The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

I spotted this book on a friend’s bookshelf and decided that I was up to the challenge of having my belief in the existence of God put to the test. Having lived a significant portion of my life as an agnostic, and having jumped between agnosticism (i.e. God may or may not exist) and theism (i.e. God does exist) more times than I can remember, I think I’m more qualified than most to claim that I’m capable of having an open mind.

The hardcover edition of The God Delusion is about 400 pages long. Should it really take 400 pages to prove or disprove the idea of God? I personally don’t think so. The book is this length because Dawkins includes many related topics, some of which I found useful; others were a waste of space. For instance, Dawkins spends a whole chapter talking about how many of the scientists who appear to be theists on paper are actually athiests. Scientists sometimes use the term “God” in a loose, poetic sense. Dawkins’s argument may have some validity, but it’s hardly scientific for a reader to believe or disbelieve in a theory by counting how many scientists’ heads are on each side. We want a rational case for athiesm presented!

Sadly, before we can get to hear the crux of the argument, Dawkins has a lot of stuff to get off his chest. A lot of it comes across as quite emotional and dripping with arrogance. In introducing a quote by C.S. Lewis, on the matter of whether Jesus could have been truly “good” if he wasn’t really “God”, Dawkins can’t help himself from stating it thus: “C.S. Lewis (who should have known better) said …” Dawkins’s disagrement with Lewis was simply on the grounds that each author came at the issue with a difference set of presuppositions: Lewis with the view that the Gospel accounts are reliable historical documents, and Dawkins that they are not. And so, there was no need for such mockery.

When I came to Dawkins’s central argument, I was surprised by its simplicity. It turns out he has a big problem with the idea of “infinite regression” (i.e. if God made the universe, who made God, then who made the thing that made God, ad infinitum). Well, on that we are agreed. Infinite regression answers nothing. But Dawkins refuses to accept that the idea of a creator is a valid means of terminating an infinite regession. Long ago, I heard it argued to my complete satisfaction, something like this: Logic tells us that for every effect we need a cause. The universe began with a Big Bang. That’s not a proper explanation, because we need to explain how the material for such a bang originated. A creative agent of some kind. And, of course, we face the obvious question of who created the creator? The most logical idea that our brains can comprehend is that there should be nothing at all: no universe, no laws of physics, no anything. That would make perfect sense. Except here we are. We exist. And so, whether we like it or not, we are forced to consider, in the absense of any rational alternative, the notion that there indeed was a “first cause,” something that exists outside of time itself and is responsible for all that we see.

Dawkins denies this argument, in a chapter entitled “Why there almost certainly is no God.” He believes in evolution, as a lot of people do. In my mind, whether you do or don’t has little bearing on whether God exists. Evolution is related to biology alone. And when we’re talking about the origin of the universe, that’s cosmology. Where Dawkins errs is that he insists on cosmological evolution: the universe arrived at the form it is in today by a process of evolutionary changes. Dawkins acknowledges that this is not something that can be proven, but he stands by the principle that the simplest answer is almost always the right one (the theory of evolution claims to show how the simple gives rise to the complex without the need for an intelligent designer). God, he says, is infinitely complex, therefore he almost certainly does not exist. Did you spot the flaw in Dawkins’s reasoning? He assumes cosmological evolution to be true in order to lay his ground for disproving God (i.e. the answer to the origin of the universe must be simple, therefore it ain’t God). In other words, he assumes cosmological evolution to be true in order to prove cosmological evolution to be true: circular reasoning.

And that’s it. That is Dawkins’s single thread on which he clings to. And it’s over and done with about halfway through. The book continues for another two hundred pages, because it’s not just theism that Dawkins is attacking. It’s the idea of a personal God who hears prayer. And so, religion is under scrutiny for much of the remainder of the book. He attempts to explain the predominance of religion by theorising about us having a “God centre” in our brains - a left-over item from man’s evolutionary progress that once helped us survive, but now we’re better off without it in our more enlightened times. Pure speculation.

Dawkins talks about religion’s association with violence. He wastes a page or two quoting some hot-headed anti-athiest remarks posted online by a blogger. Why include this stuff? It’s just the remarks of an idiot blowing off steam. Oh, but I think I know why Dawkins put it in the book. The book is littered with poor examples of quotes by theists, both from antiquity and modern day. The author appears to indulge every whim to sling mud at a believer in God over some poorly thought-out comment the believer made. These quotes cannot form the basis of a rational argument against God, so why are they included? All they do is create a vague buzz of negativity in the reader’s mind about the idea of God. But perhaps that’s the idea. And if true, that makes Dawkins a fairly sinister author.

On the matter of religion and acts of violence, there is no doubt a connection. But it’s the same connect that exists between, say, soccer and violence; just look at England’s reputation for football hooliganism. The governing principle that Dawkins misses is that violence is easily associated with anything that people feel passionately about. If we rid the world of religion, we don’t cure the problem. We relieve one symptom of a problem that lies in the nature of man.

Dawkins is totally out of his depth when talking about the Bible. He sees the God of the Old Testament as a big bully, replaced by a more favourable deity in the New Testament. I, however, see a perfect unity of the two, because I’ve given them more than a cursory glance over the years. The idea of a holy God who demands absolute perfection, who cannot stand sin, who must punish sin - a God who rescued man at great cost to himself - these concepts don’t register with Dawkins. I get the feeling that he has led a fairly moral life, and if it were possible for him to believe in heaven, he would consider it his right to end up there - as a decent law-abiding citizen of earth. Even when he examines the God that he doesn’t believe in, he can’t help but shape God in his own image.

More rational athiests than Dawkins will feel disappointed by his ranting. Some athiests will of course be cheering him on (in the same way that some people think Michael Moore makes honest documentaries). Worst of all, some who are on the fence about Christianity may use the book as a form of escape. From experience, I know that we are not often as rational as we think we are at times; we can claim to seek the truth, but unconsciously we’re trying to escape from something that we desperately hope isn’t true: a God who demands our attention; not everyone has a mind that is sharpened like a razor against self-deception and crafty arguments.

I left this book feeling like I had been poisoned, but relieved that my rational belief in God remained intact. I would never say to anyone not to read something; that’s an attitude that smacks of brainwashing. But I would caution that this is a dangerous book for an impressionable person. In a spirit of fairness, I recommend also reading The Dawkins Delusion? by Alister McGrath for a well presented opposing argument.