The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins: my review

I admit that I bought it some time ago and read it quickly; I just got through with a slower rereading of it.

What it has The book basically starts out by countering the idea that religious beliefs are somehow entitled to a certain amount of respect just because they are religious beliefs.

Dawkins then goes on to discuss the God Hypothesis and what he means by that.
In a nutshell, by “god”, Dawkins is referring to a supernatural entity that either currently acts or has acted in some supernatural way to effect the outcome of otherwise natural events (e. g., a deity that resurrects dead people, heals illnesses in a supernatural way, causes bullets to miss people (or vital organs), etc.)

He then critiques arguments for the existence of such a deity and find them wanting; he argues that life, as we know it, strongly argues against there being a designer.

He talks about religion and where it might have come from (from a evolution via natural selection point of view) and then does the same thing about morality. Then he talks about what he finds wrong with religion and how, in some sense, subjecting a child to religion can even be child abuse.

How I read his arguments

Here is what I see as his major point: “faith”, as in believing in something without having any evidence for it is inherently bad, at least for an adult. That is, “blessed are those who have not seen but believe” is, well, nonsense.

It isn’t bad for, say, a kid to do so, as kids who do accept their parents instructions on faith (“honey, don’t play in the street”) tend to live longer.

This is where Dawkins thinks that the faith “meme” came from; those who listened to their elders survived at higher rates and therefore passed on “faith” genes.

True, many of us take medicines without understanding the biology of it, and I don’t know everything about the computer that I am using. But I know that studies have been done on the safety of the medicines and those who have done the studies have passed rigorous examinations and peer review processes.

One of the most entertaining aspects of the book for me is how snippy he is! Time and time again, he lampoons some of the Panglossian utterances that we’ve heard made again and again: “Oh, you got cancer? It must be part of God’s plan.” “Oh, the 9-11 attacks were bad, but did you see God’s hand in this? Only 3000 died in the towers; that was a miracle!”

The latter was from an e-mail that I received.

Anyhow, I had to smile at reading responses that I wish that I had given.

Dawkins also takes on the “morality” canard and points out that both atheists and believers give similar responses to the standard “moral dilemma” questions, which seems to indicate that even theists don’t really get their morality from a different source than atheists.

Also, think about this example: remember the weird Bible passages that call for people to be stoned to death for doing things like working on the Sabbath, talking back to their parents, engaging in homosexual activity? Remember the ruthless slaughters described in the book of Joshua? How about the murders committed by Samson?

Most of us can see these things as being grossly immoral; clearly can’t be getting that reaction from the Bible. Hence we must be using some other source.

What I wish Dawkins would have said when asked “where do atheists get our moral values from”: I usually say: “we get our morals from the same place we get our medicine, technology, computers, laws and science!” Pretty simple, isn’t it?

What Dawkins leaves out: Dawkins admits that people explain to him that they don’t believe in an “old man with a beard” type of god. Dawkins goes on to say that he knows that, but a god that requires “faith” is a priori bad. Dawkins also mentions pantheism and blows it off as “sexed up atheism”.

Dawkins also blasts agnostics: after all, few of us are really agnostic with respect to all of the other gods and religious deities out there.

But here is the point: many people (albeit a minority of people) adhere to a religion but don’t really believe in a physics changing deity!

My evidence for this: check out the latest Pew Survey on Religion in the United States. 40% of Americans do not believe in a personal god, including 37% of Catholics, 46% of Eastern Orthodox, 58% of Jews, 34% of mainline Protestant church goers and even 20% of Evangelicals!

Note also that I took belief.net’s “What kind of Christian are You” quiz. I answered every “what really happened when the Bible reported Jesus did miracle X” with a “secular reason” response. I still was scored as a “left leaning traditionalist Christian”.

Even funnier, my sister (who is a Christian) scored in the same category as I did!

My point: there are people who go to church for more than social reasons who don’t believe in miracles. Why?

My guess is that I will call the “grand metaphor” or “grand myth”: sometimes, being grounded in some standard myth (e. g., the Jews being lead out of bondage, Jesus standing up for his principles to help others, even onto death) can help someone through rough patches of life. No, no deity will come in and miraculously save you, but it can calm you down and help you do the right thing.

Religion can teach useful techniques too, such as prayer, meditation and yoga (the latter is good for bad backs!); no “faith” is required.

Also, it appears to me that the public, in general, is quite accepting of this view of religion (see Obama’s, Edward’s and Biden’s answers; Clinton panders a bit)

So, my conclusion is that Dawkins while talking about the God delusion really doesn’t talk about a religion delusion.

Dawkins doesn’t really attack religion that is subordinate to reason on matters of reason. The reason I talk about “matters of reason” is this: oft-times, our reason can show us the right thing to do, but sometimes we need the moral courage and moral strength to do it. Religion, when properly applied, can help provide the latter (though it doesn’t have a monopoly on that).