Book Review: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

This is technically the first book I've finished reading since we started our reading list, though it is not actually in the top 100. So while I've added it to our spreadsheet, I still have at least 100 books to go! I'm sure that these reviews will have some variety depending on how much I enjoyed the book and how busy I am with other things at the point when I finish them, but it is a new challenge so let's get things started!

As this is more of a scientific text and I began it before we decided we were going to do the reading list, I'm probably a little under prepared to write a proper review. I really wish I had been taking notes as I read, but I will just have to make do with what I can find quickly.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. While, at times, Dawkins can come across a bit arrogant and pushy, I greatly appreciated the degree to which this book was well researched. It is littered with quotes and citations and provided quite and exploration of religion. If you don't know (or can't gather from the title) Dawkins is one of the primary faces of atheism (or at least one of the most vocal) in current day. He evaluates various aspects of a religion from a scientific position and, in my opinion, he did a pretty good job of it. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in exploring religion further. While, as I mentioned earlier, he can be a bit pushy and arrogant at times, I don't see this as proper justification to ignore what he is saying. A car salesman may be pushy, but that doesn't mean that you won't learn anything about the car by listening to him.

As this book was well researched, I would feel improper having a review of the book that didn't share at least a few of the interesting quotes and tidbits that I found most intriguing / could readily find in the text.

One of the things I found very interesting was the exploration of the founding fathers. Many people in America consider this to be a Christian nation and to have been founded with those principles, when there is substantial proof that that is not only false, but many of the founding fathers were very likely atheists. Here is a quote from the book from a treaty between America and Tripoli that was drafted in 1796 under George Washington and signed by John Adams in 1797:"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." Hard to imagine the any politician drafting something like that nowadays, huh?

Another quotation that Dawkins included was one that I have heard many times as almost a slight against Evolutionary Theory. From Darwin himself: "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." That really does seem to give Creationists something to latch on to, doesn't it? But as Dawkins points out "Needless to say they never quote what follows. Darwin's fulsomely free confession turned out to be a rhetorical device. He was drawing his opponents towards him so that his punch, when it came, struck the harder. The punch, of course, was Darwin's effortless explanation of exactly how the eye evolved by gradual degrees." Things like that I enjoy because it provides a little elucidation to something that I had been slightly familiar with, but not all that knowledgeable about.

While I could find more interesting examples, I don't want to get carried away with quotations. Again, I highly recommend this book, regardless of your faith, especially for anyone interested in a scientific exploration of religion.

I'm hoping that I will hone my "craft" as these book reviews continue. Especially since some of the books on our list are tapping on 1500 pages, I believe it may be in my best interest to keep a little notepad with me as I read so I don't have to rely entirely on my memory (which most people know is sub-par haha). And so continues an immense literary journey!

Reading List / Challenge

So, recently, MC and I decided that we need to stop having the TV on as our default activity when we just want to relax and so we devised a few activities to do instead. One of the activities was to have "Language Night" where we both study language for at least an hour (She's working on Italian for the honeymoon and I'm working on Spanish). The other one was reading. We had a few books that we had sitting around that we had been wanting to read but never got around to it. So we also have a "Reading Night" where we spend at least one hour reading our current book (though just doing this has made us turn most nights into reading nights as well).

Once we started reading a bit more, we decided that we would try to find a "Must-read Books" list of some sort that would include a lot of classics that most people should read, but don't always get around to doing so. So we looked around and found many lists, some shoddy, some extremely long, until we finally found one that we both liked. Now it has a little bit of a British skew since it was done by BBC, but I liked that it was basically an accumulation of reader responses, as opposed to one "expert" telling me what I should read.

We thought that such a large undertaking would benefit from documentation and it would be nice to have some milestones to celebrate along the way. So I created us a Google spreadsheet to keep track. I have all the fancy formulas to keep counts for each set of 20 books (read in any order), a total count, and rewarding automatic changes when milestones are reached. MC may think I'm a little obsessive, but I think it turned out pretty good :-) I also left room at the bottom for us to add our own books whenever we want to read something not on the list. (I am currently reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and MC is reading "The Watchers" by Dean Koontz) These additional books have no effect on our 20 book milestones, but they are added to the total so we still "get credit." :-)

It will definitely be an interesting undertaking and, perhaps, I may start adding book reviews to my blog since I will have much more to contribute in that arena (though I hardly have the literary background to provide a very meaningful critique). AT the very least I can look back and read what I wrote since I am terrible about remembering anything haha. Wish us luck!