence of god, most of the arguments are against the concept of the 'personal god who counts'.. this will be discussed in detail later, but i mentioned it here because initially the discussion starts with introducing polytheism, monotheism, secularism, and Agnoticism (launching the inevitable strong "sure-man's" attack on the latter - even though he says he can't be sure).


The writer next moves to discussing the main arguments that prove god's existence, showing their fallacy (he says that he is disproving them, but honestly there is alot that can - and will - be said here). He starts with Thomas Acquinas' proofs (the book calls them 'proofs' not proofs), then the ontological argument, then the argument from beauty, the argument of personal experience, the argument from scripture, the argument from admired scientists, Pascal's wager and Bayesian arguments. A lively and interesting discussion is raised over these topics, but one needs to have a good background and understanding of what he mentions to truly grasp what is being discussed.


Moving from defense to attack, the writer moves to proofs of the inexistance of god. The first is a reversal of the Boeing 747 argument [ the argument goes that if I had all the parts of a boeing 747 thrown around in my backyard, and a sudden wind blows, then the probability that this wind creates an actual running plane is similar to that of the world being created by chance ] by claiming that Natural selection reverses the equation making the existence of god that improbable (as opposed to the world just being found).


He then presents a very interesting concept which is the 'worship of gaps'.. he argues that certain gaps in the sciences are quickly filled by 'theists' by god... then whene science fills that gap, god is moved out.... so many things pending explanation are assumed to be 'done by god' in a primitive human tendancy, but as science develops, the writer argues, these spaces will become smaller and smaller, thus disproving god completely as 'unnecessary'. He Adds a discussion about the anthropic principle and its role in proving that theism just can't be true based on this vision of the world from the perspective of being created to 'completely fit' us.



The next part of the book searches for the roots of the religion looking through social and psychological factors that can explain man's tendancy to believe in a god and to look for theism, and he uses an example of the 'cargo cults' - people who used to worship soldiers who used to bring them cargo as messiahs - to show that there is nothing godlike about this tendancy.


In the next part, he moves to a discussion of morality especially since the moral principle is one important source of wondering and thougth for us, arguing that this morality that we have actually does have darwinian (evolutionary origins) and looks for its roots. He also argues - from the other side - that god is unnecessary for being 'good'. Humans can be perfectly moral and good even if there was no belief in god.


The writer moves to a discussion of the old testament, somehow a brutal discussion, showing many of things that are very hard to be accepted by our modern personality and ethics - even if we put them in their historic perspective. One important thing to remember however is that this discussion, even though directs strong blows to judaism - for example, has no strong overall effect on the discussion of theism vs. atheism. He includes the interesting concept of the changing moral zeitgeist, where there is a continuous shift - as he sees - and development in the collective 'moral spirit' of humanity.... this is what makes us reject certain old statements of religion...


The next part is basically a discussion of the evidence that religion is actually not just a support for morality, but rather a burden on it.. He includes religious hostility, fundementalism, the dark side of absolutism, the attitudes towards homosexuality, the sanctity of human life, and that even moderation in faith fosters fundementalism, abuse (physical and mental) of children...


Towards the end of the book, the writer provides a list of friendly addresses that help in 'escaping religion'...


Next I will add an Blog entry that will include a discussion of the ideas, arguments and theories discussed here and in other places as far as the theism vs atheism struggle goes... I will include some of opinions and inputs on the matter.