Talk:The God Delusion/reviews

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This sub-page is here for discussion of the various reviews, so that they can be fit appropriately into a critical reception section. The goal is... Trim down the current review section into a coherent critical reception section. Have a page that documents the process of selection, and how we reached consensus on how to represent so many opinions in a neutral manner. Please be very bold in editing this page!

Contents 1 Terry Eagleton 2 Richard Kirk 3 Alvin Plantinga 4 H. Allen Orr 5 John Cornwell 6 Alister McGrath 7 Peter S Williams 8 Russell Blackford 9 Steven Weinberg 10 References

[edit] Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton is mainly a literary critic with interest in theological themes. His review was published in the London Review of Books.^[1]

Our summary

Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books argues that Dawkins has insufficient understanding of the religious concepts he is attacking to engage with them effectively. He comments, "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology." He questions whether Dawkins has read or heard of Christian thinkers like Eriugena, Rahner or Moltmann. He denies that all faith is blind faith, suggests that "while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it". He claims that "Critics of the most enduring form of popular culture in human history have a moral obligation to confront that case at its most persuasive". He adds, however, that Dawkins is effective in attacking "that particular strain of psychopathology known as fundamentalism, whether Texan or Taliban".

Last paragraph

Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to ‘sophisticated’ religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass. The huge numbers of believers who hold something like the theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals. As far as such outrages go, however, The God Delusion does a very fine job indeed. The two most deadly texts on the planet, apart perhaps from Donald Rumsfeld’s emails, are the Bible and the Koran; and Dawkins, as one the best of liberals as well as one of the worst, has done a magnificent job over the years of speaking out against that particular strain of psychopathology known as fundamentalism, whether Texan or Taliban. He is right to repudiate the brand of mealy-mouthed liberalism which believes that one has to respect other people’s silly or obnoxious ideas just because they are other people’s. In its admirably angry way, The God Delusion argues that the status of atheists in the US is nowadays about the same as that of gays fifty years ago. The book is full of vivid vignettes of the sheer horrors of religion, fundamentalist or otherwise. Nearly 50 per cent of Americans believe that a glorious Second Coming is imminent, and some of them are doing their damnedest to bring it about. But Dawkins could have told us all this without being so appallingly bitchy about those of his scientific colleagues who disagree with him, and without being so theologically illiterate. He might also have avoided being the second most frequently mentioned individual in his book – if you count God as an individual.

Other important points

• On the concept of God: "Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or ‘existent’: in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects."
• On the role of religion in evil: "Such is Dawkins’s unruffled scientific impartiality that in a book of almost four hundred pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false. The countless millions who have devoted their lives selflessly to the service of others in the name of Christ or Buddha or Allah are wiped from human history – and this by a self-appointed crusader against bigotry. He is like a man who equates socialism with the Gulag. Like the puritan and sex, Dawkins sees God everywhere, even where he is self-evidently absent. He thinks, for example, that the ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland would evaporate if religion did, which to someone like me, who lives there part of the time, betrays just how little he knows about it. He also thinks rather strangely that the terms Loyalist and Nationalist are ‘euphemisms’ for Protestant and Catholic, and clearly doesn’t know the difference between a Loyalist and a Unionist or a Nationalist and a Republican. He also holds, against a good deal of the available evidence, that Islamic terrorism is inspired by religion rather than politics."

Discussion

Makes many important points. --Merzul 11:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Richard Kirk

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer who lives in Oceanside, California. He is a regular columnist for San Diego's North County Times, and his reviews have also been published in the American Enterprise, First Things, Touchstone, and the California Republic website. This review was published in The American Spectator.^[2]

Our summary

In "An Exercise in Contempt", a review in The American Spectator, Richard Kirk contrasts Alfred North Whitehead’s willingness to look at the big picture and give historical players their due credit with what he calls "the scattershot pettiness that pervades Richard Dawkins’ book." “Far from being a serious philosophical book, this ill-edited and garrulous diatribe contains just about anything that crosses the author's mind" with “page after sarcastic page of attacks against any foe Dawkins considers an easy target.” Dawkins avoids the “real question" of "whether one's explanation terminates with a meaningless cosmos or with a being who provides a reason for things.”

Last paragraph

Overall, Dawkins' "philosophy" amounts to little more than this unintentionally humorous observation by Dr. Edward Tryon that was quoted in a Time-Life book on cosmology, "Our universe is simply one of those things that happens from time to time." That's reason according to Dawkins -- a man whose cultural and philosophical observations are predictably au courant, consistently dogmatic, and largely unreflective. He is the un-Whitehead, a man who will never (barring divine intervention) appreciate this sublime comment by my philosophical mentor: "In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions."

Other points

• ...

Discussion

I would suggest deleting this review entirely. Since the book has been reviewed by top critics, philosophers, and scientists; who need to know what Richard Kirk thinks. --Merzul 11:47, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alvin Plantinga

Alvin Plantinga is often considered together with Richard Swinburne as the greatest living theist philosophers of religion. The review is published in Christianity Today, not exactly a neutral source :)^[3]

Our summary

Alvin Plantinga, an analytic philosopher and author, has published a detailed review titled "The Dawkins Confusion". He says that Dawkins is a brilliant writer but this book is nothing more than an "extended diatribe...and contains little science...many of his (Dawkins') arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class." He concentrates on chapter 4 "Why There Almost Certainly is No God" by saying that Dawkins' argument is basically: God has to be enormously complex because the universe has so much information in it; therefore God has to be complex and thus He is enormously improbable. Dawkins does not support this assertion and Plantinga finds it probable that Dawkins is assuming materialism. Plantinga states that the books argument "...really doesn't give even the slightest reason for thinking belief in God mistaken, let alone a delusion" and he finds Dawkins argument is not against God but naturalism.

Last paragraphs

The God Delusion is full of bluster and bombast, but it really doesn't give even the slightest reason for thinking belief in God mistaken, let alone a "delusion."

The naturalism that Dawkins embraces, furthermore, in addition to its intrinsic unloveliness and its dispiriting conclusions about human beings and their place in the universe, is in deep self-referential trouble. There is no reason to believe it; and there is excellent reason to reject it.

Other points

• He makes some points about Naturalism being self-refuting.

Discussion

Should mainly be used in the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit article, but some points could be mentioned here too... --Merzul 12:27, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] H. Allen Orr

H. Allen Orr in The New York Review of Books^[4] suggests that "Dawkins is on a mission to convert" but fails "to engage with religious thought in any serious way" relying instead on "extraneous quotation" and "anecdote after anecdote". He asserts that Dawkins "suffers from several problems when he tries to reason philosophically" and complains of "exercises in double standards"^[5] He says "we all agree: religion can be bad. But the critical question is: compared to what? And here Dawkins is less convincing because he fails to examine the question in a systematic way." and that if discussions about disagreements between science and religion "are to be worthwhile, they will have to take place at a far higher level of sophistication than Richard Dawkins seems either willing or able to muster." Daniel Dennett, who wrote his own full review of the book,^[6] objected to this review and an exchange of letters ensued.^[7]

[edit] John Cornwell

John Cornwell states in The Sunday Times "there is hardly a serious work of philosophy of religion cited in his extensive bibliography, save for Richard Swinburne^[8] – himself an oddity among orthodox theologians". He also complains that "Dawkins sees no point in discussing the critical borders where religion morphs from benign phenomenon into malefic basket case. This is a pity, since his entire thesis becomes a counsel of despair rather than a quest for solutions."^[9] Cornwell also penned a letter from God to Dawkins in The Sunday Times suggesting that "Mendel was living proof that faith in Me and knowledge of science are not in competition...while science and religion are two very different discourses, they can coexist in harmony."^[10]

John Cornwell in his book Darwin's Angel and elsewhere^[11] suggests that there are several lapses of understanding in Dawkins's positions, and that the "religion as a virus" ideas have disturbing precedents, and the way Dawkins's arguments are presented might promote more fundamentalism with in religious communities.

[edit] Alister McGrath

Alister McGrath, author of Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, describes The God Delusion as Dawkins' "weakest book to date, marred by its excessive reliance on bold assertion and rhetorical flourish, where the issues so clearly demand careful reflection and painstaking analysis, based on the best evidence available". He suggests that "All ideals – divine, transcendent, human, or invented – are capable of being abused. That’s just the way human nature is. And knowing this, we need to work out what to do about it, rather than lashing out uncritically at religion."^[12] One of McGrath's main points is that "Dawkins’ assertion that science disproves God is not right".^[13] He has subsequently produced a book-length critique of The God Delusion called The Dawkins Delusion?^[14].

[edit] Peter S Williams

Peter S Williams, a Christian philosopher and author, in a review for the Christian charity Damaris International, says that while "The God Delusion is the work of a passionate and rhetorically savvy writer capable of making good points against religious fundamentalism," Dawkins "is out of his philosophical depth". Williams proposes rebuttals to two of the book's arguments against the existence of God: Dawkins' use of the anthropic principle and the "who designed the designer?" objection that according to Williams is at the heart of the 747 Gambit.^[15]

[edit] Russell Blackford

Russell Blackford, writer and philosopher, has written a positive review of The God Delusion for Cosmos Magazine ^[16] in which he states that "Dawkins strides adroitly and confidently" across his areas of discussion, with a style of discussion which is "extraordinarily impressive in a work of such vast ambition and interdisciplinary scope".

[edit] Steven Weinberg

Physicist Steven Weinberg has also responded to this line of criticism: "I find it disturbing that Thomas Nagel in the New Republic dismisses Dawkins as an “amateur philosopher”, while Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books sneers at Dawkins for his lack of theological training. Are we to conclude that opinions on matters of philosophy or religion are only to be expressed by experts, not mere scientists or other common folk? It is like saying that only political scientists are justified in expressing views on politics. Eagleton’s judgement is particularly inappropriate; it is like saying that no one is entitled to judge the validity of astrology who cannot cast a horoscope."^[17]

[edit] References