The God Delusion – Central Ideas

The God Delusion is a non-fiction book by the English biologist Richard Dawkins, its main argument is that a supernatural creator or a “God” almost certainly doesn’t exist, and a belief in one is a delusion. The book makes the reader question their own beliefs and ideas about religion, morality and decision making, and although the book starts by questioning religion it goes on to explain other concepts like atheism, natural selection and evolution.

One concept that Richard Dawkins raises is that religion should not be controlled by family and instead should be a personal decision. For example a baby born into a Christian family will be assumed to be Christian as well, but in fact it is not as it does not believe in the religious beliefs yet.  As the child is assumed to be Christian it now does not have a choice and when it grows up will often feel forced to follow the religion. Dawkins has the theory that if someone was to follow a religion it should be his or her choice, and should not be instead forced onto them in their childhood.

The book states that religion is for the weak minded as it is based on superstition. It explains that religion was created to justify phenomena in the world that humans were not yet able to fully understand, such as creation and the weather. Now that science is able to explain a lot of things that were previously unexplained, he believes that religion is now irrelevant and unneeded.  He provides examples that show the flaws in religion hoping to show the reader that religion is a false belief and

The God Delusion

accepting it is a delusion.

The central ideas of the book revolve around the concept that god and religion is a delusion. It states that those that support religion are weak minded science makes religion irrelevant and unneeded; it instead supports the ideas of atheism and evolution.

The God Delusion-Structure

The God Delusion was seen to be as an attack on religion and the existence of a higher being(s), but in hindsight it was an attack against the existence of religion itself and (Dawkins specifically targets Christianity in this way) its way of manipulating people to the Church’s advantage.

Dawkins structures his 400 page bible-basher basically like a formal debate. You could be in a “Does God exist?” debate, pick and choose a few of his arguments, and probably win.

The book is divided into 10 chapters, each supposedly with a different central argument, but really a lot of it is variations on a theme. For the risk of spoilers I won’t go into detail over what each chapter entails, but basically Dawkins has two main points, which are kind of stated above: in the first half of the book he tries to argue that there is almost certainly no supernatural deity, by almost I mean he sees it even more impossible to rule out the possibility of God, if that were possible!

The most memorable part of this is his use of the term “God hypothesis”, for which he describes Albert Einstein’s stance on religion, that there was some form of “designer” in the universe. He explains how natural selection and other processes are better at explaining the cosmos but respects Einstein’s view insofar as saying his view is “light years” from that in Abrahamic religions. In this way he implies the scientific method is a far superior form of explaining phenomena than religion. Practically the entire first half of the book stands upon and/or consists of variations of this very point.

His second main point through this is that religion is present as long as the undiscovered is there—they go hand in hand, but that religion and morality do not follow this same line of thought. He argues atheists can equally good if not better citizens of society, contrary to the belief of many religious people that religion=morality. He also argues that because of this, religion has lost all sense of its service to humanity in favour of moral superiority, which he believes to be its ultimate downfall.

I believe the structure is weak in this sense. It feels light, unsubstantial. Basing the book on just two principles seems unconvincing. It’s possible for a great mind to pick apart his arguments, but what would be the use? 

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins- How

Faced with this question: How does the God delusion make the abstract concrete? Make the mind boggling understandable? Make the distant / impersonal personal? The ordinary extraordinary?

I wrote the following:

Richard Dawkins is a highly controversial atheist author who really doesn’t like religion. One of his most famous books, published in 2006, is The God Delusion. In this book he argues the idea of a personal God who created the Universe and interferes with people’s lives is delusional. He categorises all traditional gods into this one label; Hindu gods, Egyptian gods, Islamic, Jewish, Christian.

In The God Delusion Richard Dawkins presents the idea that the wonders of life and the universe were not created by a supernatural power. Although the book could be considered highly offensive, Richard Dawkins has obviously put a lot thought into his points and does his best to present a case in the hope of enlightening people.

As the whole concept of his book is theoretical, I think he has tried to fill it with lots of interesting stories and events to keep readers interested. Along with thought experiments to prove his points he also uses personal anecdotes, news stories and events; sometimes to prove a separate point or sometimes in conjunction with a theoretical concept.

These are stories that hold some sort of relevance to his point and provide evidence for his arguments. I see Dawkins’ use of stories, which we may recall happening or even personally relate to, as the main way he tries to make his thesis more understandable and relevant to our everyday lives. For example, he uses a story about his wife that we can probably all relate to. When she was a child, she hated her school but never told her parents. As an adult, she told them this and when asked why she did not tell them she simply said “but I didn’t know I could”. He translates this experience into religion and children feeling they don’t have a choice, or that they ‘just are’ apart of one.

Although they work well, I think he goes a bit too far with the anecdotes sometimes. Sometimes Dawkins’ points get lost in between the stories. In the introduction I found that the explanation of what the book is about was scattered through the whole chapter in between stories and descriptions of events. Some of the stories are also a bit informal, such as personal anecdotes about his wife’s childhood that he easily could have fabricated. He does present a good argument for his cause otherwise, though, and his effort is evident in his writing.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins- Central Ideas

In the book, Richard had talked about religion. He had attacked it savagely, making points that religion is bad and that no one should ever be in one. He had also talked about decisions, how some people make them and how some people didn’t know they could. He had begun his argument with religion, and how kids of Christians are simply assumed to be Christians as well. When they later grow up, they would simply assume that they are born Christians and can never change.

Richard had also stated that religion is for the weak. He started the argument by stating the origin of religion, which started from superstition. In the past, if people fell ill, their families would pray for help, thinking that some high being would descend from above and cure them of the sickness. If the people were cured, they would assume that there really was a high being and that he had saved the peoples’ lives. If they had died, they would assume that they had not prayed hard enough to them. All this stems from human nature. Humans do not want to be completely powerless, and by believing in a god, they think that they are doing something that could help.

Finally, Richard also thinks that religion leads to extremist, people who believe in their religion so much that they are willing to sacrifice their lives, often in the detriment of others. This has already been proven true with bombings, terrorism and suicides. People only do this thinking that they would be rewarded beyond measure when they die and gain the highest level of luxury. Believing in that, they would do anything to achieve that. After, there are no police in their versions of heaven. Not only are they not treated as lunatics, people in their religion revel them, thinking that they are courageous. Maybe Richard is right, maybe religion isn’t all that good.

 

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins – Language Features

Richard Dawkins sharing the God Delusion to a group of people.

Whether you are religious or non-religious, if you have read “The God Delusion” there’s one thing you can be certain on; Richard Dawkins is a hell of an author. His persuasive ability is of the highest calibre, both subtle, and powerful; which of course he needed if he were to ever stand a chance to endeavour in one of the most ambitious tasks of any persuader; conversion of religion, or in this case, the switch to religion to the absence of religion.

Although of course he wouldn’t have succeeded in converting every reader to atheism, his book still required his incredible mastery of the language and its conventions to make his text persuasive. Richard Dawkins is like a trained assassin when it comes to using language. He has in his rack, various literary “weapons” of all kinds of shapes and sizes, which he uses with precision, power, and personality, to attack away at the victim of God. What are these weapons? Well let’s find out.

Anecdotes are abundant in the God Delusion, and are in fact his primal source of evidence, alongside his logical reasoning’s of his ideologies. These anecdotes and his explanations are what make up the fat bulk of the book, and arguably is the most important technique for his persuasion – no reader would just accept his beliefs, he had to back it up with solid facts. His arguments aren’t in some mixed up order either, they do follow a particular structure to develop the mind of the reader through these arguments; starting off with making suggestions as about some of the upcoming to believing in God, to straight-up rebuking the idea of God’s existence.

But another important technique he uses in making his anecdotes effective on the readers is his ability to create characterisations ideas like “God” as either Good or Evil. This is crucial to the book because Dawkins wants the readers to see God and Religion as bad, and atheism is good, and to do this he has to make clear distinctions between the sides, and cast them off to opposite poles, with one side clearing being in good favour. Perhaps the most distinguishing characterisations he made was one of God himself, in which he says,

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

When Dawkins made this little caption of God, he had to make his selection of words and figurative language very carefully. All of the traits he includes are negative ones, and he leaves no room for hopeful positives. He wants to characterize God as the most unlikable character ever to exist, and as such he finds the traits which the eye of the modern person would receive as undoubtedly horrible.

However all of this is just the main block of his persuasive plan. To effectively “make it work” he needed to round it all off with his profile, or how the readers viewed the author of the book. If the readers saw an argument which looked like it was written by and angry, ranting, idiotic, and frustrated atheist, they would automatically shut him off and deem any of his further arguments as just rabble. So Dawkins adapts his style of writing to the voice of someone people would listen to wilfully; that is, an authoritative, intelligent, and confident voice. Essentially he takes the role of the leader, and a leader that people would actually listen to. To achieve this is pretty simple really. Use big words, make assumptions but pose them as facts, add in a few sciency stories and WALLAH, you got yourself a nice, suited mask that says “Hey, I’m smart so listen to me.”