the God Delusion

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Dawkins at a book signing for The God Delusion in the Barnes & Noble store in Lower Manhattan in 2008

The God Delusion ( english The God Delusion ) is the title of a 2006 first time at Houghton Mifflin published in the English original monograph Richard Dawkins ', he opposed in the theistic religions and especially to the three Abrahamic religions applies. Dawkins' central theses are that all belief in God in all its forms is irrational and that religion usually has serious negative effects on society. The book was a great sales success worldwide and has since been considered one of the main texts of the “ New Atheism ”.

Outline of the book

Cape. 1: A deeply religious unbeliever

In this chapter Dawkins differentiates the statements of various natural scientists, e. B. Sagan , Weinberg and Hawking , on their personal attitude to religion and underlines this with appropriate quotations. He explains that Albert Einstein , for example, did not believe in a (personal) God, as was often assumed, but used the term metaphorically for the universe he admired.

Here Dawkins also differentiates and explains the terms theism , deism and pantheism . He also addresses what he believes is undeserved respect that religions enjoy or claim in many societies. He quotes Henry L. Mencken :

"We have to respect the religion of the other, but only in the sense and to the extent that we have to respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are clever."

Cape. 2: The God Hypothesis

Here Dawkins gives a brief overview of polytheism , monotheism and agnosticism and creates a scale of seven gradual beliefs ranging from (1) convinced theist who "does not [believe] but knows that there is a God" to (7 ) convinced atheist who “ knows that there is no God.” In the middle lies (4) the pure agnostic who “ knows that [he] cannot know whether there is a God or not.” Dawkins appreciates himself as a (6) de facto atheist: "I estimate the probability of God's existence to be very low and live my life accordingly."

He then writes that the USA was originally founded as a secular state, but that today it can be regarded as the most strongly religious state in the western world. This is shown e.g. B. intolerance towards atheists with great tolerance towards any religious denominations and sects . The rejection of Darwin's theory of evolution by Christian creationists , which is also associated with this , is met by scientists in part with Stephen Jay Gould's NOMA theory , according to which science and religion are two separate areas. Just as science cannot make any statements about God, religion should leave the facts to scientists.

As a positivist, however, Dawkins clearly distinguishes himself from NOMA. He argues that a world with a God is fundamentally different from a world without God. The question of the existence of gods is therefore basically a question that can be dealt with using methods from natural science. Dawkins sharply criticizes an agnosticism that declares the question of God in principle inaccessible to scientific clarification and even refuses to subject the God hypothesis to a probability assessment. In this context he speaks of the poverty of agnosticism .

Cape. 3: Arguments for the Existence of God

Dawkins goes on to list and criticize the arguments that he believes have been most frequently made for the existence of God:

  • the Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas with a general extension to ontological , a priori ' - or, a posteriori' -Argumentationsketten;
  • the beauty ("Where does the beauty in the works of artists come from?");
  • the personal experience of God (“I have experienced God”);
  • the existence of " Holy Scriptures " ;
  • the compatibility of science and faith (“There are believing natural scientists”);
  • Pascal's bet “not believing in God could be devastating”;
  • the calculation of the probability that God exists by Stephen D. Unwin .

Cape. 4: Why there is almost certainly no God

Dawkins presents arguments that make the existence of God seem improbable or unnecessary. Dawkins identifies the main problem with the idea of ​​a creator and almighty ruler of our world in that such an idea does not actually explain anything, but, on the contrary, merely represents an infinite recourse by combining something very complex (our world and life on it) with something even more complex (God) explained, the origin of which remains unclear. He explains this with the arguments

  • the understanding of natural selection ( evolution theory );
  • against the concept of irreducible complexity by the biochemist Michael J. Behe ;
  • the worship of (understanding) gaps (ie everything we do not understand is ascribed to God );
  • of the anthropic principle (ie we live on our earth because it is made for us [man ⇒ earth] compared with only on such an earth we were able to develop at all [earth ⇒ man]).

Dawkins concludes that it is impossible to prove or disprove the alleged existence of a "higher being" since nonexistence cannot be proven. Here he cites Bertrand Russell's thought experiment , a teapot that may orbit in space, but in principle cannot be discovered even with the best telescopes. Be it with God as with her: imaginable, but neither demonstrable nor refutable. In such a case, however, the burden of proof would be on those who would claim the existence of the teapot - or that of a god.

Given the logical difficulty of proving the non-existence of any being in principle, Dawkins therefore advocates the cautious thesis that God almost certainly does not exist. Dawkins attacks the divine hypothesis with precisely the type of argument that theologians have long used against the notion of uncreated forms of life: the existence of such forms of life must be explained and their mere chance existence is implausible. For the field of biology, the argument was invalidated and the emergence of living beings with complex, highly functional structures was understood as a natural phenomenon within the framework of evolutionary theory. When asked about the existence of God, however, this type of improbability argument applies, according to Dawkins. The existence of a god is at least as improbable as the existence of an uncreated, purely accidental Boeing 747.

Cape. 5: The roots of religion

Dawkins hypothesizes that 'belief' has been favored through evolution, since belief in a higher being is widespread in social systems. Possibilities of an explanation that he discusses are

  • the placebo effect: a person who believes he is living under a fatherly, almighty protector should feel more confident in life.
  • Group selection: A group that sticks together by a conviction or a belief (of whatever kind and reinforced by admission rituals) should have an advantage over groups without convictions.
  • By-product effect: Children who have learned to 'blindly believe' ('blindly trust') what experienced older people give them as warnings may have a greater chance of surviving in a dangerous environment. A reinforcement can arise if these warnings (prohibitions and commands) are ascribed to an even higher power than that of the elders.
  • Psychological conditions (how the brain works): Intuitive dualism (ie I in my body , instead of monism: I, the body ) leads people to the question: What is and where does this "I", this soul, that inhabit my body come from? And since everything has to have a meaning (water comes from a spring so that I can drink it), the soul must also have a meaning, which (for lack of explanation) is associated with a higher meaning (God).

Recurring aspects of these explanations can be explained by the fact that religious ideas could be memes that go through independent evolutionary processes and only use humans as “hosts”. Examples of these memes would be: (a) If you live this way (and not otherwise), after death you will be rewarded and continue to live. (b) The more you believe and the less you doubt, the better it is for you (the happier you will be). (c) Unlike you, unbelievers are certainly punished or should be punished by you, etc.

At the end of the chapter, Dawkins goes into the phenomenon of cargo cults , in which the emergence, spread and perpetuation of memes - which Dawkins consider absolutely irrational - can be observed.

Cape. 6: The roots of morality. Why are we good

Dawkins claims here that people do not derive their morals from religious scriptures, but that the emergence of morals is a universal social phenomenon. In test answers in which difficult, morally justifiable decisions are asked, there is no correlation between moral decision and religiosity: Believers and atheists / agnostics show the same decision profiles. In an example from population statistics, Dawkins describes the quantitatively substantiated observations by Sam Harris that in the USA in traditionally republican states, in which conservative Christian groups exert a strong influence, murder rates, violence and property crimes are significantly higher in cities than in comparable cities in “liberal” democratic states. So religion is not a guarantee for moral behavior and religious people are not automatically “good”. “Good” and “bad” can ultimately be traced back to experiences that were made in the development phase of human or even pre-human groups with a social behavior, to “useful” or “harmful” (for the group). Imagine that hunters from group (or family) A encounter a hunter from neighboring group B who has penetrated their territory. Group A will at least drive away intruder B or even kill him, because he is a food competitor. From a food gathering point of view for Group A, this is a useful, so “good” act. The same act, the same process, is exactly the opposite from the perspective of Group B. The killed hunter is missing his group in finding food, which can mean hunger and an existential crisis under certain circumstances. Hence, killing hunter B is a harmful event by an "evil" act.

It follows from this that when assessing a process or behavior it always depends on the point of view of the person concerned. And that in turn means that “good” and “bad” and morality, ethics etc. derived from them cannot be absolute, always valid or even “divine” values. The assessment of good and bad is relative ( ethical relativism ) and yet all people more or less have a feeling for good and bad. Evolution did it. It's in the genes, it caused the species to survive in the distant past. It comes to full fruition when group interests are behind it, when everyone depends on one another in order to survive as a group. In our modern world, too, individual people or interest groups try to secure territories. A family man who “worked his way up” by eliminating competitors by all means ensured a high standard of living for himself and his family, a large area - a “hunter” concerned about the welfare of group A, the good does.

It is not difficult to see that competitors who have been booted out and their groups B, C etc. could see in “Hunter A” a ruthless or slimy upstart, an “evil one” who is largely indifferent to the impairment or destruction of other existences. All of this can also apply to competition between companies fighting for market share by legal or illegal means.

Cape. 7: The “good” book and the changeable ethical zeitgeist

In this chapter, Dawkins states that the Bible is completely unsuitable as the basis of human behavior and morality today and is in fact not used as such by Christians either. Modern Christians would only cite excerpts from the Bible as a moral basis, such as the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount , but not e.g. B. the fratricide and genocide described in detail in the Old Testament or polygamous and incestuous behavior. But how, Dawkins asks, does a Christian decide which passages of the Bible are worth listening to and which are not? Certainly not on the basis of the Bible itself, but at your own discretion; the Bible is then a postponed justification for moral judgments that have already been made.

For the change of morality over time, he uses the term zeitgeist and uses the example of the Ten Commandments to show how this could be understood today.

Cape. 8: What's So Bad About Religion? Why this hostility?

Here Dawkins emphasizes that even a "moderate" belief benefits fanaticism . He explains that the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 were only possible in this form (as well as religiously motivated attacks everywhere else in the world) because the assassins really believed that after their death they would be martyred in a paradise to come. However, this belief was only able to consolidate because the society in which the perpetrators grew up takes the seemingly harmless belief in God and a paradise for granted. As an example, he cites the attitude of some religions towards homosexuals and their persecution or the fact that respect for life (unborn, soldier, adulterer, people of different faith, ethnic groups) has been and is very variably adapted to the respective beliefs.

Cape. 9: Childhood, Child Abuse, and How to Escape Religion

A particular concern of Dawkins is in his book Criticism of Child Indoctrination by Religious Associations and Churches. He criticizes, among other things, the state funding of religious schools, especially in Great Britain , as it encourages fundamentalism . According to Dawkins, there can in principle no more be Catholic or Muslim children than there are Marxist or social democratic children, since children are too immature to actually be able to form an opinion. He demands that children should be able to grow up without being influenced in one direction or the other, and describes the practice of religious upbringing of children as child abuse . As examples, he cites the life of Edgardo Mortara , a child from a Jewish family who was removed from his parents and "saved" by papal ordinance through baptism - carried out by his nanny - or the mental agony of a child when it was to recognize believes that a deceased friend of a different faith must now suffer agony for eternity .

Cape. 10: a necessary loophole?

In the final chapter, Dawkins addresses the often claimed usefulness of belief for a "good life". He concludes that it is not necessary to believe in God to be happy or comforted. Just as a child breaks out of the phase of being accompanied by an “ imaginary friend ” and becomes an independent and responsible adult, the thinking and knowing person should be able to free himself from a “higher power that is constantly observing him”.

dedication

Dawkins dedicated the book to the writer and satirist Douglas Adams , who died in 2001 .

Expenditure)

Reactions to the book

Book market

The book is a sales success. The original edition published in 2006, was in January 2007 on the nonfiction - bestseller list of the New York Times at No. 4. It was translated by the end of 2007 in 31 languages. In Germany the book on September 10, 2007, in a translation by Sebastian Vogel in the Ullstein publishing house published and reached over several weeks Rank 2 of the best-seller list of book reports in the category hardcover / non-fiction. As of January 28, 2010, 2,086,402 copies were sold in English and over 260,000 in German.

Reactions and comments

On the one hand, God's delusion was highly praised and nominated for many prizes (including the British Book Award ), but on the other hand it also met with severe criticism. Dawkins is particularly often accused of revealing his book that he has a lack of religious studies and philosophical-theological knowledge.

Criticism of Dawkins' style

A number of commentators accuse Dawkins of advocating his theses in a fundamentalist way that he accuses many of his opponents, especially Christian fundamentalists . The German theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf describes Dawkins in his review as a “ biologistic hate preacher ” who brags about his philosophical ignorance and brings little new or original. Not only Dawkins himself, but also some of his critics object to such allegations that they were at least partially based less on rational arguments than mere resentment of his opponents.

Content discussion

The Oxford theologian Alister McGrath believes that "God does not belong in the same category as scientific objects", and has as a response to The God Delusion the book The Dawkins Delusion? (German title: "Der Atheismuswahn") written.

Dawkins suggests in his book that many abuses in the world are of religious, even theological, origin:

“Let's imagine a world where there is no religion - no suicide bombers, no September 11, no attacks on the London Underground, no crusades , no witch hunts , no gunpowder plot , no division India, no war between Israelis and Palestinians, no bloodbath among Serbs / Croats / Muslims, no persecution of the Jews as 'Christ murderers', no 'problems' in Northern Ireland [...] "

- Preface

McGrath replied:

“Imagine if Dawkin's dream came true and religion disappeared: would the arguments among people be over? Certainly not. Such divisions are ultimately social constructs. They reflect the basic sociological need of communities to define themselves and to determine who belongs and who does not belong, who is friend or enemy. "

- The atheism madness, p. 103

Some critics, such as the British publicist Kenan Malik , point to the originally political, secular nature of these conflicts, which only come along through political degeneration in religious guise.

Jürgen Spieß believes Dawkins' thesis that an atheistic world would be more peaceful has been refuted, since in the 20th century it was precisely atheistic and scientific state systems that committed particular atrocities.

The literary scholar Terry Eagleton accused Dawkins of a lack of objectivity in a detailed criticism. Dawkins is practically unable to admit that religious belief could have brought even a single human gain.

The atheist philosopher and religion critic Joachim Kahl considers Dawkins' delusion of God to be "a testimony to the intellectual delusion of Caesars ". According to Ludwig Quidde, this has "two complementary features: triumphalistic overestimation of oneself and abysmal blindness to reality." Both are present in Dawkins. He "rant" about the vice of religion and vilify the Judeo-Christian God as the "monster of the Bible". With this he shows that he “has no idea about the Janus-faced nature of religion and its ambivalences”.

The philosopher Daniel Dennett counters the frequent accusation that Dawkins' statements show philosophical and theological ignorance : the book is “not an attempt to contribute to philosophical theology.” Dawkins refutes the arguments that “are brought up from thousands of pulpits to millions of television viewers every day become". And "neither the television preachers nor the authors of the best-selling spiritual books" would "heed the subtleties of theologians in the least".

Response of the EKD

The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) criticized Dawkins for a "coarse" apology of the secular, which became a counter-religion. The book by the professor from Oxford shows an “evolutionary insight into the coincidental emergence of life, which is now being upgraded to a worldview”. In a press release, the EKD regrets that Dawkins' "Tirade against God and religion [...] on the many hundreds of pages hardly contains a committed discussion of the theology and philosophy of the last centuries". They are more likely to be touched on the surface. Almost obsessively, however, Dawkins “unfolds his picture book of horror: From the crusades to child abuse, from Adolf Hitler to Osama bin Laden, everywhere in the past and present he finds gruesome examples of the evil that arises from believing in God. This arc of images of fundamentalism, anti-Enlightenment spirit, hostility towards democracy and freedom, exclusion, violence and dehumanization is for him the best evidence against God. "This is where his own argumentation becomes a trap, according to the EKD:" The meaning of religion says Dawkins, one cannot prove with the means of the empirical argument. God cannot be found in the world that is made visible with the methods of science. Yes that is true. But then it cannot be refuted by the means of sensual experience either. ”No matter how gruesome the perversion of belief in God could be used as evidence against the meaning of belief in God. "You cannot reject a procedure with polemical verve that you then apply yourself."

Lawsuit against publishers in Turkey

In 2008, the book's Turkish publisher, Erol Karaaslan, was charged with “inciting the people”. However, he was acquitted with reference to freedom of thought.

Giordano Bruno Foundation

Andreas Müller, employee of the Giordano Bruno Foundation , wrote a review for the Humanist Press Service : “The God Delusion is sometimes the best book that is critical of religion. It is neither militant nor one-dimensional. Rather, it explains the best arguments against religion and against God in each of its forms. Linguistically written at the finest Oxford English level, the book is humorous, intelligent and easy to understand. "

Replies

  • Terry Eagleton : Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate . Yale University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-300-16453-4 .
  • David Bentley Hart : Atheist Delusions. The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies . Yale University Press, New Haven 2007, ISBN 0-300-11190-8 .
  • Joachim Kahl: Neither the delusion of God nor the delusion of atheism. A critique of the “new atheism” from the perspective of the “old atheism” . In: EZW -tex No. 204/2009, pp. 5–18 ( PDF ).
  • Michael Kotsch : Atheism: God or non-God is the question here. Greetings from Dawkins “God's delusion” . In: Bibel und Gemeinde 2/2008, pp. 7–22 ( PDF ).
  • Rudolf Langthaler ; Kurt Appel (Ed.): Dawkins' Gotteswahn. 15 critical responses to his atheist mission . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78409-8 .
  • Rudolf Langthaler : Why Dawkins is wrong. A polemic. Freiburg i. Br. 2015.
  • John Lennox : Did Science Bury God? A critical analysis of modern thinking. 3rd edition, SCM R. Brockhaus, Witten 2011, ISBN 978-3-417-26261-2 .
  • Alister McGrath : The Atheism Mania: An Answer to Richard Dawkins and Atheist Fundamentalism . Gerth Medien, Asslar 2007, ISBN 978-3-86591-289-3 .
  • Florian Ossadnik: Spinoza and the "scientific atheism" of the 21st century. Ethical and political consequences of early enlightenment and contemporary criticism of religion. Studies In European Culture, Volume 8, edited by Ludwig Tavernier. VDG, Weimar 2011. ISBN 978-3-89739-705-7 .
  • Peter Strasser : Why religion at all? The god who created Richard Dawkins. Fink, Paderborn 2008, ISBN 978-3-7705-4612-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edward Croft Dutton (2007) "Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion". Journal of Social, Political & Economic Studies 32 (3): pp. 385–388, pp. 385 f.
  2. ^ A b Terry Eagleton: "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching" in the London Review of Books . German translation: "Fuchteln, threschen, besidehauen" ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.discorsi.de
  3. ^ Hardcover Nonfiction , The New York Times, January 21, 2007
  4. ^ Richard Dawkins - Science and the New Atheism Richard Dawkins at Point of Inquiry December 8, 2007.
  5. ↑ Der Gotteswahn in Buchreport ( Memento of the original from August 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.buchreport.de
  6. ↑ In Dawkins' Comments
  7. ↑ The nominees and winners of the British Book Award. ( Memento from April 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Marty E. Martin : Sneers. In: The Christian Century . dated November 14, 2006
  9. ^ A b Edward Croft Dutton: Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion. In: Journal of Social, Political & Economic Studies Volume 32, Number 3, 2007, pp. 385–388, here p. 387.
  10. ↑ Friedrich Wilhelm Graf: The "dear God" as a bloodthirsty monster. In: sueddeutsche.de . May 19, 2010, accessed May 2, 2015 .
  11. ^ Edward Pentin: All's Not Quiet on The Atheistic Front. (No longer available online.) In: ncregister.com. July 31, 2007, archived from the original on April 13, 2015 ; accessed on May 2, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ncregister.com
  12. ^ Alister McGrath: The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine. 2007, ISBN 978-0-281-05927-0
  13. ↑ Alister McGrath: The Atheism Mania. An answer to Richard Dawkins and atheist fundamentalism. 2007, ISBN 978-3-86591-289-3 .
  14. ↑ Kenan Malik: I don't believe in Richard Dawkins. In: telegraph.co.uk. Archived from the original on October 27, 2006 ; accessed on May 2, 2015 .
  15. ↑ Review in Political Studies 419 ( Memento of the original from October 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2008, p. 102. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hss.de
  16. ↑ Joachim Kahl: Neither God delusion nor atheism delusion. A criticism of the “new atheism” from the point of view of a representative of the “old atheism” , Marburg 2008 (also available online as a PDF file )
  17. ^ Daniel C. Dennett: 'The God Delusion' by Daniel C. Dennett. In: nybooks.com. January 11, 2007, accessed May 2, 2015 .
  18. ↑ Ekd Internet editorial office: Simplified, coarsened and crossed. (No longer available online.) In: ekd.de. October 12, 2007, archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; accessed on May 2, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ekd.de
  19. ↑ Boris Kalnoky: Dawkins "God's Delusion" in Turkey in court. In: welt.de . April 1, 2008, accessed May 2, 2015 .
  20. ↑ 'Tanrı Yanılgısı' kitabı beraat etti ntvmsnbc.com (Turkish) Retrieved July 7, 2011
  21. ^ Andreas Müller: The God Delusion , table of contents / review, hpd from January 16, 2007.