Saturday, June 13, 2009

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins--"The God Delusion"

When I started this book I was a little skeptical, since in the introductory part the author claims that he wants to prove some kind of rationale for an argument against religion. That sounded weird to me, as I was used to think that religion is usually part of a domain which is disconnected from the rational/scientific land. However I must say that the arguments that he brings are very convincing, and they tend mostly to point out the sociological/psicological/economical etc. consequences of religion. The book is divided in 10 chapters, which go from a description of the most important religions, to the confitation of the usual proofs of God's existence, a discussion of "morality", and the abuse of religion on most of the people. I copy below some of the passages that I liked the most.

"Here is an idea or a notion that you are not allowed to say anything bad about it; you're just not. Why not? because you're not! [...]Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be". (pg.42)

Far better, of course, would be to abandon the promotion of religion altogether as grounds for charitable status. The benefits of this society would be great, especially in the United States, here the sum of tax-free money sucked in by churches [...] reach levels that could fairly be described as obscene. (pg.53)

"The priests of the different religious sects...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live." (Thomas Jefferson) (pg.137)

The anthropic principle states that, since we are alive, eucaryotic and conscious, our planet has to be one of the intensely rare planets that has bridged all three gaps. [...] Other find this unsatisfying [...]uses the analogy of a man sentenced to death by firing squad. It is just possible that all ten men of the firing squad will miss their victim. [...] `Well, obviously they all missed, or I wouldn't be here thinking about it.' But then he could still, forgivably, wonder why they all missed, and toy with the hypotesis that they were bribed, or drunk. (pg.169-173)

Is religion a placebo that prolongs life by reducing stress? [...] It is hard to believe, for example, that health is improved by the semi-permanent state of morbid guilt suffered by a Roman Catholic possessed of normal human frailty and less than normal intelligence. (pg.195)

The antropologist Helen Fisher, in Why We Love, has beautifully expressed the insanity of romantic love, and how over-the-top it is compared with that might seem strictly necessary. Look at it this way. From the point of view of a man, say, it is unlikely that any other one woman of his acquaintance is a hundred times more lovable than her when 'in love'. Rather than the fanatically monogamus devotion to which we are susceptible, some sort of 'polyamory' is on the face of it more rational. (pg.214)

The following is a partial list of religious memes that might plausibly have survival value [...]: (*) You will survive your own death (*) Heretices, blasphemers and apostates should be killed (*) Belief in God is a supreme virtue (*) Faith is a virtue (*) Everybody, even those who do not hold religious beliefs, must respect them with a higher level [...] of belief. (*) There are some weird things that we are not meant to understand. (pg.232)

Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law:'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' (pg.235)

Why should a divine being, with creation and eternity on his mind, care a fig for petty human malefactions? We humans give ourselves such airs, even aggrandizing our poky little 'sins' to the level of cosmic significance! (pg.270)

As the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Steven Weinberg said, `Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.' (pg.283)

Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man--living in the sky--who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time...But he loves you! (George Carlin) (pg.317)

"There is in every village a torch--the teacher: and an extinguisher--the clergyman. (Victor Hugo) (pg.348)


"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own." (Bertrand Russell) (pg.397)

"That it will never come again/Is what makes life so sweet." (Emily Dickinson) (pg.405)

In the end: I enjoyed a lot this book, for the good points that it brings to the discussion, and for some of the awesome quotations that are in there.