ChrisV
05-07-2007, 12:52 PM
In the last couple of months, I have read:
- "The God Delusion", Richard Dawkins
- "God: The Failed Hypothesis", Victor Stenger
- "The End Of Faith", Sam Harris
The God Delusion has perhaps been discussed most extensively on this forum. Dawkins opens by attacking religion on philosophical grounds, then shifts to a complexity-based argument against design (the "Ultimate 747"), then moves on to Darwinian insights about morality. It wasn't a bad book for atheists, there are some items of interest and some ammunition for debates. I definitely wouldn't recommend it to theists since Dawkins' tone of incredulity at the stupidity of all religious people would be a bit grating. I'd give this a B.
Victor Stenger is a physicist and attacks religion on general scientific grounds. I had a number of problems with this book. The first is the ridiculously overstated subtitle "How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist". Bit of an absurd claim. The second is that Stenger is a pretty bad writer. I found myself skipping over paragraphs simply to avoid Stenger's prose and get to whatever his point was. The third thing was that it turned out that the subtitle was no accident; he would frequently end chapters by saying that some property of the universe was "exactly what you'd expect if there is no God". OK, so the no-God hypothesis works fine, but that doesn't mean you've shown the God hypothesis is not consistent with the same property. Stenger's carelessness irritated even me as an atheist, I imagine theists would be screaming at the page. There's a bit of material attacking the "fine tuned universe" argument, but a lot of it is pretty speculative and really the answer "we don't know why the universe is like that" suits me fine at the moment. Not a recommended book. C-.
Next up The End Of Faith. This is a lot more like it. For starters, Sam Harris is light years beyond the other two in terms of writing ability, as those who have read his debate with Andrew Sullivan will have noted. He not only confronts religion on the ground it should be confronted on - philosophy - but with a degree in philosophy and a doctorate on the neurology of belief in the works, he is the only one of the three equipped to do so. He is clearly a very intelligent and widely-read man, and while he leaves the reader in no doubt of his fierce antipathy to religion, his focus is generally on the beliefs themselves and not those who hold them (cf Dawkins). As a result I think his book would be a lot more palatable to the sort of theists who are open to rational debate.
End Of Faith gets a solid A. I'm probably going to read some scifi or something for a while now, but when I get back to anti-theism, next on my list are (of course) Sam Harris's "Letter To A Christian Nation", and Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great". I've read that this latter one is written from a literary and historical perspective, which is a new angle. Also, Hitchens is one of my favourite writers, so I'm hoping he can outdo even Harris on quality of prose.
- "The God Delusion", Richard Dawkins
- "God: The Failed Hypothesis", Victor Stenger
- "The End Of Faith", Sam Harris
The God Delusion has perhaps been discussed most extensively on this forum. Dawkins opens by attacking religion on philosophical grounds, then shifts to a complexity-based argument against design (the "Ultimate 747"), then moves on to Darwinian insights about morality. It wasn't a bad book for atheists, there are some items of interest and some ammunition for debates. I definitely wouldn't recommend it to theists since Dawkins' tone of incredulity at the stupidity of all religious people would be a bit grating. I'd give this a B.
Victor Stenger is a physicist and attacks religion on general scientific grounds. I had a number of problems with this book. The first is the ridiculously overstated subtitle "How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist". Bit of an absurd claim. The second is that Stenger is a pretty bad writer. I found myself skipping over paragraphs simply to avoid Stenger's prose and get to whatever his point was. The third thing was that it turned out that the subtitle was no accident; he would frequently end chapters by saying that some property of the universe was "exactly what you'd expect if there is no God". OK, so the no-God hypothesis works fine, but that doesn't mean you've shown the God hypothesis is not consistent with the same property. Stenger's carelessness irritated even me as an atheist, I imagine theists would be screaming at the page. There's a bit of material attacking the "fine tuned universe" argument, but a lot of it is pretty speculative and really the answer "we don't know why the universe is like that" suits me fine at the moment. Not a recommended book. C-.
Next up The End Of Faith. This is a lot more like it. For starters, Sam Harris is light years beyond the other two in terms of writing ability, as those who have read his debate with Andrew Sullivan will have noted. He not only confronts religion on the ground it should be confronted on - philosophy - but with a degree in philosophy and a doctorate on the neurology of belief in the works, he is the only one of the three equipped to do so. He is clearly a very intelligent and widely-read man, and while he leaves the reader in no doubt of his fierce antipathy to religion, his focus is generally on the beliefs themselves and not those who hold them (cf Dawkins). As a result I think his book would be a lot more palatable to the sort of theists who are open to rational debate.
End Of Faith gets a solid A. I'm probably going to read some scifi or something for a while now, but when I get back to anti-theism, next on my list are (of course) Sam Harris's "Letter To A Christian Nation", and Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great". I've read that this latter one is written from a literary and historical perspective, which is a new angle. Also, Hitchens is one of my favourite writers, so I'm hoping he can outdo even Harris on quality of prose.