What is your opinion of the book by Richard Dawkins called "the god delusion" ?

Question

please only answer this question if you have actually read the book. I'm interested to hear what people think about it's contents.

Answer 1

I found it to be a fun, easy read.

Didn't get anything new out of it, but I thought it was well-written. :shrug:

Answer 2

Dawkins makes a good case for atheism, which has often been misunderstood and/or seen as something evil.  

I enjoyed it, probably because I agreed with everything he said, and I enjoy reading the words of intelligent people.  It did start many discussions and debates about a topic that is too often ignored or deemed off-limits.  

Answer 3

It's a convincing case for atheism primarily directed from arguments dealing with evolutionary biology from a well established and respected scientist in that field who is also one of the largest proponents of atheism today.

While lacking some of the literary eloquence of Christopher Hitchens' work, Dawkins is immensely readable and accessible, and he presents his arguments in a way that should leave few readers scratching their heads in confusion. Though at times slightly derisive, and a bit biting in his humor, the tone will upset few but the most fundamental religious believers.

The poster below me sites the propaganda film Expelled as a source. This is a film made by creationists to besmirch evolutionary discourse. It is highly misleading of actual events, tries to portray evolutionary biologists as n***s, and provides no evidence of its own. Further the posters misunderstanding of the theory of panspermia is also misleading. Whether exoterric in origin or not, life would still have had to first originate with abiogenisis, panspermia just points out that microbial life could have already been present on asteroids and comets that helped form the earth, and that the original abiogenesis could have occurred before the planet was formed.

Answer 4

I haven't read the book, but I listened to Dawkins talk about it for an hour on the radio, and I saw him talk about similar ideas in the documentary film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."

Basically, Dawkins is a militant atheist.  He believes that anyone who believes in a god is deluding him- or herself and that by arguing forcefully in the public arena, he can convince some people that there is no god, that the universe is a machine, that mankind evolved from randomly combining chemicals without any help from a supernatural power, and that religious belief is actually harmful to society.

I believe that Dawkins is mistaken.  I do not believe in the God of Evanngelical Christianity, but neither do I believe that life began randomly, wholly through the operation of natural laws.  There simply has not been enough time since the origin of the universe for even one protein strand to occur through chance, much less the plethora of life that exists on the earth.  While Dawkins is unwilling to accept the possibility of some Supreme Intelligence designing the cosmos and Earth in particular to be conducive to human life, in Expelled, he asserted that extraterrestrials may have seeded life on Earth.  So there is no god--no question of that!--but maybe Martians brought about life on Earth?  

His position seems silly to me.  Agnosticism is a much more logically reasonable response to the question of the origin of life than is Atheism.  However, he does make some good points about how dogmatic religions breed intolerance and violence.  I would, however, suggest that nearly as much (perhaps more?) good comes from religious belief and expression as bad.

Nevertheless, the destructive side of religion exists, and Dawkins wants to root that out of human society.