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Book Review | The God Delusion | Richard Dawkins

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The God Delusion, published in 2006, is an international best-selling book written by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is an English biologist and a Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University in England.

Throughout the book, Dawkins makes references to many other authors and books about God, religion, and related topics (see the "More" section at the bottom of this post).

The intention of the book, according to Dawkins, is to raise consciousness about God and religion through a discussion and analysis of:

  • The concept of Darwinian natural selection

    • Far from pointing to a designer, the illusion of design in the living world is explained with far greater economy and with devastating elegance by Darwinian natural selection. And while natural selection itself is limited to explaining the living world, it raises our consciousness to the likelihood of comparable explanatory 'cranes' that may aid our understand of the cosmos itself. (p. 24)

  • The issue of childhood and religion

    • ...I want everybody to flinch whenever we hear a phrase such as 'Catholic child' or "Muslim child'. Speak of a 'child of Catholic parents' if you like' but if you hear anybody speak of a "Catholic child', stop them and politely point out that children are too young to know where they stand on such issues, just as the are too young to know where they stand on economics, or politics. (p. 25)

  • Atheist pride (there is no reason to apologize for being an atheist)

    • On the contrary, it is something to be proud of, standing tall to face the far horizon, for atheism nearly always indicates a healthy independence of mind, and indeed, a healthy mind. (p. 26)

    ...to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled. (p. 23)

In the book, Dawkins makes the case for the improbability, or "delusion", of a supernatural God. To define the word "delusion" Dawkins uses a definition from Microsoft Word's dictionary, which, according to his book states:

a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially a symptom of psychiatric disorder

According to Dawkins, the first part of that definition "captures religious faith perfectly". Dawkins then uses a quote from Robert M. Pirsig (the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) to address the second part:

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

Dawkins makes the point that the word "God" is often used to mean very different things. It can be used in the supernatural sense. It can be used to describe the physical laws that govern how the Universe behaves and operates. It can also be used in a poetic or metaphorical sense. And so on.

...if the word God is not to become completely useless, it should be used in the way people have generally understood it: to denote a supernatural creator that is 'appropriate for worship'.

Dawkins distinguishes between a theist, a deist, and a pantheist as follows:

  • Theist - believes in a supernatural God who created the Universe, and believes that God is involved in ongoing human affairs (answers prayers, forgives and punishes sin, performs miracles, etc.)
  • Deist - believes in a supernatural God who created the Universe, but does not believe that God intervenes in human affairs afterwards
  • Pantheist - does not believe in a supernatural God, but does believe in Nature and the laws that govern the workings of the Universe

Dawkins spends a considerable amount of time talking about how religion and religious beliefs receive exaggerated respect from society and are somehow "above" everything else when it comes to being challenged.

A widespread assumption...is that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect that any human being should pay to any other. (p. 42)

The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that is does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'. (p. 45)

But I am intrigued and mystified by the disproportionate privileging of religion in our otherwise secular societies. All politicians must get used to disrespectful cartoons of their faces, and nobody riots in their defence. What is so special about religion that we grant it such uniquely privileged respect? (pp. 49-50)

Dawkins defines the "God Hypothesis" and summarizes his opposing view as follows:

...there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. (p. 52)

...any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. (p. 52)

Discussing the subject of secularism and the founding fathers of the United States, Dawkins quotes Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

According to Wikipedia, there is a question as to the real intent of the first part of Article 11. In addition, a second "Treaty of Peace and Amity" was signed several years later which superseded the "Treaty of Tripoli", which did not make the same statement about the Christian religion. So, it seems Dawkins' point, that the United States was founded as a secular nation, is at best controversial.

Regarding prayer, Dawkins mentions a prayer study, the results of which were published in April of 2006 in the American Heart Journal in an article entitled Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. The study concluded that:

Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG [coronary artery bypass graft surgery], but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.

Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer | The New York Times

Chapter 3 of the book is entitled "Arguments for God's Existence". Dawkins talks about three different kinds of arguments:

  • a posteriori argument - based on observation and inspection of the world
  • a priori argument - based on reason, critical thought, and understanding
  • ontological argument - based on being or existence

Here is a summary of the Chapter 3 arguments:

  • Thomas Aquinas - a 17th century friar, priest, philosopher, and theologian who wrote the Summa Theologica which contains his "Five Ways" or "Proofs" for the existence of God (a posteriori arguments):
    • The first three proofs, The Unmoved Mover, The Uncaused Cause, and The Cosmological Argument, are similar in nature, all relating to what happened or existed first, with God being the absolute first mover or cause
    • The fourth proof, The Argument from Degree, talks about degrees of many things in the World by which humans make comparisons and judgements, and in the case of "goodness" there must be some maximum amount or degree, and that maximum is God
    • The fifth proof, The Teleological Argument (Argument from Design), looks at how things are designed in this world (the human body, the process of photosynthesis, etc.)
  • Ontological Arguments
    • St. Anselm of Canterbury - an 11th century monk, philosopher, and theologian who is credited with originating the ontological argument for the existence of God
    • Bertrand Russell
    • David Hume and Immanuel Kant
    • Bertrand Russell
    • Douglas Gasking
    • William Grey of the University of Queensland
  • Beauty - the existence of composers such as Beethoven and Mozart, or Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
  • Personal Experience - seeing visions, hearing the voices of God, how the human brain is capable of constructing very believable models and run "simulation software" (dreams, hallucinations, optical illusions) that can make us believe something that in reality is just not true
  • Scripture - how the written word is very persuasive to some people (some don't question the author, when it was written, why it was written, etc.), how the story of Jesus is very similar to other religions that were already in existence in the Mediterranean and Near East, and whether The Bible is a correct and accurate record of history
  • Admired Religious Scientists - the argument that because some religious scientists and scholars believe in God, that should lend some credence for belief by the common man
  • Pascal's Wager - the argument that it is in one's own best interest to behave as if God exists, since the possibility of eternal punishment in hell outweighs any advantage of believing otherwise
  • Bayesian Argument - the argument based on probability and Bayes' theorem, supported by the book "The Probability of God" by Stephen Unwin

Chapter 4 of the book is entitled "Why There Almost Certainly is no God".

Here is a summary of the Chapter 4 arguments:

  • "The Ultimate Boeing 747" - a phrase Dawkins coined to describe the improbability of God (an improbability at least as improbable, or possibly even more improbable, as complex things coming into existence merely by chance)
  • Natural Selection and the Theory of Evolution, attributed to the work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace

    Natural Selection not only explains the whole of life; it also raises our consciousness to the power of science to explain how organized complexity can emerge from simple beginnings without any deliberate guidance. (p. 141)

    Dawkins mentions what philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett refers to as the "trickle-down theory" of creation (the idea that it takes some "greater thing" to create a "lesser thing"), and how Darwin's theory explains exactly how that does happen. Dawkins also mentions how some theists believe in both God and natural selection, and that God may have incorporated the use of natural selection to create the living things on earth. Finally, Dawkins makes the point about how creationist theory, when talking about some complex life form, often asks the question, "Did all of this happen by chance?", to which the answer is "No, of course not", but how the theory then often assumes that the only alternative to "chance" is "intelligent design", leaving out the possibility of natural selection.

    Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer? (pp. 146-147)

  • Irreducible Complexity - Dawkins uses this phrase (and the phrase "the smooth gradient up Mount Improbable") to explain how natural selection is an exceedingly long, slow process, and that life as we know it evolved by very small, gradual degrees.

    What is it that makes natural selection succeed as a solution to the problem of improbability, where chance and design both fail at the starting gate? The answer is that natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so. When large numbers of these slightly improbable events are stacked up in series, the end product of the accumulation is very very improbable indeed, improbable enough to be far beyond the reach of chance. It is these end products that form the subjects of the creationist's wearisomely recycled argument. The creationist completely misses the point, because he (women should for once not mind being excluded by the pronoun) insists on treating the genesis of statistical improbability as a single, one-off event. He doesn't understand the power of accumulation. (p. 147)

  • The Worship of Gaps - how creationists (people who believe that God created the Universe) reference "gaps" or things that are scientifically unexplained or scientifically understood in the present day, and how they make the assumption that God is what must fill those gaps.
  • The Anthropic Principle: Planetary Version
  • The Anthropic Principle: Cosmoligical Version
  • An Interlude at Cambridge

Here is list of the remaining chapter titles with a brief summary of each chapter:

  • Chapter 5: "The Roots of Religion"
    • How Darwinian evolution and natural selection might have played into the existence and sustainability of religion
    • Possible advantages of religion such as protection from stress-related disease (and the "flip" side of how religion can do the opposite and cause stress and guilt) by way of a placebo effect
    • The theory of group Darwinian natural selection where certain groups of people are "favored" over others
    • Dawkins' personal theory that religion and religious behavior is a by-product of something else, one example of which is how children, for the sake of survival, learn to believe without question what grown-ups tell them, and how that can result in a by-product of religious beliefs "programmed" into them by their parents (how children are vulnerable to "mind viruses")
    • How the human brain might be psychologically primed for religion (the dualistic theory of mind and teleology)
    • How memes (ideas, practices, or behaviors passed on from person to person in a culture) might have played a part in religion
  • Chapter 6: "The Roots of Morality: Why are we Good?"
    • Where does good and morality in humans come from?
    • Do humans need religion to be good?
    • Darwinian reasons for human altruism - genetic kinship, reciprocation, and acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness.
    • A study done my Marc Hauser (professor of Psychology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Biological Anthropology at Harvard University) and Peter Singer (professor of Bioethics at Princeton University) which showed no statistical difference between atheists and religious believers in how they would respond to several different moral dilemmas (Morality Without Religion).
    • Are humans good and moral primarily to gain acceptance from God and out of fear of his wrath if they are not?
    • Is being religious positively correlated with morality?
    • Are God and religion necessary to set absolute standards for what is right and wrong?
  • Chapter 7: "The 'Good' Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist"
    • The Bible provides rules for living by instruction (for example, the Ten Commandments) and by example/role model which "...if followed through religiously...encourage a system of morals which any civilized modern person, whether religious or not, would find - I can put it no more gently - obnoxious." (p. 268).
    • Dawkins makes the point that with the Bible, people pick and choose what parts to take literally and what parts to believe.
    • Dawkins points out that a significant number of people do in fact take the Bible literally. He also talks about how some of those same people blame mankind for disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, and how their radical thinking might well be derived from their literal interpretations of and beliefs about some of the stories in the Bible (for example, the story of Noah's Ark, or the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah).
    • Dawkins makes the point that there are many "immoral" stories in the Bible, and when people decide for themselves which stories are moral and which are immoral, their criteria for deciding does not come from the Bible itself, but from some other source that is available to all people whether they are religious or not. In other words, in his opinion religious people don't, and modern day morality doesn't, derive morals from the Bible.
    • Speaking of the New Testament in the Bible, Dawkins admits that the ethical teachings of Jesus are admirable (compared to the "ethical disaster" of the Old Testament), but warns of other not-so-ethical teachings in the New Testament (in particular, the Christian concept of atonement for "original sin").
    • Dawkins goes on to talk about "original sin" (Adam and Eve eating the "forbidden fruit" and being banished from the Garden of Eden), and how unjust and unfair it is for all descendants to be yoked with that burden because of a transgression carried out by a remote ancestor.
    • Dawkins discusses the concept of "Love they neighbor", and how in the Bible it sometimes applies only when your neighbor is of the same religion (for example, Jew). He talks about how religion is a "label" by which groups are identified and how in the past that has resulted in the persecution and sometimes massacre of groups of people labeled as such. He acknowledges that in-group loyalties exist outside of religion, but states three ways in which religion "amplifies and exacerbates": 1) the labeling of children (for example, "a Catholic child"), 2) segregated schools, and 3) taboos against marriage outside of a given religion.
    • Dawkins talks about religion being a divisive force stating "Even if religion did no other harm in itself, its wanton and carefully nurtured divisiveness - its deliberate and cultivated pandering to humanity's natural tendency to favour in-groups and shun out-groups - would be enough to make it a significant force for evil in the world." (p. 297).
    • Dawkins discusses the idea of a set of "New Ten Commandments" like the following:
      • First Commandment: Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.
      • Second Commandment: In all things, strive to cause no harm.
      • Third Commandment: Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.
      • Fourth Commandment: Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
      • Fifth Commandment: Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.
      • Sixth Commandment: Always seek to be learning something new.
      • Seventh Commandment: Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.
      • Eighth Commandment: Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.
      • Ninth Commandment: Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.
      • Tenth Commandment: Question everything.

      Source:

      Lee, Adam. "The New Ten Commandments". patheos.com. Retrieved 2016-01-02.

    • Regarding the Moral Zeitgeist (Zeitgeist defined as "spirit of the times") Dawkins states "Whatever its cause, the manifest phenomenon of Zeitgeist progression is more than enough to undermine the claims that we need God in order to be good, or to decide what is good." (p. 308).
    • Dawkins discusses the subject of Stalin and Hitler and how apparently some religious people point to them as good examples of the "evils" of atheism. Dawkins notes that Stalin was in fact an atheist, but he says claims that Hitler was an atheist are dubious. He also makes the point that even if both were atheists there is no point to be made because there is no evidence that atheism influences people to do bad things.
  • Chapter 8: "What's Wrong with Religion? Why be so Hostile?"
    • Apparently, Dawkins comes across as "hostile" to some religious people because he is adamant and "fundamentalist" in his beliefs about religion. He makes the point that his "fundamentalism" is really passion, and that his passion comes from the fact that his beliefs (in the Theory of Evolution, etc.) are based on evidence, as opposed to a religious fundamentalists beliefs which are considerably less evidence-based and rely for the most part on the words of some holy book (for example, the Bible) and faith.

      As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect." (p. 321)

      Fundamentalist religion is hell-bent on ruining the scientific education of countless of thousands of innocent, well-meaning eager young minds. Non-fundamentalist, 'sensible' religion may not be doing that. But it is making the world safe for fundamentalism by teaching children, from their earliest years, that unquestioning faith is a virtue. (p. 323)

    • Dawkins discusses and gives several examples of how in some theocratic countries (for example, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia) people are convicted and put to death for blasphemy and apostasy, which are in reality nothing more than thought crimes.
    • Dawkins discusses the topic of homosexuality, and how some fundamentalists rail about the evils of homosexuality, something done in private by consenting adults.
    • Dawkins touches on the topics of human embryos and abortion, and how some fundamentalists seem more concerned about the "killing" of embryos than the killing of adults on death row.
    • Dawkins discusses the "Beethoven Fallacy" (a "human potential" argument regarding abortion).
    • Regarding moderation in faith, Dawkins says "...even mild and moderate religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes." (p. 342).
    • Dawkins talks about how extremists like Osama bin Laden, or any disciple of any terrorist organization willing to detonate a suicide bomb, is motivated by faith/religion and the glory of being a martyr and receiving whatever awaits them in the afterlife. He states "...these people actually believe what they say they believe. The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion."(p. 345).

      • As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers. The alternative, one so transparent that it should need no urging, is to abandon the principle of automatic respect for religious faith. This is one reason why I do everything in my power to warn people against faith itself, not just against so-called 'extremist' faith. The teachings of 'moderate' religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism. (pp. 345-346)

      More generally (and this applies to Christianity no less than to Islam), what is really pernicious is the practice of teaching children that faith itself is a virtue. Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument. Teaching children that unquestioned faith is a virtue primes them - given certain other ingredients that are not hard to come by - to grow up into potentially lethal weapons for future jihads or crusades. (pp. 347-348)

  • Chapter 9: "Childhood, Abuse and the Escape from Religion"
    • Dawkins talks about the Italian Inquisition and how in the 1800's children of some Jewish parents were taken away from their parents by the Catholic Church because the church discovered that the children had been baptized as Catholic sometime in their earlier youth.

      But this story of the Italian Inquisition and its attitude to children is particularly revealing because it is religious. (p. 351)

      First is the remarkable perception by the religious mind that a sprinkle of water and a brief verbal incantation can totally change a child's life, taking precedence over parental consent, the child's own consent, the child's own happiness and psychological well-being...over everything that ordinary common sense and human feeling would see as important. (p. 351)

      Third is the presumptuousness whereby religious people know, without evidence, that the faith of their birth is the one true faith. (p. 353)

    • Speaking about children, Dawkins states "The important point is that it is their [the children's] privilege to decide what they shall think, and not their parents' privilege to impose if by force majeure" (p. 367).
  • Chapter 10: "A Much Needed Gap?"
    • The "gap", meaning our psychological/emotional need for God as a companion, comforter, and confidant
    • The roles of religion - explanation, exhortation (rules by which we should behave), consolation, and inspiration
    • The idea that gods in general might have evolved from the simple notion of a childhood "invisible friend" being somehow retained into adulthood
    • The power of religion to console does not make it true (false beliefs can be just as consoling as true beliefs)
    • "The Mother of All Burkas" - an analogy Dawkins uses to explain how science can open our minds to see and understand things that otherwise we are not able to see or sense.

Source:

Dawkins, Richard. (2006). The God Delusion. ISBN-13: 978-0-618-91842-9, ISBN-10: 0-618-91824-8. Houghton Mifflin Company.

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