Talk:The God Delusion

References

Lots of the references refer to specific pages in the editor's copy of the God Delusion - shouldn't the edition and publisher be mentioned? (or the ISBN, so that edition can be found again). MrBeast 22:27, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Dawkins Delusion

I notice that Alister McGrath has written a new book called The Dawkins Delusion?. McGrath seems to have a real bee in his bonnet about Dawkins. Anyone would think he is trying build a career around attacking the man. Still, McGrath is unable to provide any evidence that his God exists anywhere besides in his imagination. Yet he continues to assert, without proof, that God does exist. People often erroneously think that it is the job of the atheist to disprove God's existence, as if it were possible to disprove any imaginary entity. No, it is the job of the person claiming Zeus to exist to demonstrate with proof that Zeus does exist. Otherwise, we have no reason to assume Zeus's existence to be worthy of debate.

My favourite Christopher Hitchens quote comes in here:

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

I wish people like McGrath could get to grips with this. -Neural 14:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

At least he deserves an award for the most unoriginal rebuttal title since "The Da Vinci Hoax"... Seriously though, Alister isn't that bad, search amazon for "Christian Theology" and he should be up there. Now, about this new book, has anybody read it? Is there anything relevant to add about it here, or does it suffice to link to it? --Merzul 04:03, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Neural – Dawkins certainly thinks that McGrath is riding on his popularity. Here's a quote from his website (posted as a comment):

“ Alister McGrath has now written two books with my name in the title. The poet W B Yeats, when asked to say something about bad poets who made a living by parasitizing him, wrote the splendid line: "Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?" [1] ”

Lh'owon 05:08, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

It's ridiculous to suggest that Alister McGrath is trying to "build a career around attacking Dawkins". McGrath was awarded a personal chair at Oxford purely on merit aged 46, (Dawkins had to have a chair endowed specially for him, aged 54), and has written 18 books which have nothing to do with Dawkins. McGrath exposes some of Dawkins philosophical and historical howlers and Dawkins responds by a personal attack. Given the scathing reviews that The God Delusion has recieved even from atheists, it is unwise to conclude that its sales are driven by "popularity" rather than "notoriety". The comparison [[User:Merzul|Merzul] makes with Dan Brown seems apt. I am however puzzled Snalwibma's comment that "McGrath's comments on TGD cannot have come from a book that predates it by 2 years! TDD is not "subsequent" to those comments, but their source." in his latest edit. I think he may be confusing the book TDD with the article of the same title? NBeale 10:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

... And I suppose RD's chair was not awarded "on merit"?!!! But to the point - yes, I am confusing the two McGrath publications of the same name - but it isn't clear from the wikipedia article that the McGrath review is in his article, not his book. The footnote/reference simply says "The Dawkins Delusion", and I naturally assumed this was the book. Perhaps if there was a proper reference insted of just a link to something that appears (admittedly without following the link) to be the book called TDD it would be easier to understand. Snalwibma 11:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

RD would never normally have been appointed to a chair at Oxford. Indeed he was being criticised for neglecting his duties as a Reader in pursuing his popularist agenda. Simonyi heard that "his hero" was in trouble (according to press reports on Dawkins's website) and he endowed this very specific chair "with the express intention that its first holder be Richard Dawkins". Oxford was short of money at the time and accepted this gift with the string attached. NBeale 08:29, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not that big of a Dawkins fan to bother deleting another persons comment, but I think this is quite dubious material and not very nice towards the subject. Unless these accusations are based on reliable sources, I suggest you remove them from this talk page. (And then you can remove this comment as well). --Merzul 21:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

If you like a bit of malicious gossip - did you hear the latest rumour about John Polkinghorne? Snalwibma 21:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

What a lot of negative reviews!

I have just reread the article, after many weeks away. Does anyone else, I wonder, share my impression that the thing has been badly skewed by quote-mining Dawkins-bashers in a gleeful point-scoring attempt to overwhelm what Dawkins says with as many trivial negative comments as possible, and at all costs to ensure that the detractors have the last say? No, I have not read all the reviews, but I find it hard to believe that the critical reaction was really as negative as the Wikipedia article suggests. I strongly suspect POV-based quote-mining. Is it time to redress the balance and trim away some of those oh-so-important reviews by oh-so-learned religious commentators with their oh-so-predictable negative reactions? Gnusmas 20:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

If you think the article is missing reviews in notable publications that are more positive, you should link them. Speaking as someone who enjoyed the book, I'd suggest that the negative reactions were indeed predictable, as well as voluminous--because that's what a best seller praising atheism is bound to attract.--Barte 22:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

By all means add some quotes from positive reviews (if you can find them), but I think the article gives a reasonable balance of the assertions of Dawkins and the criticisms. The book was pretty much panned by almost every philosopher who reviewed it, whether they are atheist or religious. Was it predictable that atheist reviewers should have had negative reactions? If so, why?NBeale 10:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Me too with NBeale on the negative criticisms but for different reasons; there is too much money, power and politics in religion to expect too many positive endorsements as the book speaks for itself. The target audience was joe-pubic not the "philosopher". Given Dawkins' role has traditionally been to make science more consumable then this is an understandable focus. Consider what joe-public would make of, say, the words of Karl Rahner or say Plantinga's ontological argument ? No I do not think that "panned" by "philosophers" is a criticism but a complement to the book. Ttiotsw 10:57, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Over-generally speaking, the book has drawn scathing reviews from believers, mixed reviews from fellow atheists, many of whom were uncomfortable with Dawkins' take-no-prisoners approach. It will be interesting to see the critical reception for Christopher Hitchens' new book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything".--Barte 15:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have made two edits that slightly balance the negativity of the section, but in general I agree, our duty is to be neutral with respect to what is out there, and considering that Dawkins calls atheists/agnostics tolerant of moderate religion as "Chamberlainian", the negative reviews from atheist commentators should not be surprising. --Merzul 21:30, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

It's worth checking the individual reviews. Sometimes expert reviewers will use the opportunity to pursue thoughts of their own, even if they quite like a book. In any event, reviews usually have some balance that can't be summed up without a bit of work. The review by Kenan Malik is a case in point. I had reason to check this yesterday, and found that our account of it was rather distorted. Metamagician3000 01:02, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Great Beethoven Fallacy

I just happened to look through a few pages of this and found a major error. He attacks religious groups for claiming Beethoven was deaf. In fact, Beethoven was deaf. The author mentions Beethoven many times in the book as if he's a big fan, but he doesn't have basic knowledge of the man. Worse, he skips over the bigger argument, about eugenics and how deaf and disabled people have sometimes been targeted by birth control advocates. He seems to be saying deaf people have never accomplished anything so there is no arguement. In fact, in recent years the US, France and Canada have all had leaders with significant hearing loss. Other famous individuals considered deaf include Thomas Edison, who invented audio recording. Just reading this section I can see that the book basically follows whatever is in the author's head without bothering to check basic facts. How did he ever graduate from college?

To be fair to Dawkins he does know Beethoven was deaf but disputes the suggestion that he was the 5th child of a syphilitic father and a turburculous mother, and that modern doctors might therefore have recommended an abortion. (I'm unable to find my Beethoven biography, what is clear is that there were a total of seven children, of whom only three survived infancy) As to "how did he graduate?" the answer is "with a second-class degree" NBeale 10:23, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The book specifically states that there is no evidence that Beethoven was deaf. Maybe the author meant born deaf, but that's not what it says. His argument seems to be written in such a way as to avoid the whole issue of eugenics, but rather than exposing a fallacy he creates a "straw man". He's attacking something he claims he found on the internet instead of the actual argument. Assuming you can determine if a child will be deaf, which may be possible today, then Beethoven might have been aborted. There's so many errors in this section alone it makes wikipedia look like a bastion of accuracy. Your typical article here is much better organized and argued. People who read this book are the sort that like to think they're educated because they went to college, read two books a year and simply follow whatever the professor says. This is why American culture is such crap. (revised) I noticed this guy is actually British so I'll revise my opinion and say he's the sort of professor that has a British accent that Americans fall for. Maybe he thinks he's so smart no one should edit his work for obvious errors.

Well the sentence (p299) is very poorly written "He [Beethoven] was the eldest - strictly the number two, but his elder sibling died in infancy, as was common in those days, and was not, so far as is known, blind or deaf or metally retarded" so you could read the 3rd "was" as applying to Beethoven but actually I'm sure that all three "was"s apply to different things and the 3rd one applies to B's elder sibling. (It seems from [2] that "An elder brother, Ludwig Maria, died at one week old. Ludwig's two brothers - Caspar Carl and Nikolaus Johann - were followed by two more children - Georg and Margherita - both of whom died in infancy." I think your wider points are spot-on. Why not get yourself a WikiPedia ID and contribute more fully? NBeale 15:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Why is this poorly written? In this paragraph and those nearby, Dawkins never asserts that Beethoven wasn't deaf. He doesn't come close. Our anonymous critic's far-flung accusations here are entirely baseless.--Barte 21:36, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

If someone is talking about Beethoven I would assume thy mean the composer and not his brother or his dog. If this brother died in birth how could they know if it was deaf or retarded? Is that some kind of British humor? Anyway, he doesn't address the whole point of the story which is that if Beethoven was aborted or gassed by the Nazis then you don't have his music. The idea of looking at relatives for signs of disabilities is so old it doesn't make any sense without at least giving us some background on eugenics, which is an important subject in terms of explaining why humans shouldn't play god. It's easy enough to find history of religious societies that were faulty since nearly every society has been religious. There's only a few examples of non-religious societies and they're not good. I notice the author claims Hitler was Catholic. I suppose Lenin was Jewish? Isn't one of the author's basic claims that people shouldn't label children based on the religions of their parents?

We need to start focusing this discussion on the Wikipedia article. (There are great sites like convinceme.net for online debate). This talk page is for discussing the article, so do you have any suggestions on how to improve it? --Merzul 02:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we should take any more notice of someone who wants to use Wikipedia as a soap box, is not focused on the article, and does not even sign with an IP address. Metamagician3000 01:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

On the subject of improving articles, I'd like to invite interested editors to have a look at a related article, The Dawkins Delusion?. The reason? It is one of the most blatantly POV articles I've come across, in urgent need of some neutrality. Thanks all. -Neural 00:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather focus on improving this article, and while I agree that neutrality is a good thing, I don't want editors to leave this page just yet! See below... --Merzul 08:30, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

What's next?

Are we happy with the current structure, and will we just maintain and improve small things here and there; or are there any suggestions about what is needed to improve the article more substantially? We have limited this to the contents, while Feature Articles on books, such as The Brothers Karamazov or Night (book), generally include a lot more. There is at least some things to say about the context, publishing and all the supporting talks and interviews that he has given after the books publishing. This would be a good opportunity to add some pictures :) --Merzul 08:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

sourcing

The entire synopsis uses the book alone as a source, unless I missed a source. It would be preferable to include some other sources - reviews written by others. I'll start looking over reviews myself, any help would be appreciated. KillerChihuahua^?!? 11:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

• I don't follow this line of thinking. It's a synopsis of the book, giving a summary of what Dawkins says in TGD. The only sensible source is the book itself. Reviews and opinions of others are given space in the "Reviews" section. Snalwibma 11:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The line of thinking was that if there are any bits within the synopsis which make statements about what Dawkin's aims and methodology were, in other words, minor speculation, those should be sourced. Upon more careful reading of the synopsis, however, I don't see any questionable speculation, so feel free to strike my concern. KillerChihuahua^?!? 11:57, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

This article makes almost no sense

This article at various points seems to assume (it's not really clear, and then again many of the arguments are not very clear) that all readers are ultraconservatives or athiests. Is this how the professor presents his arguments? Does he assume that all Abrahamic religious groups believe in Creationism, biblical inerrancy, that things which appear to be incorrect should be believed nonetheless, etc? Does the synopsis of this article leave out crucial contextualizing information that would keep it from being a bunch of disembodied floating straw man arguments selected merely for titillation factor? I mean c'mon I haven't read this book, but as for the summary here, as a Christian I could make a better case for athiesm in an hour by assembling results from Google queries. An easy way to improve the article is to (a) Contextualize (b) Ask how would a skeptical Christian (or Muslim...) who has been educated in the various sciences and believes in evolution understand this guy's arguments? Should certain subsections of the synopsis be ignored by certain readers? (c) Did he allow for some score "points" from his opponents in order to demonstrate his reasonableness and that he understands the point of debating? (It's helpful to include say a hint of this in the synopsis because it sets the tone for his work). I'll assume that this isn't just pop culture spin machines spinning and that the author deeply cares about his arguments (as is the norm in arguments of belief), and assume the flaws lie in the article. - Connelly 19:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, your judgment of this article is similar to what many Christian reviewers have said of the book, so I don't think the synopsis is that far off. Personally, I think the originality of the book is not in its content, but in its style; so it's value (to atheists) is not philosophical but social. It's not so much what he said, but that he dares to say it. So I don't think the synopsis really requires any more detail, what this article would need is to explain more about the impact of the book and the context in which it has been published. --Merzul 01:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, more information is needed about the context in which it was published. - Connelly 19:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

As a Christian you are already well on the road to Atheism as you already discard many gods, though you leave just that one Jewish tribal god as an exception, so yes I would agree that you probably could present the case for Atheism quite well. You discount 'n-1' gods: atheists discount 'n' gods. In this book Dawkins uses an almost conversational tone presenting that religious belief is a delusion. It has introduced the idea of "delusion" into the conversation; and it has stuck given that we now have a rebuttal called "The Dawkins Delusion?". I don't see it as an argument for Atheism but an argument against the delusions. This includes such concepts as the afterlife too in which he uses the example of Buddhists (which is nothing to do with the term "atheist").

With book articles we can't really start up our own review of it as that is more or less original research but must summarise each book section neutrally, add other people's reviews for and against and other related data.Ttiotsw 07:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I like that you thought this worth making an argument for, it gives me hope for the future of what I fear is an increasingly uninterested and unintelligent populace. I'm not sure Wikipedia is the best place for posting such arguments, as they tend to start flamewars. I wasn't asking for a review but rather contextualization. - Connelly 19:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

So you want to represent the content of a non-fiction book presenting one persons views on what they feel is a "delusion" into the worldview of the deluded ? I feel that reworking one set of foundation myths to apply it to another cultural setting is fine but this book is questioning the foundation myths. To contextualize that misses the point somewhat. Ttiotsw 19:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

No, contextualize to explain e.g. why the subsection "Why there almost certainly is no God" jumps immediately into minutiae of the mechanics of the debate of Creationism vs Evolution, which is a topic mostly of interest to America and the U.K. in the years of 1859-2007. Actually now that I look at it, it seems this entire section is focused solely on evolution debate. Bizarre. In any case, jumping into this section is like jumping into ice water if you are a skeptic like me: one wonders how in the world we went from the philosophical topic "why there almost certainly is no God" to the mechanics of the given debate. I think this would be much more confusing for people who don't live in the United States and who haven't grown up around Christians. My other point was that whatever this author's original arguments were, they seem to have been ripped completely to shreds by Wikipedians removing the deductive force from them and merely exposing various "OMG that's so controversial" quotes. I guess maybe I should read the book but I'm now kind of leery of it after Merzul's observation that it isn't serious philosophy and seems to be some kind of social movement instead. (I'm asocial, black triangle symbol would be given to me in the Nazi camps). - Connelly 22:48, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Reverted category "criticism of fundamentalism"

I removed the category added by Chsbcgs (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). I'm not too pleased with his list of contributions, but with respect to this particular edit I explained in the edit summary why I object to that category, please respond here if anybody disagrees. --Merzul 21:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. It is a criticism of fundamentalism. It is also a criticism of moderate religion. I just re-added Letter to a Christian Nation before I noticed your comment here. I'll take that book back out for the moment; I had not realized the fact that this category was just created. It might not be particularly useful. I'm open on this; we could CFD it, if we don't I'm leaning toward putting these books in that category. — coelacan talk — 04:35, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have serious concerns about the user who created this category, and I am assuming bad faith here, but look at the guys talk page... so he has created a category "criticism of fundamentalism" and added books by atheists and religious authors that in his opinion criticise fundamentalism; it's not just a neutral and helpful category, it's very much arguing that Dawkins and Harris have focused excessively on religious fundamentalism. While "criticism of religion" is a neutral category, both Category:Criticisms of Fundamentalism and Category:Criticisms of Moderate Religion would be loaded with one side's POV. --Merzul 04:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Just thought I would add something because I'm going to sleep now... I mainly removed the tags because of the way these things have been added without any discussion. I have no problem putting them back if after a reasonable discussion you find that my above argumentation above is not persuasive. --Merzul 05:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)