The God Delusion | Richard Dawkins | Live and let Live No More

The God Delusion | Richard Dawkins | Deluded no more

books:

The God Delusion

	The God Delusion Richard Dawkins Mariner Books, 2008 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 1217 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Live and let Live No More

Now in my late 40's, I grew up quite literally in the shadow of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK--the epicenter of American Evangelicals. My Mother was Roman Catholic and my father Southern Baptist. It's taken many years and Herculean effort to escape such an auspicious orbit. And I thought I had long escaped. I eventually settled into a live-and-let-live, middle-of-the-road agnosticism.

Then I read this book. And I realized that that passive acceptance, that "live and let live" approach to American Fundamentalist Christianity I'd held, was itself dangerous. By not openly refuting something so blatantly ignorant and destructive, I was passively contributing to it. I now realize this to be clearly true and I thank the author for this powerful distinction. Especially as I reflected back on my own religious indoctrination, as a very young child, I desperately needed even a wink from a wise soul, as if to say, "Don't worry son, the smart ones don't actually drink the kool-aid." Only after reading this book, I realized, I had to start standing up for what I believe in. And especially, for what I don't believe in.

Those schooled reviewers who criticize Dawkins as being too hard on religion or especially personal spirituality are still missing the point. If you believe in anything other than a Fundamentalist, Literalistic interpretation of religious texts, you are abjectly hypocritical. If forced to accept your own believes literally, you would abandon them. Moreover, by accepting them as being divine but also vague, you accept that any interpretation is acceptable--it's a personal choice (and yet, a divine overarching truth). You might then say, those choices, however, have limitations--say laws to prevent inspired apostles applying their personal interpretation as to fly planes into tall buildings. But then you're saying religious texts are superseded by laws, composed by sober societies. So your religious ideal is now relegated to a very vague, still divine, but not proscriptive idea, which you're entitled to because it makes you feel good. Like smoking pot. And yet, indulging even privately in that inebriant is illegal.

I highly recommend reading this book in corroboration with Letters to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris and Misquoting Jesus by Epstein.

This book is important. If you love religion, read it. You've nothing to fear. Right?

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Deluded no more

If you have doubts about religion versus science then read this book. It is clear and cites good evidence to support it's claims. A book to read several times.

Eye opening...

Richard Dawkins has incisively separated fact from fiction (i.e. god) in making a case that an omniscient God is very unlikely to exist and is not the source of all that is good. See the youtube presentation by Dawkins in Lynchburg VA for more information if you are interested.

Good book, but not that deep.

If you are an atheist this is a good book for you, but Richard does not really try to convince us that there is no God, his arguments are of a different kind.

I was an atheist and I can understand Richard, but there is a higher place from atheism which pictures "God" in a different light than the classical one (bible). The progression is like this: God (bible) -> no God (atheism) -> new God (revelation)

The book was a page turner at some points, in average about 100 pages were the good part. Sometimes I found it rather boring.

A good book in average, but not what I expected, his aim was more to point out the flaws in religion (good arguments) than to prove that there is no God, purpose, etc.

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