The God Delusion in 100+ Books in 2025

Jul 19, 2007 Ryan rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, philosophy

Note to self: must use the word "barmy" more often....

This is an amazing argument against belief, it's so refreshing to see it logically spelled out. What is the real benefit to faith? Where did it come from? Why do so many people practice and value it? What can we do to understand it more? How much more amazing is the world without it? He answers many of these questions, and it's well worth the read to see him go through things so brilliantly. Easily would get 5 stars from me if not for two min Note to self: must use the word "barmy" more often....

This is an amazing argument against belief, it's so refreshing to see it logically spelled out. What is the real benefit to faith? Where did it come from? Why do so many people practice and value it? What can we do to understand it more? How much more amazing is the world without it? He answers many of these questions, and it's well worth the read to see him go through things so brilliantly. Easily would get 5 stars from me if not for two minor things - focus and a few brief cases of incompleteness.

I really liked this book, and respect Dawkins' viewpoints and almost entirely agree with him. I think I need to read other books of his that might have a little more focus - at times I felt like I was reading a long blog post of his. This 420 page blog post meanders every once in a while, and its meanderings mainly deal with responding to attacks and craziness in the press directed Dawkins' way.

The lack of focus sometimes seemed to prevent him from attaining a completeness of exploration of the fascinating issues he brings up. For instance, in his chapter about the roots of religion, he goes through many interesting and probably accurate reasons, based on natural selection, of why groups of people would think to start worshiping a deity. One glaring possibility he didn't deal with is that it's possible that tribes/societies who came up with a judging external figure (that was a barometer for doing good things) would tend not to be as destructive to their kin and might be more altruistic... and that would cause them to be more successful than tribes/groups that just sort of did weird worship of trees or something.

For example, if Og is alone and saw a child in the tribe struggling in quicksand, an Og that thinks that there's an all powerful judging figure that would know whether or not he went to save the child, he would try to save the child, and then the tribe does better. Whereas an Og that didn't think something else would know of a non-altristic deed or nonaction might do that sort of thing less often, which wouldn't benefit the tribe or his kin.

I just thought that was a glaring potential explanation for the sort of deities that people came up with, and he was a little intellectually dishonest in not bringing it up to deal with it - possibly because it's a positive effect of religion. He is so resolutely academically honest and fair in nearly every other argument he makes in the book that this instance jumped out at me. I was waiting for him to deal with this possibility and was a little surprised that he didn't mention it.

That said, I could have just gotten stuck in a little niche imperfection in an otherwise stellar book that I highly recommend to anyone. ...more

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Oct 16, 2009 Com rated it did not like it

Shelves: abandoned

Like many others, I made a start on this book hoping to find some useful insights and well presented arguments in favour of non-theism. Unfortunately, this was not Dawkins intention, and consequently I put the book away after a couple of chapters.

Written with passion and bias, Dawkins lays aside the objectivity of scientific method, and presents little more than a series of logical fallacies.

Poorly researched, poorly argued, poorly written. Hopefully Dawkins will return to his sphere of usefuln ...more

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Jun 23, 2008 Dolly rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2009, science, nonfiction, religion-philosophy

I had heard a lot about this book, both good and bad. I found it to be fascinating and well-written, although I can see the "smarty-pants professor" writing style that's been critiqued several times in this forum (laura and others). Mr. Dawkins does come off as a bit smug and self-righteous at times, but on the whole, I'm impressed with his knowledge, research and thoroughness with which he covers the topic. I liked the references at the end of the book and I will be sure to look into a few of t ...more

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