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Well, I borrowed this from the library recently, because I was curious about whether Dawkins' arguments were similar to my own or not.
All in all, I wasn't overwhelmed by the book. I don't think it was particularly well written or structured or thorough in its arguments. However, I think it raised a few good points, and it was far from the shrill, bigotted drivel that some claim it was. I was particularly impressed by the following points:
1) The point that a child should not be considered as belonging to any religion any more than it should be considered as being Marxist or liberal.
2) The evolutionary explanation of morality. I think in some ways it's better than my own view of morality as a social contract, but I still think the latter is in some way relevant within the former.
3) That religious people do not actually use their religion to guide their morality.
4) That religion is a "pick and choose" affair, and that as soon as one tenet is contradicted by evidence, it can be said to apply only metaphorically, with no way of telling which parts of a hoyl book are metaphorical, and which aren't.
5) His point that moderate religion provides a setting for extremist religion to flourish by praising faith as a virtue. We can't really distinguish "extremist" faith from "true" faith as faith has no objective standards to be measured by, no reasoning behind it, and is down to interpretation and belief.
On the other hand, the book was not very well organised. There seemed to be many pages that I felt were superfluous, especially at the beginning, so the whole could have been much slimmer. If, in fact, one wanted to convince others that their religion is false, I feel this could be done in 3 chapters:
1) That there is no scientific evidence and few philosophical arguments for God's existence.
2) That there is scientific evidence against scripture, and many philosophical arguments against God's existence.
This would lead to an understanding that faith is not backed by anything, and is what it says on the tin: belief, with no reasoning behind it. This leads to the third point:
3) Beliefs are arbitrary and unfounded. They are a result of one's birth in a particular time and place to particular parents. Born elsewhere, one would just have enthusiastically been a Hindu believing in a god with an elephant's head or an Ancient Greek believing in a God who turns into a bull to have sex with women as a Christian believing that God is his own father and edible.
In completely other news, I have my first day at Sports World today.
All in all, I wasn't overwhelmed by the book. I don't think it was particularly well written or structured or thorough in its arguments. However, I think it raised a few good points, and it was far from the shrill, bigotted drivel that some claim it was. I was particularly impressed by the following points:
1) The point that a child should not be considered as belonging to any religion any more than it should be considered as being Marxist or liberal.
2) The evolutionary explanation of morality. I think in some ways it's better than my own view of morality as a social contract, but I still think the latter is in some way relevant within the former.
3) That religious people do not actually use their religion to guide their morality.
4) That religion is a "pick and choose" affair, and that as soon as one tenet is contradicted by evidence, it can be said to apply only metaphorically, with no way of telling which parts of a hoyl book are metaphorical, and which aren't.
5) His point that moderate religion provides a setting for extremist religion to flourish by praising faith as a virtue. We can't really distinguish "extremist" faith from "true" faith as faith has no objective standards to be measured by, no reasoning behind it, and is down to interpretation and belief.
On the other hand, the book was not very well organised. There seemed to be many pages that I felt were superfluous, especially at the beginning, so the whole could have been much slimmer. If, in fact, one wanted to convince others that their religion is false, I feel this could be done in 3 chapters:
1) That there is no scientific evidence and few philosophical arguments for God's existence.
2) That there is scientific evidence against scripture, and many philosophical arguments against God's existence.
This would lead to an understanding that faith is not backed by anything, and is what it says on the tin: belief, with no reasoning behind it. This leads to the third point:
3) Beliefs are arbitrary and unfounded. They are a result of one's birth in a particular time and place to particular parents. Born elsewhere, one would just have enthusiastically been a Hindu believing in a god with an elephant's head or an Ancient Greek believing in a God who turns into a bull to have sex with women as a Christian believing that God is his own father and edible.
In completely other news, I have my first day at Sports World today.
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