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The God Delusion |  | Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy Used: $4.83
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Seller: Sam Lehman
Rating:  1597 reviews
Sales Rank: 8,831
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Am. ed.
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 0618680004
Dewey Decimal Number: 211.8
EAN: 9780618680009
ASIN: 0618680004
Publication Date: September 18, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A preeminent scientist -- and the world's most prominent atheist -- asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.
With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 1597
 Read the Reviews! October 28, 2006
Harvey Ardman (Rockport, ME USA)
1356 out of 1551 found this review helpful
I've just finished reading the 141 reviews above mine, and I think they're utterly fascinating--almost as interesting as the book. And the scores--the numbers who find each review helpful--are equally remarkable.
Some reviewers, delighted to find their opinions supported by Dawkins, use the opportunity to bask in their superior intellects and display their generous contempt for those who disagree.
Other reviewers feel personally attacked by this book, fending it off as best they can so they can retain their illusions, which are obviously valuable and meaningful to them.
Actually, you don't even have to read the reviews to see which is which. Just look at the numbers. If you see very few finding the review useful, you'll know the review was written by someone opposing Dawkins' ideas. And if the majority find the review helpful, that means it agrees with Dawkins.
This tells me that most of the people who are bothering to read the reviews are already pro-Dawkins--and it bodes ill for his hopes that his book will convert the believers.
It won't convert many believers, not because it is wrong--it isn't--and not because it isn't well-written--it is--but because whatever else you can say about faith, it isn't easily extinguished. For those who have it, it is the only life raft on a limitless ocean. Those who don't have learned how to swim, or plan to.
The most annoying reviewers, from my point of view, are those whose remarks demonstrate they haven't read the book (such as the fellow who insists Einstein was a believer), or those who feel Dawkins doesn't have the Biblical knowledge to back up his conclusions.
He doesn't need any Biblical knowledge. None of us do, when it comes to the question of belief. Memorizing the Bible neither adds nor subtracts from our ability to feel faith.
And that's the bottom line for me. I am unable to accept an assertion of any kind supported by nothing more than faith. I need some kind of truth, some kind of evidence.
There are or might be moments when I am jealous of those capable of faith. I would love to believe, when a loved one dies, that he or she is going to a better place and that we'll meet again some day. What a lovely, comforting thought. Would that it were true, or that I could believe it. But I don't--and it makes this life and every moment in it more valuable to me.
I once asked myself how a person totally unfamiliar with religion, might choose among the world's offerings, might decide to adopt one of the world's thousands of religions. I could find no way. They all claim they're right and all the other religions are wrong. But are any of them right?
Now I'm thinking similar thoughts about God. I saw a website recently that compiled the names of all of the gods, worldwide and throughout history. They found 3800 different gods or supernatural beings. If I were inclined to believe, which one would I choose and why?
Dawkins points out that we're all atheists. We don't believe in Amon-re, Zeus, Thor, Apollo, Odin, etc., etc., etc. He just goes one god further.
Dawkins imagines no religion. September 19, 2006
G. Merritt (Boulder, CO)
2728 out of 3215 found this review helpful
"As a scientist," Richard Dawkins writes, "I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect" (p. 284). In other words, the greatest crime of fundamental Christianity is to think without asking scientific questions. For those readers already familiar with Dawkins' work, it will come as no surprise that this book is nothing less than brilliant. Pity those readers, however, who either won't read this book (they should) or who will find nothing positive to say about it, because this is the work of one the greatest thinkers of our time.
In THE GOD DELUSION, Dawkins, the celebrated evolutionary biologist, Oxford Professor, and author (The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution), gives us a carefully-reasoned yet entertaining treatise on atheism that is equally eloquent and provocative. His basic argument is that the collective irrational belief in "The God Hypothesis" is not only wrong ("intellectual high treason"), but pernicious in its resulting intolerance, oppression, bigotry, arrogance, child abuse, homophobia, abortion-clinic bombings, cruelties to women, war, suicide bombers, and educational systems that teach ignorance when it comes to math and science. Sure to provoke his adversaries, Dawkins not only portrays the "psychotic" God of the Old Testament as "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully" (p. 31), but also challenges, quite convincingly, every major argument for God's existence, and shows that the Founding Fathers considered religion to be a threat to democracy. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, claimed "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man" (p. 43). Benjamin Franklin said "Lighthouses are more useful than churches" (p. 43). A 1796 treaty signed by John Adams declares, "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion" (p. 40). Adams also said, "this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it" (p. 43). Even conservative icon, Barry Goldwater, threatened to fight fundamentalists "every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans" (p. 39).
While Dawkins is clearly out to change minds here, unfortunately, for most of his readers, he is only preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, for its erudite advocacy of science and rationalism at odds with the divisive, oppressive, injurious, and deadly forces of religion, THE GOD DELUSION is highly recommended. Further reading in this area includes Daniel Dennett's, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006) and Sam Harris's, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) and Christopher Hitchens' recent God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
G. Merritt
Reaches its intended audience December 21, 2006
Colin C. Mckenna (Lafayette, CA USA)
25 out of 26 found this review helpful
Many have criticized this book for not speaking in a voice that could influence religious fundamentalists away from their delusion. There is no way the topic can be discussed that would have any hope of doing this. It would be akin to writing a book that through gentle persuasion would reason a paranoid out of his delusions. Ain't going to happen.
I believe the intended audience is those who already have grave doubts, and are looking for a well reasoned examination of the issue. I was impressed by the simple and straightforward approach to resolving a basic question: "since we can't know for sure if God exists, shouldn't we all be agnositics?"
I also enjoyed his definition of a pantheist (I'll leave that for the reader to discover).
The opening sections on Einstein and his "religious" beliefs, and a general discussion of pantheism and deism are worth the price of the book just by themselves.
As an aside -- those reviewers who cite Einstein's religious conversion away from atheism have clearly not read even this much of the book.
Written with great humor and wonderful quotations -- I am sure there is something here to offend just about everyone -- but also with great courage and forthrightfullness.
Inspirational, if perhaps ultimately idealistic. November 11, 2006
Bruno
50 out of 57 found this review helpful
Dawkin's writing is always passionate, here though is a polemic that screams urgency on nearly every one of its 350 odd pages. Clearly born of a growing dismay at the re-encroachment of religion into not only moral but political discourse, Dawkins has set out his lifelong objections to both the irrationality of religious belief and also to the damaging effects he argues it has on society and above all to children. In a particularly controversial and biting chapter he condemns the religious indoctrination of young people as a form of child abuse greater than that of the catholic priest sex scandals.
I find Dawkin's prose electrifying, provocative and at times beautiful, particularly here when describing the compatibility of awe and wonder at the universe with the atheistic position. Dawkins attempts to rebut most of the historical arguments for God's existance, refute the claim that morality is dependent on at least a belief in God (if not his actual existence) and in general the idea that religion serves as some kind of Platonic noble myth keeping society sane, happy, moral and together. He ends the book by arguing that children should not suffer the abuse of being force fed religion, and instead should be raised as rational beings, helping to create a mature society in which scientific method determines questions of fact and philosophical reasoning that of moral value.
I'm an aetheist, though I have a much too pessimistic view of human nature to call myself a humanist, but upon finishing the book I was rather swept away for a short time in a kind of hope that reason can indeed one day abolish dogma and superstition to produce both a fairer and a happier society. I'm rather left thinking though, that perhaps that could only be in a society of cloned Richard Dawkins, or at least of an unlikely human society where most people have a level of intellect and courage even approaching his. At one point in the book he refers to a positive correlation between intelligence and atheism without drawing any negative conclusions as to how difficult that leaves turning the mass of not so intelligent citizens into rational moralists.
Due to his well known scientific dismissal of group selection theory, and despite a long discussion of 'memes', he doesn't seem to take on board the rather unfortunate but plausible possibility that whilst religion may be a clutch of often nasty Darwinian 'misfirings', selection processes involving memes may mean that those cultural groups who clothe these evolutionary blanks in the memetic robes of religion may in fact inevitably survive over those which don't. This is arguably something we are witnessing in parts of Europe where the increasingly secular populations are simply being replaced by the more fertile muslim populations. The survival of the religious 'go forth and multiply' meme vs the humanist feminist 'woman have the right to careers' meme seems to have one predictable outcome, both for the memes and the cultures that bear them. Consider, Amsterdam, the citadel of European humanism, now a place where homosexual couples are afraid to openly show their love for fear of being beaten up for offending religious sensibilities.
Another criticism in an otherwise excellent book, is that Dawkins spends far too little time rebuting the absurd charge, commonly thrown at him, that he is an atheistic 'fundamenatlist'. And absurd as the comparison with Islamic radicals or Bible literalists may be, it is one that has become almost a deep rooted Pavlovian criticism of Dawkins even amongst highly intelligent intellectuals. This is an accusation, incidently, which Dawkins admits here is acutely painful to him.
This is a brilliant and inspirational book and deserves to be read by as many people as possible. Although unlikely to be read with fair minds by religious believers, hopefully its fate is to become more than simply a 'Bible' preaching to already converted aetheists. I would imagine Dawkins aim in writing this book was to provide an inspiration for those wishing to fight the cancerous return of unthinking dogma in public life. In this, I'm certain he has succeeded magnificently.
A Philosophical Handbook April 25, 2007
CV Rick (Minneapolis, MN, USA)
36 out of 40 found this review helpful
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
Showing reviews 1-5 of 1597
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