The God Delusion - ComeLibros Club

416 pages

English language

Published Feb. 22, 2006

ISBN:: 978-0-593-05548-9

(1 review)

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.

29 editions

nerd teacher [books] reviewed The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

This book wouldn't have even aged well in 2006.

1 star

Content warning Discusses apologia of rape, abuse, and CSA; includes conversations of various bigotries (spin a wheel, and I promise it's there).

I hate this book, and it's a prime example of why the New Atheists harmed any movement of any sort by atheists. It just provides so many examples of the many of the reasons why people get so upset about anti-theism (which, for the record, I have a complicated relationship with because of New Atheists), particularly as their anti-theism is based entirely in forms of bigotry and a failure to understand the world around them. The anti-theism of people like Dawkins and his ilk does not, in any capacity, explore the connections between (primarily organised) religion and their societies.

Starting with the more minor problems: I don't know what editor allowed a book, even in 2006, to include URLs in the text. Even on the ebook version, the links were there without the ability to click them. I also don't know why the editor even encouraged Dawkins to keep many of his notes, which were incredibly disparaging to many people. They were so elitist and pompous; they were almost all entirely irrelevant.

Oh, and the fourth chapter does exactly nothing of what he claims it does. It's just a continuation of the third chapter and doesn't even contribute to a conversation of why there "almost certainly is no god."

The rest of the book is pure bigotry and abuse/rape/CSA apologia, so this is probably going to be a messy range of thoughts:

I can't even begin to describe the amounts of rage I felt reading him try to say that "mild paedophilia" is a thing in order for him to be able to focus on "religious" abuse while trying to make it out to be "worse" (as if there are hierarchies of abuse -- how despicable) or him trying to separate physical, mental, and emotional abuse (and into "religious abuse") when they're all inherently connected in some form.

He routinely uses the "protect the children" trope that the right uses except for atheism, including saying that we should take children away from their parents for "indoctrinating" them. He has zero concept of the abuse that took place in residential schools, and he acts like we've since stopped doing any of the most harmful things that we've ever done to people (e.g., slavery).

And all of his supposed "support" of gay people (because he never considers the existence of anyone outside of binary lesbian and gay people) is entirely hollow once you know what his stance has been on trans people in the years that followed publication. How can any of his "support" really be genuine? How can any of his belief to "let people be as they are and want to be" even be real when he simply won't? I wouldn't have believed him in 2006, and I certainly don't today.