Krishna
Richard Dawkins, whose books – for example The Ancestor’s Tale and The Greatest Show on Earth – we have already reviewed now turns to another one of his topics. All the books we have reviewed of this author is about evolution and this one is about Atheism, as you can easily deduce from the title itself.
Very different from the run of the mill books you read.
Talks about atheists and why they are looked down upon. The book is amazingly funny as well as challenging your fundamental core beliefs. The author argues and systematically dismantles all the arguments of the faithful. If you are not comfortable with a rationalist argument against the existence of God, please do not read this book.
He talks about atheists who say that their belief in no God should not be taken to argue with the people who believe in God as well as those atheists who believe that even though there is no God, the society needs God for various reasons : for peace of mind, to ensure that there is some purpose in this life or to ensure that the religious injunction of ‘go good not evil’ is necessary to avoid anarchy in society. Or those who argue that ‘some people will need belief in God to comfort them in troubling times’, or those who argue that atheism is intellectually demanding and therefore is not for everybody. Interesting arguments.
He also points out that religion gets a ‘free card’ to get out of any reasonable arguments. They are free to criticize anything but nothing can criticize, or even discuss, sacred beliefs held by the devout. He asks why this ‘special privilege’ is granted and whether this is fair.
Richard Dawkins also talks about the high percentage of scientists and high percentage of intelligent beings who are atheist or at least do not believe in God as the devout do. He also argues that in ancient times, most scientists professed religious beliefs – and this includes Charles Darwin – only because to state that they were atheists was to court danger and opprobrium from the public.
He explains why the ‘intelligent design’ theory falls on its own sword, making the existence of God even more improbable. He explains how religion shuts down research and curiosity by assigning every gaps in scientific understanding to God and vigorously opposing any dissenting views and even forbidding scientific curiosity in finding the remaining answers. He points out the irony of his awkward questions to the theologists as ‘so nineteenth century’ while they defend their faith based on first century ideas and are embarrassed about really admitting beliefs in the miracles described in the bible. He takes Christians as an example but his fundamental arguments are against all religious texts and beliefs despite the existence of Darwin’s theory of evolution that shows how spontaneously life arose and evolved into all the complex and wonderful diversity we see today all around us.
He next turns to the argument that ‘We need God to be good’ and manages to demolish that argument too.
He then turns his attention to why religion, even faith that does not subscribe to terrorist ideologies does not deserve unquestioning acceptance by detracters, out of respect for the ‘religious sensibilities’. He quotes authors who examined the psyche of jihadists and terrorists and concluded that they were not madmen; they were simply motivated very strongly by their religious convictions. By shielding religion from questioning, and by the ‘explanations’ of all religious leaders after a shocking terror incident as to why this is ‘not religion but subversion of it’, the world is propagating the same conditions where in the future someone can get radicalized. He talks about the fundamentalists of all religions – the Islamic terrorists, the ‘American Taliban’ of the extreme right and others in the same light.
He seems to deconstruct the arguments one by one. Is God necessary to ‘provide comfort’? Is such a deity required for reassurance as in the need for hugs from humans when you are feeling blue? Is God simply an adult version of the ‘invisible friend’ that many kids have in their childhood?
He then shows how even the directors of Science in a government funded UK school set up by a theological society try to infer that the word of the bible is the literal truth and the kids should not be taught evolution or even geology which implies that the world is older than the six thousand years that Bible asserts as the age of earth.
Finally, he counters the argument that a Godless world would also be a bleak world, with the implications that human life is pointless and therefore completely depressing. He points to the wonders of science, how mankind has managed to push against the physical limits of the senses (in both the small – as in the quantum physics – and the large (as in astronomical advances) and how it can help maintain the sense of wonder rather than a bleak outlook.
He also points out the circular reasoning of the ‘proof’ of existence of things like purgatory (as in Catholic belief) and other items contrary to common sense, just because of the conviction imposed by your elders and parents that faith should mean unquestioning belief in even non commonsensical concepts because the holy book says that it should be so. He keeps the arguments generic as to apply to all faiths and dogmas therein.
Finally, he talks also about how unreasonable it is to label children as Catholic Children or Protestant Children or Muslim Children or Hindu Children when the kids themselves are too small to understand what it means and are incapable of deciding for themselves whether they subscribe to that ideology. He advocates calling them ‘children of Catholic parents’ etc instead.
All in all, a thought provoking book. Passionate in what he says, eloquent as always in pleading his case, interesting and humorous as well, this is an easy read and makes you sit up and think.
Which is a good goal for any book.
7/10
= = Krishna