Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
140 of 177 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
By a practising Muslim..., 14 Mar 2009
An excellent book, very well-written and thoughtfully argued. Stimulating and challenging - at times scathing - but something which definitely propels one to delve deeper into the reasons for belief - or indeed lack of them.
Dawkins' central thesis seems to be that the evolutionary process of natural selection, as propounded by Darwin and bolstered by the amalgamation of much subsequent indicatory evidence, provides a viable and real alternative to the "God Hypothesis" - indeed it blows it out of the water. But, why then - if blatantly false - is religion so ubiquitous? Evoking theories of evolutionary psychology and the human need for consolation and meaning (as well as the scientific ignorance of our ancestors), Dawkins explains the popularity of religion in purely secular terms.
But what, then, about morality? How can we derive our principles of right and wrong if not from an absolute source of incontrovertible authority (God / revelation)? Again Dawkins responds by explaining how the roots of morality have Darwinian origins and includes a chapter on how the moral lessons of traditional religion (quoting biblical scripture, although I suspect his treatment of the Quran or other sacred texts would be equally unsympathetic) are not that endearing anyway. Why be so hostile though - isn't religion a good thing, a quaint yet harmless cultural phenomenon? Well no, look at the fundamentalists, terrorists, homophobes and other fanatics being spawned by the religious project in increasingly large numbers. Dawkins is unequivocal: religion is dangerous and we need to protect ourselves from it.
So what's the solution, what do we do? Simple, answers Richard with customary gusto: take a strong dose of courage followed by an even stronger one of rationalism, then cast off these restrictive fetters we've inherited from childhood. Grow up, for God's sake (no pun intended), and breathe the fresh, fragrant air of twenty first century scientific freedom! Our experiments have revealed, after all, that there are no fairies at the bottom of the garden.
This, in a nutshell, is a synopsis of the book and something, I must say, I found to be an exhilarating read. I approached the book with an open mind, determined not to allow the predilections of my preconceptions taint my appreciation of his arguments, and was sufficiently enthused to write directly to the author (I await his response). It's always refreshing to have your beliefs challenged, and Dawkins is an expert at doing that. He also has a brilliant knack of reducing complex scientific content down to digestible chunks (peppered with generous offerings of very entertaining humour), and this adds considerably to the readability value of the text. It's not for nothing that Dawkins was the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, demonstrating his ability to explain - in simple terms - science to the layperson. Also worth pointing out is one of the key benefits of the book in the way in which it collates into a single place so many of the classic as well as modern arguments for belief versus disbelief, making it into a cutting-edge handbook for reference.
So what of the key questions the text raises? How can people of faith come to terms with the structured and forceful arguments outlined above? Can we marry faith with modern twenty first century scientific rationalism or are the two fundamentally incompatible, consigned to follow paths of mutually irreconcilable divergence?
I, for one, remain content with my faith as a Muslim after reading Dawkins' book. Although appreciating the validity of many of his arguments, and recognising the negative impact that extreme religion can have, I'm not convinced entirely by the argument for blind and random evolution. Too many holes exist for my liking, and a "leap of faith" is required similar to what the religious person must commit to. I also found his section on the "anthropic principle" to be singularly unconvincing. Cosmology and the origin of life is something science is still stabbing in the dark at (although Dawkins says he has "faith" the answer will be found as the discoveries of science continue). I choose to have faith that the answer has been given to us, whilst fully respecting those who choose to disagree. Ultimately, it's the personal prerogative of each individual to forge an understanding of existence unique to them, whether buttressed by an accepted world-view or not. Dawkins challenges and stimulates us into believing that there is nothing outside of ourselves - we are the sum and substance of billions of years of chance occurrences and all supra-natural entities our ancestors believed in are nothing but the fictions of human imagination. What we choose to believe, though, is our individual and independent choice.
|
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
God Is Dead! (but does not know it), 31 Oct 2009
Richard Dawkins is a writer on scientific issues, who in 1995, at the age of 54, was appointed to a professorial Chair, recently created at Oxford for popularization of science. He is basically a writer or publicizer rather than, in the innovative or research sense, a scientist. He has become quite well-known in the UK for being perhaps the foremost proponent of militant atheism. This book seems to be his primary polemic against a spiritual view of the Cosmos and our own world. Nietzsche said "God is dead!" Dawkins attempts to prove it and to prove what a good thing this "fact" is.
The book is harshly polemical. I found it confused and full of the sort of superficially plausible arguments found, for example, in Nietzsche's "The Antichrist" (according to Rudolf Steiner, the first book directly written by Ahriman or Satan himself, no less!). His highest praise seems to be reserved for John Lennon's idiotic song "Imagine", but Dawkins does not bother to quote the line "imagine all the people, living for today", exactly the mindset which is leading society and the world to chaos and destruction.
Dawkins finds little to respect in any theologians or philosophers: I did not see Plato mentioned and, as for St. Thomas Aquinas, he is both "fatuous" and "vacuous". His argumants for the existence of a spiritual world are scarcely worth mentioning and in any case can be knocked down like skittles by a great brain like Dawkins...; Pascal the same. Dawkins says that the Royal Society contains few believing scientists (perhaps atheists are more drawn to the natural sciences in an age where they have been hijacked by the unbelieving?) and says that MENSA did studies showing that, among their members, IQ increases with an atheist caste of mind. The more religious, the less intelligent. He fails to see that that indeed might be true of MENSA, but that fact means little, because the vast majority of persons with an IQ over the MENSA bar of 140 are not members of MENSA! My IQ was once tested at 155, well above MENSA entry level, but I have never wanted to belong to a pointless nerdy group like MENSA. The fact that Dawkins either ignores or does not see that the MENSA studies prove little or nothing shows to me that Dawkins is either not entirely intellectually honest or that he is just not a very good scientist.
Believing scientists have been and are many and range from Teilhard de Chardin to David Bellamy. It is perfectly possible to accept both evolution (in the physical sense) and also creation: see David Bellamy, Jolly Green Giant, or the works of Teilhard de Chardin such as Hymn of the Universe. And the stunning book Meditations on the Tarot (Anon) by (in fact) Valentin Tomberg goes into this possibility (believing scientists, scientifically aware priests, in some detail. We need not go so far as Aleister Crowley: "We place no reliance on Virgin or pigeon, Our method is Science, our aim is Religion!"
Dawkins notes that recent atheists have made up "ten commandments" better than the original. Perhaps, but time moves on. Dawkins notes the existence of moral (or SPIRITUAL?) evolution alongside physical evolution and calls it the Zeitgeist, which of course is German for Spirit of the Times or Time spirit. Rudolf Steiner claimed that that title is taken by archangels in turn. Yes, times move on, but they move on for reasons of spiritual evolution and moved BY spirits, including human ones.
Dawkins says that evil things have never been done to promote or by reason of atheism as a philosophy. What about Bolshevism, which killed tens if not hundreds of millions in the 20th century, often directly in the cause of atheism? all the leading Bolsheviks and most of the leading later Stalinists were atheists, primary among them Lenin. A good book on the subject is written by Sergei Prokofieff.
Dawkins himself has gone to "war" on behalf of militant atheism, most egregiously by an advertizing campaign on the sides of London's buses, but it achieved litle save to stimulate interest in the spiritual. Dawkins used duff ammunition, I think, including Polly Toynbee!
In the end, it is true that there are intellectual arguments against the existence of God or a spiritual world. There are arguments in favour, too. Pascal was but one early comprehender of this fact. In the end, as Rudolf Steiner said, an atheist, especially of the militant type, has an unhealthy soul. "Belief" or "faith" is not of the mind solely, but deeper yet. The atheist is lacking in something. The "believer" can perhaps only answer, to the atheist's "reasons" to doubt a spiritual world, in the words of Goethe's Faust: "in your nothing I hope to find my everything"...
A book worth reading once, before it vanishes into the tides of or under the waves of spiritual evolution.
|
|
|
247 of 333 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Atheist Handbook, 7 May 2008
There have only been 719 reviews to date, so far so I thought it needed another. This title, now available in paperback has some comments on criticisms of the hardback edition in a new introduction and amazon are currently offering it at half price.
Why has this book been so controversial? Well Dawkins isn't a theologian (nor does he need to be, but more on that later) he is an evolutionary biologist and is famous from his books wherein he developed the pioneering gene's eye view of evolution (instead of the level of the individual animal) in books such as 'the selfish gene' and 'the extended phenotype'. It seems that being a symbol of modern neo-darwinian theory he found himself the target for the oddest attacks from creationists, people who said his field wasn't a field at all but an ungodly contradiction of the biblical story. In his biology books, Dawkins famously tosses in a few asides about how silly religious faith is and how so many of their holiest observances seem to be based on just so much made-up fairytale nonsense.
Finally it seems that being on the defensive against fundamentalists did not suit his nature and he published his first non-science book - 'The God Delusion'. Despite taking the offensive he keeps firm hold of his scientific methodology and establishes through reason and logic how pretty much everything in religion is wrong. How silly the arguments are for God, how we don't need it for ethics, How it doesn't even provide much comfort and so on.
None of Dawkin's arguments are particularly new and groundbreaking. What he achieves in this book is the rather less revolutionary though incredibly useful act of bringing all the arguments together. This is why I would call it an atheist's handbook. You can neatly look up an argument to trounce a theist and then follow it up with his excellent bibliography. Some of the criticism based on the hardback was due to the fact that Dawkins had no religious training, and he dispenses with this rather juvenile complaint in the introduction to the paperback.
If you're an atheist, you'll love it, if you're someone who just 'doesn't believe in god much' then it might expand your mind and you will probably put it down as an atheist. If you're religious? It will ask you hard questions which I hope anyone reading this will have the courage to do honestly to make them think about what they choose to accept as true.
So far, this is the most important book of the 21st century.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
Watch the author talk about this book in Windows Media
Player format: 
by Richard Dawkins
by Richard Dawkins
by Christopher Hitchens
by Richard Dawkins
