Abstract
Is atheism good for mental health? Absolutely if you think, like Richard Dawkins, that religion is but a form of insanity. His latest book, The God Delusion (2006) purports to be a frontal attack on religion in all its forms, Christian or Muslim, polytheistic or trinitarian, fundamentalist or moderate alike. He takes issue not only with creationism and the religious right, considering them, as many European mainstream or liberal Christians do, an aberration. For Dawkins, religion itself is an aberration, no matter in what form or guise it might appear. Religious education, for him, is a form of mental child abuse. The attack is carefully orchestrated, the evidence assiduously gathered, the arguments tirelessly expounded. The message, of course, is not entirely negative. Dawkins strives not only to abolish religion but to raise consciousness for secular humanism or, as he prefers to call it, atheism. He hopes to convince readers that religion can be abandoned, that it is not too late to turn their backs on their childhood indoctrination and start breathing the fresh air of science. The whole case is presented in language that is rhetorically powerful and wittily entertaining, passionately engaged and eminently readable. Richard Dawkins (b. 1941), an evolutionary biologist by trade, is one of Britain’s leading intellectuals and arguably the most outspoken secular humanist today. Recently, he has been selected as one of the world’s one hundred most influential people by Time magazine (BEHE 2007), while in a poll organised by Prospect and Foreign Policy he was elected, after Noam Chomsky and Umberto Eco, among the top three public intellectuals in the world. He studied at Oxford, taught in California in the 1960s and worked with Nikolaas Tinbergen, who later won the Nobel Prize. He first acquired international renown by his book The Selfish Gene in 1976, which, still in print, has been translated into more than two dozen languages and followed by numerous best-selling titles. A Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature (since 1997)
Highlights
Is atheism good for mental health? Absolutely if you think, like Richard Dawkins, that religion is but a form of insanity
Dawkins’ performance, whom Simonyi explicitly recommended to be the first to hold the chair, has certainly not been disappointing in that regard. He has published five books, including The Ancestor’s Tale (2004), which many consider his magnum opus – and is not likely to be superseded by The God Delusion despite the wider circulation of the latter title
Dawkins himself will turn out to be such an atheist of cultivated taste (86–87), which will only reinforce an early suspicion of the reader, one of the most alarming aspects of the book: Is Dawkins consciously selling out to propagandistic efficiency either in the hope of higher income or greater popularity and popular influence?
Summary
DAWKINS, R. (2006) The God Delusion (London etc.: Bantam) [6]+406 pp., 24 cm, ISBN-13 978-0593055489, ₤20.1. He has published five books, including The Ancestor’s Tale (2004), which many consider his magnum opus – and is not likely to be superseded by The God Delusion despite the wider circulation of the latter title He has delivered innumerable public lectures all over the world, especially in Britain and the United States, and wrote and presented documentaries for British television. Dawkins himself has acknowledged the drawbacks and potentially self-defeating nature of his aggressive argumentativeness (HALL 2005), but that does not keep him from charging forth as he is wont in The God Delusion, the author’s best ever selling book to date, of which every British MP received a courtesy copy last April through a popular initiative (RANDERSON 2007) It has attracted tremendous attention, stirred up a lively public debate, and elicited a wide variety of responses ranging from worshipping the ground he walks on to the plain abusive in tone. Giving a comprehensive account of his arguments and engaging many of them critically and in detail, I will argue that the book’s success or failure must be evaluated primarily on its own terms.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
