The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is a pretty good read.
If you're an atheist, anyway.
You reckon? I'm an atheist, and agreed with almost all of it, and I thought it was shit... really fecking shit
For a start, it's totally politically naive. On the very first page he nonchalently claims that without religion, there'd be no Northern Ireland conflict, no Arab-Israeli conflict, and no Balkan wars. As the physicist Wolfgang Pauli used to say, that's "not even false", it's just a fatuous, sixth-form argument
He repeatedly shows that he's unable to distinguish between Republicanism, Nationalism and Catholicism, and between Unionism, Loyalism and Protestantism.
From a personal point of view, I find his views on Jewishness borderline offensive... he clearly hasn't understood that being Jewish is a matter of not just religion but ethnicity - so saying the world would be a better place if there weren't any Jews is a bit different from saying the same about Christians. He reluctantly admits that there are atheist Jews, like his mate Robert Winston, but assumes that Winston considers himself Jewish as a matter of vague tribal loyalty - not wanting to let everyone down - rather than considering that there might be non-religious aspects of Jewish culture that are rich or worth keeping
He breezily suggests that Amish kids should be separated from their parents at birth to avoid indoctrination into what he sees as a primitive religious cluture... hang on there Prof, is that worth thinking about a bit more? For instance, is it not conceivably just a little on the fecking fascist side?
He deals with Anselm's ontological argument - which is flawed, yes, but needs some quite tricky logic to show it's flawed, by literally saying, "I'm going to answer this playground argument with another: na na na na na, I'm not listening" or some such embarrassing guff.
He quotes about 2 sides of crap gags lifted off the internet
And finally, there's the unbelievably crass, offensive and embarrassing "Burka of Ignorance" metaphor at the end, in which Ignorance is envisaged, bizarrely, as a vast burka reaching to the skies...
Aside from that, it's brilliant
