The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins
"I've read some Richard Dawkins and much more of the Stephen J. Gould, aficionado. I find his, even if his writing style tends to be a lot more obtuse than Dawkins is. I find his general tone in his writings on evolution to be more welcoming and less arrogant, which is amazing because Stephen J. Gould, he would have been the first to admit that he was a very arrogant person.
But, "The God Delusion" is part of this recent spate of books addressing religion and tensions between science and religion, especially evolution and religion. So, "The God Delusion" is about the delusionary nature of faith, at least theistic faith, right. He doesn't explicitly attack faith such as a Buddhist faith in any particular way because he doesn't really have a beef with that.
Here's the problem with Dawkins' book. He attacks faith in God, theism as delusionary, but it approaches it purely and relentlessly from the perspective of a scientist. It's a rather infuriating book if you believe that it's possible instead to have multiple ways of dealing with the world and the puzzles of human existence. At various points in "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins actually tells little, ________ little stories of having had encounters with people of religious backgrounds and usually these encounters involve him severely offending the person.
And it's funny, you know. You've got to respect the guy. You got to hand it to him. He's unabashed. My overall criticism of "The God Delusion" is that it's arrogant and way unnecessarily so. It's beautifully written. It's comprehensive. It's interesting. So, I'm tempted to give it a four, even a five, but in terms of its arrogance, and it's non-evenhandedness I would actually tend to give this book two stars."
RSS feed 
