The God Delusion

By Richard Dawkins

Nearly ever book that I review is one that I would want others to read. THIS IS NOT THE CASE FOR THIS BOOK. After hearing so much hype about it in the press, and thinking I must be missing something, I have read and reread the book. But my assessment has not changed one bit, but only become stronger. I suggest that Dawkins should stick to his day job. Although he's a superb biologist when dealing with observable facts, he isn't a philosopher and he shouldn't play one in print. He doesn't seem to have the mind for it. Why? Because the philosophical mistakes that he makes in this book are so silly that one has to wonder what his editor was thinking (or drinking). What one finds are the jumps in logic that I would expect from someone like Shelby Spong trying to eliminate the miraculous or a high school freshman who is trying to dismiss religion to justify his binge drinking.

And this gets to the heart of the problem of the book. It is mostly an emotional rant against Dawkins' concept of God, which I admit I do not believe in either. So don't get me wrong, I am not exactly bashing his atheism (which is not logical in my view), just the oddly weak nature of his strawman arguments that only saw the light of printed day owing to his stature in his proper field of expertise, which is not theology or philosophy.

Major example of silliness: Since the more complex a thing is the more unlikely it is to exist, God is most likely not there, since God would be hypercomplex. But this proves nothing and doesn't even follow logic. Of course any idea or concept of God will include the "beyond beyond" apophatic category, but isn't that logical and doesn't it allow for the simplicity of God at the same time? Both arguments are circular, but his is the diameter of a basketball hoop. It holds very little grey matter. Moreover, it assumes God must be complex. That is just his prejudiced assumption. God doesn't have to be complex. In fact, it is just as logical or not to assume divine simplicity. Look at the Western Theological Tradition with people like Aquinas or Augustine, i.e., real philosophers. Divine simplicity is part of the package for them. Or, to put it plainly, he is applying biological ideas and categories wrongly to the divine, which last time I checked no theologian of the Christian tradition ever does. Why not? Because it doesn't make sense to speak of God as just the most complex creature in the universe, just the biggest kid on the block. That would be changing what Christians, Dawkins' main object of ridicule, mean by the term "God". But that is what little kids (and Dawkins) think about God, not philosophers and theologians (or hopefully adults). And it's sad his editor didn't ask him, "Uh, Rich, you never proved your premise. Not even attempted to prove it." Again, poor logic.

At any rate I am not sure that theists need to even speak of the probability of God existing. It is not probable for God to exist; but that aside, his confusion of probability with impossibility is unwarranted and a basic redefining of the terms. I can guess that he doesn't believe in the possibility of eleven-sided triangles, but whatever.

A further example of silliness is his idea that evolution writ large, especially neurological evolution, disproves God since it is random, and thus unlikely. But how so? It only disproves a particular type of literalist fundamentalism, which even most Christians in the past rejected anyway. From very early on, Christians at least (I am thinking of Basil and Macrina in the fourth century, among many others) have said that God does what God does, and if science shows how it is done, great, but it never can answer the "why" behind the purpose. That is a cosmogogical question, not a cosmological one. It is a purely philosophical/theological question. And besides, something's being unlikely doesn't disprove its existence, only its unlikely existence. That is a huge distinction and it is just, if not more, supportive of theism's claims about creation. But again, Dawkins is dismissing a childish view of God and claiming he dismissed the Great Tradition. Simply strawman silliness that people get duped by, since it reinforces their own atheistic fundamentalism.

Can't we have open, logical minds? Richard Dawkins, or at least his editor, should have actually read some theology or philosophy before writing the book. It would have made his arguments stronger and my review shorter. Again, it is simply astounding to read how much faith Dawkins puts in the god of Chance. The role of chance once the universe is created is reduced (to odds that are still much larger than he admits), but his premise of a one in a billion chance of DNA to arise is way too optimistic by hundreds of trillions and would require way more than the 13-odd billion years the universe has existed.

And no matter how we understand the process of evolution, it is simply an article of faith to say that no god created whatever it is at the beginning; as much a leap of faith as any theists'. This is where Dawkins' own god of the gaps enters in: chance. For him, anything is possible, even the impossible, except for the existence of God, since he uses a very gigantic and unwarranted understanding of the idea of chance, which is NOT a cause of anything, to replace the reality of god. But he offers absolutely no logical basis for the belief. None whatsoever. He should at least be an agnostic if he followed logic and not bias. (Oh yes, atheists have faith.) And finally, although this is perhaps being petty, the cover speaks more than it perhaps may have intended. You will notice that his name is what you really notice before the title. This is so true. The book is about his half-formed and ill-willed rants more than it is about anyone's supposed delusions. Were it not for the seriousness of the subject, this book would be a sad, but somewhat humorous, tale.

Please see these for better arguments for and against religion: Does God Exist?: A Dialogue, The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism, Miracles, The Abolition of Man, There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, Does God Exist: The Craig-Flew Debate and Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God. On the lack of scientific objectivity, which is often erroneously a subtheme of the atheist/theist question, see not only the previously mentioned books, but also Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Clarendon Paperbacks) (which is twenty dollars in paperback) and Truth And Method (Continuum Impacts). Lastly, just take a few hours and read this newer book The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions. It is a primer by a highly respected agnostic on why authors like Dawkins are in no position to speak with any authority on philosophical questions, even if "they can recite the periodic table" front and backwards, and why the new strand of militant atheism is not based upon rationality, but upon faulty preconceptions, bigotry and a misconception of the role of science itself. Being an expert in one field does not automatically cross-pollinate into other fields. A notable exception, however, is the author of The Devil's Delusion, David Berlinski, who has a Ph.D. from Princeton University and has taught mathematics and philosophy at universities in the United States and in France.

You see, it isn't as simple as Richard pretends it to be, and his rants are much more about himself than either science or religion.