The God Delusion

Book: The God delusion
Author Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion was the May book of the Bangalore politically inspired book club.  Written by a famed atheist, the book questions the existence of God and asks questions such as - Why we believe? Why should we pray, origins of God, Is creationism scientific? While doing so, it adds a lot of "masala", lot of anecdotes, funny quotes and an admitted bias in language during its criticism.

The starting point of this book is what gets one going; Why a discussion on God such a taboo in public? We can talk about politics, cricket, astronomy, but when somebody starts a discussion on creationism, or God, suddenly you are in some "sacred" (pun intended) territory and all discussion stops. This book is one such attempt to bring out a discussion.

For me, the first half was just masala, repeated mocking of religion. But in later chapters, as it talks about evolution,  thats when it gets interesting.  Dawkins, first, applies evolutionism to counter creationism but then he also applies it to origin of Gods, the roots of morality.  The line of argument gets quite fascinating here. Dawkins picks up an arguments, follows it up and then sometimes discards if it does not fit the evolutionary process. Morality stems from religion, this is a complete non-sense and Dawkins does a nice job discrediting this point.


Perhaps, the most meaningful chapter comes in the end when Dawkins talks about childhood and religion.    Should children be taught religion? Childhood being a stage when things are internalized very quickly, especially a thing which requires blind belief and no questioning. Dawkins makes a strong case that religion should not be taught to children. From a marketing standpoint, this is the best time to keep your customers loyal. While  science at one end end is taught in a step-wise manner, while every lesson of science is preceded by question everything, religion is just the anti-thesis of it.

Overall, this book is a good one if somebody needs points to articulate against religion. It shines in bits and pieces but there is a lot of bias that has gone in writing into it. It is interesting to read reviews of this book. People who like it (like me) feel somewhat satisfied and believers who hate it  often claim that this book has no substance but they themselves offer no critique on the things that are talked about in it. Negative reviews soon result in mindless bashing like Dawkins will go to hell etc.


This meetup was better than the others, 4 people showed up including me but three of four had read this book. So, the discussion that followed was more meaningful. But since most of us are converted atheists, it was little bit one sided.