[Ed: This is an old post that never made it through the whole publishing process because, well, life got in the way and so did my server's ability to boot without going into kernel panic. I'm going to continue on with reviewing The God Delusion because I promised someone I would.]

Alright. This is the first real entry on my iterative analysis of Richard Dawkins’ new book The God Delusion (go here for the first). It’s going to be short, though, because the first chapter really doesn’t say much all that necessary of further dissection. The chapter divides into two sections, Deserved Respect and Undeserved Respect. The first is a clarification between two kinds of religion: “supernatural religion” and “Einsteinian religion”. Einsteinian religion, as Dawkins calls it, is that “quasi-mystical response to nature [that] is common among scientists and rationalists.” ^[1] This type of religion is in juxtaposition to the supernatural religion of “religious people”, and it is the gods of supernatural religion that Dawkins is calling delusional. I’m not sure why he called this section Deserved Respect. Possibly he meant it as a contrast to what gets Undeserved Respect.

What is it that gets this undeserved respect? Why religion, of course. Dawkins provides of litany of areas where religion is provided with unthinking respect that it should not have. Or, rather, it is provided with respect merely because it is religion, and not because of any trait that would make the respect deservéd. That’s actually fine with me. I don’t think we should give respect unthinkingly. Religious ideas should be able to be freely questioned just like any other, and both suppoorters and detractors should have a voice.

Notice, however, that there is a difference between questioning religious ideas and haranguing religious people with sophmoric polemics and pejoratives. The two should not be equated. Also note that a failure to understand why there is generally respect for religion does not mean that, ergo, you should disrespect religion and religious people. It might be the case that people do not merely respect religion ipso facto, but for other reasons as well.

One final note: in this chapter, Dawkins makes the following quote: “Some men think that because they have achieved a high degree of learning in one field, they are qualified to express opinions in all.” ^[2] I’m going to step out on a limb and make a prediction here: By the end of this book we are going to see Dawkins eat those words. I know Richard is a very, very intelligent person; much moreso than I, and I know that his interests probably scale numerous disciplines. But I also know that his professional fields are zoology and biology. From what I’ve seen in other reviews (and this is borne out in the table of contents), he makes philosophical and moral objections to God’s existence. That would be fine, of course, if he were properly a philosopher. In fact, I think it would be fine if were a sailor, or a barista. What’s not fine is making such a complaint and then commiting the very same thing yourself. My bet is that Dawkins’ philosophical objections are going to be the same old rehashed arguments that have been dealt with time and again. Why would he do this? Because those areas of scholarship are not his field.

I don’t mean to say that I’m going to set Dawkins straight every place he’s wrong, but I do hope to provide rebuttals to some of his arguments. I am in no way a professional in the area of philosophy, but it’s where my passion lies. In contrast I don’t have much practical knowledge in the area of evolution and intelligent design, which Dawkins spends several sections on. That’s a topic of study that really doesn’t bear much interest for me, at least not enough to wade through the morass of contending books and papers. I feel if I were to respond in an authoritative way I would most assuredly be coming from a standpoint lacking a solid base of knowledge. So if my critique of the “scientific” sections of his book is sub-par, I apologize in advance. I’m sure there are reviews out there that do his arguments much more justice.

1. Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 11.
2. Ibid. 16.