The God Delusion

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The other book I think people are referring to is "God Is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchins.

The God Delusion is the better book, in my opinion. Hitchins rubs me up the wrong way in general by being scathingly condescending to anyone who did not have the glittering good fortune to be born as him, and his book is ranty and directionless.

I agree that Dawkins can come across as quite sledgehammery, but I think that is a symptom of his popularity. He's become the voice of a whole intellectual movement, so he has to make very sure that he says nothing at all that could be quoted out of context, otherwise he'd have all the Creationalist loons publishing "Dawkins says God not so bad after all" everywhere. I think an example of that (possibly given by Dawkins but I don't have the book with me) is that it drove Einstein nuts to have "God does not play dice with the universe" quoted again and again as evidence of his belief in God, when it was no such thing - he was just trying to get across the concept of physics poetically but everyone took it literally.

In some of Dawkins's essays he is quite clear that while religion has produced some wonderful things (I think the example he gives is Bach's music but it would be equally true for the Bamiyan Buddhas), it is a concept that is not relevant now, it has become dangerous and should be abandoned.

Sam Harris is much more thoughtful and eloquent than Christopher Hitchens on the same subject, and like Dawkins, a scientist by training. Hitchins seems to take the "you must be stupid to believe this crap" line but never actually engages in any deeper examination of what exactly is wrong with religion. It's really just a personal attack on anyone who's religious.

Slim the book is called Darwin's Angel, it's reviewed: richarddawkins.net/article,1591,Review-of-Darwins-Angel-An-Angelic-Response-to-the-God-Delusion,Sall ey-Vickers on richarddawkins.net

i encourage you to pick it up, ignore all the preamble and dive in. it's about the only thing i've bought in the last year that ISN'T sitting on the shelf unread.

It is currently sitting on a shelf waiting to be read, I can't quite bring myself to start it

i think if you found the book sledgehammerish (i did too) you probably didn't need that much convincing anyway. fwiw, before i read it i entertained vague notions of being an agnostic but have now come to accept that i am an atheist.

the point of the book wasn't to "recognise the good that religion does", whatever that might be. as a wishy washy arts graduate with no scientific training, however, i did enjoy the bit where he acknowledges the influence of (the christian) religion on (european) society/culture - knowing your bible stories and being willing to suspend disbelief helps me make sense of a lot of things, and lacking spiritual belief is no excuse for being ignorant.

broccoli summed it up quite well.

Barnstaple, "some" people did put the case against religion quite eloquently a couple of centuries ago......that was the enlightenment.
Quite frankly, I find it very sad that suddenly no one remembers that separation of state and church among other things is a battle that's already been fought and won.

Vintage, I think the fellow you're refering to actually wrote a book contradicting the god delusion, I would be interested to read that one. Can you remember the name

I haven't read the GD yet but I listed to a good discussion about it - The Times Online podcast - I can't figure out how to get the specific link to it but if you put Times Online Books into your search you'll see it. It's Richard Dawkins in a debate with this fellow who's a physicist, ex-atheist & now prof of theology at Oxford.

My dh is hogging it and I am desperate to read it. I do think that RD is a bit sledgehammerish but I also think that someone needs to be; until recently, no one has really put the case against religion/god, and it's about time someone did. Now Hawking has published a book on teh same subject, but I have no idea what his slant is, and there is a journalist called Christopher something who has also written a book on this.

I know that my father, about 25/30 years ago, was an atheist, but RD somehow or other turned him against atheism. Dad was one of the most intelligent/intellectual people I've ever met and a true polymath, so his disagreement with RD does muddy the water for me, as otherwise I would be in complete agreement with RD.

Perhaps the Hawking book should be my priority. Any of you read that?

LOL Broccoli. That sums up what I think is wrong with the book - I find him very convincing on the bad bits of religion but I don't think he recognises the good that religion does.

I thought it was good. It was nice to see my vague notions about why I am an athiest put into clever words.

I did think though that given that his target was so easy to hit he could have been a little less sledge-hammer about it. The example that immediately springs to mind is his claim that (I'll paraphrase as I don't have the book with me) "if there were no religion, there would have been no destruction of the Budhas of Bamyan" - true, but if there were no religion there would never have been the Budhas of Bamyan.