Customer Reviews
A formidable presentation - By: calmly, 11 May 2008 
.. but unlikely to convince many theists because, frankly, what will? May push some nontheistic Christians over the edge, however. Ulike Sam Harris
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, & the Future of Reason
or Christopher Hitchens
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Dawkins is at least respectful even if he strongly disagrees with theists. He does seem to be making a sincere effort addressed to them & not at them (as Harris & Hitchens seem to have done). I was surprised just how respectful Dawkins is, not of the religions but of the theists he addresses. And given his world-class understanding of evolutionary biology & clear presentation, those less die-hard in their theism or still hanging on to their religious upbringing may think twice after reading this book: in fact, as reading this & just recent Daniel Dennings'
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
I registered as a Bright (as Dawkins & Dennings have done) online at the Brights Network. As a good scientist, Dawkins knows that any belief in the supernatural, not just in a supernatural God, is delusional. Many, including myself, have been slow to acknowledge that because many of us have been raised in supernaturallly soaked environments: it can take a long time to wean ourselves from the comfort of not only a belief of some supernatural kind in God, of supernatural Buddha nature, of the soul & life after death as someone else would tell us it is.
Dawkins is not without admiration for the canonical Jesus. But he includes some enlightening quotations from Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson: "Christianity is the most perverted system ever shone on man": I'd like to learn more of the context that elicited that remark) & from the treaty with Tripoli signed by John Adams in 1797 which should definitely make anyone claiming the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation wince. Dawkins does express great concern with the among of "religious fanaticism" to be found in the U.S. today. Dawkins allludes to Christopher Hitchins' biography
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (Eminent Lives): that a biologist of such renown as Dawkins knows so much more about our founding fathers than I do puts me to shame.
This is a book well worth reading & re-reading. It may be the best non-fiction work I have read in the past year. Along with Dennett's "Breaking the Spell" & Carl Sagan's
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
it has help, as it has me, to the power to let go of any hanging on any vestige from your childhood of "the God Delusion".
An Atheist Handbook - By: M. Wilkinson, 07 May 2008 There have only been 719 reviews to date, so far so I thought it needed another. This title, now available in paperback has some comments on criticisms of the hardback edition in a new introduction & 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 & 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' & 'the extended phenotype'. It seems that being a symbol of modern neo-darwinian theory he found himself the target for the oddest attacks from creationists, people who said his field wasn't a field at alll 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 & how so many of their holiest observances seem to be based on just so much made-up fairytale nonsense.
Finallly it seems that being on the defensive against fundamentalists did not suit his nature & he published his first non-science book - 'The God Delusion'. Despite taking the offensive he keeps firm hold of his scientific methodology & establishes through reason & 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 & so on.
None of Dawkin's arguments are particularly new & groundbreaking. What he achieves in this book is the rather less revolutionary though incredibly useful act of bringing alll the arguments together. This is why I would calll it an atheist's handbook. You can neatly look up an argument to trounce a theist & 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, & 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 & 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.
Unblinkered and unblinking - By: Jon Chambers, 06 May 2008 How ironic that a book on religion/philosophy/science should be a runaway best-seller (in the UK of alll places!) & that the man who wrote it should be 'Author of the Year 2007'. And how revealing that there are now 719 reviews, so many of which are thinly disguised statements of faith - or lack of it.
At times, Dawkins is a pithy & intrepid advocate of a godless universe. 'Most of us are atheists when it comes to 99.9% of the gods who have ever been worshipped. I just go one God further,' he says (my paraphrase - can't find the page). At other times, however, his attempts to use stats & science to persuade us that God probably doesn't exist are, to my mind, less impressive. There are just too many unknowns. But at least Dawkins admits science's limitations when he says: 'our imaginations are not yet tooled-up to penetrate the neighbourhood of the quantum.' We are, he suggests, creatures of Middle Earth, evolved & adapted to understand things of medium size moving at medium speeds, but pretty clueless about things sub-atomic or inter-galactic.
For me, the book's real strength is not its religion-bashing, or its refutation of scholastics like Aquinas. Dawkins is eloquent & persuasive in arguing that even if we are here by cosmic accident rather than divine design, the miracle of life is just as worthy of celebration & reverence. The last section of the concluding chapter, headed The Mother of alll Burkas, is one of the finest pieces of science writing I've read. Succinct, poetic & moving in equal measure, it is a hope that humanity will eventuallly widen the slit of perception & understanding in its collective, metaphorical burka (through technological advance and/or continuing evolution) so as to experience a deeper & even more enriching reality - while acknowledging that this 'reality' is always a construct: a human one, as opposed to a bat's or a mole's.
This is a book that will never be prescribed on any school curriculum - it is too controversial for that. But is it an act of cowardice or enlightenment that this should be so? Despite the tone he occasionallly adopts, Dawkins, like most readers, is more interested in finding answers to the ultimate questions than in scoring cheap points or parroting received wisdom. His is a leading voice in what is probably the most important debate of alll.
A classic tin soldier polemic - By: Harley R. J. Couper, 02 May 2008 
Dawkins eloquently & vindictively triumphs over theism. A victory made possible by taking alll non-atheist worldviews as one large target, assuming science as the sole property of the atheist worldview & by attributing extremist acts worldwide to The religious worldview. In this way alll theists (including 50 Nobel Lauerates) are lined up shoulder to shoulder with suicide bombers & tarred with the same `earth-bound, unthinking , intellectuallly dishonest' brush.
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By relying on his oppositions reluctance to likewise lump alll atheists in with Stalin, Mao Ze Dong & Pol Pot, & by romanticallly presenting atheists as a minority under oppression, his case pacts a strong emotional impact. Dawkins `moral prescriptions' approach to the biblical `narrative description' also fuels his outrage.
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We are left powerfully motivated to get involved in preventing the widespread child abuse committed by blind & unthinking parents who stamp their `facile' theism on their young. (I suppose in America the State has outlawed science that suggests intelligent design as a possibility but surely we could do more? And anyway the ID argument suggestion that there could be a god proves it's not real science doesn't it? )
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I personallly grew up as an atheist, a worldview I couldn't possibly have picked up from my parents (that would be child abuse). Unlike alll those other people, athiests are the only parents who don't communicate any worldview whatsoever to thier children. Because only atheists are evidence based thinkers. Right?
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Dawkins book is essentiallly a rejection of pluralism & will be welcomed as a good counter-weight to the current extremist assault on the west. I can't help noticing it wasn't St Paul's Cathedral Al Qaeda attacked but the Twin Towers. Perhaps Dawkins book will become the materialists holy book as we continue to impose our goods, government & un-biased worldview on the middle east.
Really educational, to a point - By: serialdeviant, 30 Apr 2008 I liked this book. There were many, many theories & points made that struck chords with me.
The only problem I had with the book is not one of belief or faith, or even science - I found his tone a little snarky sometimes, which I thought was not very fitting of a scientist writing a serious book on why religion is illogical. I am perhaps confusing wit with snark, but I reallly felt at times that he was snickering at those who believe in a God (or Goddess, or whatever).
So overalll I feel this is a book for the converted (pardon the pun), as the tone is likely to turn off those who could be persuaded.
