Reviews of The God Delusion and God is not Great

[ignorantianescia]

mediotutissimus.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/god-delusion-richard-dawkins.html

The editorial line of this blog is unsympathetic to Dawkinsian atheism (as it is to religious fundamentalism), but it has to be said that this is far from being a bad book.

Dawkins is a good writer - a man with an obvious gift for communication. His prose is lucid, readable and even urbane, albeit with occasional intervals of Pooterish lameness. He is less pompous and more interesting than his fellow antitheist Christopher Hitchens. He mostly keeps his invective within bounds, though he does not hide his contempt for the supernatural view of the world and those who espouse it. In all, an admirer will find his approach clear-headed, rigorous and incisive. An opponent is more likely to find it rigid, simplistic and suffused with its own brand of fundamentalism. Dawkins even feels obliged to protest at one point that he is "not advocating some sort of narrowly scientistic way of thinking". It says a lot that he thinks that such a caveat is necessary.

Yes, this review is over two years old and the book has been out for more than six years, but I thought this review deserves to be read because the fairly unique angles it takes on the book.

[sandwiches]

In some respects an insightful review:

There is nothing particularly original, or indeed attractive, about this mindset. Whether Dawkins' views are right or wrong is in many ways less interesting than the manner in which he holds them. The black-and-white simplicity, the absolute confidence in a particular worldview, the refusal to compromise in the struggle of light against darkness, the preoccupation with principle over pragmatism, the conviction that people who are laughing at you secretly know in their hearts that you're right.... Somehow, it all seems oddly familiar.

More thoughtful atheist/agnostic scientists tend to come to the same conclusion:

www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/dec/26/peter-higgs-richard-dawkins-fundamentalism

Higgs has chosen to cap his remarkable 2012 with another bang by criticising the "fundamentalist" approach taken by Dawkins in dealing with religious believers.

"What Dawkins does too often is to concentrate his attack on fundamentalists. But there are many believers who are just not fundamentalists," Higgs said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. "Fundamentalism is another problem. I mean, Dawkins in a way is almost a fundamentalist himself, of another kind."


Re the review on Reggie's blog to which you link, one has to disagree with the comment that The God Delusion " is far from being a bad book".

The review by H Allen Orr (the evolutionary geneticist) is the one I remember best:

www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jan/11/a-mission-to-convert/?pagination=false

Despite my admiration for much of Dawkins’s work, I’m afraid that I’m among those scientists who must part company with him here. Indeed, The God Delusion seems to me badly flawed. Though I once labeled Dawkins a professional atheist, I’m forced, after reading his new book, to conclude he’s actually more an amateur. I don’t pretend to know whether there’s more to the world than meets the eye and, for all I know, Dawkins’s general conclusion is right. But his book makes a far from convincing case.

The vacuum created by Dawkins’s failure to engage religious thought must be filled by something, and in The God Delusion, it gets filled by extraneous quotation, letters from correspondents, and, most of all, anecdote after anecdote.

The point is that all judgments, including ethical ones, begin somewhere and ours, often enough, begin in Judaism and Christianity. Dawkins should, of course, be applauded for his attempt to picture a better world. But intellectual honesty demands acknowledging that his moral vision derives, to a considerable extent, from the tradition he so despises

Dawkins is yet another one who believes he possesses some kind of key to objectivity and the realities of history, logic, human psychology and nature do not impinge on his own self-certitude. His book immensely cheered those who shared his views but in the end it was full of sound and fury while signifying little.

[ignorantianescia]

This excerpt from another blog post is related to the review:

mediotutissimus.blogspot.nl/2010/12/kidnapping-of-edgardo-mortara-david.html

Not that Pius was lacking in defenders. Catholic writers and newspapers praised his stoutheartedness and commended his actions. The Pope, they said, had acted in accordance with his religious duties, and besides, the boy was clearly loving it. His parents might be upset to have lost him, but they had lots of other children, and in any case they should have thought of that before they broke the law by employing a Catholic maidservant. What was more, they could immediately be reunited with Edgardo by becoming Catholics themselves, in which case they would also be granted eternal salvation. These lines of argument are oddly echoed by no less a person than the professional atheist Richard Dawkins. In The God Delusion, Dawkins uses the Mortara case as part of his foolish argument that ascribing parents' religion to their children amounts to child abuse. He seems to think that the Mortaras themselves were culpable because they had employed a Catholic servant due to silly Jewish scruples about the Sabbath and because they refused to make a fake conversion to Catholicism to get their son back.

Feb 14, 2013 20:00:40 GMT sandwiches said:

Re the review on Reggie's blog to which you link, one has to disagree with the comment that The God Delusion " is far from being a bad book".

I wouldn't call it persuasive or nuanced, but there's plenty of interesting stuff in the book.

[sandwiches]

there's plenty of interesting stuff in the book. ?

Examples?

Interesting from what point of view? I found it interesting as an indication of the thinking (or possibly lack of thought) of someone like Dawkins and those who admire him.

But interesting in any other sense? Did he add to the philosophical or sociological understanding of God or religion?

Possibly it stirred interest in God and religion and philosophy in those who were curious about such matters and had little understanding of them and were inclined to be hostile to such matters?

[ignorantianescia]

Feb 17, 2013 22:06:17 GMT sandwiches said:

there's plenty of interesting stuff in the book. ?

Examples?

Interesting from what point of view? I found it interesting as an indication of the thinking (or possibly lack of thought) of someone like Dawkins and those who admire him.

But interesting in any other sense? Did he add to the philosophical or sociological understanding of God or religion?

Possibly it stirred interest in God and religion and philosophy in those who were curious about such matters and had little understanding of them and were inclined to be hostile to such matters?

I was thinking more of his decision to include his views on evolutionary morality. Plus he gave some interesting poll figures, arguably the best part.

Fair's fair, despite the fact it was lacking in accuracy and that he used it for his own ideological agenda, I'd also call it interesting that he discussed the Mortara case in the book.

[ignorantianescia]

For any interested, the same blogger has also reviewed Hitchens's book:

mediotutissimus.blogspot.nl/2010/09/god-is-not-great-christopher-hitchens.html

He's rather more negative about it than about The God Delusion, in (very short) summary he finds Hitchens a dilettante and something of a boor.

This book has become one of the leading texts of modern atheism – second only, perhaps, to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. It is not a new publication (it first appeared in 2007), but it seems fitting to return to it on the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the land of Tyndale, Knox and Cromwell. I’m afraid that this is not going to be a sympathetic review. Reading this book can be regarded as an upmarket version of listening to one’s slightly tipsy brother-in-law – the one who’s got a way with words but likes the sound of his own voice a bit too much – holding forth at a dinner party about what a load of dangerous nonsense religion is, while dropping the names from time to time of books that he’s read. The other guests maintain a slightly uncomfortable silence and hope that the dessert is going to arrive soon.

Hitchens doesn’t just stand for a generic atheism – his is very clearly a middle-class liberal English atheism (even as an American citizen, he retains a broad streak that is as English as Orwell or Greene). It is the secularism of J.S.Mill and Bertrand Russell, a decent, cultured non-creed which seeks to exchange the parish church for the art gallery, Cramner for Shakespeare and holy communion for an agreeable lunch. He explicitly wants the book to persuade religious readers to embrace nonbelief, but yet much of his florid prose is directed against targets outside his very specific cultural constituency, and it is far from clear who he is going to convince.