Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
An Atheist Handbook, 7 May 2008
There have only been 719 reviews to date, so far so I thought it needed another. The title is available in paperback (which 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 being a symbol of neo-darwinian theory he found himself the target for the oddest attacks, 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 creationists 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 achives 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.
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108 of 136 people found the following review helpful:
very enjoyable with a few misgivings, 2 Oct 2007
Like the penultimate reviewer, I enjoyed this a lot more than Dawkins' other books. He's great at exposing the absurdity of many religious beliefs and at how easily they crumble when exposed to reason. But where I feel the book is a little disappointing is in Dawkins' attempts to explain why religious beliefs are so powerful and so ubiquitous. Predictably, he tries to apply some of the ideas of evolutionary psychology but is never very convincing, or even very clear about exactly which explanation he's advocating. In my view, he doesn't understand the full implications of the `consoling' aspect of religion, or understand the psychological need that many human beings have for the sense of purpose, meaning and security which religion provides (even though based on an illusion). Religions developed in times when human life was incredibly difficult - usually very short and full of disease, violence, hunger and poverty. Life is still like this for many people in the world -and the function of religion is to provide some consolation for this suffering, and the illusion that a `higher power' has control over the random chaos of our lives. There is a very enlightening view of the psychological origins of religion in a great book called The Fall by Steve Taylor. It has a chapter called `The Origins of God' which is one of the most convincing explanations of religion I have read.
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203 of 275 people found the following review helpful:
Atheistic Delight, 11 Oct 2006
I only managed to read three reviews of this before I felt compelled to add my own comments. Dawkins does not suggest that he is 100% correct, neither does he base his judgements on 'blind faith' as one reviewer here put it. The God Delusion is an excellent dissection of religious faith, a polemic which lays bare the often nonsensical and ridiculous beliefs held by religious people. Dawkins bases his ideas on sound scientific argument, on logic and, above all, on common sense.
The God Delusion is a wonderfully written piece, never becoming too technical or high brow so as to be beyond the grasp of us mere mortals, and given Dawkins' immense stature in the scientific community you'd be forgiven for expecting a book which only those in a similar field could hope to understand. I read this in an almost constant state of awe. Dawkins has somehow managed to put down in print things that, I now understand, I've been unconsciously thinking about for years but never given voice to. A happy agnostic two weeks ago, I am now an ecstatic atheist and I recommend this book to anyone who's ever expressed even the tiniest doubt that their religious beliefs might, after all, be poppycock.
If I had any complaints they would be thus: the book is obviously aimed at an American audience and I found this disappointing (that's my nationalism coming through!). There are also some instances of 'the Emporer's new clothes' about it, almost encouraging the ridicule of those with faith, which I don't believe was intentional but it did come through. Apart from that, this is probably the most important book I have ever read and I can't wait to read it again. First though, I'm reading Charles Darwin's Origin of Species!
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