In 2006, the same year that Stephen King published "Lisey's Story", Richard Dawkins published "The God Delusion". I had never read it until this summer and now I have finished it. The act of reading those 450 pages was very different from the process of reading the King novel. Much more concentration required.
Of course I was drawn to the book because I have been an atheist as long as I can remember and instinctively I have always been 99.999% sure that the idea of a "God" is delusional. I realise that a few people who visit this blog are Christian believers and who knows - there may be a few Muslims, Hindus and jews too as far as I know. But like Richard Dawkins, I firmly believe that they have all got it wrong They have been misled. It is indeed all a great big delusion.
We atheists are painfully aware that we live in societies where we are supposed to "respect" other people's views and their religious habits. If the truth be known, most atheists in general give that "respect" reluctantly while internally growling and dismissing the whole religious shebang as dangerous poppycock.
We look on as innocent children are indoctrinated with their parents' religious beliefs. Shouldn't they be allowed to form their own judgements when they are older and make properly informed decisions? How often are they presented with the illuminating possibility of atheism?
I found the early chapters of "The God Delusion" quite hard to read as they are framed in the style and language of academia. There are many quotations and references to wrestle with as Dawkins hacks his way through the troublesome undergrowth of religious belief. It can seem as though he is addressing an auditorium filled with quizzical postgraduates.
However, beyond the middle of the book I was finding the content much easier to master as the author explored such matters as the roots of morality, Hitler and Stalin, Darwinism, the physical and mental abuse of children and the awful symbolism of the burka in Islam.
Richard Dawkins has thought the whole thing through rather like a scientist pursuing a big research assignment. Several times he paused to reflect on religiosity in America, the frightening ignorance of creationism and the unhealthy bond between religion and government over there. It's not easy to be an atheist in America and in that land of legends and fast food, folk frequently realise it's best to keep their godlessness to themselves while religious zealots espouse their nonsense and blow their proverbial horns.
Here, for your interest, are four random extracts from "The God Delusion":-
“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.”
&
“A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.”
&
“To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries”
&
“Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.”
The quotations above, I think, provide an authentic foretaste of the book.
