The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The God Delusion
Book Review: A Museum of Old Errors
Summary: 2 Stars
In Oxford, where Richard Dawkins teaches, lie two connected museums: the Museum of Natural History, where Lewis Carroll took little Alice to see the Dodo, and behind it the Pitts River Museum, where one can still find totem poles contributed by E.B. Tylor, one of the founders of Cultural Anthropology and former curator. If anyone ever builds a museum of old errors about religion, he could do worse than to begin with the arguments in this book.
I enjoyed it, as I enjoy those museums. Dawkins writes well -- God Delusion is full of lively anecdotes, witty replies, and interesting quotations or scientific facts. Occasionally Dawkins even made a winning point. (Along with dinasaur fossils and old rocks, one can also find live squirrels on museum grounds.)
But this book is a rich collection of error, gross exagerrations, and dubious statements. I counted over 160, ranging from trivial to grotesque and vital.
Obviously I can't list all 160. My book on the "New Atheism" will give many. But for now I'll offer a few examples.
Let me begin with gross errors of fact. Dawkins claims that the "Gospel of Thomas" tells many miracle stories. Now first of all, calling Thomas a Gospel is problematic, for reasons I give in "Why the Jesus Seminar Can't find Jesus'" Secondly, Dawkins claims it is "more or less arbitrary" that the four canonical Gospels were chosen instead -- which is also nonsense, as I show. But let those points pass. "Serious" historians like Pagels and Ehrman have been filling peoples' minds with these ideas, and it wouldn't be fair to blame Dawkins for them.
The more grotesque error is that Dawkins is confusing the "Gospel" of Thomas with the "Infancy Gospel of Thomas" -- which actually contains the stories he refers to. Thomas, the pseudo-Gospel, contains no narrative whatsoever, apart from "So and So said." It is as if I wrote a book against evolution and credited Karl Marx with the Origin of Species: such a basic blunder is not auspicious.
An error less blatant, but more profound, lies in claiming that Pascal admits that the odds against Christianity being true are high. In fact, Pascal thought the evidence was excellent, and gave quite a bit of it in Pensees. An atheist who thinks "Pascal's Wager" was all he had to say on the subject (Shermer makes the same error) is like a creationist who thinks Steven Jay Gould denied there was evidence for evolution.
The argument I found most persuasive (for a moment, before I started to think -- and talk with scientists) was Dawkin's claim that few eminent scientists believe in the Judeo-Christian God. But the alleged scarcity of believers in those quarters would only be relevant if elite scientists were particularly knowledgable about the evidence for and against religious faith. Is it likely that after 80 hours a week working on biology or physics, they have time for 1st Century history, comparative religion, and philosophy, then pour over missionary journals for evidence of miracles in their spare time? No matter how smart you are, your opinion is only of value if you have studied the evidence fairly.
I asked an Oxford physicist about Dawkin's claim that the effort to find distinguished scientists who believe "have an air of desperation, generating the unmistakably hollow sound of bottoms of barrels being scraped." After naming some prominent Oxford scientists who are Christians (including one of Dawkin's bosses!), he said he thought the correlation between scientific success and faith was, if anything, the converse in the UK. He added that he thought a sociological explanation probably best fit the facts in the US; which is also my hypothesis, but one Dawkins does not even seem to consider. Some scientists I have talked with on the same subject have suggested that there might be some prejudice against believers, especially in biology. I don't know if these alternative explanationss hold water. The problem is Dawkins does not consider them: he seems to simply assume that a "bright is a bright is a bright' -- someone smart enough to study science, must ipso facto know better about theology, no questions asked.
And reading Dawkins is itself likely to bring up such questions for thoughtful readers. Here he is, the most famous atheist in the world, an Oxford professor, free to study anything he likes. But over and over again, he shows himself poorly informed, often mistaken, and shallow in his thinking.
Dawkins takes on classic "proofs" for the existence of God. He then offers his own "proof" that God does not exist. There are two problems with this section. First, it is terribly shallow -- he does not interact with strong opponents like Richard Swinburne or William Craig enough even to convince an informed reader that he has even read them. Second, he overlooks most of what I, at least, think are the best arguments for the supernatural and for God. I wrote my favorite ten on the back cover as I began the book: Dawkins offered feeble arguments against three, and I think ignored the rest entirely.
One of Dawkins' errors lies in assuming something like E. B. Tylor's old theory of the evolution of religions -- which, like Tylor's totem poles, now belongs in the museum. As I show in Jesus and the Religions of Man, Tylor was soundly refuted when (among other things) his student, Andrew Lang, found that primitive peoples often had a clear reocgnition of a Supreme God surprisingly like the God of the Bible. Yet another Oxford scholars, James Legge, the first professor of Chinese here, also played a role more than a hundred years ago in this discovery. All of these men lived and taught within a ten minute walk of Dawkins' college. He never mentions any of them.
But here's the worst, and why this book finally made me lose patience with Dawkins, except as a prose artist and his early work as a scientist. In the past, Dawkins defined faith as believing without or even against the evidence. Alister McGrath, also an eminent Oxford professor and one of the world's acknowledged experts on Christian thought (which Dawkins admits is his primary target here), among other things pointed out
that no serious Christian thinker would accept Dawkin's definition
of "faith." He explained what Christians do mean by the word, and gave a copy of the manuscript to Dawkins.
That's how scholarship is supposed to work. You make a claim, give your evidence, then see what other scholars say about it. If they argue against you, you either amend your claim, or show where they are wrong.
Dawkins read that book. He poured over it, writing notes in the
margins, as he admits. But he simply ignores McGrath's argument on
this point. Dawkins just repeats his old dogma: "faith is evil
precisely because it requires no evidence and brooks no argument."
Never mind that he fails to give serious evidence that that is what
Christians mean by faith. Never mind that McGrath gives evidence
that this is NOT what we mean by faith. On this subject (and others), it is Dawkins who "requires no evidence and brooks no argument." (See my discussion on this topic.)
Dawkins may be a good biologist (though Denis Noble's recent book challenging his signature "Selfish Gene" analogy is also worth a read), but he is badly out of his depth in the fields most relevant to his argument in this book -- philosophy, history, and theology. His contempt for these fields (as it seems to me) betray an almost magical assumption that competence in one field automatically transfers to another. God Delusion clearly shows that one can be "bright" yet also deeply ignorant.
Dedicated atheists may enjoy this book, and poorly educated Christians find it a challenge. But while Dawkins tries to turn the table on people who describe him as a creature of the 19th Century, it is hard to deny that the shoe does seem to fit -- a museum.
Book Review: A Must Read
Summary: 5 Stars
Anyone who is not afraid of confronting their beliefs or looking for truth, should read this book. It should be required reading for all freshman in college, whether they are religious or not. I live in a conservative bible belt state, and I can't tell you how many people I know that would benefit from actually thinking hard about what they believe and why they believe it. In fact, most religious people in this state need to be force fed this book. A lot of things in this world would be better if they were. Thank you Richard Dawkins for writing this book.Book Review: A Must-Read
Summary: 5 Stars
For those of us old enough to remember when the 21st century was still a far-off time promising a society based on reason and science, it certainly seems that civilization is slowly moving backwards into a mini dark age. These days it seems more likely that instead of spending my retirement exploring Mars, I'll probably end up spending it attending witch burnings or riding a donkey to a mosque.
This book is Richard Dawkin's rage against the descending collective ignorance. He's certainly passionate about the subject, but always backs up that passion with good, solid arguments.
Those with religious and spiritual beliefs may be put off by the title. I admit that I was a bit hesitant to read it. I LIKE my beliefs. But the main message I got from the book is that if you really are a seeker after the Truth then you must be prepared to question even your most cherished beliefs. Use the brain "God" gave you.
Book Review: A Must-Read for Believer or Nonbeliever
Summary: 5 Stars
I have never before read a book where I so much wanted the author present as I read it to continue the conversation. Dawkins has been thinking, debating, and defending the views in this book for years, and it shows. He often anticipates the next argument that the reader may have.
The tone of the book is that of an candid, off-the-cuff conversation with the reader. He is not pretentious or stuffy. He's not trying to be subtle and academic. His opinions on many matters (e.g., the Templeton Prize) come out loudly and clearly. He says enough that any reader will find things with which to agree and to disagree.
He says upfront that his purpose in writing the book is that the reader will be an atheist by the time s/he finishes it. Thousands of books have been written with the opposite objective by theists. Why does it seem so strange when done by an atheist?
This book, I believe, will be quoted nd referenced for years to come. It contains so much (each paragraph is a delight to read), that every atheist should keep it handy for its arguments, and theists should read it to know what will be coming at them.
Dawkins makes the helpful distinction repeatedly between what we want to be true and what is in fact true. This book is not for those who don't understand the difference between these. It will needlessly make them feel less comfortable without changing their minds, so why bother. But for those who - like in the Matrix - want to take the pill that has the potential to show them the real truth - good or bad, this book is a must read. That is not to say that Dawkins necessarily has converged on the truth. Instead, he offers a solid counter argument for those who have grown up in the ethos of religion and theism. It is an argument as least worth considering. As Aristotle said, ``It is a mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain thoughts without accepting them."
In case Dawkins is reading this review himself, I'll offer a couple other reflections for him and the readers. Dawkins uses several OT scripture passages to show the nastiness of God. But he missed what I consider the worst. The 24th chapter of II Samuel details how King David, in his pride, takes a census of the people under his rule. This angers God. What does God do to punish David? He sends a disease upon the people so that 70,000 of them die. 70,000 innocent people die to teach David a lesson.
Unrelated to the above, an essay that readers of Dawkin's book may want to read is the essay by Martin Gardner, "Why I an not an Atheist?" in his book, "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener." Gardner is an intellectual giant certainly on par with Dawkins, and so it is with a certain power that he essentially claims that he believes in God because he wants to. Irrational? Likely. Provable? Absolutely not. But Gardner explains that he is more than a rational animal. Why should he ignore the part of himself - deep inside - that wants there to be a God so that justice and mercy and eternal life can be hoped for. This, in my opinion, is the best counter to Dawkin's argument.
Book Review: A Philosophical Handbook
Summary: 5 Stars
There seems to be no middle ground with readers of The God Delusion, they either love it or hate it. That seems to reflect the preconceptions one brings to the volume, the religious feel attacked and the atheists feel vindicated. The religious scramble to find some way to counter the arguments, the often hostile beratement Dawkins delivers, while the atheists dance on the grave of dying religiosity.
My one real beef with the book is that although packed with enough argumentative logic to make it a seminal discourse on the refutation of deity (the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim deity almost exclusively), Dawkins relishes the ad hominem and childish attacks too much. That undermines his own work in places, and while the humor is biting and I found myself openly laughing I also see how offensive it could be to people of faith.
While I'm not going to contribute an overview because that's been covered so many times, in so many ways - in fact the words dedicated to synopsis by the various reviewers most likely exceed the actual words in the substantial volume itself - I will give an impression, my impression. My impression is that this is a book that I will refer to many times in the future. This is a book that I will keep on my shelf with the other reference tomes, and one which will become more valuable than the Bible itself.
Religion and the belief in God isn't going away, despite the arguments against deity. But I do think we need to arm ourselves against unwanted religious intrusion into our public and national lives. Dawkins, for all his gloating, does give a substantial refutation of the idea that morality is religious in nature. That alone is worth the cover price. It's brilliant to be able to cite logical case by case for the ideas of humanism as a source of moral behavior and good conduct.
Other than that, it's a great read, a valuable resource. I'll recommend it to all my friends, and send it as presents at Christmas (nothing could be more appropriate).
- CV Rick