The God Delusion

I just finished reading Richard Dawkins latest book "The God Delusion". There are 711 reviews of this book on Amazon and many, many more if you google the title. I generally don't like non-fiction books, but I've finished two of them in the last two weeks. "The God Delusion" and "Six Frigates" by Ian Toll. Most of the reviews of The God Delusion on Amazon are positive. The negative reviews seem to be written by those whose minds cannot or will not be changed. From the comment of many of those that gave the book a poor review you could tell they didn't read the book.

This book is a quick and enjoyable read...some parts easier to follow than others. But on the whole he makes a very sound, rational argument that God doesn't exist. It is a book that I'd like to own.

Some of the parts I really enjoyed were the discussions of the effects of prayer on the recovery of sick individuals. He even mentioned my "look alike" Francis Galton (chap. 2). I liked the way he handled Thomas Aquinas' "proofs" of God's existence (Chap. 3). The discussion of the roots of religion (chap. 5) was awesome, especially the discussion of the "Cargo cults". Of course you know that any discussion of the "morality" of the Old Testament is going to be a knee slapper.

I particularly liked this discussion of Michael Behe and irreducible complexity. I didn't realize that Behe had claimed that science would never find an evolutionary explanation for the immune system. During a cross examination in a court case he was presented with 58 peer-reviewed publications, 9 books and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system. But Prof. Behe insisted that this was not sufficient evidence of evolution and that it was not good enough. When Behe was cross-examined, he was forced to admit that he hadn't read most of those 58 peer-reviewed papers (chap. 4, pg 133).

Dawkins discussed the who designed the designer question. I never spent much time thinking about that question because I was taught the answer to that question in my first grade in Catholic School. God is the supreme being who made all things. He always was and always will be. Pretty simple actually...he just always was.

If you are agnostic before you read this book, I'm pretty certain you will be an atheist after reading it.