Book Review: The God Delusion

My book club's selection this month was The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. As a devoted Christian I was very game to read this book, as I want to understand the atheist position as much as possible. However, looking forward to being challenged by one of atheism's brightest minds, I was very quickly disappointed. This book is one long, tedious exercise in third-rate argumentation -- strawman and red herring fallacies, cherry-picking, ad hominem, and character assassination. As one of the other club members pointed out, Dawkins makes use of debating techniques we learned not to use in the seventh grade.

The premise really boils down to this: God is unlikely to exist because religious people are jerks and idiots (esp. Christians), religious dogma is silly (esp. Christianity), and some ideas about God are contemptible (esp. biblical). Chapters begin with promising titles ("The God Hypothesis" and "Why There Almost Certainly is No God"), but never deliver. "The God Hypothesis," for example, never actually spells out what the God hypothesis is. Instead, we get page after page of cherry-picked examples of the worst and silliest that Christianity has to offer, along with Dawkins' pompous rants and endless quotations underlining his deep contempt for religion and religious people. All I could gather from this is that the "God hypothesis" is little more than "God sucks."

The initial chapter, with sections titled "Deserved respect" (anything atheistic) and "Undeserved respect" (anything religious, esp. Christianity) is what sets the tone for the rest of the book, and warns astute readers that what lies ahead is a decidedly propagandistic view of the subject. Dawkins doesn't bother to build up his argument, but immediately draws conclusions for his readers through frequent use of the word "enlightened" to describe anyone and any idea that agrees with his premise. His bigotry is most revealed in a response to a book written by Stephen Jay Gould (now dead and unable to defend himself) titled Rocks of Ages, in which Gould effectively says that science answers the "how" of existence while theology answers the "why." Dawkins, who is so unable to grasp that an eminent evolutionist could believe such a thing, states that Gould could not possibly have meant what he wrote and ascribes it to an undue respect for religion. As an interesting aside, I should mention that Dawkins refutes Gould's idea of these 'non-overlapping magisteria' by stating: "...a universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?" I agree with Dawkins here, but apparently nobody has given him the memo that intelligent design has no place in the science classroom.

I do not doubt that much, if not all, of what Dawkins presents in criticism of Christianity is true. Some notable (and not so notable) Christians have said and done very silly, even contemptible, things. But does this necessarily represent the sum of Christianity? It is Dawkins' duty to present as accurate a picture of his subject as possible and to defeat the best it has to offer before he can claim victory. But he says little of Christianity's merits. In cases where Christians have accomplished laudable things, such as with Rev. Martin Luther King, their faith is written off as meaningless coincidence. Where such dismissals are impossible, the facts are simply omitted. Nowhere in the book could I find mention of the role British evangelical Christians played in bringing about the end the worldwide slavetrade. Dawkins is British, and I would be surprised if he were unaware of this historical fact. (There is also a movie on this topic in theaters right now.) There is also no mention of the Christian foundation of modern science, industrialization, and modern democracy (for a good review of this see Dinesh D'Souza's What So Great About America).

The true propagandistic nature of Dawkins book is revealed through lack of any meaningful discussion of the atrocities committed by atheists. Dawkins mentions Hitler, if only to bring into question the nature of his religious background, but fails to address Hitler's second in command, Martin Bormann, who was architect of the Holocaust and a staunch atheist. His discussion of Stalin, however, is a painful exercise in twisted logic. Dawkins does not attempt to argue that Stalin was anything but atheist, but concludes that Stalin's atheism had nothing to do with his vile actions. He correctly asks, "What matters is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things" but concludes, astoundingly, "There is not the smallest evidence that it does." This is, in fact, quite wrong. Jeffrey Dahmer claimed that he did terrible things, because, in a universe without God, it's all meaningless. (Perhaps, now that Dahmer is dead, Dawkins will presume to speak on his behalf and claim that he didn't really mean it.)

On a large scale, you can examine the line of reasoning taken by the members of the communist Khmer Rouge for their slaughter of millions of their own countrymen. They had a vision of their ideal society, and the most effective way to accomplish it was to wipe out the old society and begin fresh with the children. When you believe there is no God, you make the rules. As Dostoyevsky put it, "If God is not, everything is permitted." Not only has atheism influenced bad behavior, it has done so disproportionately compared to all religions combined. Dinesh D'Souza explains that the oft-mentioned Salem witch trials resulted in 25 deaths and the Spanish Inquisition may be responsible for as many as 100,000 deaths; yet communsim is responsible for an estimated 100 million deaths. Nevertheless, Dawkins conveniently arranges his assumptions so that he can dismiss the obvious and arrive at precisely the point he wishes:

• When a Christian does something bad, his faith is at fault. When a Christian does something good, his faith is irrelevant.



• When an atheist does something bad, his atheism is irrelevant. When an atheist does something good, his "enlightened" atheist beliefs are responsible.

I haven't finished the book, and it doesn't bode well for the rest of it as the first few chapters follow the exact same format: interesting and provocative titles followed by monotonously endless rants, attacks, and sloppy reasoning that never address the point of the chapter. Wading through all this to get the salient bits reminded me a little of Gandalf's description of interrogating Gollum -- eventually you get a piece of useful information, but not without much aggravation.

Dawkins makes the claim in his preface that, if he's done his job right, religious readers will be atheists by the end of the book. The problem is getting them to the end of the book -- he is assuming that a religious person can be persuaded to read through over 300 pages of endless insults and attacks (one of our Catholic members, admirably, managed to do this). Furthermore, the only way Dawkins can accomplish his goal is if said reader is a complete ignoramus, with no knowledge of history or religion whatsoever, and lacking convictions of any depth. But perhaps this describes the type of converts Dawkins wishes for.