The God Delusion

Here’s the first book for the site…

Richard Dawkins’ (2006) The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press.

Here’s some of the blurb from the inside cover:

“…Dawkins attacks God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed, cruel tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign, but still illogical, Celestial Watchmaker favoured by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the ultimate improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry and abuses children… Dawkins presents a hard-hitting, impassioned rebuttal of religion of all types and does so in the lucid, witty and powerful language for which he is renowned.”

As an impassioned atheist, this is a book that I have wanted to write myself for many years. I first came across Dawkins as a young teenager when I read his River Out of Eden. At the time I still held some pretty agnostic beliefs with a tendency towards Christianity and I remember finding it slightly discomforting. Not necessarily because I disagreed with the evolutionary arguments he was proposing, but rather I felt uncomfortable with the tone that he used to articulate them. And today, even though I now hold quite strong beliefs against the existence of God and agree with Dawkins’ arguments regarding this view, I still find him unnecessarily venomous and aggressive in his language. I can almost sympathise with those that criticise Dawkins for seemingly promoting a religion of his own. Dawkins’ would probably respond that he has to be absolutely robust in his attack on those that belief in God because it is ultimately concerned with seeking and defending the truth. And this is where Dawkins and I would probably diverge. Truth, as Richard Rorty said, is a property of sentences not a property of the world. Dawkins, (probably stemming from his scientific background) is far too much of a positivist for me. As anyone familiar with the likes of Kant, Hume, Wittgenstein and others would know, the scientific method as a way of gaining ‘truth’ is logically flawed. Dawkins, unfortunately, doesn’t acknowledge any of this.

The reason that this book was chosen as the first, was due to its apparent appropriateness, in that: I am already reading it; this site is linked to the Religion, Philosophy and Ethics degree at the University of Gloucestershire; and Dawkins himself has recently shown his incredulity at the validation of a new MA degree in Sport & Christian Outreach at the University. (See Dawkins’ site, and the article in the Telegraph)

All in all, it seemed like one of the best ways to start some stimulating discussion…