Talk:The God Delusion/reviews

message: Terry Eagleton is mainly a literary critic with interest in theological themes. His review was published in the London Review of Books.
;Our summary
Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books argues that Dawkins has insufficient understanding of the religious concepts he is attacking to engage with them effectively. He comments, "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology." He questions whether Dawkins has read or heard of Christian thinkers like Eriugena, Rahner or Moltmann. He denies that all faith is blind faith, suggests that "while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it". He claims that "Critics of the most enduring form of popular culture in human history have a moral obligation to confront that case at its most persuasive". He adds, however, that Dawkins is effective in attacking "that particular strain of psychopathology known as fundamentalism, whether Texan or Taliban".
; Last paragraph
Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to ‘sophisticated’ religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass. The huge numbers of believers who hold something like the theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals. As far as such outrages go, however, The God Delusion does a very fine job indeed. The two most deadly texts on the planet, apart perhaps from Donald Rumsfeld’s emails, are the Bible and the Koran; and Dawkins, as one the best of liberals as well as one of the worst, has done a magnificent job over the years of speaking out against that particular strain of psychopathology known as fundamentalism, whether Texan or Taliban. He is right to repudiate the brand of mealy-mouthed liberalism which believes that one has to respect other people’s silly or obnoxious ideas just because they are other people’s. In its admirably angry way, The God Delusion argues that the status of atheists in the US is nowadays about the same as that of gays fifty years ago. The book is full of vivid vignettes of the sheer horrors of religion, fundamentalist or otherwise. Nearly 50 per cent of Americans believe that a glorious Second Coming is imminent, and some of them are doing their damnedest to bring it about. But Dawkins could have told us all this without being so appallingly bitchy about those of his scientific colleagues who disagree with him, and without being so theologically illiterate. He might also have avoided being the second most frequently mentioned individual in his book – if you count God as an individual.
;Other important points
* On the concept of God: "Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects."
* On the role of religion in evil: "Such is Dawkins’s unruffled scientific impartiality that in a book of almost four hundred pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false. The countless millions who have devoted their lives selflessly to the service of others in the name of Christ or Buddha or Allah are wiped from human history – and this by a self-appointed crusader against bigotry. He is like a man who equates socialism with the Gulag. Like the puritan and sex, Dawkins sees God everywhere, even where he is self-evidently absent. He thinks, for example, that the ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland would evaporate if religion did, which to someone like me, who lives there part of the time, betrays just how little he knows about it. He also thinks rather strangely that the terms Loyalist and Nationalist are ‘euphemisms’ for Protestant and Catholic, and clearly doesn’t know the difference between a Loyalist and a Unionist or a Nationalist and a Republican. He also holds, against a good deal of the available evidence, that Islamic terrorism is inspired by religion rather than politics." 
;Discussion
Makes many important points. --Merzul 11:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terry Eagleton 

message: Richard Kirk is a freelance writer who lives in Oceanside, California. He is a regular columnist for San Diego's North County Times, and his reviews have also been published in the American Enterprise, First Things, Touchstone, and the California Republic website. This review was published in The American Spectator. An Exercise in Contempt, Richard Kirk, The American Spectator, 12/8/2006
;Our summary
In "An Exercise in Contempt", a review in The American Spectator, Richard Kirk contrasts Alfred North Whitehead’s willingness to look at the big picture and give historical players their due credit with what he calls "the scattershot pettiness that pervades Richard Dawkins’ book." “Far from being a serious philosophical book, this ill-edited and garrulous diatribe contains just about anything that crosses the author's mind" with “page after sarcastic page of attacks against any foe Dawkins considers an easy target.”  Dawkins avoids the “real question" of "whether one's explanation terminates with a meaningless cosmos or with a being who provides a reason for things.”
;Last paragraph
Overall, Dawkins' "philosophy" amounts to little more than this unintentionally humorous observation by Dr. Edward Tryon that was quoted in a Time-Life book on cosmology, "Our universe is simply one of those things that happens from time to time." That's reason according to Dawkins -- a man whose cultural and philosophical observations are predictably au courant, consistently dogmatic, and largely unreflective. He is the un-Whitehead, a man who will never (barring divine intervention) appreciate this sublime comment by my philosophical mentor: "In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions."
;Other points
* ...
;Discussion
I would suggest deleting this review entirely. Since the book has been reviewed by top critics, philosophers, and scientists; who need to know what Richard Kirk thinks. --Merzul 11:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Richard Kirk 

message: Alvin Plantinga is often considered together with Richard Swinburne as the greatest living theist philosophers of religion. The review is published in Christianity Today, not exactly a neutral source :)
;Our summary
Alvin Plantinga, an analytic philosopher and author, has published a detailed review titled "The Dawkins Confusion". He says that Dawkins is a brilliant writer but this book is nothing more than an "extended diatribe...and contains little science...many of his (Dawkins') arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class."  He concentrates on chapter 4 "Why There Almost Certainly is No God" by saying that Dawkins' argument is basically: God has to be enormously complex because the universe has so much information in it; therefore God has to be complex and thus He is enormously improbable. Dawkins does not support this assertion and Plantinga finds it probable that Dawkins is assuming materialism. Plantinga  states that the books argument "...really doesn't give even the slightest reason for thinking belief in God mistaken, let alone a delusion" and he finds Dawkins argument is not against God but naturalism.
;Last paragraphs
The God Delusion is full of bluster and bombast, but it really doesn't give even the slightest reason for thinking belief in God mistaken, let alone a "delusion."
The naturalism that Dawkins embraces, furthermore, in addition to its intrinsic unloveliness and its dispiriting conclusions about human beings and their place in the universe, is in deep self-referential trouble. There is no reason to believe it; and there is excellent reason to reject it.
;Other points
* He makes some points about Naturalism being self-refuting.
;Discussion
Should mainly be used in the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit article, but some points could be mentioned here too... --Merzul 12:27, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alvin Plantinga