"The God Delusion" who has read?

Question

thoughts? :)

Answer 1

Yes and awesome!

What a friend we have in Dawkins!

Answer 2

I have read the book and I'm a Christian. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" I've also read the critique of the book by several noted people.

Alister McGrath, author of Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, describes The God Delusion as Dawkins' "weakest book to date, marred by its excessive reliance on bold assertion and rhetorical flourish, where the issues so clearly demand careful reflection and painstaking analysis, based on the best evidence available".

Alvin Plantinga, an analytic philosopher and author, has published a detailed review titled "The Dawkins Confusion",[50] in which he claims that Dawkins' philosophy is "at best jejune". He mainly attacks chapter 4 "Why There Almost Certainly is No God" by saying that Dawkins' argument is basically: God is enormously complex; therefore God is enormously improbable. Dawkins does not explain this inference and Plantinga finds it probable that Dawkins is assuming materialism. In a materialistic paradigm of reality the existence of a being of enormous knowledge implies the existence of a very complex and indeed unlikely configuration of material parts. But when discussing the existence of God materialism cannot be used as a premise, after all the non-existence of God is directly implied by materialism. So Plantinga's criticism is that Dawkins' argument for the improbability of God is question-begging.

Peter S Williams, a Christian philosopher and author, in a review for the Christian charity Damaris International, says that while "The God Delusion is the work of a passionate and rhetorically savvy writer capable of making good points against religious fundamentalism," Dawkins "is out of his philosophical depth". Williams proposes rebuttals to two of the book's arguments against the existence of God: Dawkins' use of the anthropic principle and the "who designed the designer?" objection that according to Williams is at the heart of the 747 Gambit.[49]

Dawkins like most Atheists is a very angry and self-centered person. He asks, the extremely childish question, If God is real then who created God? What is he 5 yrs old? I'm an engineer not a physicist and I have an answer right here (off of the top of my head) :

We(humans) exist on a 1 dimensional single directional time line. It always goes forward. Imagine if you can a being that can exist on a multi-dimensional, multi-directional time line. That being would be outside of your reality. As such,He could have no beginning and no terminating point. He could always be and always was. Sound familiar?
I guess since Dawkins is a self-proclaimed high priest of atheism, his book will be used as the latest atheist bible. No proof whatsoever, just a lot of hot air.

Answer 3

I largely agree with it, but it could have been better written. Some of the arguments hold very subtle fallacies, from the other party's point of view, and so in that respect fail. An argument is a good argument if it is successful within the other party's frame of reference. Further, regardless of orientation some parts were weak. I liked it overall, but I kept feeling a need to get out a highlighter and edit it. Good book, not great.

Answer 4

I haven't, nor do I feel the need to do so. I have already established for myself that my approach is effective and reasonable.

Because God can be defined in any number of ways, it cannot be so easily rejected. The supernatural need not show itself to us, nor is it necessarily able to do so. In that sense, God is very possible. It is when we begin to set more parameters that God can be analyzed and thrown out.

Of course, I am assuming, by the quotes atheists use, that the purpose of the book is to disprove God. I have no problem with showing the failures of the Christian God, but the denial of a general God-concept would bother me.

Answer 5

"i havent but i know someone who has and she says richard dawkins is full of himself."

Wow, you should punch yourself in the face after that. Who in their right mind is going to complain about a book using second hand information? Are you TRYING to appear like an ignorant fool?


"Science can't prove whether God exists or not."

That's your complaint of the book? Really? You really think that is a criticism of the book? You CLEARLY did not read the book. You should be ashamed of yourself for lying.

"I think the militant Atheism he supports is actually just as dangerous as religious fundamentalism."

You are either a liar (in that you didn't read the book at all) or you skipped huge sections of the book. Either way you come out looking like a tool.

Answer 6

Outstanding book. Mr Dawkins raises answers to questions Christians didn't even know they had.
Hes thoughts and ideas really strike a cord in the whole faith-based belief system. But Christians won't read it, its just too logical.

Answer 7

Yes.

I think that Mr. Dawkins if a brilliant evolutionary biologist. I think he does a wonderful job of explaining the delusions. I only wish that he could be less obtuse and insulting when doing so - calling people names doesnt make him look good.

Answer 8

Read God the Fail Hypothesis.

On the back it quotes Dawkins as "I learned an enormous amount from this splendid book."

I am more into physics that is why I liked it.

But Dawkins book is quite good though his tone should be more scientific.

Answer 9

It mentions some interesting research into the origins of compassion. Dawkins is a bland writer, but has, and shows, a first class mind.

Answer 10

He is straight to the point, though I could see why he would come off as "arrogant" to some people. Great book btw.

also, try...Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World". It's somewhat related.

Answer 11

I found Richard Dawkins to be kind of self-referencing, but it's not unbearable. He's very articulate, and I like how he thinks. A good book, overall.