God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

date Feb 20, 2008
authors Richard Dawkins
reading time 4 mins
  • Book Title: The God Delusion
  • Author: Richard Dawkins
  • Year written/published: 2006
  • Summary: Atheism and why there’s no God
  • Contents page:
    1. A deeply religious non-believer
    2. Arguments for God’s existence
    3. Why there almost certainly is no God
    4. The roots of religion
    5. The roots of morality: Why we are good?
    6. The ‘good’ book and the changing moralist zeitgeist
    7. What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?
    8. Childhood, abuse and the escape from religion
    9. A much needed gap?

Some extracts:

Mathematical proof for the existence of god, Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point…

You know the formula, m over nought equals infinity, m being any positive number? Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by nought. In which case you have m equals infinity times nought. That is to say that a positive number os the product of zero and infinity. Doesn’t that demonstrate the creation of the universe by a infinite power out of nothing? Doesn’t it?

the God paradox…

If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about his intervention which means he’s not omnipotent. … Karen Owens has caputred a witty little paradox: Can the omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change his future mind?

Darwinism and God…

Our consciousness is also raised by the cruelty and wastefulness of natural selection. Predators seem beautifully ‘designed’ to catch prey animals, while the prey animals seem equally beautifully ‘designed’ to escape them. Whose side is God on?

Simplicity and God…

Enter God. God comes to the rescue by deliberately and continuously sustaining the properties of all those billions of electrons and bits of copper, and enutralising their otherwise imgrained inclination to wild and erratic fluctuation. … … It is because God constantly keeps a finger on each and every particle… … But how can Swinburne possibly maintain that his hypothesis of God simultaneously keeping a gazillion fingers on wayward electrons a simple theory?

God

Swinburne generously concedes that God cannot accomplish feats that are logically impossible, and one feels grateful for this forbearance. Having said that, there is no limit to the explanatory purposes to which God’s infinite power is put. Is science having a little difficulty explaning X? No problem. Don’t give X another glance… and it is always a supremely simple explanation because, after all, there is only one God.

Monitoring

Well, actually almost everything. A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. His existence is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right. Word, other corners of God’s giant consciousness are simultaneously preoccupied with the doings and emotions and prayers of every single human being - and whatever intelligent aliens there might be on other planets in this and 100 billion other galaxies.

some quotations…

  • Truth in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. ~Oscar Wilde
  • Strange is our situation here on Earth. each of us comes for a shirt visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: the man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends. ~Albert Einstein
  • Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? ~Douglas Adams
  • Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ‘til the end of time! But He loves you and… He loves you… ~ George Carlin