The God Delusion is a 2006 book by British evolutionary biologist and ethologist Richard Dawkins, in which he argues that a supernatural creator, God, does not exist, and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. In the book, he expresses his agreement to Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila (1991) that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."; He argues in favour of the possibility of morality existing independently of religion and proposes alternative explanations for the origins of both religion and morality.
In early December 2006, it reached number four in the New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list. The book has attracted widespread commentary and critical reception, with many works written in response.
Background
Dawkins has presented arguments against creationist explanations of life in his previous works on evolution. The theme of The Blind Watchmaker, published in 1986, is that evolution can explain the apparent design in nature. In The God Delusion he focuses directly on a wider range of arguments used for and against belief in the existence of a god (or gods).
Dawkins identifies himself repeatedly as an atheist, while also pointing out that, in a sense, he is also agnostic, though "only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden".The God Delusion, page 51.
Dawkins had long wanted to write a book openly criticising religion, but his publisher had advised against it. By 2006, his publisher had warmed to the idea. Dawkins attributes this change of mind to "four years of Bush" (who "literally said that God had told him to invade Iraq").Richard Dawkins, Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science, Bantam Press, 2015, page 171 (). By that time, a number of authors, including Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, who together with Dawkins were labelled "The Unholy Trinity" by Robert Weitzel, had already written books openly attacking religion. According to the Amazon retailer in August 2007, the book was the best-seller in their sales of books on religion and spirituality, with Hitchens's God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything coming second. This led to a 50% growth in that category over the three years to that date.
Synopsis Dawkins dedicates the book to Douglas Adams and quotes the novelist: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" The book contains ten chapters. The first few chapters make a case that there almost certainly is no God, while the rest discuss religion and morality.
Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four what he calls "consciousness-raising" messages, arguing that: Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled. Natural selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a "God hypothesis"—the illusion of intelligent design—in explaining the living world and the cosmos. Children should not be labelled by their parents' religion. Terms like "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should make people cringe. Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.
"God hypothesis"
Chapter one, "A deeply religious non-believer", seeks to clarify the difference between what Dawkins terms "Einsteinian religion" and "supernatural religion". He notes that the former includes quasi-mystical and pantheistic references to God in the work of physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and describes such pantheism as "sexed up atheism". Dawkins instead takes issue with the theism present in religions like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. The proposed existence of this interventionist God, which Dawkins calls the "God Hypothesis", becomes an important theme in the book. He maintains that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific fact about the universe, which is discoverable in principle if not in practice.
The book argues against the Five Ways. According to Dawkins, "[t]he five 'proofs' asserted by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century don't prove anything, and are easily [...] exposed as vacuous."
Dawkins summarises the main philosophical arguments on God's existence, singling out the argument from design for longer consideration. Dawkins concludes that evolution by natural selection can explain apparent design in nature.
He writes that one of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain "how the complex, improbable design in the universe arises", and suggests that there are two competing explanations: A hypothesis involving a designer, that is, a complex being to account for the complexity that we see. A hypothesis, with supporting theories, that explains how, from simple origins and principles, something more complex can emerge. This is the basic set-up of his argument against the existence of God, the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit, where he argues that the first attempt is self-refuting, and the second approach is the way forward.This interpretation of the argument is based on the reviews by Daniel Dennett and PZ Myers.
At the end of chapter 4 ("Why there almost certainly is no God"), Dawkins sums up his argument and states, "The temptation [to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself] is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable". In addition, chapter 4 asserts that the alternative to the designer hypothesis is not chance, but natural selection.
He dedicates a chapter of his book to criticism of the God-of-the-gaps argument. He noted that:
Dawkins states he cannot disprove God's existence with absolute certainty. However, he applies Occam's razor to argue that a godless universe requires fewer assumptions than one with an omniscient and omnipotent deity, which he contends would represent an extremely complex explanation. He further asserts that omniscience and omnipotence are logically incompatible attributes. Based on these arguments, Dawkins concludes that a universe without God presents a more plausible explanation.
Religion and morality The second half of the book begins by exploring the roots of religion and seeking an explanation for its ubiquity across human cultures. Dawkins advocates the "theory of religion as an accidental by-product – a misfiring of something useful": "The general theory of religion as an accidental by-product – a misfiring of something useful – is the one I wish to advocate" as for example the mind's employment of intentional stance. He proposes that religions spread through cultural transmission, comparing them to memes (a concept he likens to viruses).: "the purpose of this section is to ask whether meme theory might work for the special case of religion" (italics in original, referring to one of the five sections of Chapter 5)
He then turns to the subject of morality, maintaining that society does not need religion to be good. Instead, society's morality has a Darwinian explanation: altruistic genes, selected through the process of evolution, give people natural empathy. He asks, "would you commit murder, rape or robbery if you knew that no God existed?" He argues that very few people would answer "yes", undermining the claim that religion is needed to make society behave morally. In support of this view, he surveys the history of morality, arguing that there is a moral Zeitgeist that continually evolves in society, generally progressing toward liberalism. As it progresses, this moral consensus influences how religious leaders interpret their holy writings. Thus, Dawkins argues that morality does not originate from the Bible. He proposes that society's moral progress informs what parts of the Bible Christians accept and what they now dismiss.Having given some examples of what he considers to be the brutish morality of the Old Testament, Dawkins writes, "Of course, irritated theologians will protest that we don't take the book of Genesis literally any more. But that is my whole point! We pick and choose which bits of scripture to believe, which bits to write off as symbols and allegories."
Other themes
In The God Delusion, Dawkins not only defends atheism, but also goes on the offensive against religion. Dawkins criticizes religion for what he describes as its subversion of science, fostering of fanaticism, encouragement of bigotry against homosexuals, and other negative influences. Dawkins regards religion as a "divisive force" and as a "label for in-group/out-group enmity and vendetta".Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Black Swan, 2007, page 294 ().
He is opposed to the teaching of religion in schools, which he considers to be an indoctrination process. He likens the religious teaching of children by parents and teachers in faith schools to what he perceives as mental abuse. Dawkins considers the labels "Muslim child" and "Catholic child" equally misapplied as the descriptions "Marxist child" and "Tory child", as he wonders how a young child can be considered developed enough to have such independent views on the cosmos and humanity's place within it.
The book concludes with the question of whether religion, despite its alleged problems, fills a "much needed gap", giving consolation and inspiration to people who need it. Dawkins argues these needs are much better filled by non-religious means such as philosophy and science and asserts that atheism offers a more life-affirming perspective than religion. An appendix gives addresses for those "needing support in escaping religion".
Critical reception The book was nominated for Best Book at the British Book Awards, where Richard Dawkins was named Author of the Year. Nevertheless, the book received mixed reviews from critics, including both religious and atheist commentators. In the London Review of Books, Terry Eagleton accused Richard Dawkins of not doing proper research into the topic of his work, religion, and further agreed with critics who accused Dawkins of committing straw man fallacies against theists.
Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of The Dawkins Delusion? and Dawkins' God) argues that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 Sunday Times Literary Festival.
In Why there almost certainly is a God: Doubting Dawkins, philosopher Keith Ward claims that Dawkins mis-stated the five ways, and thus responds with a straw man. For example, for the fifth Way, Dawkins places it in the same position for his criticism as the Watchmaker analogy- when in fact, according to Ward, they are vastly different arguments. Ward defended the utility of the five ways (for instance, on the fourth argument he states that all possible smells must pre-exist in the mind of God, but that God, being by his nature non-physical, does not himself stink) whilst pointing out that they only constitute a proof of God if one first begins with a proposition that the universe can be rationally understood. Nevertheless, he argues that they are useful in allowing us to understand what God will be like given this initial presupposition.