In the end, I'm not really sure what the point of this book was. Perhaps it was rushed out following the release of Dawkins' book. The blurb on the back tells me "it's a reliable assessment of the God Delusion", which suggests to me that it's marketed to people who don't actually want to read the God Delusion, but want to know what it said through a "safe" lense. Now I'm quite happy for people to choose not to read books that they know will bore or antagonise them, but I think it's a bit wussy to hide behind someone else's skirts. Just say you can't be bothered with reading it and have done.

There are few petty points: the McGraths criticise Dawkins for his use of the word delusion, complaining that "although Dawkins does not offer a rigorous definition, he clearly means a belief that is not grounded in evidence"(p.1 Dawkins Delusion). This seems a redundant criticism, given that in his preface, Dawkins explicitly states his use of the dictionary definition "false belief, or impression"(p.27 God Delusion), rather than a technical or medical one. There's no need for them to intuit what Dawkins means by delusion, he'd already explained exactly what he meant. They go on to describe Steven Jay Gould as an atheist, when he identified himself as an agnostic.

The McGraths also criticise Dawkins for only having raving nut-jobs on the tv series he presented, Root of All Evil, and asks why there were no moderates. And yet, chopped liver and CofE Bishop Harries. Who can tell which is which?
It's inaccurate of the McGraths to say that "no representative figures were included or considered"(p.27 DD), when Harries appeared. Actually if you look on Youtube, the full interview between Harries and Dawkins is eminently sensible and chilled. So I'm left wondering how many liberal moderates like Bishop Harries would they want Dawkins to interview? Or is a CofE bishop unrepresentative of Christianity?

The McGraths also react to the God Delusion's points with a kind of "that's not my sort of Christianity" therefore it must not exist; or therefore it's an unfair accusation or strawman sort of Christianity which Dawkins argues against. But since they complain about the extremists getting all the air-time apparently, they must be aware that these people exist?

Dawkins is undoubtedly using a blunderbuss rather than a scalpel sometimes, but Christianity as a term covers a wide range of sects and some are fairly whacky. Whether individual or groups of other Christians would agree with them is not really the point, it's a big umbrella. To criticise something that big, some groups are going to be able to say, "hey that bit doesn't apply to us, therefore you are wrong about everything else"; but while the first part of that sentence may be true, the latter doesn't follow.

They also criticise Dawkins' lack of knowledge of theology. I don't think Dawkins spent a huge amount of time on the Bible in any event, but yeah, probably a fair point. But then Dawkins makes no claims about being an expert in theology.

By the by, it always puzzles me why a book that is supposedly the word of god requires so much explanation. I mean it gives people something to do, I suppose, a whole industry in apologia, contextualisation and head-rubbing. And often enough the resulting explanations seem relatively plausible. As in the bit in Kings where Elisha gets called baldie by children, and he curses them so two she-bears chow down on 42 of them. Obviously that's not the relatively plausible explanation, but rather, according to some commentaries, children was mistranslated - they were youths, and their taunts were mocking Elisha, his mentor Elijah and his god all at once. The yoofs came from a nasty town of calf-worshippers and were probably bad uns anyway. Not to mention they were possibly only mauled a bit, rather than splattered far and wide. It was early teen gang culture, served a bear-asbo from god. (Although if the Bible is god-breathed and inviolate, how do mistranslations occur?)

Where was I going with this? Oh yes, it's that it puzzles me that holy books require so much study, why they are not self-explanatory if they're really about a deity trying to show itself. What's with all the hoops?

Oops, I've wandered away from my book review, so bear with me while we reset course...

Alister goes on to tell an anecdote about a young man who was apparently very cross with him after a seminar about his book Dawkins' God, where he says that this fellow approached him complaining that McGrath had "destroyed his faith" in atheism or Richard Dawkins or both. This rather sets up the expectation of some splendidly smack-down responses to the questions raised in the God Delusion. But McGrath doesn't bring out these big guns in this book, so we'll have to take his word for it. Or perhaps we're supposed to go buy his other book.

The McGraths seem understandably miffed about some of Dawkins' language regarding theists, such as faith-heads: and yes, the tone of the God Delusion is strident at times. But it is a polemic. It's meant to be in-your-face-and-wrestle-you-to-the-floor sort of stuff, not kiss-you-on-the-lips-and-call-you-spanky.

I strongly suspect there are better replies to Dawkins' book out there than this one, but in its favour, it is mercifully brief. ( )

In Richard Dawkin’s new book, “the God Delusion”, he alludes to the mantra of fundamentalist atheism that all wars are caused by religion, and that we would be better off without religion as then wars would cease. This tired argument from an eminent scientist demonstrates that when Dawkins speaks about religion and history, he is speaking well beyond his competence.

In Dawkins’ Wikipedia article, there is mention that in 2004, a self selecting and unscientific poll by Prospect magazine had selected Dawkins as the leading intellectual in the world today (last year Noam Chomsky polled over twice as many votes as Dawkins on the same poll). As useless as such polls really are, it did lead me to a review of Dawkin’s book by a non religious writer in the same magazine. He said of Dawkin’s argument:

"Yet under Stalin almost the entire Orthodox priesthood was exterminated simply for being priests, as were the clergy of other religions and hundreds of thousands of Baptists. The claim that Stalin’s atheism had nothing to do with his actions may be the most disingenuous in the book, but it has competition from a later question, “Why would anyone go to war for the sake of an absence of belief [atheism]?” as if the armies of the French revolution had marched under icons of the Virgin, or as if a common justification offered for China’s invasion of Tibet had not been the awful priest-ridden backwardness of the Dalai Lama’s regime. "

Indeed, the same review starts off with this summary:

"It has been obvious for years that Richard Dawkins had a fat book on religion in him, but who would have thought him capable of writing one this bad? Incurious, dogmatic, rambling and self-contradictory, it has none of the style or verve of his earlier works. "

Is Dawkins speaking beyond his competence? McGrath points out (with clear examples) that Dawkins is embarrassingly ignorant of Christian theology. The writer of this review says: “One might argue that a professor of the public understanding of science has no need to concern himself with trivialities outside his field like the French revolution, the Spanish civil war or Stalin’s purges when he knows that history is on his side”.

This is a man who has fallen into the same trap that we all fall into sometimes - of failing to properly research and critically evaluate the evidence - particularly when the evidence seems to support his thesis. If he is not researching and evaluating evidence, he is indeed speaking well beyond his competence.

McGrath's polemic therefore ably exposes the weaknesses piee by piece in Dawkin's book. Will you be impressed? That will largely depend on what side of the argument you are already persuaded to - but an unchallenged argument is like an unstomped sand castle - very pretty, but not very strong. Read this book to hear the other side of the story. ( )

This guy's got Dawkins's number. A nice, succinct, intelligent debunking of the "militant atheists" currently soaking up the limelight. ( )

I was looking forward to this book. I like my opinions about religion to be challenged and as a supporter of Dawkins, I was hoping that McGrath would come up with some carefully considered arguments that would make me think.

It contains nothing of the sort. It is little more than a rant against Dawkins of the "how dare he say that!" kind, with an occasional, "this person doesn't agree with him" thrown in. He is constantly looking for exceptions to the rule, which is not difficult to do, but he adds nothing to the central argument: Is there as God or not?

Here is a typical quote: "Dawkins seems to think that saying something more loudly and confidently, while ignoring or trivializing counter-evidence, will persuade the open-minded public that religious belief is a type of delusion."

Counter evidence? Nowhere in this book is there any attempt to offer any evidence to support the basic tenets of religion. They are merely accepted as true.

The book gets a little more interesting when he challenges Dawkins' view that religion is a cause for violence and evil and the world would be a better place without it.

This tedious, thankfully slim volume is a wasted opportunity. ( )

Though I hold a naturalistic world view, do not share the beliefs of any organized religion, and have been a long-time fan and admirer of Richard Dawkins’s science writing, I was surprised and disappointed with his book on atheism, The God Delusion. It is an ill-conceived and poorly researched polemic against religion, primarily Christianity, that does no credit to Richard Dawkins or atheism in general. Instead, the book showcases an accomplished science writer lowering himself to the level of a TV “shock-jock,” exhibiting the same lack of concern for accuracy, and the same simplistic, narrow-minded orientation.

The McGraths offer a much-needed response in this succinct and intelligent book, which I noticed in the New Books section of the Kansas City Public Library a few weekends ago. At 118 pages, including end notes, annotated bibliography, and author profiles, it is not a lengthy reading project. In their introduction the authors explain they do not intend a point-by-point rebuttal of all the inaccuracies, misstatements, and mistakes in The God Delusion, which would be tedious indeed given the width and depth of its blunders. Their approach, instead, is to challenge Dawkins “at representative points and let readers draw their own conclusions about the overall reliability of his evidence and judgment.” (p 13)

Their challenges are presented in four chapters, “Deluded About God?,” which critiques the distorted characterization of contemporary religious belief Dawkins presents; “Has Science Disproved God?” which explores scientism (a worldview insisting only scientific investigation can provide reliable knowledge) and takes exception with Dawkins’s argument that the vast majority of scientists are atheists; “What are the Origins of Religion” highlights gross mischaracterizations by Dawkins about research on the historical origins of religion and also demonstrates Dawkins’s conclusion on the subject have no evidentiary basis and, in fact, is nothing more than uninformed speculation; and “Is Religion Evil?,” which provides a balanced view of the healthy and unhealthy aspects of religious belief, as well as other sociological processes that can also lead to violence.

These chapters are not constructed as comprehensive arguments, but provide general overviews of the topics covered and direct readers to more detailed resources for further reading and evaluation. Alister McGrath, the principal author, has a tendency to repetition with increasingly emphatic statements. One rather imagines him typing away at the word processor, becoming more and more heated by some particularly irksome inanity in Dawkins’s book, pounding the keyboard with more and more force, until Joanna pokes her head into the study with a mildly admonishing “Alister, perhaps it’s time for some tea?”

One passage I found telling occurs on page 62, which is in the chapter on the origins of religion. The authors discuss cognitive biases which “predispose us to fail to notice or to discount data that are inconsistent with our view. On the whole we do this because it is efficient – it takes effort and is upsetting to have to change one’s mind – even if change is in a positive direction.” The God Delusion is then presented as an example of such bias. “Without full awareness that he is doing so, Dawkins foregrounds evidence that fits his own views and discounts or distorts evidence that does not.”

This struck me because I have had difficulty accounting for how an experienced science writer with a reputation for accuracy could distort and misrepresent so many reference sources. While reading the book, I began obtaining some of Dawkins’s references and found that he frequently does misrepresent them. Just one salient example is Max Jammer’s Einstein and Religion, which Dawkins uses to support a statement that Einstein was “repeatedly indignant” about being described as a theist; that is, one who believes in God (Dawkins, p 18). Jammer’s book demonstrates exactly the opposite: Einstein was repeatedly indignant about being described as an atheist. “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” (Jammer, p 97)

Such problems, and this is only one of many examples, demonstrate that Dawkins’s position regarding atheism is so strongly biased he cannot be objective about the evidence. He can’t even read references accurately.

Einstein’s phrase, the “harmony of the cosmos,” recalls another passage from The Dawkins Delusion, which sites an argument for the existence of God, as phrased by Richard Swinburne, “that the intelligibility of the universe itself requires an explanation.” In other words, what can account for the natural order of the cosmos which science has been so effective at discovering? Answers to this question seem clearly beyond the realm of science. Is faith not a legitimate response? Earlier in their book, the McGraths observe that much of the available evidence supports both atheistic and theistic interpretations. Fundamentalists on either side of the argument deny this, but the observation should give pause for thought to readers with an open mind on the subject. ( )