After hearing everyone talking about this bestselling book, I was finally compelled to read The God Delusion by British biologist Richard Dawkins. Among his main points:

1. The existence of God is a scientific question. You can’t say that science is completely separate from religion, because a universe with a God would look very different from a universe without one.

2. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. The Boeing 747 gambit is an argument for intelligent design, saying that the odds of higher life forms emerging by chance are roughly the odds of a hurricane sweeping through a scrapyard and happening to assemble a Boeing 747. But attributing the design of a complex world to God doesn’t solve the problem, because the creation of a God capable of such design would have been an even more improbable event.

3. Natural selection gives a much better explanation of the world by use of a “crane” rather than a “skyhook,” or creating complexity by building on lower layers rather than from a miracle.

4. There is almost (he does give that concession) certainly no God, and belief in one in spite of the contradictory evidence qualifies as a delusion.

This part of the book is very strong, and frankly, you don’t need reasoning nearly as sophisticated as his to argue the point.

I was raised as what you might call a casual Christian. It was our affiliation by default, but I think we all knew it was made up. Actually, until I saw Religulous in 2008, I had no idea the whole Bible was meant to be taken literally. For those who don’t know, the universe was created by the Big Bang, snakes can’t talk, dinosaurs were real, and Jesus did not reincarnate as bread.

Even if you interpret the Bible metaphorically, it still doesn’t make sense. God commits random acts of genocide, then says “Thou shalt not kill.” He’s omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, but prefers to take a completely hands off approach to running the world, lest his existence be revealed. He created (at least some) people with rational minds, then gets offended when they don’t believe in him without evidence. He loves everyone, but he’ll send you to hell if you’re gay or you eat the wrong apple or work on a Sunday.

(And for those who wonder how I can say this while entertaining the possibility of phenomena such as Akashic record reading, keep in mind that not believing in something full of ridiculous contradictions is very different from automatically rejecting everything we can’t see.)

But I was wondering why Richard Dawkins would write this book. Yeah, I knew I would agree with a lot of what he said, but why put so much effort into refuting something that’s so obviously false, and which does no harm if not taken to extremes? Why not live and let live?

I changed my mind when I read about some of the anti-atheist and pro-religious discrimination Dawkins talks about. Some examples:

• When an atheist asked for police protection for his peaceful protest of an anti-vaccination group, eight different police officers independently refused to protect him, or even threatened violence against him.
• The Supreme Court ruled that members of a particular New Mexico church can take hallucinogenic drugs because they believe that it connects them to God. Meanwhile, doctors believe that medicinal marijuana can prevent blindness in glaucoma sufferers, but apparently that’s not good enough. (Though New Mexico legalized medicinal marijuana after the book was published.)
• A twelve year old student wasn’t allowed to wear an offensive t-shirt to school because it violated the school’s policy against harassing homosexuals. The student’s lawyer got him a religious exemption from the harassment policy, on the grounds that homosexuality conflicts with his Christian beliefs.

We’ve been conditioned to think that all religious beliefs are automatically untouchable. If stuff like this is happening, maybe it’s time to question that.

This book is more constructive than I was expecting. As opposed to just being anti-religious, Dawkins claims that atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled, and the benefits potentially gained from religion can be better gained in other ways.

However, this part of the book needs to be greatly expanded to do this topic justice. Before reading the book, I thought, “OK, it’s a delusion. But is all delusion bad? What about the placebo effect, where a sugar pill cures a disease because the patient believes it will?” I don’t think he answered this question well enough.

Share your thoughts. Is all delusion bad? Is religion OK? Is atheism OK? Do people have the right to their own religious beliefs? Do other people have the right to say that their religious beliefs are stupid? What happened to the separation of church and state in America? Is mainstream religion a direct threat? Is it an indirect threat, in that it provides a breeding ground for extremists?