Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes. He critiques 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. In so doing, he makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just irrational, but potentially deadly. Dawkins has fashioned an impassioned, rigorous rebuttal to religion, to be embraced by anyone who sputters at the inconsistencies and cruelties that riddle the Bible, bristles at the inanity of “intelligent design”, or agonizes over fundamentalism in the Middle East or Middle America.
2 thoughts on ““The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward”
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Given his logical conclusion of the absence of any creator and therefore his adoption of the premise “nothing caused something to come from nothing”, does he address why there is music? – and why medical research indicates there seems to be a physical place within the brain itself that acts as a spiritual center – or why all cultures have a spiritual mythology? Sounds like an interesting book. May I listen to it?
Writing in Harper’s, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson argues that Dawkins has a superficial knowledge of the Bible and is intolerant of theists, yet demands tolerance of science: “if religion is to be blamed for the fraud done in its name, then what of science? Is it to be blamed for the Piltdown hoax, for the long-credited deceptions having to do with cloning in South Korea? If by ‘science’ is meant authentic science, then ‘religion’ must mean authentic religion, granting the difficulties in arriving at these definitions.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion
(Dawkins is a brilliant biologist but a nieve theologian.)