Book Thoughts: "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

It has been with great interest that I've delved into the last two books I've read, "God is Not Great" by Christopher Hitchens and "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins.

If you know me very well at all, you know that I was born into religion, raised in religion, and steeped myself in religion so much during my late teen years and into my early 20s that I actually planned on going to seminary to become a pastor. This desire of mine overcame, for a period of a few years at any rate, my fantastic desire to learn about and know about science, ethics, and natural law.

It was on a night spent on my own in a monastic cell in 2001, that I started to think about what was going on in my life and life as a whole. That evening I began an argument with "God" that has in one form or another until the present day. Part of this was in respect to a conversation had with my pastor earlier in the day in which he told me that he didn't believe everything in the Bible was true. As an honest and semi-intellectual individual, I really didn't believe that the Bible was true either, but to be confronted with the fact by the man who had been responsible for my religious upbringing and education was absolutely startling. If the Bible indeed wasn't true, why was I continuing to go around espousing the faith that is based on it? Why was I spending every Sunday morning in church when I could have been sleeping in, watching football, or reading a book?

I began a journey on that day in July 2001, and that journey continues today. That journey has taken me to depths of depression and into the heights of human inquiry. The reading of these books and exploring these issues is just another step on that journey.

Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, professor at Oxford, and one of the world's most prominent and out-spoken atheists. In this book, he sets out to prove that either God does not exist, period, or that the likelihood of his existence is extremely improbable. He accomplishes his task very well, at least for anyone who comes to the book with an open mind.

Where Hitchens primarily makes his case on Philosophy and logic, Dawkins uses these as well as the hammer of science to make his. To Dawkins, there is no question that science can't answer. There may be questions science hasn't answered yet, but it has the capacity to answer them in the future. Religion, he argues, is a closed system of belief that has no new answers for us on anything. Each new religion claims to be god's final word. Yet somehow, they keep springing up. The Christians thought themselves to be the completion of the Jewish traditions, and the Muslims prefer to think that a new revelation to their prophet finally got it all right. Even now in the modern age new religions keep springing up, many from the burnt over district of New York State in the 1800's. Despite the fact that any objective look at these modern faiths shows that they have been totally fabricated and don't stand up to scrutiny any better than the great monotheistic religions of our past, they still find a way to entrap people in their web.

Dawkins not only makes a convincing argument about the error of religion in all things worldly, but he also makes a compelling case for erecting science, using Darwinian natural selection as an example, as the foundation for our beliefs, then pursuing new knowledge strictly through scientific inquiry.

Other topics covered:
The evolution of Religion
The roots of morality
The Bible and morality
What is so wrong with religion anyway?
Religion and Child Abuse
How to view a world through science and not religion.

All in all. this one of the most enjoyable non-fiction books I've ever read. While I wouldn't stop and go all out and say I'm an atheist at this point, I'm certainly trying on the glasses. I would love to sit down with Dawkins and have dinner. An outstanding book from an obviously outstanding intellect. It's not over done either. Though there is a lot of science in the book, a high school understanding of biology and physics should allow the reader to go through the book with very little problem.

Give it a try with an opn mind and see where it takes you.