|
The God Delusion (精装)
by Richard Dawkins
| Category:
Religion, Science |
| Market price: ¥ 278.00
MSL price:
¥ 268.00
[ Shop incentives ]
|
| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A breath of fresh air, Richard Dawkins's book is a frank discussion of science and rationalism versus religion and superstition. |
| If you want us to help you with the right titles you're looking for, or to make reading recommendations based on your needs, please contact our consultants. |
|
| |
AllReviews |
  1 2 Total 2 pages 13 items |
|
|
Patrick McCormack (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-19 00:00>
Richard Dawkins starts out by telling his four goals, including consciousness raising; freeing people from the moral slavery that is religion; showing the power of Darwinian explanations; and, it seems, calling all religions and believers by a bunch of names. At least I think that must be the fourth goal, and certainly his most successful. This is a book by an angry name-calling evangelist for atheism.
He then stumbles into a major mistake. He believes that believers have as their central goal tried to prove the existence of God, and he therefore believes he can use his mind and rationality to counter by proving that God does not exist. His mistake is obvious to any Hindu, Buddhist, Christian... These religions are not founded merely on proofs, they are founded on faith. His refutations are therefore a misguided project, from the start.
But attack he does. He takes on many of the major arguments for the existence of God, with a combination of invective, straw-man arguments, and occasional insights. The result is angry and sophomoric.
Why is it a mistake to believe that religions offer only proofs for God's existence? Look to Isaiah, Chapter 55: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Look to Chapter 59.
"We stumble at noon as in the twilight,
Among the vigorous as though we were dead.
We all growl like bears;
Like doves we moan mournfully.
We wait for justice, but there is none;
For salvation, but it is far from us.
For our transgressions before you are many,
And our sins testify against us. "
Judaism and Christianity are based on a set of beliefs that God is far greater than people can encompass, that man is limited, or fallen. Buddhism cites humbleness as a major virtue of the Buddha, and one of the reasons for the depiction of his clothes, his stances, his teachings. Any proofs for the existence of God, even famous ones like those of Aquinas, start with one foot in a barrel of cement, a hubristic human impulse to encompass God within the human mind.
Dawkins does a poor job of executing his attacks on these theorists for God. Each argument is in turn caricatured, and then ridiculed. He could weave baskets with his straw men. In any freshman composition class, writers are required to accurately depict the thoughts of their sources before attacking them... Dawkins would fail freshman comp on this ground alone.
But to be fair, he also makes a crucial case for his position, summarized on page 157 of the hard cover version. His six point proof for the non-existence of God is really about two points, maybe only one. It boils down to an argument that claims the Universe is designed are illogical claims, because who would have designed the designer? Gotcha says the sophmore!
This is merely a banal re-statement of Parmenides refutation of Plato's forms - there is no designer because a designer would have to be in turn designed, and that designer in turn designed. In other words, logic chopping. Philosophy 301. The answer to this sort of logic chopping, the religious equivalent of Zeno's Paradox, is to say no, that is not necessarily the case by any logic or real world experience. Sometimes a designer is just a designer without endless recursion. Maybe even with God...
But Dawkins uses this banal and incorrect insight, which he cites as his central point, to make the great leap. In two short further paragraphs he says that "If the premise of this Chapter is accepted the factual premise of religion is untenable."
What? He offers as proven a point he barely takes the room to make, a proof he barely offers! This is the great hoodwinking buried under the invective and bile. Dawkins is a man without a chest, unable to make so much as a decent paragraph out of his central proof, a vain and puffed up stuffed shirt for atheism. Oops, I just slipped into Dawkinsian argumentation. Mea culpa.
The book never engages a central tenet or voice of any faith, and instead chooses to cite every bad person associated with faith, every fringe character in religion trotted out in a tour that is peripatetic and unfair. He cannot talk about a faith without using the perversions of that faith as his text.
Within the flow of his invective there are so many specific points that can be refuted that one grows tired. Here is one, just as an example: He gets the point of John Paul II's veneration (not worship, veneration, which is a different word) of Mary exactly wrong. JP venerated Mary because she was entirely human - facing choices just like other humans do, without the resources of God - and not because she was some sort of co-God, or out of a polytheistic impulse. Dawkins misreads this as a polytheistic impulse of the Pope, and his mis-reading here is either ignorant or willful. Coincidentally, this allows him to snicker at JPII rather than engage his points.
See, here is the point. Maybe God does not exist. But Dawkins is so bitter and angry, and argues in such a wrong-headed fashion, that a reader is left wondering where the smart atheists are, who can make a real case against the existence of God, where to turn for an intelligent debunking of faith... I would not say that Dawkins is so bad as to back a reader into faith, but he is just bad enough to back any intelligent reader out of atheism, especially out of rabid evangelical atheism. At the very least, readers will be bound over to ennui and disgust over their $27 miss-spent dollars.
Such a stupid bright man, such a dishonest clever book.
(A negative review. MSL remarks.) |
|
|
D. Bennett (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-19 00:00>
Dawkins book is stunningly honest and forthright in its evaluation and examination of organized religion. He is able to see beyond the hollow arguments and flawed logic of religiosity and bring an enlightened (even if it is harsh) perspective to the many deeds and misdeeds of religion. By doing so, he has given a voice to the many silent atheists in the world and perhaps has caused some agnostics to get off the fence and join the enlightened side. Dawkins critique is particularly important in this newest era of evangelism, which is allied with the likes of George W. Bush, among others. Their growing political and social influence, and anti-American ideas (such as theocracy) must be met with truth and vigilance. Dawkins takes us in that direction quite effectively. This is a "must read" if you are in the least bit concerned about the eroding legacy of our Founding Fathers (a legacy built upon secularism, freedom of speech and the press etc.)
|
|
|
Andrew Desmond (MSL quote), Australia
<2007-01-19 00:00>
Let me be frank, I loved this book. It's a wonderful jab at all things religious. It's very much a case that the emperor has no clothes and Richard Dawkins has the role of pointing out the obvious.
Dawkins' work mainly acts as a critique of Christianity although it can be equally applied to any religion. His approach is one of taking no prisoners. He has no time for faiths. These are simply superstitions that rely on intolerance and hypocrisy. He is an articulate man with a clear message. He sees religion as something that should not enjoy the following it is provided by some of the population.
Dawkins is a breath of fresh air. Those who succumb to religion are, at best, misguided. At worst, they are stupid. Yet why is it that religion seemingly cannot be questioned? Why are we implored to show "respect" for religion and the religious? It is not inappropriate to question people about most other aspects of their lives, but to question someone's religion is deemed to be disrespectful. This way of seeing the world is nonsensical. Religion should be exposed to the light of day.
The history of Christianity is poor. It has condoned the crusades, the inquisition and the witch hunts. It is an appalling history by which it should be roundly condemned. It deserves closer examination and Dawkins has achieved this end in a lucid and incisive manner.
I have little doubt that this book will be criticised by the various self-appointed moral guardians amongst us. Yet this really does not represent a threat. In the fullness of time, reason and science always wins over superstition and darkness. |
|
|
|
1 2 Total 2 pages 13 items |
|
|
|
|
|
|
