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The God Delusion: A digested read

Posted by Tim Fletcher on 30 May 2007

So you’re waiting at the airport for your flight to Zante, and you see the The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins in paperback. Should you buy it? Let me try and give you a taster.
The first 159 pages contain an interesting discussion of the arguments both for and against the existence of God, ending with Richard Dawkins’ central argument. I had forgotten Pascal’s wager, where the penalty for guessing wrong about God could make an eternity of a difference. But as Richard Dawkins writes, you cannot feign belief in God. Pascal’s wager can only cause us to look at the question seriously.

Then after his main argument for Darwinian evolution, and in the second half of the book, Richard Dawkins gives us the benefit of his opinion on religion. He deals with the bible. It is the discussion of morals that I personally find most interesting. Altruism is explained as "the misfirings of Darwinian mistakes; blessed precious mistakes" (p221). Although Richard Dawkins argues that these noble emotions are not demeaned by this explanation, I can’t accept that. I guess I hold the virtues of compassion, goodness, kindness, and generosity too highly to think of them as misfirings. In my humble opinion you can skip p160 to p362 and attend the next Alpha course instead, and ask your own questions. The very final section of the last chapter is worth reading, and is about the scale of man in Middle World, although it is strangely linked to the illustration of a burka.
I like Richard Dawkins’ honesty, although the reader is in absolutely no doubt about his conclusions. He does say he likes some classical religious music, and on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 = I know there is a God, 7 = there definitely isn’t one) he places himself at 6. In his central argument (p157-159) his statement of intent is to explain the "appearance of design", and he does acknowledge the current puzzles in theoretical physics. It has got me thinking though – which is good. Now I must find out about this eucaryotic cell structure (p140).
The book is dedicated to the memory of Douglas Adams, he who gave us the gifts of Arthur Dent and Dirk Gently. Richard Dawkins includes this quote from Douglas on the flyleaf: "Isn’t it enough to see that the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
I would change it to, "It is enough to enjoy the beautiful garden, and the truth is there is no evidence of the existence of fairies - but I wonder, is there a Gardener?"