Books › The God Delusion
The God Delusion
First published 2006 · 580 pages
A fierce, unapologetic intellectual broadside that dismantles dogma while celebrating the awe-inspiring reality of the natural universe.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting in a lecture hall with a brilliant, fiercely uncompromising professor who is determined to shake you awake. The pace is brisk and rhetorically propulsive, driven by a combative energy that takes no prisoners. Dawkins employs a tone that is simultaneously wry, exasperated, and deeply passionate, wielding logic like a scalpel against centuries of dogma. While the atmosphere is undeniably provocative and often irreverent, it is not entirely cynical; beneath the biting critiques of religious harm lies a profound, almost poetic reverence for the natural world and the scientific method. It will delight skeptics, thrill secularists, and offer a bracing, intellectually rigorous challenge to anyone willing to question the foundations of faith.
- Mood
- combative
- urgent
- irreverent
- awe-filled
- Tone
- polemical
- wry
- unapologetic
- intellectual
- provocative
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the supremacy of reason · the danger of dogma · intellectual liberation · the wonder of the natural world
- The writing
- Sharp, highly rhetorical, and laced with biting British wit, the prose is designed to persuade and provoke in equal measure.
- The arc
- Moves from a fierce, systematic dismantling of deeply held beliefs to a soaring, awe-filled celebration of scientific reality.
- Who it's for
- Skeptics, science enthusiasts, and questioning believers looking for a rigorous, unapologetic defense of secularism and rational thought.
Content notes
- religious trauma
- discussions of child abuse
- war and violence
- anti-religious sentiment
About the book
Publication Date: January 16, 2008 A preeminent scientist—and the world's most prominent atheist—asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.
With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. _The God Delusion_ makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.
Description from Open Library.
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