An Attack on Religion: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Book Review
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Published by Houghton Mifflin in 2006

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist by trade (author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker), is also one of the world's best known and most avowed atheists. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins makes the case that religion is not the foundation of humanity's moral values, that it has and is a major source of violence in the world, and that it instills ignorance which deprives free thought and pursuit of knowledge.

The author begins by defining the difference between a true believer, an agnostic, and an atheist, followed by debunking the major arguments for God's existence, from Thomas Aquinas' 'proofs' to the scriptures to Blaise Pascal's wager ("You'd better believe in God, because if you are right you stand to gain eternal bliss and if you are wrong it won't make any difference anyways."). Dawkins uses eloquent logical reasoning to counter these claims and is utterly convincing. The explanation of scientific facts in the next chapter, "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God", is likewise powerful and cogent. For example, Dawkins argues that even though the origin of life is still a mystery and the chance of it happening is statistically small (relatively small, because even if the chance was one in a billion, there would be a billion planets with life on them, given that there are a 100 billion galaxies and probably a billion billion planets in the universe), the probability of a God is even smaller because if a divine creator designed life, who designed the creator?

The chapters "The Roots of Religion" and "The Roots of Morality: why are we good?" are also immensely interesting. In the former, Dawkins cites a postulation that religion could be a by-product of mechanisms that were built into the brain by selection for falling in love. Another complimentary hypothesis is that irrationally strong conviction was useful in early human evolution as a guard against fickleness of mind ("It would be a severe disadvantage, for example, when hunting or making tools, to keep changing one's mind."). In the latter chapter, Dawkins theorizes that altruism towards strangers is another by-product of our ancestral altruism towards close kin, just as sexual desire is not diminished in a couple where the woman is on the pill even though they both know that she cannot conceive.

Dawkins justifiably has a problem with parents who teach their children a certain religion without proper explanation:

"I thank my own parents for taking the view that children be taught not so much what to think as how to think. If, having been fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence, they grow up and decide that the Bible is literally true or that the movement of the planets rule their lives, that is their privilege. The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, and not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure."

In the same chapter, titled "Childhood, Abuse, and Religion", Dawkins quotes a few dozen idioms, phrases, and cliches used in English that come directly from the King James Authorized Version of the Bible. In concluding the chapter, he writes:

"Let me not labour the point. I have probably said enough to convince at least my older readers that an atheistic world-view provides no justification for cutting the Bible, and other sacred books, out of our education. And of course we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage."

It is here that Dawkins is incomplete in his reasoning and omits a very important point. Besides providing personal psychological needs, religion also serves ecological and ecclesiastic roles that strengthen the community. There is something to be said of a weakening culture due to weakening religion as evidenced in Europe, where many churches lay empty or are being converted into nightclubs.

At the outset of the book, Dawkins declares, "I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented." Indeed, attack would have been a good subtitle for the book--Dawkins leaves all pleasantries at teatime and does not mince words. In doing so however, he covers a diverse issue of topics, from the Afghani Taliban to the prayers of John Paul II to the policies of the Bush administration. His expression of opinions on a plethora of subjects begs the question--why is an evolutionary biologist writing about these issues? Richard Dawkins has gotten criticism for his inclusion of political opinions in an otherwise unrelated discourse, such as his excellent book The Ancestor's Tale--which traces Homo sapiens' ancestry species by species back to the origin of life--which would have been a masterpiece save for his quips about the Bush administration. In fairness to Dawkins, his opinions are much more appropriate in this book than in any other because religion and politics are deeply intertwined in many countries, but especially in America and the Muslim world. Yet even if some of his opinions are relevant, they are not always explained in scientific terms. For example, he correctly compares the U.S. government's and media's use of "terrorism" to the Salem witch trials, yet when he writes about suicide bombers who justify their actions through religion, he does not dig into their ultimate causes (for example, territorial and cultural transgression, etc.). This is why his previous bestseller The Blind Watchmaker is a much better book on why God almost certainly does not exist (and had nothing to do with the creation or subsequent evolution of life) precisely because it is void of political and philosophical opinions and only advances scientific facts and theories.

The God Delusion is still a good, mainly philosophical discussion on religion and its current-events implications, and is worth reading. But given Richard Dawkins' confrontational style--in contrast with the Southern politeness of Edward O. Wilson, for example--readers, especially religious ones, who are interested in learning more about evolution will be better served reading The Blind Watchmaker and The Ancestor's Tale.